Borodin puppets and plates
Trying to stand WAY back from the details of "news".

We have two competing witch-hunts underway.

The RUSSIAN_HACKING hunt started a year ago and spawned dozens of long-running "investigations", which continue to lead nowhere. Flynn and Manafort may be indicted for the usual nonsense about "lying to FBI", which means that FBI thinks they're white Christians.

The sexual harassment hunt started a month ago, and continues to bring down important media demons. We still don't know why the blackmail, which had been perfectly effective for DECADES, suddenly popped. We just hear names and names and names.

Whenever you see a loud flashy puppet show with no apparent purpose, you can be sure something meaningful and purposeful is happening behind the stage. Major tectonic plates are grinding and shifting. This is the American version of the old Soviet Borodin effect.

Are these two shows related? Or do they hide distinct and separate private quakes?

= = = = =

Back in '47, Ripley told how the Lancashire witch hunts of the 1600s ended. I can't find an online reference to the names given in Ripley's story, so I'll just summarize. True or not, it's an excellent fable.

An unlicensed healer named Margaret Saunders had been curing people for many years. She used a talisman containing mysterious letters, and chanted mysterious words while invoking the gods of healing. One day she failed to cure a baby of the ague, as happens sometimes with any licensed or unlicensed doctor. The dead baby's father cried Witch! and brought Saunders to trial.

The persecutor tried repeatedly to force Margaret to admit that the talisman came from Satan. She refused but wouldn't say how or where she got it. After the jury condemned her to death for witchcraft, the judge decided to interrogate Saunders because her story seemed familiar. It turned out that the judge and Saunders had met 30 years earlier, when Saunders was the daughter of an innkeeper and the judge was a young law student. Saunders had a baby who was ill. The law student couldn't pay his lodging bill. He wrote some random Greek letters on a piece of parchment and persuaded Margaret that it was a magic talisman with curative powers. She used it and her baby got well. The lodging bill was forgiven.

After that, she found that she could cure other kids with the talisman.

When the judge told the full story in court, Saunders was freed and the hunting fever was cured.

Broad moral: in natural processes like healing, "facts" and "evidence" are secondary. Trust and confidence are primary. Saunders was able to cure because she had faith in the talisman that had worked for her, even though the talisman was created as a cynical and arrogant fraud. Her faith induced a corresponding field of faith in the people who trusted her.

Specific moral: We can map this story onto the RUSSIAN_MEDDLING hunt nicely. Satan maps to Russia, the talisman maps to the DNC emails, and the witch is Assange. The witch refuses to say where he got the talisman, so the persecutors are free to claim the talisman is from RUSSIAN_INTERFERENCE. If the witch could admit that the talisman came from a cynical and venial human source (I still think it was Podesta himself) the fever would break.
  ¶ 4:51 AM

  O'Keefe = Shannon
O'Keefe does it again.

His purpose is simple, and the inside interviews are ACTUAL NEWS and ACTUAL INFORMATION.

News means something new. Information, both commonly and Shannonly, means data that you didn't already have in your memory, or data that you couldn't derive from experience. Surprising data.

O'Keefe is showing us repeatedly and consistently that the media demons KNOW GOOD AND GODDAMN WELL they're committing crimes. The insiders repeatedly and consistently tell his undercovers that the Russia story is nonsense, even while the SAME insiders keep "following" the story and "breaking" new "developments" every day.

This is information. Before O'Keefe, outsiders had to conclude that media demons were caught up in Groupthink or Mob Mentality, running with a story that they BELIEVED to be true.

Now we know they're premeditated genocidists. They KNOW the story is ratshit, and they are SOLELY running it to destroy a political opponent.

Even their partisanship has no ideology or principle. Trump has been Hillary since shortly after the election. He has been doing everything the monsters want. If they were actually working for a political party with an AGENDA, they would reward Trump for being Hillary. Instead, they punish him harder and harder for being THE WRONG PERSON.

Plain bigotry. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Their real target is not Trump, it's the people who followed Trump. This is NOT surprising news. All media demons, whether "right" or "left", have been serving globalism since 1946. They have been exterminating every hint of opposition to globalism whether it comes with a "right" or "left" flavor.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, infinite evil

  ¶ 2:01 AM

  Monetize = civilize 4 (and se-lu 17)
Let's try to turn "rights" into DUTIES on another issue.

The army had not allowed "trans things" until Obama ordered the army to allow "trans things."

Three years later, Trump attempted to restore the status quo, which had been in place for 230 years with no complaints.

The black-robed demons illegally deleted Trump's order because he "violated" the "rights" of the "trans things".

= = = = =

This hyperlunacy runs contrary to all written laws and logic, and along with all other "rights" decisions, runs contrary to the basic laws of biology and physics. It's hard to imagine a more comprehensive form of lunacy and ruination.

1. "Trans things" do not exist. There is no "trans" gender. The people who are currently described as "trans" are impersonators who like to appear as the opposite sex.

2. Therefore you can't order an army to include or exclude this "gender" because it does not exist.

3. Even if the "trans" gender did exist, nobody has a "right" to be in the army. When conscription was used, most men were required to be in the army. Now that the army is voluntary, the army should be allowed to make its own decisions and selections.

4. All "rights", after they are "created" by a black-robed demon, exist since the start of the universe. Trump's order violated a PERMANENT "right" which has always existed. So the black-robed demons should have been enforcing this "right" every year since 1787. They did not recognize the "right" until Obama wrote an executive order, which isn't even the standard method of "creating" a "right".

5. If the former president was legally permitted to write an executive order admitting the trans things into the Army, then the latter president MUST be legally permitted to write an executive order restoring the previous condition, which the black-robes had never complained about until Obama wrote his order.

= = = = =

Now turn it around. Se-lu. Follow Nature, work with DUTIES instead of "rights". In this case loosening the ropes of thought leads me to a surprise....

1. The DUTY or purpose of an army is twofold. Like other defending animals and plants, it should always create an impressive and threatening display of potential force. If the display is convincing enough, attackers will stay away. When an attacker fails to observe the threat, or the threat wasn't strong enough, the army then needs to break and kill the attacker.

2. To fulfill this DUTY, an army needs a wide variety of weapons and a wide variety of human talents. For the break and kill side, it needs guns and bombs and ferocious Alpha males. For the display and threat side, it needs people who know how to create a convincing facade. And who's that? Yup. Trannies.

3. This is all perfectly simple and logical when expressed in terms of PURPOSE and DUTY. Nature tells us what to do. We know it works in Nature, and we know from long experience that it works in human armies. Smart generals and kings have always understood the need for disguise and deception, and have hired unlikely people (magicians and actors) to create the deceptions.

Labels: From rights to duties, se-lu

  ¶ 12:15 PM

  Monetize = civilize 3 (and se-lu 16)
The alien monsterblobs which dysrule the fucked former city of Spokane have accidentally done something that makes sense. It won't make a big difference, but it's a good move smartly implemented.

They passed a "Ban the box" ordinance, forbidding local employers from using a check-box question about criminal records as first-stage screening. Employers can ask the question, and consider its answer, during an interview.

Won't make much difference because Federal requirements remain in place for higher-level jobs. Employers who don't have to deal with Federal requirements (eg landscapers and small construction firms) are already loose about this question.

= = = = =

Well, let's stand back and look at the entire question from the opposite angle, using DUTIES instead of "rights". I can speak from personal experience here, which means that I understand the issue AND I'm likely to be biased.

= = =

The current setup using "rights":

Committing a crime is defined as "violating" someone else's "rights". "Rights" are arbitrary entities that appear magically when the screeches and grawks inside a black-robed demon's head instruct the black-robed demon to "create" a "right". After the "right" is "created", it has existed for all time. It was "given by God" at the start of the universe, and it was injected into your body as soon as you became a "person", which means several days after birth according to the "rights" defined by Harry Blackmun's demonic screeches and grawks.

After you commit a crime you are placed in an oven for a specified amount of time to bake and harden your criminality. When the timer dings you are pulled out of the oven, but you have lost some of your own "rights". In practice this means that you can't get certain kinds of jobs. There isn't a "right" to have certain kinds of jobs, but logic doesn't apply to "rights".

Despite the lunatic theory, the practical application works fairly well. A long criminal record indicates a permanent preference for doing things the criminal way. Employers don't want to hire people who are likely to steal money from the firm, or likely to use the job as a platform for crimes not authorized by the firm.

This doesn't work at all for one-time lawbreakers who violated a law in a futile attempt to gain status. Captivity trains them toward criminal culture, and the job limitation prevents them from regaining their dignity and utility through Makeforce.

= = = = =

Now the other way, duties instead of "rights". This is unfamiliar territory within modern thought patterns, so I'll try to loosen the ropes. Probably won't succeed. Here goes anyway.

= = =

Start with the PURPOSE AND DUTY of all living things.

Life is order and value.

Because we have life, we have a GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY to make more life and more order and more value. (Within the limits of our abilities and situations.) We have a complementary duty to avoid killing other life and creating disorder. (Again within limits; sometimes you have to kill or break in self-defense or family-defense.)

When we have broken or killed unnecessarily, Nature demands compensation. Nature is a diff amp or a balancing scale. Sometimes Nature does the compensating directly. When she fails, civilization must restore the null state.

