Polistra's Mill

Blago

2012-03-15T07:35:00.004-07:00

As the inimitable Blagojevich heads for jail, just one thought.

Business and politics have the same goal: sell goods or services to customers.

In business, it's normal for the customer to pay for what he receives.

In politics, it's abnormal for the customer to pay for what he receives.

= = = = =

Normal business: I order a pair of shoes from LL Bean. I send them $70 and in return they send me shoes. Nobody else pays.

Abnormal business: LL Bean sends me a pair of shoes and tries to get $70 from everyone except me. (This is so bizarre that it isn't even a crime, because nobody tries it!)

= = = = =

In politics normal and abnormal are reversed.

Normal politics: Soviet Agent Bush The Son sells a Medicare Prescription drug program to 700 widows in Palm Beach in order to gain their votes, because those 700 widows are the only real voters. Everybody else pays $1 trillion for those 700 votes.

Abnormal politics: Blago sells a Senate office to one man who wants it. In return the man pays Blago $100k. Nobody else pays.

= = = = =

The same rule should apply to both situations. You receive a thing or a service, you pay for it. Nobody else pays for it.

Blago is being punished for honest dealing.

Good sign for the future!

2012-03-15T05:33:00.005-07:00

AP item:

An academic analysis of surveys spanning more than 40 years has found that today's young Americans are less interested in the environment and in conserving resources — and often less civic-minded overall — than their elders were when they were young.

The findings go against the widespread belief that environmental issues have hit home with today's young adults, known as Millennials, who have grown up amid climate change discussion and the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle." The environment is often listed among top concerns of young voters.

"I was shocked," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who is one of the study's authors. "We have the perception that we're getting through to people. But at least compared to previous eras, we're not."

Note the all-encompassing Stalinist 'we' from the psych prof.

As usual, when experts use a despite construction [as in "go against widespread belief..."] the truth is really because.

Teens are naturally inclined to rebel against the beliefs of the previous generation. When the previous generation treats the young with arrogant condescension and officially censors all unorthodox thoughts, the rebellion gets vastly stronger. Kids want to know what the adults are hiding, and since the advent of the Web, it's much easier for them to find out.

This applies to all the pseudosciences of the modern Establishment: Environment, Evolution, Economics, Cosmology, and Psychology. In all those areas, only one opinion is permitted in mass media and schools. In Environment and Evolution, heresy is officially prohibited in the schools.

= = = = =

Sidenote for fairness: In each of those areas some honest science does exist, but the officially approved theories are fraudulent. The public spokesmen, the people who control the discussion and grants, are pushing provably wrong pseudotheories.

Intuition

2012-03-14T19:39:00.003-07:00

Sometimes I start thinking that my minimalist lifestyle is unusual, and then sometimes I realize it isn't.

This morning I went to Safeway on one of my regular MWF store trips. The list was a bit shorter than usual. The checkout lady said: "Load's a little light this morning. Gets you out of the house, eh?"

Yup. She's got me pinned!

When I picture the usual set of customers at that hour of the morning, they fall into two categories:

(1) 300-pound single moms with food stamps and toddlers.

(2) Compact oldsters, most of whom act well-exercised and alert but not athletic or wealthy.

I probably fit into (2) pretty well, which means the checkout lady knows my type thoroughly!

Makes me wonder. Will the 300-pound single moms ever get to be oldsters? Or will they be finished at 45?

How did so many in that generation grow so heavy?

Process again

2012-03-14T05:04:00.012-07:00

Two especially egregious examples of Process over Fact.

(A) After the Sergeant carefully demonstrated the utter insanity and futility of our presence in Afghanistan, the Army and the administration are setting up 4,674 new Task Forces, which will give lifetime employment to 57,212 lawyers, to Investigate This Heinous And Unprecedented And Unthinkable Action. Same old Lone Gunman shit, as always. Meanwhile, it's forbidden to move or touch anything while an Investigation is underway, so we'll stay in Afghanistan forever.

Correct response: If we were sane, we would listen to what this desperate Sergeant is telling us. We'd hear his message loud and clear: "You have given your soldiers an absolutely impossible job. There is no mission. There is no goal. There can never be a mission or goal. It is logically and physically impossible. All we can do is mindlessly kill or be killed." And we would respond to his message by GETTING THE FUCK OUT. NOW. NOW. NOW. THIS SECOND. OUT. OUT. OUT. OUT. NOW. NOW. NOW.

(B) China is keeping its minerals to itself. Nothing wrong with that; the advantage of being a nation is that you can decide what to sell and what to keep. We don't like this particular keeping because we've been too fucking stupid to keep or develop our own minerals. Our initial response to China's economic normalcy is process. We're begging various international agencies, owned by China, to investigate China's actions and reach a conclusion.

Correct response: We must recover our own nationhood, which was lost 23 years ago. An actual nation would respond to China's move in one of two ways: (1) Cut off all trade and outsourcing that benefits China. Buy back their bonds so they don't have a handle on us. Resell the bonds at a profit, by force if necessary, to the traitorious corporations that have served China, and require those traitors, by force if necessary, to keep the bonds until maturity. Or (2) devote a huge crash program to developing our own minerals. Eliminate EPA. Open all Federal land to exploration and mining. Redesign our idiot shit so it doesn't need any exclusively Chinese materials. This will require us to give up some of our idiot shit entirely, which will be a pure gain for Americans. And it will also reduce our dependence on the Chinese slaves who make our idiot shit, and provide an ancient unknown thing called "work" to skilled Americans.

Smart kids!

2012-03-13T17:03:00.004-07:00

From Northwest Public Radio:

An over-enrolled technical high school opening for the first time this fall in north Idaho indicates an unmet hunger for practical job training. The multi-district collaboration in Rathdrum doesn’t even have a roof yet, and enrollment already exceeds capacity. Now, the school is on the hunt for more instructors.

The Kootenai Technical Education Campus, or KTEC, is due to open this fall. Enrollment is offered to public school students from around the Coeur d’Alene area. Those lucky enough to be admitted will spend half-days learning in-demand skills like welding, computer repair or diesel mechanics. The school was originally designed to have 280 students, but 900 have signed up.

KTEC director Mark Cotner says when it comes to hiring instructors, these courses require a higher level of expertise than the shop class you might remember from school. “These programs are really based on industry certifications," Cotner explains. "So that when a student comes out of say the welding program, they are already certified for the welding industry.”

North Idaho voters approved a property tax levy in 2010 to build the Kootenai Technical Education Campus. It uses an Oklahoma model that bases technical curriculum on the needs of the regional economy. Another similar school was built in Wilder, Idaho.

Those kids, presumably led by their parents, are EXACTLY RIGHT. They see how their future can be successful. They're returning to the pre-1970 secret of American success, which is the only way America will succeed again. Good technical training will serve those kids well for a lifetime, and will also serve the whole country.

Sounds like the educrats in Oklahoma (no surprise!) and Idaho (slight surprise!) are on the right track. Let's hope educrats in other states can see this trend and adjust accordingly. Cut colleges to the bone, strip out the pointless college orientation of high schools. Focus entirely on getting the kids into a job with the best possible training!

2 down, a few dozen to go

2012-03-12T06:34:00.004-07:00

Mass murderer Stephen Schneider blessedly died last year. Now mass murderer F. Sherwood Rowland has blessedly died.

Two criminal monsters down, but a whole lot still unfortunately living and slaughtering.

Thousands of people are unnecessarily starving, dying in coal mines, dying in biofuel plant explosions, freezing because heat is unaffordable.

Please, O Kuhnian Gods, speed up the process!

Infill

2012-03-11T13:58:00.010-07:00

Since December I've doubled my weekly exercise, infilling between the usual M-W-F trips to the store. Walking every day makes a noticeable difference in mood and health.

These infill walks required fighting two old internal rules made by my Kraut chromosomes.

Rule 1: «Achtung! Valk must haff Purpose! No Valk mitout Utility!»

This rule never made any sense. In younger years I felt free to drive or bike without a destination, but walking has always needed a firm reason. No idea why. Breaking this rule was easy; just one pleasant random walk deconditioned it.

Rule 2: «Achtung! All Valking Routes must be Maximally Efficient! Cut all Corners, never go around Unnecessary Block!»

This rule does make sense for a lifetime pedestrian, and I've learned quite a few tricks to find the shortest possible path. But it's completely wrong for a random walk, where the only destination is Back Home, and the purpose is to maximize distance without getting overly tired. Because it's logical, this rule is harder to break, and still requires some Strangelovian internal slapdowns.

= = = = =

Useful walks always head south and east from my house, because that's where the stores and bus stops are. So the random walks have headed north and west, to explore unfamiliar territory. And there's a surprising amount of unfamiliar stuff within a one-mile radius, because I simply never looked in those directions before!

Earlier I noted a 'locus of new growth' that seems to be propagating from the city's beautiful repaving of Wellesley. Flips, sales, existing remodels, and new construction. Infill as usual in Spokane, the Infill Capital of the West. Nevertheless, an indication of positive economic activity in this part of town. The new construction is on lots that have been vacant for a hundred years!

Now I'm noticing a 'locus of decay' in the other direction, propagating from the only apartment building in the neighborhood. This apt is a two-story wood structure, probably a WW2 barracks extensively remodeled. It's been decaying for a long time and fully abandoned for a couple years. The apt seems to be infecting nearby houses with Who-Gives-A-Fuck-Itis. Near the apt are several collapsing failed remodels, mixed as usual in Spokane with beautiful and elegant 1930's cottages.....

Electric day

2012-03-10T17:09:00.009-08:00

Today is the first sunny warmish day of the year. The plants know it, the squirrels know it, and the electric cars know it.

(1) I got out into the yard with a rake and started fiddling around.

Since last year's reclaiming, I've made a firm practice of walking in the back yard once a day, if only for a moment, to maintain the sense of possession. Like a dog patrolling its territory. Now that I've retaken the yard from trees and trash and wind-fear, I'm not going to slack off. This year's task: smooth out the humps and dips and replant where needed; maybe build a tiny deck to sit on.

(2) A new generation of squirrels is also reclaiming this block. Their parents wisely abandoned the area last year after a hawk ate one of them. I was curious to see if the parents would somehow pass on the warning to the next generation, but apparently not.

(3) This morning I saw a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla for the very first time. What's more, I saw them at the same time in the same intersection. Amazingly the Tesla was moving!

This indicates the permanent niche for the pure electric car. Rich boy's toy to be displayed in warm sunny weather, like an Avanti or a Nash Metropolitan. You don't start it in winter or drive it in snow.

Separation anxiety

2012-03-10T16:08:00.011-08:00

A local public radio program discusses movies. The regular panelists are just what you'd expect: elite-bubble academics, confirmed leftists.

Today they had to confront their prejudices in an unusual way. They were discussing the Persian movie 'Separation', which has gone international. Everything about the movie was shocking to them: the Western attitudes of Persians, the educated and lively women, the contrast between sophisticated upper-class and strict lower-class. To their credit, they were trying to absorb the reality instead of blindly rejecting it.

These progressives had exactly the same biases about Persia as any Repooflican. You can see the same shared idiocy among the Israel-enslaved media on both "sides": Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NRO, NPR, all agree that "Iran" is an insane backward pile of 5th-century primitives. All agree that "Iran" is an "existential threat" to the world, and must be EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED!

Fucking stupid bigoted Yankee shitheads.

Okies understand the situation better because we've known Persians for a long time. Persians have been part of Oklahoma since the '60s, mainly because of oil connections. Nothing in that movie would surprise an Okie.

Harold has come clean. Al? Mike? Phil? Maurice?

2012-03-09T16:28:00.003-08:00

Apocalyptic wacko Harold Camping has admitted that his proposed date for the end of the world was wrong.

Well, what about it? Algore? Mike Mann? Phil Jones? Maurice Strong?

Your turn.

Not holding my breath.

Christian apocalyptic wackos are capable of humility and rationality.

Gaian apocalyptic wackos are not.

1901 again

2012-03-09T10:35:00.016-08:00

Looked for some indication that Urban Heat Island was understood a long time ago. Couldn't find that, but bumped into an interesting bit of climate alarmism from 1901. This is a little unusual in that it's written by an expert. Generally speaking, before the digital era the experts were more in touch with reality and the common people were more likely to succumb to alarmist and apocalyptic feelings.

This is a short pamphlet from the St Louis Botanical Garden, here in ebook form.

I've reassembled the somewhat jumbled pages to put the diagrams where they belong:

Probably unfair to call the author an alarmist. Actually he sounds like a careful observer who grasped the distinction between fact and theory. He expressed a fear that agriculture would be permanently damaged, but carefully avoided attributing any cause to the current problems.

If I'm reading his Diagram B properly, the July mean for 1901 was about 88. According to NWS 'climatology' data for St Louis itself, the July mean for 2011 was 85.7 degrees.

So the author was right! 1901 was indeed unusually warm. But despite his hand-wringing at the end, the unusual weather didn't continue. It went down after that, then went up again in the 20s and stayed up, according to this NCDC record for the part of Missouri that includes St Louis.

This diagram shows no carbon effects. When St Louis started to bustle in the Route 66 era, it got warm. The supposed "Carboniferous Era" after 1970 is actually a bit cooler than the preceding peak, perhaps because St Louis stopped bustling after 1970.

If nothing else, it emphasizes yet again, as Polistra has been pointing out for a long time, that "global average temperature" and "global average change in temperature" are utterly meaningless and illogical concepts. If you want to use those concepts, you have to prove first that it's valid to assemble such a conglomerate. But the modern theory-bound idiots fly right past that basic point and ASSUME AS AN AXIOM that "global average" has meaning. Circular reasoning at its best.

= = = = =

Nostalgic sidenote: The pamphlet gives a good feel for meteorological technology a century ago. Though they lacked radar and satellites, ground-level observation was better then than now. Every small town had a railroad station with a telegrapher, and those telegraphers sent regular reports of temperature and conditions to the Weather Bureau.

Presumably the author drew the curves by hand, probably with a drafting table; but he was helped by printed graph forms. Takes me back to my first real job in an Oklahoma print shop. I remember setting up similar forms for oil logging companies. Required precise casting of rule slugs on the Ludlow, followed by even more precise cutting and beveling to fit the graph together. Photoshop can be fun, but it lacks the smell and feel of hot lead!

Japan recovers sanity, Germany goes crazy

2012-03-09T06:00:00.003-08:00

Via NPR:

Health effects from radiation turn out to be minor compared with the other issues the people of Fukushima prefecture now face.

That may come as a surprise. We all watched frightening TV images, and clouds of radioactive steam and gas did erupt from the plant. That material did sometimes move over the countryside and into populated areas, so it looked like a horrible disaster.

But in the case of radiation, the dose matters. It's true, there is no bright line that separates a safe dose of radiation from a dangerous dose, but at some point, a dose is so small that any potential health risk is simply too small to measure.

Not surprising to sane people. Only surprising to fucking fools.

Meanwhile, Germany is continuing on the fucking fool path, switching from clean safe nuclear to the dirtiest of all coal: East German lignite. Famous for creating the deep brown smog that enveloped the Soviet Bloc for 50 years.

Ionized shame?

2012-03-08T20:01:00.003-08:00

Noticed an odd feeling today, something like shame or guilt. Could be a continuation of the full-moon emotion but I doubt it.

The full moon creates longing and dissatisfaction, as in "Is that all? There must be something else...." Thoroughly familiar, happens every month.

This is much less familiar, but it's a sensation I learned to associate with a coming earthquake. Dark shame, as in "I'm a piece of shit."

Does that mean a quake is coming tomorrow? Not necessarily.