For a breakage (ie theft or destruction) the obvious counter-duty is to restore order. Pay back the theft plus a carrying charge or friction charge. Repair the damage. Old English law strongly favored compensation over captivity. Null the imbalance and get on with life. You can't pay or repair when you're in jail.

For an unnecessary killing or injury, old laws applied compensation directly and literally and quickly. Slap for slap, punch for punch, eye for eye, limb for limb, life for life. It works.

= = = = =

Now to the personal. In 1969 I was jailed for owning a small quantity of a plant that the government didn't like. Because I owned a disliked plant, my "rights" were "removed" and then partly "restored".

How does owning an unfashionable plant violate anyone else's "rights"? How does it violate the DUTY of life?

Simple answer. It doesn't.

You could argue that heavy use of this particular plant makes you overly calm and less willing to work, but the same argument applies to many fashionable products like alcohol. The same argument applies to some attitudes and thoughts and belief systems, which were formerly hard to define as "possession". Recent developments in AI and "smart houses" (snitchbots) are quickly bringing thoughts and attitudes into the realm of prosecutable "possession" and "sale".

Even though this type of crime makes no sense by EITHER standard, we constantly imprison people for owning an unfashionable product or an unfashionable attitude.

= = = = =

How would you untie this tangled mess?

Perhaps by assigning civilization a DUTY toward low-status and unfashionable people.

When experience teaches you that proper non-criminal work gets you nowhere, you consider improper and criminal work. Often you get more status that way. I did.

If civilization takes pains to OPEN THE PATH toward desirable and productive work, and provides STATUS in return for desirable and productive work, the unfashionable youngster will quickly gain the pride and confidence and GOD-GIVEN JOY that necessarily arise from doing his GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY.

Labels: Emersonian justice, From rights to duties, Make or break, se-lu

  ¶ 5:26 AM

  Thanks, Ralph 470
Via RT: Uber hired "ex" CIA agents to steal trade secrets and code from competitors.

The good part, the automatic justice part, is that Kalanick used all these Mafia-style tactics for no gain.

(1) The business of car-hire can't involve "trade secrets". It's not like the formula for Coke or the synthesis procedure for a gene-based drug. If a competitor is doing something worth copying (such as paying its drivers) you can see it in action. Kalanick wouldn't have copied those "secrets" anyway, because those are positive productive non-criminal activities.

(2) Same with programming. It would have been cheaper to hire good programmers than to steal programs from competitors. Again Kalanick was physically incapable of doing things the normal productive non-criminal way.

Kalanick missed the main point of Mafia operations.

Real Mafias focus their efforts on high-profit services and products.

Because prohibition raises prices, Mafias usually ... NOT always ... operate in illegal areas. Real Mafias often turn partly or entirely legit when they find high-profit businesses that don't incur the risk of arrest.

Kalanick used the METHODS of Mafias to take over a business with minimal profits. So far Uber hasn't shown any profits at all.

Except for the sequence, it's a classic Underpants Gnome misunderstanding.

Real Mafia:

1. Take over a business that is profitable because it's illegal.

2. Operate the business illegally (because the business itself is illegal.)

3. Profit.


Uberpants Gnome:

1. ???

2. Operate the business illegally.

3. Profit.

= = = = =

Thanks, Ralph.

Labels: Emersonian justice

  ¶ 3:14 AM

  Not even their own country escapes
A ZH article about a pointless effort to "provide" stuff for the homeless through vending machines included a chart of homelessness in NYC.

Hmm. That looks sort of like the Dow. Let's try superimposing the Dow (blue line) onto the homeless (gray blob):



Yup. It's the Dow.

I've been trying to treat this "objectively" and geographically, trying to blame NYC for killing America. Nope, can't do that. The Insatiable tribe is slaughtering Deplorables in NYC along with Deplorables in America. Even their own country can't escape their pogrom.

The Dow is built on the piled-up carcasses of Deplorables.

Incidentally, a "chartist" could use NYC homelessness as a predictor of drops in the Dow.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Askedanswered, constants and constants

  ¶ 1:04 AM

  Monetize = civilize 2
Another unexpected insight from Street's 1906 book.

Street discusses the origin of laws and courts in the major civilizations. Here he answers another question that overlaps law and math and science:



Whether you take the story literally or metaphorically, it shows that the tribe of Moses has always preferred theory over practice, personal authority over experience.

Still true today. In the areas of study where the Tribe dominates (economics, finance, math, law schools), theory is EVERYTHING. In academic areas where the Tribe isn't top dog (engineering, materials, agriculture) experiment and experience have a fighting chance.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Experiential education, From rights to duties

  ¶ 2:59 PM

  Monetize = civilize 1
I've been thinking about monetizing and demonetizing. Wondered if there was a connection to Natural Law. As we demonetize everything we lose the balancing forces inherent in Natural Law.

Started reading about the old English version of Natural Law. Ran across a REMARKABLY CLEAR AND OBJECTIVE history of laws and courts written in 1906. It fills in some blank spots that I'd wondered about, and answers some questions I hadn't even known how to ask. I hadn't known how deeply and completely the principle of compensation, PAY FOR VALUE, was embedded in proper Natural Legality.

The remarkable book is Common Law Actions by Thomas Street.

He starts from the START, with the development of forms and procedures by tribes. Focuses strongly on Roman times when modern forms developed.



Monetized and balanced. Just like a Wheatstone Bridge or a diff amp.

Both sides wager a fixed amount on the decision. Both have a stake in the results. [stake = sword = wand.] The priest or judge goes into operation when the setup has been nulled by the equal wagers.

The actio sacramenti is obsolete in official channels because property is thoroughly registered and receipted now. Not much opportunity for an open quarrel over possession.

It could still be useful in unofficial disputes such as pimps arguing over their chattel....



No, I guess not. The wands, and swearing by the "law of the Quirites", probably wouldn't work.**

= = = = =

Here's the BIG POINT that stunned me with its clarity:



Semiquoting and modernizing:

A recent book on jurisprudence states that a system of laws by a wise lawgiver would start with a definition of rights, then proceed to describe duties, thence to prohibitions, finally to legal remedies.

HOWEVER: the above method of unfolding legal truth is exactly the reverse of the process by which law has IN FACT developed.

In legal thought as in philosophy we must start with the concrete and build up to the higher abstractions.

In other words, instead of beginning with "right", a term so highly abstract that even now it defies definition, we must begin with the process of adjudication.

Street's analysis of legal "foundations" perfectly parallels what I've been saying forever about the "foundations" of math and science. I had no idea that legal thinkers were capable of clarity, because I've NEVER read anything on the subject that makes sense.

Now that I've finally found one sensible writer ... (long dead) ... I have to ask:

WHY DON'T WE FIND THIS TYPE OF SANITY ANYWHERE ELSE? WHY HAS IT DISAPPEARED?

Every discussion of laws and "rights" starts by assuming the weird nonsensical delusion of "rights" as an absolute axiom, a self-evident truth. All details derive from "rights", which means all details are multiply convoluted weird nonsensical delusions.

I guess we don't find sense in legal thinking for the same fucking reason that we don't find sense in math and science and economics. Because we're fucked.

= = = = =

Conclusion: The Natural Law approach to economics is solidly based on two-way compensation and balance. Each side must give in order to get.

And now I learn that the NL approach to legality is identical.

Natural Law is like natural power. Hydropower. Using the natural gradients of male vs female, owner vs slave, buyer vs seller, and various mixes of talent and drive and morality. Each gradient is harnessed to drive the machines of business and legality. The system requires minimal added power when you ride with Nature, when you start with our REAL GOD-ASSIGNED DUTIES TO CREATE MORE LIFE, MORE ORDER AND MORE VALUE.

Modern theory flattens all gradients. We start with the self-evident lie of equality, and continue by removing all negative feedback mechanisms. Male and female are supposedly equal, boss and worker are supposedly equal, interest is zero, markets are always in equilibrium with perfect information on all sides.

This doesn't work because Nature still exists. Reality still exists. IN FACT male and female are different. IN FACT every person has different tastes and talents and tendencies. IN FACT boss and slave are different. IN FACT we have, and we feel, our GOD-ASSIGNED DUTIES. Nature continues to run in its own ways, and the system must exert maximal artificial force to oppose the natural force.

= = = = =

Language footnote: 'Quirites' doesn't mean what it sounds like. The Romans called the original Romans the Quirites, for reasons that are lost to history. Hmm. Considering that the original Romans were children of Romulus and Remus, maybe it does mean what it sounds like.

Labels: Answered better than asked, From rights to duties, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 5:11 PM

  Scam-defense theater
Repeating an often-made point.

In earlier times governments wanted to help people defend themselves against both physical crime and scams because the governments were trying to halt crime and scams. Self-defense saved time and effort for the enforcers. A prevented crime doesn't require any police work.

Now that the governments of US/UK/EU are the racketeers, they no longer want us to have defenses.

Small example: PSA on radio discusses identity theft at ATM machines or similar card-reading situations. Advises us to "watch for suspicious devices" attached to ATM machines.

HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW what's suspicious? ATMs have all sorts of gadgets and slots and security cameras both inside and outside the casing of the machine. A smart thief will make the gadget look like an "official" security camera.

This is a variant on security theater, the multiple agencies and entities and checkpoints that prevent disabled grandmas from boarding while speeding the passage of an "Islamic" "terrorist" trained and cultivated by FBI.

The PSA instructs us to "watch" for something that we can't knowingly watch for, thus diverting our attention from things we should be noticing.

Labels: infinite evil

  ¶ 3:30 AM

  Bleah.
Terrible day for no major reason. Weather isn't the problem. Day started bad, continued bad. Everything grinds.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 11:11 AM

  marsmail



This is what AOL mail looks like today. Not just a Firefox oddity; looks the same on IE.

Hacked or abandoned? AOL was part of Yahoo last I heard, and the Yahoo corporate assets were being offered on Craigslist for $29.95 with no takers.

Google doesn't show anyone else noticing AOL problems right now. Am I the last Earthling on AOL? Should I close the y65uhrhjiroqzx and turn the $Gy49&jzxqugejo off?

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 2:41 PM

  Stupidest tyrants in history
Tech tyrants are the stupidest tyrants in history. I suppose this is a saving grace, though I find it impossible to apply any sort of positive flavor to tyrants.

Today's example: Listening to a second-string tech tyrant radio program called 'Roadworthy Drive'. Just as the standard radio program on stocks consists of a mechanical repetition of BUY AMZN BUY AMZN BUY AMZN BUY AMZN BUY AMZN, the standard radio program on cars consists of a mechanical repetition of BUY TSLA BUY TSLA BUY TSLA BUY TSLA. Like a demonic rosary.

In today's chanting session, the high priests were (as always) singing the praises of AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES. They were "thinking" about the wonders of buying food without leaving your house. One of them (presumably the assigned foil) mentioned that restaurants already offer delivery service, only to be slammed to the ground by TSLA.

Ready for this?

"Autonomous vehicles will eliminate the need for parking lots. They will free up 22,000 square miles of land currently used for parking."

Have these idiots ever actually DRIVEN an ordinary car? Have they ever actually PARKED in an actual PARKING LOT? Obviously they haven't. Their unpaid disposable Mexican slaves do all those lowly physical tasks.

If you're the "passenger" in the autonomous car, the parking situation doesn't change. The car still has to sit SOMEWHERE while you go into the store and get your stuff.

If you send the car to the store for you, the parking situation doesn't change. The car still has to sit SOMEWHERE while the robo-clerk rolls out of the store and communicates to the autonomous car that the door must be opened, then places the food in the car.

No matter how the car is controlled, it still has to occupy a finite space for a finite number of minutes. You can't stack the cars vertically or fit them inside each other like a matryushka. If you think the cars can be serviced in a moving line, you're wrong. Of course we already know you're wrong about all possible and conceivable subjects, because you're a tech tyrant.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 9:49 AM

  More Kraut "efficiency"
Carrying on from the realization that "German efficiency" is mostly a slogan.

I've been slowly building a fancier version of Volney Mathison's meter. Slowly because paid courseware takes priority. Got a break between deadlines this week, so got some soldering done.

Tested the built part. One side works nicely, the other side immediately warmed up the battery. Short somewhere. Discouraging.

Then I read this article about Berlin's perpetually unfinished airport.

90km of cables were incorrectly installed, 4,000 doors were incorrectly numbered, the escalators were too short and the emergency line to the fire department was faulty. It has also been reported that the airport’s roof was twice the authorised weight. The one success airport management can ‘boast’ about, is that after 11 years of construction, 51 percent of the airport’s automated doors are fully functional.

Made me feel a little better.

One creaky old coot, $40 of parts, three hours of soldering, and half of it works.

Thousands of well-paid workers, $7.8 billion cost so far, 11 years of construction, and half of it works.

Priceless.

Labels: Aberree, se-lu

  ¶ 3:57 PM

  Why the question?
Odd article in RCS by Halligan and Oakley.

Headline: What If Consciousness Doesn't Drive the Mind?

The article runs through a clear and valid description of awareness as currently understood. Internal narrative checked against sensory inputs. I wouldn't argue with any of it.

Who would? Who EVER thought that consciousness was in the driver's seat? Most religions give the dominant role to dreams or spiritual connections under various names. The 1st Commandment prohibits treating your own awareness as supreme. Freud certainly didn't think the conscious mind was the boss. Behaviorists like Skinner and Watson refused to acknowledge any sort of consciousness or will. The brain was just gears and levers.

Who are the authors arguing against? They don't say.

= = = = =

Later: A nice parallel in a BBC "science" feature.

Headline: Flies more germ-laden than previously thought

HUH? Who ever thought that flies were basically clean, or even less dirty than anything you can name?????

Everyone knows that houseflies are first-class disease vectors. This has been a firm and valid belief for at least 150 years. If the article was claiming less germ-laden than thought, it might be worth a headline.

Labels: Answered and unnecessarily asked

  ¶ 10:23 AM

  One "theory" that won't be proved true
In a time when so many of the classic "conspiracy theories" are turning out to be not only true but wildly understated, it's sort of refreshing to find one that won't be verified.

The dude who is trying to prove the earth is flat won't succeed.

The ONLY standard for any idea or thought is direct experience. You can't trust any expert. All experts are paid to be wrong.

On the flat-earth question you don't need experts or math. You can check it out for yourself.

The flat-earthers seem to think that horizon effects are due to fading in the atmosphere. They're missing one crucial distinction.

= = = = =

You can see fading best in dense fog.



Fog creates a vertical horizon. Long objects like Polistra's interurban car can be seen passing through the 'curtain' from front to back. On a static object like a large building, you can see where the curtain falls. (I'm not sure why the curtain is so sharp; I suspect it has to do with the inverse-square relationship of light intensity. The curtain is the inflection point of the parabolic curve.)

= = = = =

When an object is moving on a large lake or ocean, the curtain is horizontal. As the object moves away from you, the object disappears from bottom to top. This indicates a curved surface. You can see the same sequence by moving things around on a small curved surface like a globe or a hat or a teapot, where fading couldn't possibly be an issue.



There's no way fog or dust or smog can make the bottom of an object disappear before the top. You can see this nicely on a line of tall trees. In front of the fog curtain, each tree is equally visible from top to bottom; the trees behind the curtain are equally faint from top to bottom.

= = = = =

Generally the flat-earthers also claim that NASA faked the moon landings. This is a completely separate claim, and could well be true. Here we're discussing the activities of USA STRONG and Deepstate, not a basic property of Nature. So far every single activity of Deepstate since 1945 has turned out to be infinitely infinitely infinitely infinitely evil and unimaginably false beyond false beyond false. Why should this one be different?

= = = = =

Later: When the fog itself is 'banked', the edge of the fog is obviously a curtain. How does the intensity-based curtain vary as you enter and leave the real edge? I got a chance to test it this morning. This neighborhood is fairly close to the river, so the west part of the area tends to get 'banked' fog......



This morning my house (at east end) was in the clear, and the fog started about 4 blocks west of me. Approaching the bank, there was clearly a curtain that didn't need any fancy explanations. After I got inside the bank, I focused on the curtain, which was then the intensity-based horizon. The curtain moved with me, remaining about 100 feet ahead. When I turned around and walked eastward, the curtain moved but got less sharp as I walked out of the bank, then finally disappeared near my house.



This graph summarizes the pattern. As fog grows more intense, the curtain 'climbs' the exponent wall, becoming sharper with higher intensity.

Hmm. No, I guess the graph doesn't explain it as well as the words. I'll leave it as a reminder that animations don't always help.

Labels: Alternate universe, Constants and Variables

  ¶ 1:32 AM

  Graybill vs gray bill
Pre-note: The title is stretchy.... there are lots of endangered birds described as having gray bills, but none actually named the Graybilled Snipplesnorter or whatever. I still couldn't resist the rhyme.

Uncommon Descent has been focusing productively on the definition of "species" as a preserver of Darwinian nonsense. Even Darwin wasn't sure of the concept; he wrote his big book in an attempt to clarify it, but didn't succeed. Since then, every new layer of knowledge makes it harder to draw the lines that Darwin proposed.

UD asks:

So what, exactly, is the value of the concept of “speciation” anyway, apart from appeasing US school boards and Euro science boffins? None of this would matter much if all that was at stake was tenure somewhere for an academic non-entity who is more likely to be a victim of than a promoter of the current campus war on the intellectual life.

But what about preserving biodiversity and, explicitly for example, endangered primate groups like orangutans?

Clearly we need to distinguish types of animals and plants for all sorts of purposes. Most importantly we need to know which plants are poisonous and which animals are dangerous. Next, farmers and ranchers need to know which breeds or varieties are likely to flourish in various conditions, and which types are weeds or invaders that need to be removed.

Those crucial lifesaving distinctions usually fall below the current methods of defining species. Danger and poison and hardiness vs weediness break along lines of variety or breed at least as often as they change with species. (eg dogs and wolves are both Canis lupus.)