The best hypothesis for a quake sense in humans and other animals is that we're detecting piezoelectric ionization. Strain in the underlying layers builds up to the point where it charges the soil.

And what do we have today for sure? Ionization from a sun storm.

Sitters and rovers again

2012-03-08T17:28:00.003-08:00

Reported in SciAm, a good observation of behavior in bees. By now it should be fairly unsurprising to find sitters and rovers as distinct personality types in all living things.

After studying hives—both in the wild and in the lab—and analyzing genetic and biochemical profiles of bees’ brains, researchers have found that some bees, like some humans, seem to be programmed to seek out new experiences, or novelty.

To figure out if some bees searched for new food and for new real estate, the researchers first pinpointed the food scouts. Under the cover of night, when bees generally don’t forage, hives were moved to a new location outside of familiar territory. The researchers then singled out bees that served as food scouts—the ones that located flowers and returned first to tell other bees where to find the choicest pollen. Then, to see if the food scouts were also more inclined to hunt out new homes, the researchers watched eight different colonies over two years to see which bees took the lead when swarms broke off to find a new home. It turns out that the nest scouts were more than three times as likely as other foragers to also be food scouts.

Again, sort of unsurprising but a good solid experiment.

The most interesting part is the admission at the end of the article:

It is possible that insects and vertebrates developed similar signals independently, but a more likely explanation is that “these mechanisms represent part of a basic tool kit that has been used repeatedly in the evolution of behavior,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

There's your Grand Blueprint, which seems to be taking shape as a basic theme for biologists.

Makes you wonder how long they can continue to defend the opposite notion of random unguided mutation and selection. If the 'tool kit' was there before the genes started to be used, how did the 'tool kit' develop randomly? What was the selection pressure for a broad set of design imperatives that hadn't been applied yet?

Grump about install-builders

2012-03-08T07:19:00.009-08:00

Currently working on the 4th revision of my main product. For the first version in 2002 (roughly Windows 98 era) I used an install-builder from Eset. At that time Eset was a small shareware company, and their installer was simple and cute. When my publisher changed ownership, they disliked the cuteness, so I had to switch for the next version.

For the second and third in 2004 and 2008 (roughly Win XP era) I used CreateInstall.

Eset and CreateInstall both worked neatly, building all the usual install stuff in a logical order. You just ran through a fixed sequence, filling in the blanks with appropriate files and folders.

Usual install stuff = (1) choose destination folder; (2) agree to the EULA that nobody ever reads; (3) show readme if wanted; (4) put shortcut on desktop; (5) make program able to uninstall. Those are the steps that every ordinary program uses, and those are all I ever need.

For this fourth version I wanted to follow Microshit conventions and make an MSI installer. CreateInstall didn't seem to have that option. Maybe I didn't look hard enough...!

First I tried MSIStudio, cost about $100. NOT RECOMMENDED. An incomplete program that produces none of the usual install stuff by default. You have to write separate code for some of it! Their email support is excellent, but I finally ran into a brick wall.

Now I'm wrestling with AdvancedInstaller, cost about $300. It will make all the usual install stuff, but some of it requires odd non-intuitive steps that aren't listed in the internal Help. AdvancedInstaller has a well-run online forum that provides answers to every question, but these basic things really shouldn't require attention or advice. They should be automatic, as they were with Eset and CreateInstall.

That's the whole fucking point of computer software, for fuck's sake!

= = = = =

Later: Good old tracking cookies. After I posted the above NON-recommendation of MSIStudio, Google is hammering me with MSIStudio ads!

Confused as usual

2012-03-08T05:27:00.006-08:00

More of the usual idiotic confusion by our Satanist media.

The Americans, among 43 democracy workers facing charges of fomenting unrest, are not expected to return to Egypt.

The episode is raising serious questions about how Egypt will approach calls for democracy and democratic institutions in the country.

LaHood had been running programs on voter education in Egypt and teaching new political parties how to run campaigns and develop their platforms. He says he and his colleagues at the International Republican Institute never expected to be prosecuted for their work.

...

Still, the issue is far from resolved, says Tamara Wittes, who recently left the State Department to join the Brookings Institution. She says key issues are at stake.

Wittes says the U.S. and others need to keep reminding Egyptian authorities that if they want the country to be a democracy, they need nongovernmental groups that hold authorities to account.

"The idea that community-based grass-roots organizations inside Egypt should be able to reach out to and partner with counterparts in other countries, this should not be controversial. This is a core component of freedom of association, well rooted in international law," she says.

Hopelessly confused and idiotic.

The whole point of the Arab Spring was to get rid of secular regimes that obeyed US/EU influences, and replace them with regimes that reflect local needs and tastes. Regaining sovereignty requires ejecting foreign agents of influence. That's a normal part of any healthy nation's immune system. It's like coughing and sneezing.

America has completely lost its immune system. For the last 25 years we've allowed Chinese, Saudi and Israeli agents of influence to infect all parts of our organism. But that doesn't mean we should require other nations to be just as unhealthy and suicidal as we are!

Sometimes I wonder

2012-03-08T04:22:00.009-08:00

Sometimes I wonder what it feels like to be another kind of critter. There's no reason to assume that any living thing doesn't have some form of awareness. Might be true or might not, but you simply can't draw the line.

What does a plant's life feel like?

Maybe like this:

What does a squirrel's life feel like?

Definitely like this!

Cat's life:

Life of a bacterium? How about:

= = = = =

[Serendipity note: I picked that rendition of Moldau based on the sound, before noticing that all the accompanying pictures were plant-y! Apparently the clip-maker felt the same connection. Note especially the plant that photobombed the picture starting at 4:00.]

Bibi's song

2012-03-07T10:07:00.006-08:00

A little song for Bibi and his Congressional criminal allies.

Verse:

We are you and you are us and so we are all psychotic,
So we are wild-eyed killers,
So we are lethal bullies.
Nuke with us, we'll nuke with you
And so we will nuke together
As we end the world!

Chorus:

Oh we are marching to Apocalypse, to World War III, to End of Days,
We are marching to a holocaust, to Ho-Lo-Caust Hoo-Ray!

Shouldn't have been surprised.

2012-03-06T20:24:00.005-08:00

Objectively today was pretty decent. Fine crisp sunny weather after a couple of nasty windy rainy days. Got my annual royalty check and the IRS refund in the mail. Got work to do on the latest software revision.

But all day I was nagged by a sense of frustration and incompleteness. "Hmph. Is this all there is? What's missing?" The frustration was doubled by knowing that I should be feeling massively grateful for sun, money, and work.

This Hmph feeling generally comes from a full moon, but the moon isn't full, is it?

Oh. It is.

Always fun

2012-03-06T06:39:00.004-08:00

Always fun to watch devils fighting. This is, of course, the only fight that ever happens. Satanists can only be stopped by even more enthusiastic Satanists.

Anti-satan forces are completely fairied out, utterly pussywhipped. When they dare to squeak a few delicate falsetto whispers of polite disapproval, the devils stomp them down.

Via Northwest Public Radio:

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire has approved the controversial Whistling Ridge Wind Energy Project in Southwest Washington.

But some people object because the project will be visible from Interstate 84 in the scenic Columbia Gorge.

And it could threaten spotted owls. They’ve been seen within two miles of the site in the past year.

“Some places should be off limits to industrial wind development and we believe that the Columbia River Gorge is one of those places,” says Nathan Baker, staff attorney with Friends of the Columbia Gorge. “Most people are in favor of renewable energy but they’re not aware of all the negative costs and impacts from wind energy.”

Sounds like the project will go ahead anyway, wasting huge amounts of money and real energy to turn the oh-wow-pretty-pinwheels-oh-wow. Still, it's vaguely satisfying to know that the People Who Count have slight internal disagreements about this one form of slaughter.

Now we know what "Never again" meant

2012-03-06T04:07:00.003-08:00

News item from UK Guardian:

The Israeli prime minister invoked the Holocaust in saying he would not allow Israelis to "live under the shadow of annihilation". He said he had in his desk a copy of a letter from the World Jewish Congress asking the US war department to bomb the Auschwitz death camp in 1944.

Netanyahu said that in their reply the Americans said that such an operation would require them to divert too many aircraft from other missions and it probably wouldn't succeed.

"And here's the most remarkable sentence of all, and I quote: 'Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans'. Think about that – 'even more vindictive action' - than the Holocaust," he said. "Today we have a state of our own. The purpose of the Jewish state is to secure the Jewish future. That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. We deeply appreciate the great alliance between our two countries. But when it comes to Israel's survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate."

You don't often get such transparency from major leaders.

Now we finally know what "Never again" means.

"Never again" is shorthand for "Never again will Germany get a chance to be the world's genocidal bully, invading countries just for psychopathic fun. From now on, Israel will be the world's genocidal bully, invading countries just for psychopathic fun."

The only good part of this mess is that Obama is courageously trying to hold back the bully for a few seconds. But he doesn't have much support; most of Congress is ready to help the bully.

See? Those wars were justified after all!

2012-03-05T06:54:00.003-08:00

Aha! Finally we have a home-grown terrorist who was trained in both Afghanistan and Iraq! Finally we have a reason for invading those two countries instead of Saudi Arabia, which actually attacked us on 9/11!

Arizona-born Amir Mirza Hekmati, 28, had been accused of spying for the CIA and receiving training at US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Iran's supreme court has dismissed the death sentence passed against an Iranian-American man accused of spying for the CIA, and called for judicial review of the case according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Hekmati, a 28-year-old of Iranian descent born in the state of Arizona, was arrested in December and Iran's Intelligence Ministry accused him of receiving training at US bases in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq.

Whoopsie! He's a terrorist working for America, not a terrorist working against America. Oh well. Facts don't matter when you're justifying lunatic psychopathic aggression against countries that didn't attack you.

Missing the point

2012-03-05T04:25:00.008-08:00

The Carbon Cultists and the real scientists ("skeptics") are still tossing charges and countercharges about Gleick and Heartland. Fussing about the need for integrity in process while missing the crucial difference between facts and falsehoods. It appears that the general public has caught the real difference, and even the governments in Britain and Germany are picking up the important point.

In Russia, "foes" are protesting the process of yesterday's election. It appears that the Russian people understand the real difference. Before Putin, things deteriorated into an unholy mess. Under Putin, things are gradually improving. Putin is ready to use all necessary power to continue improving his nation. He doesn't worry about process.

= = = = =

Later: Must admit, some media (BBC, NPR) are doing a good job of carrying both views on Russia. The process-loving Jimmy Carter idiots get some airtime, but the folks who understand practical reality are getting even more airtime.

Ideas from an old book, 2

2012-03-04T18:22:00.021-08:00

Following up on 'Ideas from an old book', where I found a tantalizing concept in Shepardson's 1901 book on electricity.

Questions: Do plants and trees get energy from ionization (electron transfer) along with sunlight? Is plant growth modulated directly by sunspots?

After some thought and googling, I settled on wheat yield (bushels/acre) instead of forest growth, because wheat is where the streetlight is. Richly documented and available.

Then decided to use Palouse wheat instead of Kansas wheat. The Palouse is closer to the Aurora, thus more likely to feel the Shepardson effect. Also avoids a couple of unwanted variables, because Palouse weather and farming practices are much more constant than Kansas. No prolonged droughts, no change from family to corporate ownership, no crop switches induced by subsidies. Just the same families working the same acres for a century, gradually improving their methods.

And I wanted to focus on the sunspot event of 1957, because it was the deepest penetration of the aurora over North America in living memory. If there's any effect, 1957 should bring it out.

I found exactly what I wanted in an old USDA document, PDF here. This shows winter and spring wheat yield for Whitman County from 1939 to 1964.

Added temperature and rain records from NCDC. More detail in this entry.

Tacked on a sunspot curve (PDF) from here.

Result is this chart with 1957 highlighted:

Corresponding Excel spreadsheet is here.

Not conclusive by any means, but 1957 certainly stands out, especially for spring wheat! The temperature wasn't doing anything special that year. Rain was up, but not nearly enough to spur the jump in yield.

Agh, don't go squishy.

2012-03-04T05:20:00.007-08:00

Mormons are always eager to prove that they're just another Christian church, following the Abrahamic tradition.

Well, they've proved it nicely today. They're just as fucking chickenshit as any fucking fairyass Episcopalian when faced with Commie pressure, and they're loyally obeying Abraham.

Abraham Foxman, that is.

For a long time Mormons have been "re-baptizing" dead people, for reasons that I can't begin to fathom. (I don't do theory in science or religion; I only understand practices that have some contact with reality.)

The usual Jew pressure groups, led as usual by Abraham Foxman, got all weeweed up about this silly ceremony which has absolutely no effect on anyone or anything. Unless you believe the Mormon theology, which I'm damn sure Foxman doesn't. Foxman only believes in Modern Jewish Theology, namely "Jews win. You lose."

So now the Mormon leadership has received a new revelation, just as they did a couple generations ago when other Jew-financed Commie pressure groups got weeweed up about Mormon hiring practices.

I suppose the Romney candidacy is part of the picture here. Romney is a vulture who lives and moves among Jewish vultures, and his funding comes from Goldman Sachs.

So the natural tribal desire to see Romney win the presidency requires a new revelation about a completely meaningless practice that can't possibly offend or bother sane humans.

Log-rolling is a coup?

2012-03-03T05:28:00.006-08:00

It's hardly worth mentioning AP's uniform and drearily predictable bias, but this example is so egregious and subtle that I think it's worth a note.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- A bill to link abortion coverage to maternity care has died in the Washington state Senate.

The bill was caught up in a Friday afternoon Republican budget coup, in which the GOP peeled off the necessary three Democratic votes to introduce an austere budget plan.

The abortion measure, HB 2330, had passed the House and Democrats expected it to have the votes necessary in the Senate, but two attempts to bring it to the floor were narrowly voted down in the aftermath of the budget coup.

Trading favors to "peel off" a few votes is a routine everyday part of every legislature's function. But because Repooflicans did it, and especially because it was used against the Satanic Supreme Sacrament Of Universal Infanticide, it becomes a "budget coup."

Describing a dull legislative process as a "coup" is like describing a tap on the brake pedal as a "multiple-fatality head-on pileup."

The Shutup gun

2012-03-03T04:42:00.003-08:00

Lots of foofaraw about a "new" Jap invention that uses delayed auditory feedback to confuse an unwanted speaker.

Nothing new about the technique at all. DAF has been used for 50 years in speech & hearing circles. Before digital tech, DAF devices were built as tape-loop machines with separate record and play heads. A microphone fed the record head, and the tape traveled about a half second before reaching the play head, which then went into earphones. Now you can do the same thing with software on just about any computer.

DAF is mainly used as a tactic to reduce stuttering in some people. Apparently the external delayed reverb cancels out an internal reverb loop in the brain, which is the presumed source of the stutter.

Based on known data about DAF, we can be sure that (1) The Shutup Gun won't work on everyone, because some people are immune to DAF; (2) With practice you can learn to ignore the delayed sound and pay full attention to your own speech; (3) Most experienced TV and radio broadcasters have already acquired this skill.

In short, it's an old idea, and for the Jap purpose it's a dumb idea. Determined speakers can arm themselves against it by practicing with software DAF.

"Politicized"

2012-03-02T04:29:00.006-08:00

Unbelievably good news from the educrats in Britain:

A school play has been referred to a Government Minister after an MP complained it was “propaganda”.

Philip Davies wrote to the Education Secretary after reading about a production on climate change that was touring schools in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Michael Gove replied, agreeing there was no place for propaganda and promising to “slim down” the national curriculum.

Whether climate change should be taught in schools is under debate as the Government looks to slash the size of the curriculum.

Its advisor has previously said lessons should stick to core scientific principles and not include global warming.