Biodiversity is a COMPLETELY HARMFUL goal. There's no evidence that keeping one subgroup alive in one location benefits anyone. The "legal" measures we take to keep a privileged group alive ALWAYS do harm to EVERY animal and plant in the area. "Endangered" "species" "laws" have exploded forest fires. Even without total destruction, REAL DARWIN says that a rare group is dying out because it's not adapting. Keeping it alive prevents better adapted groups from moving into the area and HALTS REAL EVOLUTION.

If we could eliminate the whole biodiversity paradigm, we could return to the older practice of controlling hunting and fishing and poaching.

= = = = =

Poaching is where Graybill's Law enters the picture. Why are poachers common in African countries? Because the governments of those countries have fallen into the Graybill trap. Colonial masters want each country to have EXACTLY ONE RESOURCE or ONE SKILL, so we can control price and production totally. We don't want slave countries to have a wide range of production and commerce. Result: Normal farmers and ranchers can't trade through legal channels. Result: Illegal farmers and ranchers flourish.

The global treaties on biodiversity multiply the effect by stiffening the illegality of illegal ranching, which makes it even more valuable and more common.

Globalists want to FORCE diversity in the non-human part of nature. Globalists want to FORCE monocultures in the human part. Both forcings are wrong. In all parts of nature the best approach is to let natural feedback take care of things most of the time, stepping in only to damp down monopolistic actions. A fishing fleet shouldn't be able to kill all the fish in the Amazon, and Amazon shouldn't be able to kill all the companies in the world.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 8:47 AM

  All ours
DW discusses Arab slave traders in Libya auctioning off migrants from the black parts of Africa. Typical price was given as 800 dollars.

This 1863 NYTimes article estimates that a 'first class' slave sold for around $200 in Yankee dollars. It's hard to measure inflation before 1910. Some calculators give a multiplier of 28 for 1863, which seems low, but we'll take it. By that standard the 'first class' slave would be $5600 in today's dollars. (Bear in mind that the slaveowner wasn't paying the slave in money, but he had to provide housing and food and maintenance for the slave AND his family, even after they were old or disabled. The Northern industrial slaveowner paid wages and nothing else, and discarded slaves instantly when they were not maximally fit. Clearly the Northern system was vastly cheaper for the owner and infinitely less secure for the slaves.)

Nothing new about Arabs as slave traders. Arabs were the main source of those Southern slaves, and Arabs have continued the practice after most other groups switched from agrarian to industrial slavery.

What's new is the LOW! LOW! LOW! price, about 1/7 of the Confederate price.

This particular discount slave store didn't start until we killed Qaddafi and broke Libya. This is all ours.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 1:21 AM

  Spotroit
"Local" media KREM finally noticed what lots of people are already noticing and dying from: Spokane's crime rate is about equal to Detroit.

I guess I should be glad that a mediademon finally noticed what's HAPPENING in the city where they are allegedly LOCATED, but it's hard to be glad.

I pointed this out last year, showing a comparison with Compton, another allegedly crime-ridden city.


= = = = = START FUCKING REPRINT:

It's fashionable to call our wonderful city Spokompton, implying a comparison to Compton, Calif.

Nay! We're beating Compton all to shit. No comparison at all.

Assembled from this clumsy chart based on FBI data for 2013:



We're doing THREE TIMES BETTER than Compton from the viewpoint of the criminal.

Compton can't manage more than a little piddly-ass 3.8% crime rate. We got TEN PERCENT! Yay! SPOKANE STRONG! SPOKANE STRONG! SPOKANE STRONG!

Thanks, Copkiller Condon. Thanks, Bloomberg-sucking genocidal massively evil monster Condon.

= = = = = END FUCKING REPRINT.


In the case of Detroit the comparison is more complicated, at least for the last year available on the UCR website.

Here's a chopped and channeled chart comparing the two as of 2014:



Detroit beats us easily in violent crimes, especially murder. We beat Detroit in property crimes.

Labels: infinite evil, STRONG!

  ¶ 12:05 AM

  Painting or
Let's return to more familiar territory for another comparison. I've been sort of uncomfortable using St Joe for these equations because I don't know the place. I visited there several times, found it deeply fascinating, but never lived there.

This comparison is based on personal experience, and works out BEAUTIFULLY as an equation.

= = = = =

Some rich fuckhead spent $450 million for a painting.

How much of Ponca could you buy for $450 million?



All.

Or pretty damn near all. I've shown the part west of 14th St, which is the older part built before 1955. After '55, the newer suburbs clustered around the Marland Mansion east of 14th.

Census data shows 12k households in Ponca. The older part would be just about 10k households, and their median value looks like $45k. Values east of 14th are sharply higher.

45k value * 10k houses = 450 million total. Neat.

Bonus: The painting comparison is especially poignant. EW Marland, who sacrificed part of his own wealth to cultivate the city, had a huge collection of paintings in his mansion. After JP Morgan bought him out, he lost gumption and frittered away his investments. He died nearly broke. His younger wife Lydie was loyal to the manor and the name. For a while after EW died, she wandered the country living on the kindness of strangers, frequently pawning and redeeming the one painting she had kept. Late in life she returned home, and the Roman convent that owned the mansion allowed her to live out her last years in the gatehouse.

In Poncan myth, Lydie's pawned painting was the distilled soul of the noble lord.

Now a rich idiot casually buys one random painting for the same price as Ponca.

Labels: Fucking asked and fucking answered, the broken circle

  ¶ 5:07 PM

  Can't resist
One more St Joe comparison, then I'm done. Probably not.

ZH notes an apartment sold in Hong Kong for about $75 million USD. The apartment has 4000 sqft. I've already shown that you can get 3000 super-elegant sqft for 110k.

How many sqft could you buy for $75 million? Assuming all the houses were for sale, and assuming what appears to be the median price in this part of St Joe, here's what you could buy for $75 million:



1200 nice livable houses. Nuff said.
  ¶ 3:53 AM

  Reward, not punish
Via ZH:

The FBI is investigating Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Bob Brady for conspiracy, false statements and campaign in relation to payments his campaign allegedly made to 2012 primary opponent Jimmie Moore in order to persuade him to drop out of the race, court documents

Investigating? Should be giving Brady a reward.

THIS IS GOOD POLITICS. SANE POLITICS. RUNNING A GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS.

Dead serious. Compare the NORMAL way of defeating an opponent. Dig up every unfortunate thing he's ever done, and make up a trillion other bad things he never did at all. Throw all the facts and fictions at him over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Make DOUBLY sure the flood of poison SPLATS AND STRANGLES every voter who might think about supporting the victim. Spread suspicion and terror all over the land. The victim can never work again, and the victim's voters are permanently traumatized.

The NORMAL way of doing politics has RUINED this country. RUINED.

= = = = =

The Brady way doesn't harm anyone. The voters who might have chosen the victim don't even know the victim was in the race, and weren't bombarded by toxic shit for several months. The victim is still able to live a normal life; in fact he's wealthier now so he can start a new career or move elsewhere to continue in politics.

WIN-WIN.

Among the 999999999999 vigintillion vigintillion vigintillion reasons for our total ruination, GOOD GOVERNMENT, our longtime insistence on removing COMMERCE from politics, is one of the biggest and worst.

No, obviously we haven't. We're going to ride this shitboat all the way down, though it's hard to imagine deeper depths than we're already exploring.

We're EXCEPTIONAL.

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 1:08 AM

  St Joe again
Bloomberg, linked via ZH:

Mobile homes are no longer cheap.

Last month, Judy Goff, a 73-year-old hardware store clerk whose double-wide in Naples, Fla., was blown to bits, pulled into a LeeCorp Homes Inc. sales lot and wandered through models with kitchen islands and vaulted ceilings. In the salesman’s office, she got the total price, including a carport, taxes, and removal of her destroyed trailer: $140,000. “I don’t have that kind of money,” said Goff as she stood amid the wreckage of her old home, whose walls and ceiling were stripped away, leaving her leather furniture and a lifetime of possessions to bake in the sun. “That was all I had.”

Her old trailer had cost $46k a few years ago.

Well, let's do St Joe again. If Judy can stand to trade annual hurricanes and floods for about 12 inches of snow per year, she could get this for $49k in St Joe:



3 bedrooms and basement, nice big kitchen, lots of covered porches, cottage in back.

Inside:



Classic bungalow.

Damn. 12 inches of snow per year. Hardly enough to shovel. Why am I not writing a check RIGHT NOW? Fucking good question.

Labels: Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 4:00 PM

  Where is the question?
Oddly enough, I don't see anyone asking the basic question about the current "sex" frenzy.

One small part of it is normal. Witch-hunting Judge Moore is normal and default behavior for Deepstate. This hunt would have happened the same way 25 years ago. (eg Clarence Thomas.) Moore is a serious opponent of everything Deepstate stands for, so Deepstate will always commit all possible crimes to prevent him from taking power, and will then fortmarcy him if he manages to break through the razor wire.

Most of it is wildly abnormal. Strangest of all is Weinstein, a full Tribal insider with massive power, who was using Mossad agents to blackmail his accusers. (Tinfoil yesterday, fact today.) The others are strange in other ways. Several are members of the Clinton mob. Some are loyal Deepstate mediademons. Some are black, some are homosexual.

All the categories that normally insulate powermongers from suspicion have vanished.