But this has led to fears that science teaching is being “politicised” and could lose its relevance to modern life.

I've noted before that the current British educrats are miraculously rational on matters of discipline. Now we have a REAL UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE by the same educrats.

Could never happen here. Our educrats have been diamond-hard Satanist-Stalinists for at least 60 years. If our educrats ever decided to slim down, they would eliminate everything except Carbon Cult propaganda and homosexual propaganda. Students would be reduced to chanting "Carbon is bad! Gay is good!" all day every day.

Predictably, British Stalinists (who are OUTSIDE the educracy!) are calling REAL SCIENCE "politicized". In Stalin's vocabulary, "politicized" means "disagrees with Party Doctrine." The Party's edicts are never "politicized"; they are simply the universe. Nothing exists outside the universe.

Unfortunately it will work.

2012-03-01T04:53:00.005-08:00

The boss of MegaUpload is trying out a hippieshit defense:

Kim Dotcom has compared the US department of justice charges against him and his Megaupload website to the weapons of mass destruction claims in the lead-up to the war against Iraq, accusing American prosecutors of doing the bidding of the US film industry to prop up its "outdated monopolistic business model".

"It's kind of like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you know? If you want to go after someone and you have a political goal you will say whatever it takes," said the 38-year-old German online entrepreneur...

He said "a hundred other companies" offer similar cloud-based file sharing services, but he had been "insanely" singled out as the "over-pirate of the planet". The 72-page indictment against him was a "maliciously designed ... press release", he told the TV3 television station.

The analogy will work among the brainless hippieshit tech masses, but there's an important and crucial difference.

The WMD lies were undetectable and uncheckable by ordinary citizens. None of us had inspected Iraq's military facilities, and very few of us had even seen Iraq. So we had to decide which set of experts we trusted, when neither set appeared fully consistent or certain of their facts.

MegaUpload is not mysterious or uncheckable. Most techies have used it, and some of us (including me) have lost actual money when our work was stolen and placed on MegaUpload.

Ironic, ain't it? This pirate improves his cashflow by advocating Open Source Everything, but he's using an argument that will not fool anyone with real experience in the Open Source world!

As I've discussed before, MegaUpload is closely associated with Big Music, and actually helps the big producers at the expense of small operators. This guy is a complete fake from stem to stern.

Ideas from an old book

2012-02-29T05:07:00.025-08:00

Trying to locate more info on the nickel-iron batteries that last forever, I bumped into a wonderful old book that's fully readable in Google ebook form.

Electrical Catechism, by George Defrees Shepardson.

It's a basic intro to all aspects of electricity as known in 1901, with plenty of clear woodcut illustrations and lots of plain wisdom about electricity and human nature. Written in the form of a catechism, with small questions arranged in a proper sequence for learning.

'Proper sequence' means that the learning starts with observations of common things, proceeds to an explanation of several mysteries and puzzles, and later on introduces measurements and numbers. This is the direct opposite of modern American "teaching" of math and science, which starts with numbers, ends with numbers, and ferociously avoids all possible contact with reality or facts or truth.

Example of wisdom: Several questions about medical electrical devices, which were common at that time.

Huge amount of wisdom and understanding packed into one paragraph! Think you'd find that much respect for common humanity in any modern science text? Hell no. You'd just get a whole chapter of scathing contempt for White-ass Bible-Thumping-ass Hetero-ass Redneck-ass Amerikkkkkkkkkkan-ass Yahoos ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha who are fucking dumb enough to believe anything ha ha ha ha ha, including the ridiculous horrible nasty idea that Carbon is not solely responsible for killing Our Beloved Fragile Sensitive Endangered Weeping Planet[pbuh]. We The Enlightened Progressive Ones know better, of course.

Here's an interesting experiment plus more dry wisdom:

An item that sort of echoes those everlasting Edison batteries:

This seems to imply that incandescent bulbs of 1901 had an 'analog' failure pattern, asymptoting gradually toward darkness. You had to decide when the bulb had faded enough to toss it. Modern bulbs fail 'digitally': they burn out abruptly after 1000 hours. You don't get to make the decision. Remember the famous perpetual bulb in the fire station in Livermore, Calif? Installed in 1901.

= = = = =

Enough fun... I'm really trying to bring out a thought-provoking concept that seems to have been lost since 1901.

First, a basic explanation of a well-known effect:

Second, an interesting biological connection:

Third, an application of the biological connection:

The part about grass not growing under pine trees has been explained differently since then: Fallen needles are the pine's chemical weapon to prevent the encroachment of grass.

But the basic idea that plants use their points and hairs to charge/discharge is interesting and (I think) unexplored in recent times.

Compare with recent discoveries about nanowires on bacteria. When bacteria need to exchange electrons with their surroundings to create various chemical reactions, they send out little pointy-ended wires to charge or discharge.

It's certainly true that conifers like to be closer to the aurora, while broad-leaf trees prefer to be closer to the equator. Are conifers built to use electron-transfer energy along with photon energy from visible light?

Looking at this from the other angle, do conifers affect local climate? Do they suck up spare electrons from ionized air, making the air less plasma-like and less prone to thunderstorms?

Broader questions: Do all plants play a part in sunspot control of climate? Are they directly modulated by sun-influenced ionization?

Does Not Compute

2012-02-28T02:43:00.008-08:00

Repooflican bots love to quote Obama's "Energy prices will necessarily skyrocket...", and at the same time they love to call Obama "anti-free market".

Well, the first part is right, but not in the way brand-R means it. Obama wants energy prices to skyrocket so Goldman can take the money.

The "anti-free market" part has always been wrong, by R definitions. Repooflicans use "free market" to mean "China gets the jobs, Goldman gets the money, Americans get nothing." In their Satanic eyes this is a good thing. Well, by that definition Obama is ferociously pro-free market. He showed his Goldman loyalty before the 2008 election by helping with the TARP bailout, and has served Goldman slavishly ever since.

From McClatchy News:

Robert Wilkins, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, declined a request for a preliminary injunction to halt the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from implementing a congressional mandate to limit how many oil contracts any single financial speculator or company can control.

However, Wilkins told both the CFTC and lawyers for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the International Swap and Derivatives Association that he expected to make a ruling soon on whether to hear the case. His line of questioning left both sides with the impression that he was concerned about how the regulatory agency has proceeded.

The two influential lobbies for Wall Street sought the injunction hoping to thwart what are called “position limits,” which were ordered by Congress as part of the landmark Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. The act was the broadest revamp of financial regulation since the Great Depression. The limits sought to prevent excessive speculation not just in oil but across the broad range of commodities, including farm products and metals.

Judge Wilkins expressed concern that Congress would direct the agency to impose market-wide limits without detailed study beforehand. President Barack Obama nominated Wilkins to the bench and the Senate confirmed him in 2010.

In other words, Goldman's loyal slave Obama has appointed a Goldman Guardian to the federal "court" system, and Goldman Guardian Wilkins is about to halt the tiny weak loophole-filled Dodd-Frank joke.

Classic agreed-on lie. R-bots hate Obama because he's supposedly anti-Wall Street. D-bots love Obama because he's supposedly anti-Wall Street. As always, the parties share the same false "facts", and use the shared lie in opposite polemical directions.

Edison's revenge on Tesla

2012-02-26T20:29:00.011-08:00

A super-modern Tesla electric roadster shows off its super-modern propulsion system. Occasionally the Tesla is propelled by electric motors, but if you mistakenly allow its batteries to discharge, it becomes a Brick, absolutely immovable and unrollable and unrechargeable. You have to haul it to a Tesla dealer and spend $40,000 (uninsured, unreimbursed) for new batteries. This is apparently part of the aristocratic Gaian thrill you get in return for your original $170K investment.

Meanwhile, Polistra hums sedately past the Brickmobile in her 1910 Detroit Electric. The Detroit has roughly the same short range as the Tesla, but lacks the super-modern super-digital Brickification feature. If you discharge its primitive batteries completely, you just have to recharge them. Dull. Analog. No more exciting than refilling an empty gas tank.

The picture was inspired by this delightful story. (Link leads directly to a PDF.)

Outline of the story: A remote Adirondack hunting lodge had been lighted since 1924 by an Edison DC generator outfit using 80 nickel-iron storage batteries. The system had been used fairly steadily with spotty maintenance. When the lodge's owners decided to sell, they offered the antique electric stuff to people who would preserve it or display it, rather than discarding it.

The authors of the story heard about the batteries, went up to the lodge, took the system apart, and brought the batteries down to their lab. Some cells still had electrolyte, some had been empty for many years.

Best part of the story: The authors flushed out and refilled the cells, and every single one still worked, still charged up to specified voltage, still discharged smoothly.

Edison had advertised his nickel-iron batteries as lasting a hundred years, and he was right!

Nickel-iron cells are no longer made in America ... [Didn't really need to say that, did I?] ... but one Chinese and one Russian company still make them. Aside from the obvious advantages (not turning to Bricks when they discharge, and lasting a century) nickel and iron are common minerals in plentiful supply. Contrast with the Tesla's laptop batteries, requiring rare Lanthanide minerals found mostly in China.

Satan loves stats

2012-02-26T09:16:00.010-08:00

Paul Homewood in UK discusses the funneling of most remaining science funding toward Green shit. This is predictable; the Green tumor knows how to claim all the blood supply of its victim until the victim is completely dead.

What really caught my attention was this sentence:

As a result certain areas of science are having all funding withdrawn, for, at the least, the next year. For instance PhD fellowships will no longer be available for Engineering graduates, and will be limited to only Statistics & Applied Probability for Mathematicians, as the EPSRC website makes clear.

The agency knows perfectly goddamn well what it's doing. Preferring stats over engineering isn't as obvious as funding projects with "Climate Change" in their titles, but it's actually worse in the long run.

Engineering is a constructive use of math.

Statistics is a destructive use of math.

Satan loves stats.

Stats serves the climate pseudoscientists. With the help of stats they are able to make a completely false theory give very small positive results. Without it, they'd have to look directly at the data and see the complete lack of connection between temperature and CO2.

Stats serves the sociologists who provide a "factual" basis for court decisions on Die-Versity, smashing great cities into rubble. Without it, they'd have to acknowledge the obvious difference between living societies like Korea and dying societies like Britain and US.

Stats serves the Wall Street Mafia and their slaves in CongressMart. With the help of stats they can find the most likely bet (derivative, option, etc), and then kill companies directly, or design laws to kill the proper set of companies to guarantee the bet.

Stats serves political operatives like Karl Rove and Dick Morris. With stats they can find the best possible gerrymander to guarantee My Party Wins Forever. With stats they can locate the 100 voters who really count in a national election, then figure out how to spend a trillion dollars of everyone else's money to buy those 100 voters. (See Medicare Part D.)

= = = = =

Here's reality: A difference that's worth acting on will appear clearly in the properly measured data of a properly designed experiment or observation. You won't have to tease it out with stats. If you can't design a good experiment to pin down the relevant variable, or locate a 'natural experiment' that separates the variables, you don't have a project. Give up and take a nap.

If your model "requires" thousands of variables, you have ALREADY ADMITTED that you are not objectively analyzing real data. You have ALREADY ADMITTED that you are seeking a predetermined result which will advance your career, improve your status, and enrich your grant account.

Medical research tacitly recognizes this reality. If Drug A is curing most of the terminal cancer patients, the clinical trial stops and all the cancer patients get Drug A immediately. (Stat, not stats!) If Drug B is killing some patients, the trial stops and Drug B is discarded forever.

If I were emperor I'd ban statistics entirely, except for the median. Since I'm not emperor, I can only show the problems and wish for lower subsidies to stats and higher subsidies to engineering and agriculture.

What's wrong with this picture?

2012-02-26T04:14:00.008-08:00

Seems like an odd placement of priorities:

Israel, America's lord and master, is ordering us to make war against Persia, and we're meekly obeying by banging the war drums, tightening the screws, raising the rhetoric daily.

But at the same time Israel, America's lord and master, doesn't seem especially concerned about Syria. Our Israel-slave politicians, while saying the predictable "Strongly Condemn" shit, are also sending a perfectly clear hands-off message.

Look at the map.

Syria touches the northern end of Israel, so you'd think total civil war in Syria would be an immediate concern. But it obviously isn't!

Persia is a thousand miles away from Israel, with three allies of Isramerica between the two. How would Persia's warriors possibly reach Israel without being stopped? Despite the physical impossibility of an attack, Ahmadinejad's empty rhetoric is the only thing that matters.

Something is askew here!

Reading between the lines, one plausible hypothesis: Israel is running the Syrian civil war, and already has a puppet government ready to take power when Assad has been softened up. So we've been ordered to stand back from a well-choreographed process.

We need a Reagan, but not that way....

2012-02-25T05:03:00.007-08:00

We grind through yet another episode of unspeakable lunacy in Afghanistan. Some brainless idiot with zero understanding of religion decided to burn some Korans publicly instead of secretly.

In the first place, how does any trash-burning operation go public? Even in ordinary homes and businesses without hundreds of highly-paid Blackhawk security specialists on board, it's perfectly easy to get something into the trash without being observed.

Nobody takes things out to the trash, waves them around and shouts "I'm discarding my porn!" or "I'm tossing a Bible!" or "I'm throwing away some old cabbage!"

Here's the mysterious arcane secret: BAGS. These are soft containers made of plastic or paper, which prevent people from seeing objects placed inside the container.

Polistra and Happystar demonstrate this ferociously complex ultra-high-tech method, so that our milifairy specialists might learn how to perform it after several months of study and several years of feasibility task-forces:

In the second place, there's plenty of history for occupying forces in Afghanistan. Britain learned the lesson, Russia learned the lesson. We could have figured out in 2001 that it wasn't going to work, and lots of people ... even inside our government ... tried to explain that it wasn't going to work. No, we're fucking EXCEPTIONAL. God is on our side, and everything we do, no matter how fucking stupid, is guaranteed to work because we're fucking EXCEPTIONAL.

Again Polistra and Happystar have created a brief 'training film' to assist our milifairy in understanding the strategic steps necessary to solve this problem:

When Russia was going through the same End-Stage Cultural And Governmental Alzheimer's in the 1980s, Reagan came along to mercifully pull the plug. Russia finally had to stop fucking around in Afghanistan, had to stop being EXCEPTIONAL.

Who will do for us what Reagan did for Russia? Who will pull the plug on this atrocious comatose wacked-out miserable excuse of a country?

Putin? Perhaps operating indirectly through Persia?

I just hope it happens soon. We may or may not fall into chaos. Most likely we won't, because we still have non-Alzheimer governments in a few states, and we have a long English history of self-organization. Our people are somewhat less likely to run completely wild without an iron hand on top.

Thanks for proving his point

2012-02-24T04:11:00.006-08:00

Something fairly interesting and smart is happening in England, with Muslim Baroness Warsi forming an alliance with Christians against secular evil, and now Chief Atheist Dawkins admitting to a small amount of doubt on the basic question.

Meanwhile, the Anglicans are showing a classically uninteresting and stupid response to a direct encounter with evil.

The soaring cost of metal during the global economic crisis has helped fuel a surge in metal thefts, triggering chaos on the rail network when copper signalling cables are taken.

But churches in particular have been viewed as a soft option by thieves, often poorly guarded and situated in all of the most crime-ridden areas of the country.

My first thought is that Baptists here in America would know how to solve it. Volunteers from the congregation would stand guard with double-ought shotguns. One click-click sound would knock most thieves off the roof; if that wasn't enough, an assfull of buckshot would definitely accomplish the task. After that, no more theft on this church. Criminals are highly social animals, constantly figuring risk-benefit equations.