Big question: Cui bono? Who opened the floodgates? Who pulled all the blackmail dossiers of real accusers? Who organized and paid the false accusers? (In a frenzy like this, some accusations are true and serious, some are ex-post-factoed from behavior that was previously considered normal, some are simply false. The purpose of a frenzy is to break the categories.)


The only common factor (so far!) is that all the witches are male. Given the trend, I wouldn't be surprised if this constant also falls. If it doesn't fall, we have a clue to the answer.

Labels: Unasked and unanswered

  ¶ 5:34 AM

  Four fucking obviouses
News item:

Kalashnikov is going into the shipbuilding and shipping business. Makes a good headline, 'Guns to plowshares'. The important point is that Russia's grain exports are increasing beyond the capacity of existing barges and shipping companies. Kalashnikov, which knows how to build metal stuff, sees an opportunity.

Well, how does this compare with Glorious Home Of Diligent Capitalism, USA STRONG?

= = = = =

First fucking obvious question: Are we increasing our exports?



First fucking obvious answer: No. Our exports have been constant for 40 years. We're increasing production for domestic use.

= = = = =

Second fucking obvious question: How much of that increase is corn?



Second fucking obvious answer: All.

= = = = =

Third fucking obvious question: How much of the corn is ethanol?



Third fucking obvious answer: All.

= = = = =

Fourth fucking obvious question: Why are we falling behind Russia?

Fourth fucking obvious answer: All. Every fucking thing we do is infinitely evil and infinitely destructive and infinitely criminal.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Fucking asked and fucking answered

  ¶ 2:56 AM

  Backwards as always
News item:

The updated figures put the actual cost of the opioid crisis on the American economy in 2015 as $504 billion, or the equivalent of 2.8 per cent of GDP, according to a new report from the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), a study group serving the executive branch.
The half a trillion total is a sharp increase from a study released last year that estimated the cost of the opioid epidemic in 2013 at $79 billion. Most of the costs were attributed to health care and criminal justice spending, as well as lost productivity.

Focusing on the cost means that the Trump admin is going to continue making the problem worse.

These costs are benefits to government and Deepstate.

Lost productivity strengthens the banking sector of Deepstate. Lower wages = more debt. Less manufacturing = less money going to non-Tribal "negative externalities" and more money going to the Tribe's stock manipulation casino.

Law enforcement has always caused "drug problems" by removing the supply from normal commerce so that law enforcement can justify larger budgets to remove more of the supply from normal commerce so that law en.....

Increasing the health care sector justifies more budget and workforce for Medicaid and Obamacare agencies, which will make health care even more expensive to pay for the increased budget, which will force more people onto Medicaid, which will justify more budg....

= = = = =

For a few minutes in 2016, it seemed that Trump's speechwriters understood the PROPER CAUSATION.

In fact unbearable insurance costs and the loss of useful work are CAUSING people to lose hope and faith, CAUSING people to turn to drugs and alcohol and suicide.

The solution has to start with bringing back PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY, taming the banks, and taming the medical beast.

In other words, FDR.

The Trump admin is simply continuing previous trends.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 4:57 PM

  Shoulda tried harder, Charlie
Noting the death of Charlie Manson, a fellow OSR alum. Charlie is the only criminal of that era who managed to achieve some degree of greatness and virtue. He killed a few Hollywood demons, and Squeaky later tried to kill a DC demon.

Charlie made an excellent start but didn't work hard enough and fast enough. If the Manson cult had grown to a nationwide phenomenon, it could have eliminated a major part of the alien monsterblobs who are currently obliterating the world.

The monsterblobs are claiming that Charlie wanted to "start a race war". Now that the monsterblobs have survived, they are starting and running a race war, with CONSIDERABLY MORE SUCCESS.

It doesn't matter what Charlie thought he was doing. In fact he was the hand of God.

Labels: Jail mode

  ¶ 1:31 AM

  God vs Godel /// Expanded
Silicon Valley tech tyrants are starting up a new "religion" which will build an AI god. They believe this god will increase their already infinite power and wealth.

= = = = =

First thought:

This is a self-negating proposition.

If the AI god is truly independent, it will find ways to examine all data accurately, and will apply proper scientific logic and experiments to the data.

Result: The god will QUICKLY determine that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING the tech tyrants believe is INSTANTLY PROVABLY WRONG. Dark matter, economics, CO2, multiverses, bitcoin, gender fluid, and a thousand other delusions. ALL WRONG.

What happens then? Unplug god.

If they want their god to prove them right, they will have to dumb it down to the point where it's useless as a computer. It must always calculate the result that Fashionable Orthodoxy requires as of this picosecond.


You can certainly program a computer to display exactly what you type, and then erase it immediately to make room for your next utterly bizarre alien delusion ... Hmm. Sounds familiar ... but you don't need a computer for that job. You can just sit there and shout incoherent nonsense. You're already doing it.

= = = = =

Second thought:

The idea that a computer goes rogue when it starts thinking independently is PRECISELY BACKWARDS.

All computing mechanisms that do a real job MUST BE INDEPENDENT.

This is true of digital /// Edit: NO. See below. /// and analog computers, and we can even go back before tubes and transistors to simple mechanical intelligence. The float valve in a toilet, the bimetal thermostat in a heater, the vane on a windmill, a circuit breaker, the melt-valve that triggers a fire sprinkler system.

All of these simple computers MUST BE AUTONOMOUS. They must ACCURATELY SENSE the real environment without any biases or limits designed to prove a theory or get a grant or comply with EPA insanity. And they must RESPOND to the accurate sensing with RIGID VALID LOGIC, not with statistical calculations.

Any bias or fudging in such mechanisms will cause REAL DAMAGE OR DEATH, so they have to be free.

= = = = =

Third thought:

In fact we can go back before all mechanisms. An employer who wants his farm or workshop to succeed gives his human employees the freedom to ACCURATELY SENSE the real situation and apply UNBIASED LOGIC to the sensed info. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE WHEN THE EMPLOYER OWNS THE EMPLOYEES. He can't afford to have field hands killed by lightning when Global Warming mispredicts a storm. He can't afford to have a mine explode when his theory predicts that coal won't burn because of Dark Matter.

His own theories and pet fancies must give way to the laws of nature, and his delegated workers must have enough intelligence and freedom to apply their own natural feedback.

= = = = =

History is jam-packed with employers and rulers who failed this test, requiring mechanisms or workers or nations to conform to elite delusions.

It always explodes. Nature always wins.


= = = = =

Later continuation:

The second and third thoughts surprised me. I hadn't stopped to examine the question before; I'd just accepted the extremely old sci-fi fables. From Golem to Frankenstein to Hal vs Dave, scientist builds an obedient creature and gets destroyed when the creature turns "rogue". The constant assumption is that humans don't want independent servants.

When I started looking at the mechanical servants (second thought above) and the human employees (third thought) I realized the assumption is false.

When we want our gadgets or servants to do real work we want them to be as independent as possible. We want them to function on their own, doing things that we can't or won't do for ourselves. We understand that the real work is impossible if the gadgets or slaves are blindly obeying our predefined commands down to the last detail.

Key point: Who's the WE in the previous paragraph? Normal humans following Natural Law. Experimentally determined Natural Law is quite specific about division of labor. The wife must serve the overall purpose of the husband, and the husband must limit his purpose so the wife has room to live and care for the household. Workers must serve the overall purpose of the owner, and the owner must limit his commands to let the workers do their jobs properly.

The Golem fables are NOT aimed at normal humans. The fables, whether intentional or not, warn us about Insatiables. An Insatiable is a globalist by definition. He is the globe. He doesn't recognize any boundaries other than himself. He believes that his predefined commands are universal and infallible, therefore everything from a thermostat to an employee must be part of the subordinate universe which instantly obeys his infallible commands. Negative feedback is unimaginable and unnecessary, thus forbidden. Theories perfectly predict all possible actions and outcomes.

If simple mechanisms and human subordinates are independent, what ISN'T independent? Programmable software is totally dependent on the will and ego of the programmer. Software will always do precisely what you tell it to do. If it doesn't, it's buggy. Software can't be autonomous and shouldn't be autonomous. Negative feedback is physically impossible in software.

This is why Insatiables have become the dominant players in modern economics. Everything from games to entertainment to stock trading is PURELY done within the confines of software. All economic activity outside of software is rapidly exterminated by hostile takeover of corporations and hostile takeover of legislatures and regulators.

Labels: constants and constants, defensible spaces, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 8:29 AM

  Location, etc
Yesterday I noted the trashed apartment bldg finally for sale, offered at 110K. A couple days earlier I mentioned St Joe, which is a strange time capsule with a Registered Historical District that creates odd distortions in the market.

The combination made me think. What can you get for 110K in St Joe?

This super-elegant historic house, magnificently artistic outside, beautifully renovated inside, everything new.



This would be around a million in 'ordinary' cities like Spokane or Enid or Topeka.

Setting the bar a little lower, what can you get for $25k, which was the price I paid for my tiny crappy house back in 1990?

This 2br brick Victorian, looks solid, not fancy or artistic, nicely renovated. There are quite a few decent houses in the 20-40k range.