But that's not the pussy-ass Brit solution:

Special "Voice of God" movement sensors are to be hidden in spires and finials, triggering a booming voice to take intruders by surprise warning that they have been detected and that security guards are on their way.

Oh nice. Let the machine do it, remove human morality and human decision from the picture. This will work the same way as car alarms, i.e. not at all. Especially since you've removed the surprise by announcing the system in the newspaper.

I wonder if the pussy-ass Anglicans are aware that they're proving a favorite Dawkins point nicely: God was invented by the organized churches to keep the lower class at bay.

Baptists and Muslims have a more rational view of the whole arrangement. God wants us to help him create a moral world, not just to keep the riffraff out of the basilica.

= = = = =

The Anglicans are also missing a chance to help solve the real problem. Theft of copper is a double consequence of the same underlying problem. Corporate traitors and Jew speculators have been conspiring to move the entire British (and American) economy to China. This means working-class Brits no longer have any chance of a decent job, and it also means Chinese demand and Jew speculation have driven the price of copper to levels where it's worth the risk of climbing a steep church roof to pry it off.

Well, what would Jesus do? No need to ask, because we know what Jesus actually did when Jew speculators were oppressing the common people. Drive them out, dammit!

Steak

2012-02-23T20:05:00.016-08:00

[Caution: mixed meat metaphors ahead!]

The main theme this week on brand-R talk shows is "makers vs takers". Same old tiresome shit about socialist redistributionist collectivist plastic banana rock-n-roller, etc. Half the people pay no taxes and they are the only voters, etc. Largesse from the public treasury, etc. Atlas Shrugged, etc. Losers losers losers nyah nyah nyah, etc.

Doyle asked the question in a somewhat fresh way: "When the other side is offering something for nothing, how do you beat them?"

Last night an old trucker calling into Lars Larson show said: "I always vote Democrat because I figure they're going to give me a little slice of the pie. Republicans want to keep it all for themselves."

Well, there's your answer if you want to hear it.

First, Doyle's "something for nothing" is a dishonest appraisal. Most of the "takers" have paid a lot of taxes in the past. Now the Satanic system has moved their jobs to China or obsoletized their hard-won skills. They have no real choice, and frankly they ARE entitled to get something back from a Satanic system that forces its own citizens into poverty, transfers all work to Chinese slaves and transfers all money to Jew billionaires.

Second, the trucker is right about perception if not reality. Both parties have been baking the Satan pie, but Dems historically gave the working man a slightly better chance to eat a micro-sliver of the pie. (Not much difference recently, though.)

As Polistra has been saying forever, you can't ignore the value of bringing home the pork. If you try to clean up all those earmarks, you're simply removing the one way an individual politician can return value to his voters. Without this real return, politicians are forced to sell only slogans and ideology.

Supposedly you have to sell the sizzle before you sell the steak, but brand-R politicians have completely removed the steak. You're left with nothing but the abstract ideological sizzle of Exceptionalism and Permanent Wars. Exceptionalism does absolutely no good for any actual American; trying to be Nurse Ratched for the world just makes us spend billions on foreign aid and other shit that enriches foreign potentates. Permanent war causes nothing but harm to real Americans. They pay more taxes and lose their sons, and get only tyranny (Homeland Security, TSA) in return.

If you wanted to offer an Amarillo-size steak without creating more welfare entitlements, here are some things you could do: (1) Eliminate EPA, ESA, TSA, DHS. (2) Jail the speculators. (3) Slap a 100% tariff on China. Blockade if necessary. (4) Eliminate the Federal Reserve's control of interest rates and require bankers to pay interest on savings.

Impose all of these with massive force. Instantly shoot any bureaucrat or banker or CEO who appears to hesitate for a millisecond. Head on a pike pour encourager les autres.

Some of the R candidates are talking about (1), but they won't do it. Nobody is talking about the other steps at all. Each of them would bring a quick increase in real return to the people, with no increase in tax or spending.

Never learn // EDIT: Maybe learning?

2012-02-23T10:20:00.008-08:00

Spokane news item:

Few years ago a city cop drove while drunk, caused an accident, then left the scene. At first he was quite properly fired. Now he's used the insane ADA definition of alcoholism as a "disease" to claim improper firing for a "disability", and he's being rehired with two years of back pay.

This whole mess was brought to us by bitch-ass sissy-ass fag-ass Commie-ass Repooflicans. Back in 1990, Comrade Bobdole and Rezident Bush The Father conspired to push the ADA into law. Result: Fewer jobs for REAL disabled people, and piles of wildly expensive grotesque idiocy like this.

Now Repooflican mayor Condon has gone along with the wildly expensive grotesque ADA settlement instead of fighting it.

Same Repooflican Condon who got elected by favoring "disability" "rights" and Die-Versity over civilization in an even more egregious police situation.

Idiots never learn. They keep voting for Repooflicans, and Repooflicans keep shooting them in the face with raw suicidal Lenin-bullets. Over and over and over. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

= = = = =

Update: Maybe Condon is teachable. He's suddenly pulling back from the surrender. Using the excuse that the state Human "Rights" Commission seems to be backing away from the deal. He's received plenty of criticism from actual citizens, but that's irrelevant to a public official. Must be something coming down from above.

= = = = =

Update March 1: Amazingly the Corrupt City Council has showed some real backbone for the first time in the 20 years I've lived here. They voted unanimously to reject the settlement and to refuse to rehire drunk cop Thoma. This may give Repooflican Sissybitch Comrade Condon some reason to hold firm, though I doubt he'll stick with it.

Incomplete news

2012-02-23T06:59:00.004-08:00

One of today's news stories needs a lot of clarification and amplification.

Here's the corrected version:

President Obama, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, Mayor Vince Gray, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, former first lady Laura Bush, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, and others wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying cellphones made by Chinese slaves, were on hand at a ceremony on the National Mall this morning to break ground on the Smithsonian Institution's new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The museum, which will be the Smithsonian's 19th facility, is slated to open in 2015. Actual construction work using tools made by Chinese slaves won't begin until this summer.

At the ceremony today, which was also streamed live on the Smithsonian's website using technology built by Chinese slaves, Obama read a speech from a teleprompter built by Chinese slaves. The speech said a museum charting several centuries of black history will show "not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life."

Also participating in the ceremony were Smithsonian Secretary Wayne G. Clough, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, museum director Lonnie Bunch, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, wearing clothes made by Chinese slaves and carrying a cellphone made by Chinese slaves, and Citigroup Chairman Richard D. Parsons, whose bank finances Chinese slavery. When it came time to turn over the first ceremonial clumps of dirt, however, Obama was not among those wielding a shovel made by Chinese slaves, though the president and his family remained on the stage built by Chinese slaves.

= = = = =

Yessiree bob, we deserve to congratulate ourselves for ending slavery.

Edison would appreciate this!

2012-02-23T05:26:00.003-08:00

The headlines are a little deceptive:

'Bacteria battery' boosted by space microbes

Turns out the 'space microbes' are commonly found in rivers as well, but for some reason were first noticed in the stratosphere and named accordingly. They get cycled up and down with evaporation and rain. Maybe 'rain microbes' would be a better term.

The more important part of the story:

The survey tested 75 species before combining the best into a Microbial Fuel Cell whose output then rose from 105 watts per cubic meter to 200, or enough to run an electric light.

Old Tom is smiling. No theory, just lots of organized trial and improvement.

"The research and findings show the potential power of the technique," said Grant Burgess, professor of marine biotechnology at Newcastle. "What we have done is deliberately manipulate the microbial mix to engineer a biofilm that is more efficient at generating electricity.

Selected by Time magazine three years ago as one of contemporary science's 50 most important inventions, microbial power harnesses the glow-worm-like electricity naturally generated by some microbes during their processing of waste water or mud. Commercial versions coat carbon electrodes with a bacterial slime whose tiny organisms convert nutrients into electrons and pass the power into a battery.

The research brings the lead in MFC technology back to the part of the world where it first began. In 1911, Prof M C Potter at Durham University produced electricity from E.coli bacteria in his botany department, a breakthrough little-remarked at the time but followed up from 1930s onwards.

One word, young man: BACTERIA.

Not gloating, just proud.

2012-02-22T17:15:00.004-08:00

Pretty good windstorm today, which crashed a number of trees into houses.

Didn't crash any trees into my house! Why? Because I finally had the sense to cut the weapons down last year.

Didn't mess up my fence either! Why? Because I finally had the sense to get it properly braced last year.

Gloating? More like gratitude. Gratitude is important, even when it's just gratitude to myself for having goddamn sense and goddamn frugality. Frugality piled up enough money to do the job, and sense made the decision.

Thanks, me.

Two Minutes Murdoch

2012-02-22T03:15:00.006-08:00

WUWT notes a WSJ interview with Joe Bast of Heartland.

Textbook example of how Satan's Boss Rupert Murdoch has adapted Orwell's lame old "Two Minutes Hate" into an infinitely more effective and vicious modern propaganda tool.

The interview begins with a split screen, host and Bast; but whenever Bast speaks for more than a few seconds, the whole screen switches to scenes of destructive weather. Tornados, ice storms, snowbound cities, floods.....

Hardly subliminal.

Message to the Viewer: "This Nazihalliburtonfascist Bast[ard] is trying to tell you that Global Warming is bad science. We know better, because we can see the disasters all around us, and we know with absolute fanatic religious certainty that none of these disasters ever happened until CO2 reached its current proportions in the atmosphere. Before CO2, the world was perfectly calm and heavenly, with no snow, no rain, no wind, no earthquakes, no volcanos."

If you're still deluded into thinking that Comrade Murdoch is a "right-winger", please undelude yourself! His views and agenda are identical to other media moguls; the only difference is that Murdoch is vastly more clever and fiendish. The other moguls serve Hell by directly advocating Satanic causes. Murdoch serves Hell by leading good people into stupidity, triviality and confusion.

Means and ends

2012-02-21T15:38:00.007-08:00

I've tried not to pay overmuch attention to the various 'gates' in the world of climate lately.

In general I believe that all means are proper if the end is good. People who get into hot arguments about methods (journalistic phone-hacking, email leaking etc) tend to miss the more important questions. Most of the time, the method questions are intentional distractors to prevent the yokels from thinking about the important end-questions.

In journalism, war or science, the important end-questions are:

1. Are the facts true?

2. Is it necessary to do this?

3. Will it improve the lives of innocent humans?

If you can give positive answers to those questions, then do it. All methods are justifiable, depending on the situation and the desperation.

If not, then don't do it at all. No methods are justifiable. Just take a nap.

= = = = =

You may well ask, how do you know? Both sides may think they're justified. Okay. The pair of 'gates' in climate show what happens when both sides think their causes are true, necessary and good.

First the anonymous Mr FOIA leaked a large set of REAL emails from the Carbon Cult pseudoscientists. Twice. These emails were packed full of obvious indications of intentional fraud, sabotage and censorship, full of specific conspiracies with specific members of the media and governments. Everything the 'skeptics' had been saying turned out to be true, and far worse. The Cult complained, but world opinion changed. Some governments now feel empowered to drop their support for the Carbon Crime.

Now Peter Gleick has leaked a small set of REAL emails from Heartland Institute, plus one that he apparently made up. These show no conspiracy or fraud at all; they only show that Heartland gets support from some corporations who agree with its work, and support from some sneaky big corporations who like to keep both sides feuding. Just like every other think-tank.

Both sides used nasty methods for (in their view) good ends. Now the world sees the full extent of the problem, and sees where the real crimes are.

If the honest 'skeptic' side had unilaterally disarmed, as some of the nicey-nice types seem to think we should, the Cult would simply continue to own all the words and communication. There would be no progress at all.

= = = = =

As Polistra has been saying from the start, "We must be better than them" is suicidal. In any conflict, better is meaningless. If you lose, nobody will care that you were honorable and gentlemanly. Your cause, no matter how good or bad, will simply disappear. If you win or at least stay in the game, people will be able to judge the truth and goodness of your cause properly.

Should we worry?

2012-02-20T03:04:00.002-08:00

I've been worried about Chinese espionage for 25 years, because I saw it firsthand in the Penn State engineering labs and military research facilities. It was already big in 1986, and it's much bigger now.

But, you may say, Russians and others also spy. Shouldn't we also be worried about them? Nope.

Chinese are sober, smart, disciplined and focused. They are able to take every morsel of knowledge and efficiently turn it into arrows aimed at our hearts, figuratively and literally.

Are Russians sober?

Are Russians smart?

Are Russians disciplined?

Are Russians focused?

Nope, nothing to worry about.

= = = = =

Though this makes life a little easier for us, and provides a few cheap laughs, it's a pure tragedy for Russians. They're actually smart and highly creative, and they can be disciplined and industrious when properly governed. But within Russia, they're forever doomed.

Occurs to me: I decided last year that America would be better off under some form of Islam. The same goes triple for Russia. What would an ayatollah do first? No alcohol. And no thievery, no idiotic pranks, no whoring. For a while there would be a shortage of stones and a slight surplus of dead and one-handed Russkis, but if the alcohol absolutely disappeared, everything else would pretty quickly fall into place.

For what it's worth, the Slavs here in Spokane have shown great wisdom, picking up Baptist and Evangelical faiths. And they're successful and productive citizens. What do Baptist and Muslim have in common? Both keep you dry above all.

Plots

2012-02-19T17:09:00.001-08:00

IPR ran a cute feature tonight on William Wallace Cook, a pulp writer in the '20s who churned out one novel a week. Cook served his profession by writing a book of plots, with 1462 instant plots ready to boil up into potboilers. Just add overwrought prose to taste.

Modern TV writers don't need such a book. They only need one plot for every "drama" and "comedy" show.

= = = = =

Plot LGBTQQRSTUVWXYZ:

A bunch of Jewish Communist Homosexual New Yorkers sit around in a New York scene talking about subjects of interest to Jewish Communist Homosexual New Yorkers.

During the half hour, each Jewish Communist Homosexual New Yorker must utter at least five (5) snide bitchy hateful ignorant bigoted false libelous violence-inducing statements against EACH of the following subjects:

1. Heterosexuals
2. White people
3. Southerners
4. Midwesterners
5. Christians
6. Soldiers
7. Republicans
8. Global Warming "deniers"
9. Evolution "deniers"
10. George W. Bush

The synthetic audience must make the same prolonged synthetic EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE sound, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, and the same synthetic standing ovation in response to each statement.

= = = = =

(I haven't watched TV in a couple years, so I'm not sure about (10) the Bush topic ... I suspect Bush may have been dropped from the list now that Obama is beating the pants off Bush in the supposedly evil skills of killing terrorists and increasing oil production. Best not to mention the whole subject; might confuse the masses.)

Bless you, Sevenforums!

2012-02-19T02:52:00.001-08:00

I was running into yet another of Windows 7's endless wonderful beautiful advantages and features: A large backup folder (apparently created by the system during a sudden power-outage shutdown) couldn't be deleted by any of the tricks I know. "You require permission from SYSTEM...."

Well, on a sane OS you wouldn't require permission from anyone to delete a folder on YOUR OWN FUCKING COMPUTER WHICH HAS EXACTLY ZERO OTHER FUCKING USERS.

Finally found the answer here on SevenForums.

The trick is fairly simple: a registry entry that gives you the ABILITY TO DELETE FUCKING FILES WHEN YOU WANT TO DELETE THEM.

Again, bless you.

= = = = =

Imagine the automotive equivalent: The user's manual doesn't tell you how to change a tire that was punctured by nails. It only tells you how to change a tire that was punctured by glass. If you run over a nail and get a flat tire, the tire is completely unremovable. Every time you put the lug wrench on a lug, a loud alarm sounds. You call the factory from a pay phone, run through a hundred layers of unhelpful assistants, finally get the right administrator on the phone. He tells you how to punch in a mysterious code, usable only once, which will make your on-board computer release the tire lugs.

When loops were closed

2012-02-18T04:05:00.002-08:00

Polistra and Happystar are listening to an episode of the 1946 series Night Editor.

The series is a 'one-man show', more like reading a bedtime story than a proper theatrical performance. The narrator reads the various parts. One-man shows are sometimes weird, but this one is effective.... perhaps because the narrator doesn't try too hard to make the voices sound different? (Think uncanny valley.)

This episode illustrates an event that could happen when business was conducted face-to-face between actual humans: a judge who knew the difference between good and evil used a few legal tricks to prevent a predatory banker from foreclosing on a worthy widow.

Story couldn't happen today. All business has been outsourced and securitized. All morality has been outsourced and chopped into senior and junior tranches. Senior tranche can steal trillions and get rewarded with more trillions. Senior tranche can order other countries to make war on its behalf. Junior tranche can live until it gets in the way of senior tranche. Any judge or prosecutor who tries to prevent a senior-trancher from eating a junior-trancher will be instantly removed.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

2012-02-18T02:18:00.000-08:00

Here we goooooooooooooooooooooooooo again.

Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is threatening to trigger a “new Cold War” that poses an even greater threat of nuclear conflict than the stand-off between the USSR and the West, William Hague warns.

No, asshole, Persia is not threatening anything. Persia has not started a war in 1300 fucking years. Israel is planning and organizing this war, and you are Israel's supine little house nigger.

Mr Hague repeatedly stressed that “all options must remain on the table” when confronting the Iranian regime, despite Liberal Democrat concerns that the Government may be dragged into another military conflict.

Jesus, man, can't you AT LEAST think of another fucking way to say it? You Israel house niggers have been chanting that shit about options and tables 900000000 times per day for the last 50 years.

Every fucking one in the fucking world knows that ONE option is NEVER on the table when psychopathic mindless hyper-aggressive bully Israel is giving the orders. The option of LETTING OTHER FUCKING COUNTRIES ALONE is never on the fucking table. The option of MINDING OUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS is never on the fucking table.

All other fucking options ARE on the fucking table, namely (1) war; (2) war; (3) war; (4) war; (5) war; (6) war; (7) war; (8) war; (9) war; (10) war; (11) war; (12) war; (13) war; (14) war; (15) war; (16) war; (17) war; (18) war; (19) war; (20) war; (21) war; (22) war; (23) war; (24) war; (25) war; (26) war; (27) war; (28) war; (29) war; (30) war; (31) war; (32) war; (33) war; (34) war; (35) war; (36) war.

Despite such a bewilderingly wide array of fucking options, our most wise and judicious house niggers always manage to select exactly the correct one, because WE'RE FUCKING EXCEPTIONAL.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

[As noted before, my anger here is partly directed inward. I spent entirely too many years as an Israel house nigger, mindlessly obeying all the neocon lies even while seeing most elements of the truth.]

Does this make any sense? Probably not.

2012-02-18T01:37:00.000-08:00

Random thought, most likely invalid. Yesterday's bad experience with a decongestant made me ponder the alternatives. Not just the weird little trip, but the decongesting itself. Trying to get all the mucus out means extra coughing and blowing, thus extra inflammation of the airways and extra soreness in abdominal muscles. Makes it harder to cough and blow when really needed.

I asked: Why is this good? Practice what you so tiresomely preach, boy. Trust subsidiarity and negative feedback; let the body make its own decisions.

Let the mucus dry instead of wetting it down, and try for as much sleep as possible.

And in fact this seems to work better.

Maybe there's an analogy to healing a wound. You don't want to keep it bleeding. You want to insure that the worst stuff is out, then expose it to air, let the scab form, don't disturb it.

Substitute mucus for scab.

That's it....

2012-02-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

Misteromney has been reminding me of something that I couldn't quite pin down. His little ode to Michigan today (All the trees are the right height. All the little inland lakes. I love cars.) finally locked it up.

That's it. That's him.

= = = = =

More seriously, Santorum is ahead because he understands that having the right size of job is far more important to real people than the right size of tree.

Think about that for a moment

2012-02-17T15:31:00.000-08:00

Bit of foofaraw in "scientific" circles over some genetic modifications on the bird-flu virus that make it transmissible from human to human. Some say the modification is just a bad idea and should be forbidden; some say it should be kept secret so those mythical terrorists can't get hold of it; some idiots say everything should be open.

I'm not paying attention to any of those arguments; I'm just noticing that the virus has to be modified before it's contagious among humans. It's been around forever; people have been keeping birds for thousands of years; viruses are notoriously fast mutaters; but this virus has never mutated into a human-transmitted form on its own. Required lots of expensive "scientists" to make it happen.

So: What the fuck was all the Bird Flu panic a couple years ago? It was a complete fraud, designed to increase the power and funding of bureaucrats.

Toldja so.

Won't try that again

2012-02-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Tired of coughing, decided to give modern pharmaceuticals a chance. Got a package of Tylenol Cold & Sinus pills this morning. Around 9AM took one pill. Waited for action; nothing happened. Around 11:30, read the package, noticed it said to take two at a time, so took two.

Did it decongest? Well, somewhat. Lungs did loosen up a bit. But at the same time the Tylenol sent me into a semi-hallucinogenic state for a half hour.

Back in hippie times the latter would have been fun. Now it's just scary.

No thanks! If that's the price of clearing the lungs a little faster than otherwise, it's too high. (Didn't intend that pun, but might as well leave it!)

From now on I'll stick to exercise and steam.

= = = = =

Two days later: Yup. Finally got 7 hours of unbroken sleep. Just like last time: Lungs all clear now. Yay!

Deluxe Schadenfreude

2012-02-17T03:46:00.001-08:00

Got some kind of flu or cold again. Third time in 12 months; clearly triggered by lack of sleep plus stress each time.

So won't be writing much. However, this news item is so fully packed with sweet Schadenfreude that it has curative powers!

Even sweeter and vastly more important: America finally joins the list of sane countries that are abandoning hippieshit wind "power".

The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit failed Thursday in Washington.

The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year —

Ooops: Correction needed here. Wind turbines do not power anything. They consume natural gas or coal power, and very efficiently kill birds and bats.

Continuing:

...are seeking to be connected to the electric grid. Many of those projects will be abandoned or significantly delayed without federal subsidies.

There is still a possibility the wind power tax credits could come through as a stand-alone bill or tied to other legislation. But Washington insiders say that is unlikely to happen before the election in November.

By then, the wind industry says, it will be too late to avoid massive layoffs and project delays, because wind projects slated for 2013 should already be far along.

The tax credit, which debuted in 1992,

That last line deserves to be left standing on its own.

ALWAYS REMEMBER WHO BROUGHT US ALL THIS SHIT. ALWAYS REMEMBER WHO PUNCHED THE OVERDRIVE BUTTON ON THE MARAUDING ENEMY ARMY EPA. IT WAS YOUR DEAR "CONSERVATIVE" BUSH SENIOR.

What is Switzerland for?

2012-02-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

News:

Swiss scientists plan to launch a "janitor satellite" specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships.

The $11-million US satellite called CleanSpace One — the prototype for a family of such satellites — is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL.

Couldn't resist.

Obama starting to campaign against Santorum?

2012-02-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

Obama has always made the right noises about manufacturing and outsourcing. But until now he's never made any specific proposals to solve the problem, and has happily gone along with the usual Free Trade shit.

Now he's finally getting exact:

Appearing at a Milwaukee padlock plant, Obama said the U.S. must do everything it can to make it more attractive for American businesses to stay put and grow here home, and "one place to start is with our tax code."

The president visited Master Lock, a manufacturer that has brought jobs back to the United States. Reprising ideas from his State of the Union address, Obama asked Congress to approve tax system changes right away, including a minimum tax on multinational companies so that American firms can't skirt taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. He also pushed for tax breaks for businesses that move into communities that have been hurt by factories leaving town.

Wonder if he's starting to feel heat from Santorum?

The Leninist media, both "right" and "left", have been dismissing Santorum as "just a Catholic social-issues suckup", but his audiences are picking up the whole picture. He's been advocating American production for a long time, as an integral part of the moral message. The media can't understand this.

Plain fact: If you want to return marriage and stability to the working class (both black and white), you must first return decent jobs to working-class MEN (both black and white). Decent jobs must include industrial jobs of all types, not just super-refined high-tech jobs.

Mildly optimistic sidenote: This is how party politics is supposed to work. When both parties trade meaningless slogans while agreeing on everything important, the country is fucked. But when an opposition candidate makes a real argument that resonates with a large segment of the public, a smart incumbent will adjust real policy to damp down the opponent.

FDR succeeded partly because he had two deadly serious opponents in Father Coughlin and Huey Long, who were resonating deeply and violently with large parts of America. And they were resonating for damn good reasons.

FDR had to head them off at the pass or lose the whole country. If the useless Repooflicans had been his only opposition, he wouldn't have been forced to do anything. He could have coasted along, copying Hoover while spouting anti-Repooflican slogans.

More false flag

2012-02-15T08:02:00.000-08:00

Several "failed and unprofessional" Persian attacks supposedly attempted to harm Israeli targets in India, Gruzya, and Siam. Western experts are "puzzled" by the unprofessional and ineffective nature of these supposed attacks, and the one in India seems "counterproductive" because India is more or less friendly to Persia.

IPR can't figure it out.

I can.

False flag by Mossad.

Remember the earlier false-flag attempt in October. Supposedly Persia was trying to hire a Mexican gangster to assassinate a Saudi ambassador. That one was so obvious and absurd that most commentators, even at IPR, couldn't bring themselves to support the official Isramerican story.

But when you're trying to stir up a war, facts never matter. Ask William R. Hearst. Ask Lyndon Johnson. Ask Rupert Murdoch. Ask Gary Knell.

Salute to Canada

2012-02-15T01:59:00.001-08:00

Polistra thinks a salute to Canada is timely. Today is their Flag Day, and Canada has been showing considerable sanity.

First, Canada didn't have a financial crash in 2008 because Canada never repealed its 'Glass-Steagall' type laws. Unlike US and UK, Canada never surrendered to Goldman.

Second, after many years of following Gaia even more zealously than we did, Canada is seriously cutting loose from Green Suicide. Canceling subsidies for hippieshit wind "power", officially pulling out of the Kyoto tyranny, and opening wide to oil and gas exploration.

Why does Canada hold firm against Goldman and recover more quickly from insanity? Because it retains a natural parliamentary system. When we switched to our purely abstract republic in 1776, based on lunatic Philosophical Theories about "rights" and "equality", we created the conditions for total paralysis and total corruption. It took a long time, but we arrived at the destination in 1989, and now we're just about dead.

Radio Canada ran its own brief salute to Flag Day this morning, including a soul-stirring rendition of the old Maple Leaf anthem in Sacred Harp harmony. Makes me wonder why they stick with the drab and vague 'Oooooooo Cannnnadaaaaaaaaaaaa' anthem when this perfect and snappy little song is available!

= = = = =

2/20/12:

Canada is getting even better:

Canada has threatened a trade war with European Union over the bloc's plan to label oil from Alberta's vast tar sands as highly polluting...

"Canada will not hesitate to defend its interests, including at the World Trade Organisation," state letters sent to European commissioners by Canada's ambassador to the EU and its oil minister.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME! The elderly lunatic mass-murdering wacked-out hypercriminals of EU are finally getting some serious punchback from countries with real influence. (It wouldn't matter if, say, Belize or Mali threatened a trade war.)

Non-barking dogs

2012-02-14T17:05:00.000-08:00

The usual neocons aren't barking very loudly at Obama's proposal to cut our A-bomb arsenal by 80%. Nothing on NRO, nothing on Daily Caller, minor mentions on Drudge and Newsmax. Only Weiner alias "Savage", the pure neocon transparently pretending to be an "independent", hit it hard today.

Wonder if most of the usual suspects are coming to terms with post-Cold War reality? Or are they remembering that their boy Bush eliminated ALL of our neutron bombs in 2003 under an agreement with Putin?

In either case, the cut is sensible at this point.

Bush failed to use the bombs on 9/12 when he should have thrown a few at Arabia. Now the world knows that we're not going to use them in ANY circumstance. Zero deterrent value.

Also, the weapons wonks at CFR and other think-tanks have been quietly warning that the bombs may not even be functional because of poor maintenance. Those are complex devices with lots of old electronics and several stages of chemical explosive. The nuke material has been irradiating the electronics and chemicals for 40 years, which is known to cause damage. Details are classified, but the wonks say maintenance has been badly neglected. And if the CFR boys have reached that conclusion, you can be damn sure the Chinese have also figured it out. They have spies everywhere.

So our A-bombs don't deter and probably won't work. Definitely time to recycle the material into reactor fuel, as we've already been doing with old Russian bombs.

It's that awful ColdWarming again!

2012-02-13T17:50:00.001-08:00

Classic set of headlines on today's Anti-Scientific Anti-American website.

I've highlighted the two Andes items just in case it's not obvious....

AUDIN rebuild

2012-02-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

Putting this up front in the unlikely event that someone was waiting for the fix to AUDIN, my old public-domain audiology courseware.

This week, after seeing indications that people were actually downloading the program, I decided to check out the setup file to be sure everything is OK. It wasn't OK! The setup file had acquired a virus. I located the original CD and set up AUDIN on my computer, in order to build a new installer.

While playing around, realized the existing version (built in 2004, tested on 98 and XP) was crashing in Win 7.

For what it's worth: the problem was memory 'access violation', and it came from using HeapAlloc/HeapFree for class constructors/destructors, instead of GlobalAlloc/GlobalFree. It appears that I wrote it first using Global, then switched to Heap for some unrecorded reason. Perhaps the Heap pair ran better in Win 3.1 or some other very old system.

I switched back to GlobalAlloc/GlobalFree, recompiled with newer Visual C++, and built a new installer in dull but standard MSI form.

Now it works for sure in Win 7 and Win 2000-Server. I no longer have an XP computer for testing, but if it works in 2000-Server, it should also work in XP.

For more background, see here.

Download the new setup file here.

Best article of the year

2012-02-13T03:03:00.000-08:00

Last week I noted (and transcribed) a wonderful BBC interview with Mahathir Mohamed, former prime minister of Malaysia. He advised Europe and America to get realistic, to start producing instead of manipulating, to stop living rich when there's no real money.

He observed that Asians are more realistic:

"When we are poor we live as poor people."

Now it appears that one part of Europe may finally be absorbing facts, coming to terms with reality.

In a beautifully written article on Greece by Maria Margaronis:

When you ask people on the street if they would rather Greece went bankrupt than submit to further measures, many now point out that it is already bankrupt, that public sector workers have gone unpaid for months, that hospitals have no supplies, that the poor are being wrung dry in order to pay the banks. "Let's get it over with," a woman who works for the education ministry said to me. "Then we'd know we only had €250 a month and we could start again.

Mahathir Mohamed would approve!

I have to quote the final paragraph, simply to bask in the reflected glory of perfect logic and lyrical prose:

The trouble with historical metaphors is that they can obscure the present: what's really at stake here is not Greece's identity but Europe's. All eyes are fixed on Athens, but the way out of the crisis requires a choice about what kind of Europe we want. The one we have now, with its deep structural inequalities and its rigid adherence to a failed economic ideology, protects neither democracy nor human rights. Stiff-necked and punitive, it prefers to eat its children.

How can anyone dare to support the EU after reading that?

The dismal answer: Because Goldman maximizes its profit when EU eats its children. That's all we need to know.