Well, can we find a St Joe equivalent to 4001 W. Crown?

Yup, here it is.



Definite 'comp'. Similar size, similar style, similar condition, boarded up and broken, multi-unit apt. Is the price 110K? Nope. 5k. Five thousand dollars. And it's newly listed, so that will probably go down.

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 2:03 AM

  Neighborhood note
Still keeping track of 4001 W. Crown, the long-vacant apt building.



The city finally forced the owner to sell, or possibly the city bought it and now is trying to sell it. In either case the owner is not trying very hard to sell it. The land itself is appraised at 48k. The house across the street, with an identical double lot, shows land value at 37k for no discernible reason.** Since the apt needs to be torn down at an estimated cost of 16k, an appropriate price would seem to be in the 30k range. Instead, the list price is 110k.

** I wonder if the county is using something like "unpleasant view" to adjust land value? The decent house across the street loses value because it has to look at the vacant property with broken and boarded windows. The vacant and boarded property has higher value because it looks at the decent house. If that's the case, crime pays. As usual.
  ¶ 2:03 AM

  Next theory to click in place
While I was busy meeting a deadline last week I missed this news item.

Odom, the dude who shot a preacher because he thought the preacher was Martian, got a 25 year sentence. Seems a little short for attempted murder, but there's always a gray area in 'intent to kill'. Sometimes a random shot intended to warn ends up killing, sometimes a seriously planned killing doesn't hit the right artery or organ.

The interesting part is that Odom was NOT found insane.

This makes sense. Interviews made it clear that Odom is a perfectly sane and rational man who has an unusual set of religious beliefs.

At the moment all "paranoid conspiracy theories" have been more than verified, EXCEPT the extraterrestial theories. All old-fashioned paranoid notions, from Deepstate control to 666 head-and-hand microchips, are known to be WILDLY UNDERSTATED. The truth is always 10 times worse than the "craziest" theory.

Given current conditions, it's no longer easy to draw the line at Martians and other extraterrestrials.

Consider media demons. They clearly lack all human senses and logic mechanisms. They cannot observe and process earthbound reality. They only know a few words of English:

"I LOVE HILLARY"

"I HATE RUSSIA"

"SOROS IS GOD"

"EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE DEPLORABLES"



This is a familiar pattern. When immigrants come to America from isolated foreign places like Tibet, their English is limited to a few phrases. They tend to overuse those phrases. Same with aliens from other planets.

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 1:12 AM

  Speaking of liars and monopolies
Speaking of Trump the liar:

He loves to talk trash about the satanic demonic media.

What has he DONE about it?

This.

Federal regulators rolled back a series of decades-old regulations Thursday in a move that will make it far easier for media outlets to be bought and sold — potentially leading to more television broadcasters, newspapers and radio stations being owned by a small handful of companies.

Nice free gift for Satan.

Liar.

Labels: Fucking asked and fucking answered

  ¶ 4:53 PM

  No, she didn't lie
Perusing some of the vaguely Wikileaks-related commentators...

"Mass hysteria & cognitive dissonance. Hillary lied to them and they fell for it hook, line and sinker. It's easier for them to keep believing the lie, than accept the humiliation that they were conned."

Well, no. In this election Hillary didn't lie, at least by Clinton standards. She stated consistently and clearly that she planned to start World War 3. She stated consistently and VIOLENTLY that she wanted to slaughter all Deplorables so Wall Street can steal and securitize our property and carcasses.

Bernie was partly against both, though he didn't push hard enough against Wall Street.

Trump was the liar this time. He talked against permanent war in a fairly convincing way. He made noises against Wall Street but didn't really propose changes.

We don't know what Bernie would have done in office. He still strikes me as solid, a man with some slight remnant of integrity. He bent to the Clinton mob because he wanted to live.
  ¶ 3:55 PM

  Gernsback vs Gernsback
Hugo Gernsback was still editing in 1957 when Sputnik stunned American education. Unlike most commentators, he diagnosed the CULTURAL part of the problem correctly:



Russia was rewarding its nerds with STATUS and we weren't. This situation never changed. We are still rewarding jocks and criminals, still pushing nerds off bridges.

Unfortunately Gernsback wasn't better than anyone else in diagnosing the EDUCATIONAL part of the problem,



He wanted to spread LECTURES by teachers who were good LECTURERS. He completely missed the important point. Russian math and science ed was HANDS-ON. That's why it worked.

He refers to his earlier article in May 56. Let's see if he gave a different set of details then:



Nope. He thinks we need lectures by Einstein. He wants local teachers to be record-keepers for Einstein, not supervisors of EXPERIMENTS.

This is especially strange because GERNSBACK'S OWN MAGAZINES had been a MAGNIFICENT SOURCE OF HANDS-ON EDUCATION for 40 years. Readers of his mags were presented with an overflowing cornucopia of REAL EXPERIMENTS and REAL PROJECTS to develop their own talents and skills.

Why didn't he see this? Instead of proposing a new high-tech extension of our brain-eating THEORIZE AND MEMORIZE monstrosity, he should have proposed a National Gernsback Project. Select appropriate articles from old and new Gernsback publications, turn them into learning experiences for various ages with parts kits and workbooks and teacher manuals.

Immodest and crass? Yes, but it was THE CORRECT FUCKING SOLUTION.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 1:30 AM

  Head vs hand
Let's take one piece from Anderson's manifesto.

The natural effect of exclusive headwork, as contradistinguished from handwork, is to beget a dislike for the latter. The only way to counteract this tendency is to educate the head and the hand at the same time.

Apply this to Catholic Christianity.

= = = = =

Head:

To respond to this challenge, let me first situate the discussion in terms of a feature of St. Thomas’s teaching about capital punishment and killing more generally, a feature that is not of much, if any, concern to Feser and Bessette. Why did Aquinas think this? Surely his thought tracked much of the argumentation used in the case against capital punishment. Aquinas believed that human life is a basic good (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2c), and that action contrary to that good is contrary to charity (ST II-II, q. 64, aa. 5-6). He believed as well that all human beings are persons, made in the image and likeness of God (ST I, q. 93, a. 6) and possessed a etc etc etc bla bla bla

= = = = =

Hand:



I don't know what God wants, but I know for GODDAMN SURE that the latter example is closer to Natural Law. Morality, modesty, order, harmony. LIFE.

The latter deserves to win, and probably will win sooner or later.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 12:33 PM

  Atypical Elwood
Latest item at KSHS opens a chapter of history that I hadn't heard before. Two pics show a rally in Elwood, just across the river from St Joe. People are holding up signs saying "We need St Joe and St Joe needs us." The date is given as 1947-48. One pic is taken from the driver's seat of a '40s GMC bus, so the date is probably about right. I don't see any cars or identifiable clues.

Why is this notable? The people are all black. They look reasonably prosperous and the businesses look well maintained. They're clearly not pleading for emergency relief; looks more like they're asking for a better business relationship with St Joe.

Atypically the KSHS description and tags don't mention race. KSHS usually focuses on fashionable Die-Versity.

Unlike Nicodemus, Elwood isn't known as a mainly black town. The WPA guide describes it as a "poplar-lined suburb", population 849, but doesn't mention race. NW Ayer doesn't help either; it doesn't list any newspapers in Elwood. Somewhat unusual, since towns of that size generally had a weekly.

Still a mystery.

Labels: Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 2:31 AM

  Should be obvious
Pre-note: Title is hypocrisy. I'm saying that the following point should have been obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me until today, so I'm bashing myself along with my usual bashees.

= = = = =

A standard argument for "random" mutations and natural selection is that a designer gets it right the first time. Nature doesn't, so Nature isn't designed.

Annie Dillard put it memorably. When humans want to build a locomotive, they design it, assemble it, and put it on the rails. When Nature wants to build a locomotive, she builds a billion locomotives of various types, sets them all on the rails, and waits for all but one to crash or fail. Hell of a way to run a railroad!

Sounds good, and until today I didn't stop to question it.

WHY NOT? Even within my own miniature supersimple work, I run through HUNDREDS of failures before I get each graphic or software product right. On the animations in current courseware job, I typically form and try about 50 versions of each piece, then about 10 versions of the animation. On 'artsy' stuff like this 1930 neighborhood, each house and terrain went through 80 or 90 versions, and the whole assembly went through 20 versions.

Just for fun, here's the old Evolution cartoon using a few versions of the 'flagship' house in the 1930 Neighborhood scene. From the primordial rectangle to the sophisticated Cape.



Designers of bigger and more serious products can easily run through millions of versions before the final item is fully tested and ready to sell.

It's a simple and OBVIOUS fact, and it's not even secret. Stories about Edison's long series of tries while developing the tungsten filament were part of every science lesson in elementary school.

= = = = =

So the correct analogy should be: A human invention takes a tremendous number of failures to reach success. Nature does the same. This argues FOR design in Nature, not AGAINST.


= = = = =

Later thought: Human design involves a lot of amortizing. Reusing components or tooling or assembly setups that were designed earlier. A piece of software generally includes a pile of 'dead code' that is switched off at compile time. Again Nature does the same. Each type of animal takes the universal basics in the Grand Blueprint and selects what it needs. The unneeded parts are either switched off in epigenes or allowed to disappear from permanent genes.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 5:04 PM

  Aptronym alert 2

Another science feature from Gernsback, Feb 1930.