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

Meanwhile, one of EU's most valuable children is screaming in pain, but EU continues to rip out its guts:

Global planemaker Airbus joined a chorus of concern that a European scheme to charge airlines for carbon emissions risks triggering a full-blown trade war, with implications for plane deals and even Europe's crippling sovereign debt crisis.

The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), introduced on January 1, has drawn howls of protest from airlines around the world, with China banning its carriers from taking part.

Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said he was increasingly concerned at the potential fall-out if tensions are not defused. "I am very worried about the consequences of that. What started out as a solution for the environment has become a source of potential trade conflict and that should be a worry for all of us," he told an aviation conference on Monday ahead of the Singapore Airshow.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas acknowledged the growing opposition to the scheme, and said he was willing to be flexible in finding a solution, but the 27-nation bloc would not bow to pressure to suspend the scheme, which it says is part of a global fight against climate change.

"Trading Scheme" = Profit for Goldman.
"Fight Against Climate Change" = Profit for Goldman.
All you need to know.

Perfect summation

2012-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

Perfectly phrased description of Modern Times in an NPR interview with Anne Rice.

"If there's a modern temper, it's that we are alone now. A lot of the institutions in the past that gave us guidance are now suspect or moribund."

Needless to say, this was the ultimate goal of Stalin and his agents in America. Didn't work in Russia, but worked perfectly here.

Stalin and Betty Friedan, who are spending eternity raping each other, looked up from their mutually condign punishment and smiled for a moment.

Confusion comes to a head, maybe

2012-02-12T04:05:00.000-08:00

Hardly surprising news:

Zawahiri gives support to rebels in Syria, and part of the violence there is believed to be run by al-Qaeda.

As I noted a year ago, this shouldn't have surprised anyone. Nevertheless, both "sides" of American politics are completely confused and convoluted by the whole Arab Spring.

I'm cheering for these uprisings from a nationalist perspective.

Stalinist multi-culturalism doesn't work. 60 years of misery and chaos in US and EU have proved that beyond a doubt.

Muslim countries should have Muslim rulers, Christian countries should have Christian rulers, and people who violate the standards of each culture should expect to have trouble. That's called civilization, and it does work.

But cheering is not the same as material support. On the governmental level we should be standing back. Way back. No sanctions, no military aid, no diplomatic pressure, no air support, no troops. Just let it happen. Don't jump in on either side. We're too fucking stupid to predict the consequences of an intervention, as the last 60 years have also proved beyond a doubt.

Real capitalism

2012-02-11T17:22:00.001-08:00

The textbook form of the Free Market still works in niches where Wall Street and its cute little pet governments haven't ruined things!

A group of traveling prostitutes suspected of settling in Spokane told police they were making good money here because the local competition is so ugly.

One woman is in custody and other arrests are possible as part of an ongoing investigation into a 36-year-old California man who investigators believe has been brokering sex deals while living out of motels in Portland, Seattle and Spokane. Two motel rooms in Spokane were searched this week.

Shaquisha L. Jenkins, 22, was arrested on a misdemeanor prostitution charge Tuesday when the Spokane Regional Gang Task Force searched rooms at the Stratford Suites, 11808 W. Centre Lane in Airway Heights, and the Bel Air Motel, 1303 E. Sprague Ave. in Spokane.

A Spokane police officer contacted Jenkins and an 18-year-old woman on East Sprague Avenue Jan. 31 and was told “that because there is a lack of attractive prostitutes in the area, they are able to make fairly good money,” according to court documents.

No chance of a discrimination lawsuit, no complaints from NOW/NARAL. Just facts and realism!

Sidenote: Though I haven't window-shopped in the East Sprague big-box stores in many years, I'll admit that the merchandise I see on the bus lately tends to verify the esthetic judgments stated in the article.

Not a universal curse

2012-02-11T05:59:00.000-08:00

Polistra recently discussed the 'Curse of Natural Resources', the idea that a country is generally better off without a valuable resource like oil or diamonds.

Taki has a vivid account of Nigeria's cursedness, with constant civil wars between various tribal and religious factions driven by oil. We've seen the same thing across Africa and Central Asia for a LONG time.

It's easy to see why this happens.

A resource-poor country like Japan needs oil and has none of its own, so Japan has two choices: (1) Take over the world; (2) Make enough money to buy oil. Japan tried the first choice from 1905 to 1945. Fun while it lasted, but rather unpleasant at the end. Since 1945 they've taken the second choice, which turned out a lot better for Japan's own people. They work productively, they receive money for work, and they don't get bombed.

The exact same thing happened to Germany.

Resource-rich countries like Nigeria or Iraq or Congo have plenty of oil or diamonds or copper, so they don't need to learn how to work. In such places the reciprocity is not Work for Money, but Ownership for Money. The tribe or government or rebel group that owns the resource-bearing land gets the money. Net result: endless war.

But the curse is not universal. North America has plenty of natural resources but doesn't fight tribal wars about them. Oddly enough, our biggest dispute is not about who gets to own the resources, but whether we get to use them at all. Normal businesses are trying to extract the oil and copper and gas in a civilized way; the marauding enemy army EPA is trying to prevent us from extracting any of it.

Why no curse? Maybe because our culture came from England, a resource-poor island. Admittedly the colonization of North America happened because England was trying to take over the world at that time, but England's reason for colonizing here was agriculture, not minerals. Thus the emphasis was still on working, not extracting.

It's one hypothesis, anyway.

Untwisting an axis

2012-02-10T17:23:00.000-08:00

Today's mini-furore over the contraception provisions of Obamacare shows a very slight return toward the natural alignment of parties and ideologies.

Popes in the 20th Century have consistently favored more 'socialistic' economic views, with the state protecting the poor against the rampaging rich. Popes have also consistently favored protecting life in all conditions. They've gone beyond proper Christian moral logic in recent years as they reject the death penalty, but before that change their position on all aspects of human existence was fully consistent with Christ. He founded a church of the oppressed, not a church of the elite. Anyone who is endangered by the wealthy and the powerful should be protected by his church; and that includes helpless unborn infants who are endangered by their more powerful mothers.

In Europe, Catholic political parties (usually called Christian Democrats) have run along the same lines, and still do.

American politics also followed the same lines until 1973. FDR held most of the Catholic voters because he was truly on the side of the poor, firmly restraining the vultures of Wall Street. Republicans held Protestant voters by supporting the vultures. In those years most of the big vultures were Presbyterian, and other Protestants felt their interests aligned with the vultures. (Evangelicals weren't a significant faction at that time.)

In 1968 the two parties switched part of their message, for reasons that didn't make much sense. Democrats picked up the value set of the old rich, which is also the value set of the criminal class at the bottom and the hippie children of the bourgeoisie.

Republicans then picked up the value set of the bourgeoisie, which included most Catholics.

At the same time, the parties retained their original economic positions. On economics, D was still nominally aligned with the working class and R with the old rich.

Roe v Wade in 1973 hardened up this strange twist. Catholics and Evangelicals, whose economic interests should have been D, moved to R. Presbyterians and similar anti-Christian Protestants, whose economic interests should have been R, moved to D. The richest of the rich are now Jews, who learned to be Democrats when they were mainly poor; they stayed with D but switched from economic loyalty to values loyalty.

And there we've stood ever since. Neither party has a consistent set of values, so American politics has degenerated into pure team-cheering and meaningless random slogans, attempting to swing those few hundred Floridians whose votes actually count. Nobody else exists.

There have always been a few members of Congress who stayed with the old consistent lines, making them 'incomprehensible mavericks' as seen from the conventional twisted view. Ron Paul is a pre-1968 Republican, favoring the economic interests AND the hippieshit values of the super-rich. Marcy Kaptur (and several other Rust Belt types) are close to pre-1968 Dems, favoring the economic interests AND the strict values of working class Romans.

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If NPR's analysis of Obama's backdown is valid, he's acting out of respect for the more socialistic Dorothy Day-style impulses of Catholics. If so, this little halfway compromise could start to untwist the large contradiction.

Tin ears

2012-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Lots of 'tin ears' in the news.

Misteromney gives us a fresh example every day. Not concerned with the poor, loves to fire people, and so on.

Jerry Sandusky wants to get out of house arrest so he can visit his grandkids.

Bernie Marcus and other rich bastards think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?"

Pseudoscientist charlatans think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "The social controversy over climate change is in part due to climate change denial. In order to defend and support the teaching of climate change, it is important to understand — and be able to rebut — arguments about climate science, and to understand why people choose to attack such well-tested science."

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A generation ago these 'tin ears' weren't nearly as common.

Wrong-doers weren't innately different then. They didn't have any more conscience about their wrong-doing than now. They slept easily, just as modern wrong-doers sleep easily.

But old-fashioned malefactors had a clear intellectual understanding that their deeds were abnormal and disapproved by the rest of society, and knew how to avoid saying such brazenly dumb things!

I'm inclined to blame our tight caste system.

A couple generations ago, most people shopped in the same stores, rode the same streetcars, and attended the same movies and organizations.

Most of us smoked the same cigarettes, which gave us a natural ice-breaker. Most didn't brush our teeth regularly, most didn't shower daily. We were much less fussy about smell.

Rich folks had to ask a poor stranger for information at times, teaching them that poor strangers were capable of knowing things; poor folks had to answer a rich stranger's question at times, teaching them that rich strangers didn't know everything. Now Siri has taken over this job, allowing us to keep our pet illusions about strangers.

Rich people had black American domestic servants who schooled them in working-class ethics. (Redundant: should just say ethics.) Vice-versa, the blacks serving in rich homes understood with perfect and cynical clarity how rich bastards behave. Now the rich have disposable Mexican servants who barely speak English and go home to Mexico when they're fired.

The bad/good distinction also works both ways. Modern wrong-doers can't picture how a normal mind works, how a normal mind perceives their words. Vice-versa, modern innocents fail to understand how the criminal or con-man mind works, and can't conceive that the criminal sleeps well at night. They say fantastically stupid things like "Well, I'd rather see him get life than the gas chamber, because life will give him time to regret his mistakes." No it won't, you hopeless idiot. Life will just give him time to train lots of young criminals.

= = = = =

Bet you're expecting me to issue a disclaimer. Expecting me to say "Well ha ha, we may look back fondly on olden times, but we wouldn't really want all of that to return, would we? We can't go back to racism, classism, ageism, fatism, somethingelseism, homophobia, somethingelseophobia, etc, etc, etc. We're past all that now. This is, after all, 2012, ha ha."

Nope. Not gonna say that.

All of those idiotic -ism words are fancy Orwellian ways of saying just one -ism.

REALISM.

We could go back to realism if we wanted to. We don't want to, because we've been hopelessly stupefied by 57 years of Die-Versity in "laws" and "courts", 57 years of Leninist propaganda on TV.

And even if some of us wanted to recover realism, we know perfectly well that the Gulag awaits, the Delta Force is ready to rumble. Not worth it.

Language update for Feb

2012-02-10T04:52:00.001-08:00

Professor Polistra has gathered a pretty good load of verbal ratshit for this season's Language Update.

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Curating:

Formerly just museums, now suddenly applies to any type of organizing or collecting activity.

"One big benefit of curating your Facebook feed..."

"Absolut Soni explores the past 20 years with curating space with mixed media installations from audio-visual to sculptures and couture..."

"Although we'd like to think that nothing genuine can come from curating a bevy of social media platforms..."

= = = = =

BCE / CE:

Secular tyrants have taken this up with a vengeance lately.

"The earthquake happened in 529 BCE. That means Before The Common Era."

They always specify what BCE means, so that we unwashed unenlightened unprogressive religious yahoos can perhaps gain a slight vague glimmering of the Enlightened Progressive Secular Scientific Gift that has been bestowed upon our lowly undeserving ears.

YOU AGGRESSIVE CONDESCENDING MOTHERFUCKING SCHOOLYARD BULLIES, WE ALREADY KNOW PERFECTLY FUCKING WELL WHAT BCE MEANS. BCE MEANS "I'M A HIGH PRIEST WITH MANY GRADUATE DEGREES, AND YOU'RE A DUMB FUCKING IGNORANT LOSER." LISTEN, ASSHOLES, IF YOU ACTUALLY WANTED TO COMMUNICATE FACTS TO US, YOU WOULD SPEAK NORMAL FUCKING ENGLISH. IN NORMAL FUCKING ENGLISH, THE TWO ERAS ARE CALLED BC AND AD, NOT BCE AND CE.

These monsters smash civilization with every single fucking toxic nasty filthy word they utter, and then they wonder why HUMANS fail to respect them.

Tumbril time, citoyens.

= = = = =

Contextualize:

100% Pure buzzword. Zero calories, zero semantics.

"But those fires were in the forests of south-east Australia – nowhere near the savannahs of northern Australia where you propose introducing elephants. We had to contextualise."

"The post has been expanded to better contextualize Sen. Jeff Sessions’ remarks."

"As for Mr. Payne, he responded curtly when asked about Searchlight’s shifting strategy this week. 'Ask the studio,' he said. 'I just make them. I don’t contextualize them.'"

"In that way, we can all reap the privilege of being able to contextualize ourselves through life’s toughest hurdles."

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Personal Journey / Evolve:

Another name for re-education, another name for Room 101. The end of every Personal Journey is I Love Die-Versity, I Love Fag Marriage, I Love Free Trade, I Love Open Borders. Not one iota of thought remains in my vacuum-packed brain after my Personal Journey. My vacuum-packed brain functions only to receive and implement today's Official Diktat from every single program on my Official Cable TV Telescreen.

The endpoint of Evolving is the same. Humans are rapidly Evolving in the direction of total chaos and destruction of our species. Darwinists should be protesting loudly at the abuse of Evolving to mean Eliminating reproduction, but they won't protest because they are not really Darwinists at all. They're just bloodsucking Death Fetishists like the rest of the mass-slaughtering ruling class.

One question to you Commie fuckheads: If you're really Darwinists, how come you believe that your own personal belief set as of this millisecond is the ultimate absolute final conclusive goal of all conceivable evolution? And if you look back to, say, last year, you also felt that your own personal belief set as of that millisecond was the ultimate absolute final conclusive goal of all conceivable evolution. No further progress was possible. What happens if your personal belief set, rigidly obeying the commands of your 500-foot plasma telescreen, adopts a different belief next week? Since this week's belief is the ultimate, does that mean next week's belief is impossible?

Classic example of both from Gov Gregoire:

Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington wishes she'd supported marriage equality for gays and lesbians years ago -- and she hopes President Obama evolves in his thinking soon. But she respects the president’s “personal journey” and asked people to “give him the time” to see it through.

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Tri-Yoka:

Probably unique, but worth recording and watching because pronunciations spread through the elite. The latest futile effort to keep Greece enslaved by the monstrous EU conspiracy is run by EU itself, IMF and Euro Central Bank. This Gang Of Three calls itself the Troika for some reason. One commentator on Bloomberg this morning pronounced it "Tri-Yoka", which is accidentally appropriate. Troika literally means a sled or vehicle pulled by a yoke of three horses.

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Fraser Nelson gets it

2012-02-10T03:11:00.001-08:00

Nelson in the Telegraph:

But the Bank of England cannot create wealth. All it can do is transfer it, from savers to debtors. Every extra penny enjoyed by those whose mortgage rate is now lower than inflation is a penny not going into a savings account – and the full effects are only now becoming apparent.

As those in the pensions industry know, what is happening is nothing short of a crisis. Pension Corporation, an insurance firm, estimates that the hole blown in British company pension schemes by the first round of QE was £74 billion. Firms are legally obliged to make up this shortfall – so they will need to find £20 million a day of real cash to repair the damage.

Same in US. Substitute Arch-Criminal Bugsy Bernanke, Greatest Thief In History, for Sir Mervyn King, and substitute Federal Reserve for Bank of England.

It's not just pension schemes that suffer, it's also insurance companies and the people who buy insurance. Many pension funds and insurance companies have legal or contractual restrictions on the types of investments they can make. With safe bonds yielding negative interest, those companies are earning less. This forces insurance premiums to go up.

I'm puzzled by this. Surely pension funds and insurance co's are big enough and financial enough to have influence in Congress. Why haven't they complained? Or if they have complained, why hasn't their influence moved Congress? I suppose the answer is obvious: Goldman Sachs wants it this way, and nothing else exists.

= = = = =

Update 2/14/2012: Pension plans in Britain are finally starting to complain publicly. I guess Goldman holds only 99.9999999% of the cards there.

BRAVO OBAMA!

2012-02-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Obama the Texas Cowboy Oilman is leaving Bush the Gandhian Green Hippie in the dust.

Two new nuclear plants APPROVED FOR CONSTRUCTION, for the first time since Three Mile Island!

Time for Polistra to do the Energy Dance, not seen in a few years:

Lake Vostok

2012-02-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

News:

Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said reaching the lake was akin to the Americans winning the space race in 1969.

"I think it's fair to compare this project to flying to the moon," said Lukin, who oversaw the mission and announced its success.

My first response to Lukin's moon-landing comparison was "Yeah, okay, you Russkis were late to the moon so you have to say that."

Then I thought about it for a moment. He's perfectly right. Maybe more than right.

We've been examining the moon forever. In fact, plants and animals have been shaping their lives around the moon's influence for as long as life has existed. And humans have been looking closely at the moon with telescopes for 400 years. Our moon landings didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

This under-ice Great Lake is much less familiar, much less explored, than the moon. We didn't even know it existed until 30 years ago, and we haven't been able to 'see' it at all until now.

When your entire culture is based on sadistically aggressive imperial expansion, you're blind to most aspects of reality. When your only question is "What's out there?" you never ask "What's in here?" After the end of the Space Race a few Americans are starting to ask the latter question, which turns out to be far more interesting and USEFUL.

Burble

2012-02-08T18:28:00.004-08:00

Since I've been paying more attention to the outdoors I've been noticing California Quail on and around my tiny property.

A couple years ago I began to hear their distinctive call occasionally, and enjoyed the tone which reminds me of Martha Mears. Last summer a family of quail settled in a little micro-forest, about 30 by 8 feet, along the west side of my yard. This copse is bounded on the back by a fence and on the front by tall yellow roses. In between are a dozen narrow trees or shrubs. In summer the ground under this micro-forest is nicely shaded and cool; in winter it stays fairly dry; and the thorny roses block humans and dogs. Good shelter for a quail-sized animal.

Most likely the quail decided to stay when I was planting and reseeding the back yard to replace the trees and pine crap that had made the yard unusable. They consumed about half the seeds that I put down. Seemed like a fair bargain in exchange for the entertainment they provide. Plump critters marching around in formation with their cartoonish head-antennae bobbing up and down: just plain fun to watch.

= = = = =

Related bit of science: Univ of Surrey is looking into the human impact of bird sounds.

Listening to five minutes of birdsong every day can be said to help beat the winter blues, but what other benefits can it bring? A new three year research project that will look into the impact of birdsong on human wellbeing and behaviour is being launched today by the University of Surrey in partnership with the National Trust and Surrey Wildlife Trust.

These quail produce one sound that soothes my soul. When foraging they burble together, sounding like 'wurp? wurp? wurp?' Unmistakable meaning even to my dull mammalian brain: We're all here. We're all here. We're all here. We're all here.

Humans don't make that sound, though I suppose small talk or humming while working may serve the same purpose.

Clearly there are common acoustic elements in the sounds emitted by most vertebrates, and there are common mechanisms in the cochlea and auditory system to detect these common factors. Hissing and growling are understood to signify danger. Infant sounds are universal, and most birds and mammals respond to them protectively.

And now we're back to the Grand Blueprint, aren't we?

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Artistic note: this is the first real animation I've done in a while. Mostly I've been recycling old ones with a few variations. Feels good, and serendipity added some interest. Due to Poser's interpolation, the quail make some cute moves that weren't part of my explicit keyframing.

Not fair

2012-02-08T17:41:00.001-08:00

Honest and scientific people have noticed for a long time that the Gaian form of pseudoscience fills all the slots of a religion. By now this observation is trite. Gaia has an apocalypse, a messiah, and typical forms of sin and redemption. It makes predictions that are 100% wrong, and continues to maintain faith that someday all of its predictions will come true. The Hidden Warmth will get ya if ya don't watch out! Just you wait, unbelievers!

Suddenly realized.... this comparison is unfair to religion.

Traditional religions, at least in their more solid forms, make very few bad predictions.

They say lots of presently untestable things about presently untestable areas of life: souls, heaven, the thoughts of God, etc.

But when they make testable predictions about the consequences of actual human behavior, they're generally right. And they're closer to the mark than secular "sciences" like psychology and economics.

Probably wise

2012-02-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

Perfect typo ... or is it more like an auto-correct? ... in latest UK Telegraph Anglopanic over an inch of snow. Probably a good idea, since clearly Brits have no idea how to drive in winter.

Good sign

2012-02-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

Via UK Telegraph:

Teenagers now list using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as their number one pastime, overtaking watching television, according to a new report.

Sixty-five per cent of the 16-24 year-olds who were polled for the survey, listed talking to their friends via Facebook and Twitter, as their top leisure activity.

Bodes well for the future. TV enforces ONE ABSOLUTELY UNIFORM RIGID ORTHODOX VIEWPOINT. As young folks break loose from The Big Phase-lock, they will still follow a bunch of stupid trends as teens always do. And given the way Facebook works, most of those stupid trends will be created by big corporations.

But they won't be helplessly locked into ONE set of deadly falsehoods and lethally wrong assumptions. They will be able to explore lots of different viewpoints, some of which may even be true and good for civilization.

Another line in the Grand Blueprint

2012-02-08T03:52:00.001-08:00

Biologists are realizing that the most common types of fish did most of their early development in rivers and lakes, not in the sea.

Needless to say, this goes along with the earlier realization that fish genes already contain the code for land-walking legs.

At some point a real scientist following good old Ockham will have to conclude:

You can't assume that all life branched out from one location.

That's an arbitrary axiom that needs to be independently proved before you can use it. Otherwise you're running in circles, missing most of the story.

If life randomly started in water, why do the genes of swimming fish contain the code for walking?

If life randomly started on land, why do many land critters have an instinctive 'gait' for water?

The only tenable hypothesis is that life was prepared to live in all sorts of locations, from deep salt water to soil to deep rocks to land surface to fresh water to the clouds.

Where did it begin? Possibly in all of those locales.

Learn from Pat

2012-02-07T11:29:00.000-08:00

Old Buchanan lays out the facts on Persia in a remarkably clear and rigorous way.

Basically: If Persia wants war with the West, it knows goddamn well how to start such a war. Since Persia has not started such a war, we can conclude that Persia does not want war with the West.

Strongly echoes Robert Taft's rigorous logic on the Soviet "threat", as heard in this 1952 CBS segment contrasting Truman with Taft.

(Buchanan doesn't say this, but I have to add: Persia hasn't started a war with ANYONE in 1300 FUCKING YEARS. That's a pretty good indication of a non-aggressive tendency, wouldn't you say?)

Well, who wants war? Israel and its US slaves want war.

Why? Because Israel and its US slaves are hopelessly addicted to bullying and aggression. Since 1990, America has been repeatedly attacking countries that didn't attack us, countries that had no intention of attacking us. That's the mark of a deranged psychopathic bully.

Learn from Dr. M

2012-02-07T05:38:00.000-08:00

Excellent BBC interview with Mahathir Mohamed, former PM of Malaysia. He's trying to tell Euro and US how to recover from our economic death spiral. He speaks from a more or less Islamic worldview, but basically he's just telling us to return to the pre-1980 way of doing things.

Partial transcription, with some editing of unclear phrases:

Host: Why do you think Asia has managed to weather the financial storm so much better than its Western rivals?

MM: In Asia we are still doing real business. In the West you are not doing real business, in the sense of providing goods and services. You are dealing mostly in the financial market which is not doing anything productive. It is just a kind of gambling.

Host: So can the West learn anything from how Asia built up its economy?

MM: Asia was a poor part of the world in the past and we used to live as poor people. Slowly we are building up our wealth and now we are much better off. In Europe now, as a result of these bursting bubbles, you have lost a lot of wealth, and now you must be poorer relative to the past. In Asia we live within our means. When we are poor we live as poor people. I think that is a lesson you can learn from Asia.

Host: So what should Europe do?

MM: You should go back to doing real business. Producing goods, providing services, trading, not just moving figures in bankbooks.

Host: Well, people who work in the financial sector would argue that they are providing a valuable service to business.

MM: I don't think so. They are just abusing the system in order to make money for themselves. They do not generate jobs or businesses. For instance, currency trading moves 4 trillion dollars a day. This is about the same as Germany's GDP for a year. Currency trading does not generate any jobs, so it is not productive.

Host: Currency trading has been a big issue for you. You famously pegged the Malaysian currency to stop the speculators.

MM: Currency is not a commodity. When you deal in coffee, coffee is something you can drink. You can grind it up and turn it into a useful drink. Currency, you cannot grind it and make it into anything. It is just figures in the books, and you can't trade with figures. There must be something solid [bangs his fist on the table for solidity!] to trade. Then you can legitimately make money.

Host: Should we stop having floating exchange rates?

MM: Well, floating is fine but it is not just floating by itself. Some people are manipulating it, by shortselling for example. If you keep on selling a currency that will depress the price, and if you keep on buying that will raise the price. So you can take a profit at any time just by moving up or down.

Host: So how do we stop this speculation?

MM: The idea that the market can regulate itself is quite wrong, because the market is about making profits for themselves. They don't care what happens to other people. They impoverish whole countries [as Soros did to Malaysia] and lots of people suffer.

Host: You think there should be regulation?

MM: Yes. I believe currency trading has no function at all. Of course you have to exchange currency to have trade, but pure speculation should be stopped.

Host: Coming back to Europe's predicament. How difficult a situation is Europe in now?

MM: In the first place you are in a state of denial. You refuse to acknowledge that you have lost money and therefore you are poor. You can't remedy that by printing money. Money isn't something that you just print. Money must be backed up by something, and gold is probably the best backup.

Host: How long will it take for Europe to get out of this?

MM: It will take a long time. To recover your wealth, first you have to work for many years to rebuild your capacity to produce goods and services to sell to the world. You cannot expect to live at this level of wealth when you are not producing anything.

= = = = =

Yup. Nuff said.

Learn from Our Onslow

2012-02-07T04:48:00.000-08:00

Watching the idiotic green dominos fall one after another. Solyndra, Fisker electric cars, wind "power" in Britain and Germany, and so on. They never had a valid business; they always depended solely on gov't subsidies and they knew it. But they didn't allow for the wonderful ways of Nature. These welfare queens were not simply taking tax money; they were using it to displace and destroy real business. Now there isn't enough surplus value to support the subsidies, so the subsidies are drying up.

These green welfare queens could have learned something from Our Onslow, head of a permanent welfare family. Our Onslow made a point of reading serious newspapers, keeping up with news of the economy and the strength of the Pound.

Our Rose asks: "Why is Onslow reading the Financial Times?"

Our Onslow replies: "I like to keep an eye on the economy. A bloke in my position has to wonder how long the country can afford him. If we don't get the economy right, people like me are gonna be in trouble!"

On Youtube here.

It ain't what you say, it's what you know

2012-02-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

Modern activist types, from hippies all the way to the Arab Spring folks, tend to miss one important point. They believe social media give the people more power against the gov't because social media can spread a message fast.

That's not the real source of power. Smart governments keep their power by allowing lots of expression in channels that the government can monitor. Email and Twitter are closely monitored by the gov't. Always have been. Bear in mind that NSA was one of the first nodes of the Net.

Every time you spread the message, you're giving the gov't one more data point to map the extent of the heresy; every time you forward an email, you're giving the gov't a new name to watch or arrest. And of course most of those smart-phone devices will obligingly tell the gov't exactly where you are at the moment you wrote or talked.

The real transfer of power happens the other way around. Gov't power is weakened when the gov't monopoly on acquired knowledge is broken. Thus Wikileaks, Climategate, and similar revelations are more dangerous to the gov't.

Admittedly there are a few dumb dictators like Dear Leader Kim who try to stifle everything instead of learning everything, but they aren't very successful. Holding power that way is tremendously expensive and also stifles the normal activities that keep any country running.

Encouraging

2012-02-06T06:08:00.002-08:00

NPR reports on a small but heartening exception to the overall death of storage in the modern world. The exception arises from a dubious assumption, and may prove to be ephemeral.

Farmers in the Corn Belt are quickly putting up more grain bins on their own property, in order to act as their own sales agent. This trend seems to have started from the artificial Goldman Boom in 2008, which happened only because Goldman needed a new market to vampirize after it had sucked all the blood from the housing market.

The farmers are trying to play the Day Trader game on their own. Some of them may win, but overall the odds are stacked against the individual operator.

Sounds awfully familiar. In the stock market, the 1990s dot-com bubble inspired lots of folks to try trading stocks on their own. A few made good money; most went bankrupt.

NPR interviewed a co-op manager who brought things down to non-bubble reality: With a natural commodity like grain, commoditized mass production works nicely. The co-op can manage the stored grain of many farmers at once, dividing the costs of buildings, aeration, pest control, fire protection, grading, security and marketing. It's a system that has worked for a hundred years.

Well, what's the encouraging part? Co-ops are also building more storage these days. That's the encouraging part!

The fine points of aristocracy

2012-02-05T18:25:00.005-08:00

Another of those delightful Commieshit vs Commieshit stories.

A subsidy-developer in the Philadelphia area is trying to get permission to build a huge solar-collector project on a wooded hillside. He's running into opposition from local residents AND from the local Biodiversity commieshits, both of whom disapprove of clear-cutting a steep hill and leaving it barren. In fact their concern is entirely valid. When you clearcut a hill and then you get rain, the hill falls mainly on the plain, burying any houses that happen to be there.

I found myself noticing the even-handed tone of the article. Because commieshits are on both sides of the dispute, the reporter had to be fair.

If the Biodiversity commieshits hadn't joined in ... if it had been purely the solar subsidy-thief against local residents ... the reporter would have known instantly that the solar subsidy-thief was Pure and Holy and Sacred, and the local residents who didn't want to be crushed were Nazi Fascist Halliburton Homophobes.

Or the opposite hypothetical: If a subsidy-thief had been seeking to clearcut the same hillside for a tax-advantaged steel mill instead of a tax-advantaged solar boondoggle, the reporter would have known instantly that the locals who didn't want to be buried were good folks, whose cause is worth defending. In that case the hillside steel mill project would have been described accurately as a subsidy-seeking tax dodge.

Of course it's still a tax dodge, but making it solar gives it aristocratic privilege.

Shouldn't have tried it

2012-02-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

NPR runs a feature this morning attempting to explain Roman Numerals to young folks watching the World Series, or whatever it is. Apparently each annual Super-Hockey-Golf Festival, or whatever it is, has a roman numeral on it for some reason.

In the first place, somebody should have seen immediately that this wasn't going to work on radio. You need a blackboard or an animation.

In the second place, learning mnemonics for the basic letters of the roman system doesn't get you anywhere near understanding the system. You can remember forever that I is one, V is five, X is ten, and so on; but until you know the complicated rules for combining the letters, you don't know anything worth keeping.