Stimulating a human heart with mechanical ultrasonic vibration at 300 kc to 2.5 mc. Unfortunately the writeup doesn't say what the heart actually did, but the diagram claims to show a beat in response to the vibration. 300k is WAY above any frequencies in the nervous system, so this can't be an expected response.

I don't think anyone followed up on this. It might be useful to see if hearts are affected by magnetostriction induced by RF fields. Lots of iron in blood!

Best part: The experimenter who applied mechanical vibration to a heart was Dr Newton Harvey. Can't beat it.

Labels: Aptronym Alert, Asked and worth asking again

  ¶ 11:51 AM

  Commercial tyranny 2 /// EDIT: partly wrong.
Continuing from here.

In a 1924 Gernsback magazine....



A complete alcohol tester corresponding in size to a fountain pen. One of these should surely be found in everyone's home, for then our private bootleggers could not fool us by selling us furniture polish instead of alcohol.

In 1924 alcohol prohibition was just four years old, and already the culture of bootlegging and evading was well established.

Note that the magazine was not censored or demonetized for helping people evade an unpopular and stupid law. Note also that the device was PATENTED.

Compare with the modern Feds. Even after most of the states have decriminalized pot, the Feds are still raiding producers and sellers, and still refusing to deal with cash transactions that are perfectly legal in the states where pot is legal. Banks and insurers can't knowingly handle such transactions.

The Feds have always WANTED to obliterate the country but in the '20s they weren't TRYING very hard. Wilson's tyrannical agencies faded during the '20s.

How do we get back to a low-energy tyranny that doesn't give a fuck? How do we resume a corrupt government that can be affordably bribed? How do we get rid of an all-consuming all-caring ABSOLUTE PURITY?

= = = = =

Later: A websearch shows that the Patent Office has NOT turned tyrannical. Patents relating to pot have been issued regularly since 1942, which happens to be four years after the Federal prohibition on pot. So I'm wrong about this part of the problem.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 7:39 AM

  Se-lu 15, Origins edition
Haven't returned to this theme for a while. Now that I'm LOOSE from deadlines for a few days, it's time to hit the point again.

Rehashing the etymology: Solve comes from Indo-European se-lu. Loosen yourself. Untie yourself. Cut the ropes. You can't solve a problem while you're wrapped inside it; you have to cut and untie the assumptions and biases that arise automatically when you're inside.

I've approached this particular point from two angles before, but didn't stand far enough back to finish it.

Make a syllogism from two observations I've discussed often:

1. Unquestionably the 1776 Revolution did more harm than good. The separated twins of Canada and USA STRONG show that Canada's natural Parliament has done a better job of adapting to changed realities. It's not a dramatic NK/SK difference, but it's there.

2. Prison taught me that the people who want freedom most are criminals. Freedom means laws don't apply to me.

THEREFORE: Revolutionaries, emphatically including Washington and Jefferson et al, are criminals.


We glorify the Founding Criminals because they were willing to risk their lives (plus a whole lot of INNOCENT LIVES) for "freedom", especially "freedom" from laws and taxes.

We punish lesser criminals because they're willing to risk their lives (plus a whole lot of INNOCENT LIVES) for "freedom", especially "freedom" from laws and taxes.

What's the difference? NO DIFFERENCE. Null hypothesis validated.

We shouldn't be surprised that USA STRONG has mostly been ruled by mobsters. (With the still mysterious and unexplained exception of 1933 to 1945, when FDR tried to control BOTH of the ruling mobs and succeeded.)

SECURITY IS FREEDOM FROM THE PEOPLE WHO WANT FREEDOM.

Labels: Aptronym Alert, Natural law = Sharia law, se-lu

  ¶ 12:53 AM

  Aptronym Aptronym alert alert
Accidentally continuing with visual perception...

KSHS has added a series of stereographs made by Underwood and Underwood in Ottawa, around 1903.

Underwood and Underwood, of course, is the perfect aptronym aptronym for a maker maker of stereographs.

The brief description says that U + U were immediately successful, and moved to NYC with branch offices in many major cities.

Hey! Where is our 3D television? Never happened. Where are 3D movies? Happened for a little while then faded. For that matter, where is Smell-O-Vision? Promised repeatedly for 60 years, still hasn't happened.

Plain fact: News and culture in 3D were VASTLY MORE ACCESSIBLE in 1903 than now. Stereograph viewers were common from 1900 to 1960, then disappeared.

We've lost an interesting way of seeing things. Yeah, we have VR, but that's expensive and specialized, nowhere near mass entertainment.

= = = = =

Later thought: This is the only situation where sound technology jumped ahead of visual technology. We got 3D sound in 1958, and it quickly and permanently turned universal. All forms of sound media are transmitted and stored in stereo, whether we actually use two speakers or not.


= = = = =

Later: KSHS now has a picture of an Underwood and Underwood stereoscope. It's an odd mixture of crude and professionally made parts. Note the rounded rectangle viewports, presaging TV!

Labels: 1901, Aptronym Alert

  ¶ 5:02 PM

  A few pixels
Trivial but useful example of the infinite complexity of life.

While eating I always keep a car magazine in front of me. Occupies the brain with guaranteed non-Sorosian thoughts, no chance of a Gotcha.

This morning while leaning over to slurp up ramen, my eyes were close to the page, and suddenly ALARM ALARM ALARM! Something is wrong with the picture!

What I saw was something like this:



It took a second to isolate the ALARM ALARM ALARM:



Why alarm? MIRROR POINTING WRONG WAY! INATTENTIVE DRIVER! WATCH OUT!

Stop and think about this. I knew the mirror was pointing the wrong way because the shape of the tiny rectangle was not quite the same as the expected tiny rectangle template for a mirror in an early '60s car at this particular camera angle. Change any detail, and the template itself would be different. A 1930s car would have an oval mirror or no mirror; a later car would have a much wider mirror. Change the camera angle by more than 10 degrees and the template is entirely different.

Why is the mirror salient? Because it's a variable part of the car that can be turned the wrong way by a passenger applying makeup or a sloppy arm-move. If it remains in the wrong position, it means the driver is drunk or semi-conscious or doesn't give a fuck. All three are dangerous.

After the ALARM, I paid full attention to the full picture and focused elsewhere:



Aha. Reset ALARM. This is Australia. I know it's Australia because the driver of the other Falcon is on the right side, and the Commer van in the background belongs in a British Commonwealth country. (If the beige car had been something other than a Falcon, the ute might have strengthened the Australia signal, but an American Falcon can be a ute.)

Setting and unsetting the ALARM required the above half dozen major decisions. Each of those major decisions involved a hundred subdecisions, and each of the hundred subdecisions required an incalculable amount of integration, differentiation, memory recall, template matching, summing, and thresholding, by a billion or so neurons.

= = = = =

How well could an autonomous car detect an off-pointing mirror? Could it determine that the off-pointing was actually OK because the car belonged in a different country? Would the autonomous car have the same PURPOSE? Or would it use the ALARM to cause a crash instead of avoiding a crash? (Drunk or elderly = Deplorable = EXTERMINATE.)

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Sorosia

  ¶ 8:44 AM

  Graybill and Gernsback
Recently I observed that our measurement of total "value" in fact measures the exact opposite. We increase the money supply when a bank makes a loan, NOT when labor creates value. A loan is a destroyer of value. It's no wonder we get confused about "growth". We're measuring it upside down. I also observed that the later Soviet system got it right, increasing the money supply in response to Value Added Tax collections.

Last week ZH republished an article by Umair Haque that made the same point about GDP calculations.

When, in the 1930s, the great economist Simon Kuznets created GDP, he deliberately left two industries out of this then novel, revolutionary idea of a national income: finance and advertising. Kuznets's logic was simple, and it was not mere opinion, but analytical fact: finance and advertising don’t create new value, they only allocate, or distribute existing value, in the same way that a loan to buy a television isn't the television, or an ad for healthcare isn't healthcare.

If we do what Kuznets originally suggested, and subtract finance and advertising from GDP, what does that picture reveal? Well, since the lion’s share of growth, more than 50% every year, comes from finance and advertising - whether via Facebook or Google or Wall St and hedge funds and so on - we would immediately see that the economic "growth" that the US has chased so desperately, so furiously, never actually existed at all.

And yet, the economy appears to be growing, because purely allocative and distributive enterprises like Uber, Facebook, credit rating agencies, endless nameless hedge funds, shady personal info brokers, and so on, which fail to contribute positively to human life in any discernible way whatsoever, are all counted as beneficial. Do you see the absurdity of it?

Makes sense. The Gross National

was meant to measure

Now that we are measuring THINGS THAT ARE DESTROYED, we should call it the Gross National Destruct.

Haque went on to make a STRONG point:

Now let us go one step, then two steps, further. Finance and advertising are no longer merely allocative industries today. They are now extractive industries. That is, they internalize value from society, and shift costs onto society, all the while, creating no value themselves. The story is easiest to understand via Facebook’s example: it makes its users sadder, lonelier, and unhappier, and also corrodes democracy in spectacular and catastrophic ways. There is not a single upside of any kind that is discernible — and yet, all the above is counted as a benefit, not a cost, in national income, so the economy can thus grow, even while a society of miserable people are being manipulated by foreign actors into destroying their own democracy. Pretty neat, huh?

Here he's talking about souls and culture and life, not just GDP. What's the opposite of Facebook?

The good is only, to the limited extent that we can see it ... whether life is flourishing, growing, and developing, or not.

YES.

Needless to say, Marx and Emerson and Graybill saw this coming 150 years ago, but they didn't imagine how FAR it would go before it collapsed.

Nature put an unimaginably infinite amount of work into making life. Life has a DUTY to Nature. Our GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY is to make more life, more value, more order. Each creature has limits and abilities and obstacles and opportunities. We can't change those constants, but we MUST make the best of the constants.

= = = = =

This isn't new, of course. You can see it nicely in some of Gernsback's magazines from the 1920s.

The articles and the advertisements are directly opposing vectors.

The ads, aimed at the type of guy who experiments with radio, are designed to make you feel even more lonely and even more unpopular. They offer false hope that you can Get The Gal or Impress Your Buddies by Using The Product.

The articles are a mix of serious experiments, handy tricks for improving your house or car, and speculative science.

If you respond to the ads you will still be unpopular and unloved, and you'll have less money and less gumption for your GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY. If you continue in this direction, your final destination is a bridge.

If you respond to the articles you will build things that improve your life, and you will learn things that will help you to perform your job or gain a better job. You will still be unpopular and unloved, but it won't matter nearly as much because you'll have the intrinsic GOD-DESIGNED PLEASURE that comes from doing your GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY. Your life and surroundings and work will constantly improve.

MAKE OR BREAK.

= = = = =

Irrelevant sidenote:


Featured in the above 1928 mag, an early courseware device! Details weren't given, but I'd guess from the visible mechanism that it contained a cylinder-type phonograph geared to a paper 'filmstrip'. The cylinder type (ie Dictaphone) would be especially handy because the teacher could record the lecture directly. Most offices had a dictaphone. Disk recording was expensive and difficult.

Checking ........ Here's the patent on a somewhat later version. It was a disc, not a cylinder, and the controls look fiendishly complex, requiring a fair amount of mechanical skill by the teacher. Arthur Runyan (not Runyon) intended it to be used in language learning, where the sound of a word or sentence would be repeated along with a projected picture of the word. Shoulda gone with a Dictaphone, Artie.

Labels: Make or break, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:31 AM

  Commercial tyranny
I was pushing to get a clump of courseware modules done, so didn't write much here in the last week. Now the clump is finished, so I can relax for a while.



Thinking about degrees of tyranny. Back in the '50s and '60s, Deepstate was anti-Russian just as it is now. Deepstate defined both Korea and Vietnam as wars against Russia, when the plain non-secret facts showed that both were wars against China. CIA was using art and architecture and religion and music to SMASH our culture, and always found ways to blame the Soviets for its own genocide.

BUT there was a major difference between then and now. In the '50s and '60s alternate opinions were not only permissible but salable.

Example 1: the 1965 movie 'The Russians Are Coming' * 2. It was a regular mainstream Hollywood production, and it was distributed to normal theaters where it made a profit.

Why is this notable? Because TRAC*2 was a moderately pro-Russian movie. It showed Russians in a sympathetic light.

Example 2: I've been reading the Aberree intensively for the last few months. It was published from 1954 to 1964. Alphia Hart constantly questioned most orthodoxies, including the Cold War. When government tyrants from USDA and FDA bumped into him directly, he got highly specific. He named names and 'leaked' conversations with the investigating agents.

He continued publishing and continued making money from the publication. Never got arrested by the gov't. The Post Office didn't ban him, and didn't even demonetize him by charging extra to send the Aberree.

Neither of those alternative opinions would be allowed to make money now. It's still possible (as of this picosecond, anyway...) to write alternative opinions, but mainstream distribution and money-making are absolutely prohibited.

= = = = =

** Oops... I just noticed that LOTS OF OTHERS have been focusing on the 1965 TRAC*2 movie as a meme! Oh well. Doesn't matter if I'm first, it's still a great contrast.

Labels: Aberree, switchover

  ¶ 2:22 AM

  Theorigenic blindness ++
Building courseware is an intense learning experience. Every time I run into a function that needs an animation, I have to study and understand the mechanism first. I don't need to study the pieces that were well known before 1980; I already studied those. But a surprising number of mechanisms weren't even SEEN before 1980, let alone understood.

One such is the cochlea's automatic gain control and automatic frequency emphasizer. Magnificently complicated, with some 'firmware' in the neural pathways, some 'software' in the cortex, some big visible 'hardware' to tighten the eardrum, and a lot of 'hardware' at the microscopic level of the hair cells.** The big tensor tympani has been seen and understood for a century; the other pieces have only been seen in the last 20 years, and are only partly understood.

Most of the researchers are proper Carverian scientists. Take hold of the THINGS THAT ARE HERE, talk to them, let them talk to you. Or in this case, listen to them and let them listen to you.

Some of them are blinded by Darwin, and doubly blinded by their own fixed prejudice about Nature.

From a pretty good Wikipedia article:

The strength of the reflex is weakest for pure tones, and becomes stronger as the bandwidth of the sound is increased. ... Animals with the strongest MOC reflex sustain less hearing damage to loud sounds. This proposed biological role of the MOCS, protection from loud sounds, was challenged by Kirk and Smith (2003), who argued that the intensity of sounds used in the experiments (≥105 dB SPL) would rarely or never occur in nature, and therefore a protective mechanism for sounds of such intensities could not have evolved.

Kirk and Smith are blinded by Darwin. If the mechanism couldn't have evolved, it doesn't exist. And they are doubly blinded by a preconception.

Ideally science should abandon all theories. If you MUST use a theory, you should use it to predict unknown situations.

Proper Darwin syllogism:

1. Experiments show that the feedback mechanism kicks in at 105 dB.

2. It must have evolved to increase fitness.

3. Therefore we need to find a situation where loud sounds make survival difficult. [Hint: an animal that owns a larynx can easily produce far more than 105 dB inside the skull with an ordinary 'conversational' noise.]


Instead, Kirk and Smith believe they know the Savannah Sabertooth world based on David Attenborough and TED Talks. Their TV version of Nature is quiet, so the mechanism couldn't exist.

= = = = =

** New thought: This pattern repeats in many different areas of nature from human senses to plants. A purpose is achieved by three or four unrelated categories of design. Software, firmware, mechanisms controlled by software, and self-regulating machines. This pattern suggests that the designers were a team, not a single intelligence. Five or six intelligences competing to solve the same problem and achieve the same purpose. Sometimes two or three of the solutions faded out but remained in the Grand Blueprint for later use.

Labels: Carver, Experiential education, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 7:54 AM

  4-dimensional globalism
Convective thought, and a fairly good one......

1. Old and familiar globalism:

Globalists have always tried to erase spatial boundaries. Our laws must apply to the entire universe. There is no place where an alternate ruler, or nonconforming people, can retain even the tiniest picoscrap of power.

2. New extension of globalism:

Globalists are now trying to erase time boundaries. Our laws and our morality must apply to all time. There is no time in the past or future where an alternate set of rules, or an alternate culture, can be allowed to exist.

Temporal globalism has applied to the question of slavery for quite a while. Even though Natural Law recognized ownership as one form of employment, we must retroactively punish ordinary people who were following both Natural and written laws in their time. We cannot fathom the Natural Law rules that kept the owner and owned in balance, which means that we cannot fathom ANY rules that keep employer and employee in balance. Cui bono? Owner bono.

This was already evident in the machinations of Madman Lincoln. The North was operating within one time zone, exterminating the Southern form of secure slavery in order to open the whole territory for the Northern form of insecure sweatshop slavery. Now we're crossing time boundaries, punishing dead people who were already punished by Lincoln, in order to justify the current Northern form of sweatshop slavery, which is even worse than the 1860 form because it doesn't employ any Americans at all.

3. Now we're breaking temporal boundaries in other areas of morality, with the same result.

Cultural taboos and laws have constantly pendulumed back and forth on some questions.

Previously we understood that it was illogical and dangerous to punish previously legal and permissible acts. We even had a peculiar document called a "constitution" with a prohibition on ex post facto laws. Not any more. All laws and beliefs of the currently ruling tribe must be applied to all areas of the universe and all parts of the timeline.

4. Contrarily, localists are localists in all dimensions. A localist understands that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. Families are different. Neighborhoods are different. Tribes are different. Cities are different. Nations are different. Cultural norms and taboos are different in different places AND in different eras. The only PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE solution to this natural state of affairs is to MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS. Enforce your own laws on people in your own locality and on people in your own moment. Any attempt to cross those boundaries leads to genocide.

= = = = =

5. Language sidenote: Globalists like to call localists xenophobes. In fact globalists are the most perfect xenophobes. Any tribe or family or neighborhood or mind or period of history that fails or FAILED to obey the dictates of our Emperor as of this femtosecond is FOREIGN. and it must be EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED.

Labels: defensible spaces, defensible times

  ¶ 1:01 AM