In the third place, the mnemonics were based on an assumed knowledge of rap-rop, or whatever it is. The rhyme for L = 50 involved a connection between "Fifty Cents" and "L Magazine", which are apparently rip-rap groups; when the announcer suggested that not everyone will know what a "Fifty Cents" is, they tried an alternate rhyme featuring Samuel L. Jackson, who is apparently another ripper or hopster or racketeer or whatever you call it.

Seriously, where's the editor? NPR is generally biased to the left, but it's also a cut above other left or right media in terms of common sense and depth of message.

Common sense and depth failed on this one!

Still no Niña

2012-02-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

We're thanking the weather gods for continued relief from La Niña. Most of the northern US, in fact, is getting off easy this winter. Around here we had one good solid snowstorm a couple weeks ago. Otherwise it's been cold and dry.

This winter shares a distinction with the previous summer. Both have been typical but narrow in temperatures; both have been unusually dry in precip.

Daily highs and lows have been strictly average: 85/60 in summer, 30/20 in winter. What's missing is range. Previous summer lacked the usual triple-digit hot spells, and this winter lacks the usual single-digit cold snaps. It's just relentlessly normal.

Meanwhile, winter is banging the Eastern Hemisphere hard. Some of the Europanic is silly, with Britain getting all weeweed up about temperatures near freezing!!!!! and one horrible inch of snow!!!!!!! but the problems in the Balkan area are genuinely serious, with -5F and six feet in places that aren't prepared for it.

Has the Arctic Oscillation changed its pattern again, as it did in 1976?

= = = = =

Irritation: The local media continually describe this winter as "warmer than normal". It's not, dammit. It's drier than normal. The 2009-10 El Niño winter showed what happens with warm temperatures and normal precip: Lots of rain instead of snow. I can halfway understand the confusion ... we unconsciously associate snow with cold winter, and associate non-snow with warm summer. Still, if you're posing as a meteorologist you should make a point of distinguishing temp from precip.

Wanna see a real hockey stick?

2012-02-05T03:56:00.000-08:00

Pseudoscientists in many fields love to predict that a measurement like temperature or sea level is rising linearly forever. The pseudos have been running this scam for a LONG time, as Swift showed us 300 years ago.

Nature don't play dat. Nature doesn't have "tipping points." Nature always runs in cycles or sigmoids because Nature consists of an infinite number of negative feedback loops.

But human activities certainly can form a linear jump with no visible end, because human activities (especially bureaucracies) are often designed with no feedback or positive feedback. The Economic Populist blog exhibits such a graph of long-term unemployment. It's impressive. From 1950 until Shotgun Paulson's Theft Of A Nation in 2008, the line runs in cycles superimposed on a very slow upward trend as we gradually lose our industries to China. After Shotgun, the line goes almost vertically upward, with no end in sight.

Hiss and growl

2012-02-04T19:56:00.004-08:00

Just pondering....

When you have a real vocation, your personality switches into a different mode when you're inside the vocation.

From my own experience:

When I'm discussing economics or politics I'm hot, passionate, and wildly one-sided. Those are not my vocations. Those are areas where lethal mass-murdering psychopaths are in charge, constantly attacking me and my tribe, constantly stealing my money and cultural heritage. Hissing and growling are my only defensive weapons; I don't have the aristocratic privilege or the nuclear weapons or the trillions needed to fight on an even keel.

(Must admit, the hissing is extra-loud because it's partly directed at myself for being a molasses-brained retard. I rode along with the lethal psychopaths for too many years even while seeing all of their murderous activities separately; I didn't put it all together until Shotgun Paulson stole the whole country in broad daylight in Sept 2008.)

By contrast, when I'm discussing programming or phonetics, I'm calm, open to various ideas, and impartial. Those areas are vocational. I can marshal facts and logic as weapons, so I don't need to hiss and growl.

Connecting this to an earlier ponder on the new power of vigilantes:

What was the Big Theme of the previous decade? Toto.

This was the decade when little dogs pulled back the curtains on all sorts of crooked Wizards, the decade when vigilantes punctured the balloons and bubbles of the pompous Professionals, showing the latter as complete miserable frauds, charlatans and criminals.

What really happened is that the people who are paid for their vocation have ceased to be professionals. They no longer contain the mental structure of their vocation; they no longer recognize or remember the Shoulders Of Giants in their own field.

In Huxleyan terms they're Epsilons. Every day is a new day, every moment is a new moment, every theory is a new theory. Their empty brains await the command from the Speaker Of Authority: "Carbon!" And they shout gladly, "Carbon! Carbon! Oh Carbon!"

When attacked they no longer own the facts and logic to form a calm coherent defense, because all their facts are false and their logical circuits are disconnected. So they hiss and growl and slash. Unlike my hissing and growling, theirs is dangerous because they are not powerless. Their hissing controls the media channels for everyone; their growling determines the interest rate; their slashing directs the Delta Force.

When they come after us, politeness is suicidal. They do not comprehend politeness. An Inquisitor who encounters a polite Heretic doesn't think "Oh! I am so impressed by this man's Gandhian non-resistance! He makes me so ashamed of my un-Christ-like nastiness, that henceforward I shall Repent Of My Erroneous Ways! I shall ever after be a modest Scholar, glad to teach and glad to learn!" Nope. The Inquisitor only thinks "Soft one. I can finish him by lunch, still have time for golf."

We powerless critters have to stand our ground, hiss and growl just as loudly as the tyrants, and try to undermine them or fool them whenever possible.

At the same time we should use a little discernment, and avoid wasting energy against people who aren't real threats.

Theory of treason

2012-02-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

Listening to a local stock-picking radio show. The host is interviewing an executive of Keytronics, which used to build keyboards but now does 'contract manufacturing', designing various things here and building them in China and Mexico.

I suspect the host was hoping to get callers asking about share value, but instead the callers grilled the Keytronics man on outsourcing. Good.

In response, Mr Keytronics complained about US regulations and said he simply couldn't compete with Chinese wages.

He then cited a theory that goes roughly like this: If we build things in China, we will help to develop a middle class in China. After about 50 years of killing our own working class to enrich the Chinese working class, we may be able to resume making things here and selling them to China.

Okay, asshole.

(1) You've just openly admitted to disloyalty. You stated explicitly that your business is devoted to destroying the American economy in order to build up the Chinese economy. That's how you make your profit.

(2) Your basic complaints are valid, but you've intentionally failed to state the cure for the complaints.

Regulations and foreign competition are not unchangeable laws of nature. They are artifacts of American federal law. In previous decades, US employment regulations were much less onerous and US trade policy was designed to favor American workers. Congress changed those laws because US businessmen, like you, wanted them changed.

If no company could import from China, nobody would have to compete against Chinese prices. If no company could outsource jobs to China, nobody would have to compete against Chinese wages. See how simple it is?

If a significant number of US business executives were loyal to America, they could tell Congress to roll back the regulations and reimpose tariffs and limits on outsourcing.

This has not happened because US business executives are traitors. They hate America and want China to succeed; and they have told Congress to shape the laws toward that 'theory'.

One size, old and new

2012-02-04T03:38:00.000-08:00

Various socialistic forms of governance are famous for applying "one size fits all" ... but the old Marxian forms of socialism and the new Gramscian forms make very different shoes.

Marx shoved everyone into a dull brown oxford, sized for an average foot. Most people were close to a fit, and the shoe was durable enough that you could get used to it.

Gramsci shoves everyone into a Chinese knockoff of a Manolo Blahnik spike-heeled pump. Only a few anorexic aristocrats can fit into the shoe, and it lasts a few days.

Let's look at three American examples.

1. Housing

FDR introduced Marx to America. His WPA built lots of housing projects for farmers and city people who were living in tumbledown shacks or rat-infested tenements. Many of these projects still exist, like Cherokee Village in Enid on the left. It has been maintained over the years, and is now an assisted-living facility for older folks.

Bush The Father introduced Gramsci to America. His version of accommodation was the ADA, which requires everyone to shape their buildings, public works, and daily habits to suit the needs of wheelchairs and schizophrenics.

= = = = =

2. Electricity

FDR built lots of dams. These brought electricity to farmers and city people who had been burning kerosene or rags. Many of these projects still exist, like Grand Coulee here in Wash. It has been maintained and expanded over the years, and still provides reliable cheap power and jobs to Americans.

Bush The Father enacted the Clean Air Act; Bush The Son expanded it into Cap-n-Trade and subsidies for wind turbines. This provides profit for speculators and General Electric, jobs to Chinamen, and unreliable expensive power to everyone else.

= = = = =

3. Money

FDR closed down the banks and re-opened only the solvent ones. He then outlawed abstract speculation. Ordinary people were able to trust the money system; super-rich people were forced to do something productive if they wanted to stay super-rich.

Bush The Son and Obama gifted infinite rewards to the insolvent banks and the abstract speculators who had just finished destroying the economy. Ordinary people are able to starve; super-rich people don't even need to run their usual murderous criminal frauds. They can simply sit back and watch the trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions roll in.

= = = = =

In short:

The Marx shoe fits ordinary folks, leaving the elite to buy their own.

The Gramsci shoe fits the elite, leaving ordinary folks to buy their own.

Tourette bunny cured by acupuncture?

2012-02-03T17:20:00.004-08:00

A story that's worth following a bit more....

A rabbit kept at a museum in Durham, NC was exhibiting some Tourettish symptoms such as head-twitching and walking in circles. (No, he wasn't saying things like "Eeeehhhh, what's up, DICKWADBITCH?") Vets checked him for infections, found nothing. A vet who had been using acupuncture on domestic animals tried a few sessions, and the twitching and circling disappeared.

The rabbit is what makes it interesting. With humans, it's just about impossible to tell whether acupuncture is doing anything physical or simply serving as a placebo. You can't do a double-blind or substitute a more placebo-like therapy that would feel the same. Dogs wouldn't prove anything either, since dogs clearly share the human values of helping and being helped. Rabbits are more likely to test the real physical effects, because they lack the tight links of empathy that bind humans and dogs.

There's nothing wrong with using the placebo effect. Modern medicine would cure more people if it paid more attention to the value of trust and the innate "healer mechanism".

But it would be useful for neurology to know if acupuncture belongs in the placebo category, or if it's directly causing physical changes in the various reflex arcs and ganglia. Would open the door to a wider set of related therapies, and might improve the practice of acupuncture and acupressure.... though a therapy based on thousands of years of experience and testing is likely to be optimal by now.

The O'Sullivan Mechanism

2012-02-03T08:52:00.000-08:00

This week's tempest between the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood illustrates how O'Sullivan's Law works.

O'Sullivan observed that every national office of every organization ends up at the extreme Satanist-Leninist end of the political spectrum. Even if all of their members and all of their local offices are normal rational religious people, the national office will rigidly follow the latest hard-left fashions.

We generally assume it's just a groupthink phenomenon: all the NGOs attend the same cocktail parties and feel ostracized if they don't follow the official line.

This week we got a rare chance to see how it really works. When Komen decided to stop funding The Satanist Sacrament Of Abortion, all the knives and whips and chains came out and slashed and flayed Komen into meek submission.

Just now Komen swerved back from Deviationist Road onto Straight And Narrow Path Of Orthodox Satanist Doctrine, but it's probably too late.

Komen's Self-Criticism And Recantation Whimper is perfectly Maoist in form:

"...the Komen Foundation is amending the criteria of its new policy to make clear that it will only bar funding for organizations under investigation if that investigation is criminal and conclusive in nature and not political."

Any departure from orthodoxy is Political by definition. Strict Satanist orthodoxy is non-partisan, non-political, default, unmarked, normal, doesn't need any adjectives or descriptors.

Our children will never know snow

2012-02-02T14:50:00.001-08:00

While we're waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the HIDDEN 100000000 DEGREE GLOBAL WARMING to pop out of its wormhole and BURN AND ROAST AND BOIL US, we have this mysterious illusion of deep snow and bitter cold in most of Europe. Obviously this is some kind of mass hysteria, because the Meteorology Office officially predicted that snow would be extinct by 2010.

Best part:

Amazingly, the Sahara Desert, which had no snow for 33 years until a brief fall in western Algeria last month, faces an inch of snow by the weekend.

Recognize 33 years?

Before the Soviet takeover of the West, REAL SCIENTISTS understood that 33-year pattern quite well, because they had this peculiar bizarre witchcraft-style practice of GOING OUTSIDE AND OBSERVING GODDAMN NATURE AND LOOKING FOR GODDAMN CYCLES. Fortunately we've abandoned such primitive rituals.

Finally some firmness

2012-02-02T06:36:00.000-08:00

The American hierarchy of the Roman church has finally taken a solid stand on a serious moral issue, declaring that it will disobey Obamacare requirements to provide abortions and contraception.

About fucking time.

In recent years the Roman church has been morally absent. I suppose they were ashamed of the choirboy-diddling mess, or just too busy dealing with lawsuits.

Back in the '70s some Soviet-agent priests and Soviet-agent bulldyke nunpersons went to jail for anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear protests, but they weren't really acting on behalf of Just-War Doctrine or anything else. They were only obeying their Soviet bosses, and when their Soviet bosses collapsed the idiotic movement collapsed.

And in the 2000s the church disobeyed immigration laws semi-officially, but that wasn't about morality either. It was only about keeping those lucrative Mexican customers in the church.

This official disobedience is thus the first serious pro-Christian action by the Church in at least a century.

Leave the bottle full for others

2012-02-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

Reprinting this nice cheerful scene partly from the usual superstitious compulsion to take Polistra and Happystar out of a predicament, partly because it connects to a nice cheerful news story.

The real Milk Bottle Cafe here in Spokane burned several months ago. The outer structure was saved, and it's being redone.

The cafe had been used as a Hollywood movie location back in '85. Last week Matthew Modine, the star of 'Vision Quest', visited town as part of his Vision Quest to help rebuild the cafe.

Nice bit of reciprocity! Not often seen from Hollywood types.

In Misteromney's Neighborhood 2

2012-02-01T11:35:00.001-08:00

Sequel to this.

On the 'mind-reading' advance

2012-02-01T05:20:00.000-08:00

UK Guardian has a fairly good report on this.

Lots of misunderstanding in the media.

First, this particular experiment is not reading thoughts or speech; it's just reading a later stage of the brain's response to heard sound. Going a couple stages beyond what a cochlear implant does; looking at a higher level of coding, then reverse-engineering the code to recover the sounds.

Second, there's no guarantee that the production process uses the same coding. It most likely doesn't. Speech production involves controlling the muscles of the larynx, jaw, tongue, lips, velum, pharynx, diaphragm, ribs, and abdomen to achieve a magnificently complex result. These patterns, when measured by an EMG or EEG, have absolutely no correlation with sound waves except in the rhythm of syllables.

However: Speech is regulated and refined by feedback through the ears, which is why deaf people sound strange. It's possible that the structures monitored in this experiment are also involved in the feedback part of speech.

Basically a thought goes through four main stages: (1) The internal structure of what you mean. This is non-phonetic and may be universal regardless of language, though I doubt it. (2) An internally 'heard' representation of what you want to say. This is in your own language, but sort of idealized; doesn't necessarily sound anything like you speak, and can move much faster than real speech. (3) The neural commands mentioned above, serving to control the various muscles. These are formed in your own language and dialect, and move in real time. (4) The sound that arises when those commands move your various muscles, causing air from the lungs to set up shaped vibrations. This is in your own language and dialect, but varies from day to day depending on muscular strength, inflammation of tissues, mucus in nose, etc.

Best hope for a speech prosthesis is to find where (2) happens in the brain. This is the idealized version of the utterance, and it may be the template you compare against when using auditory feedback to keep the speech under refined control. If so, it may be found in the structure monitored by the current experiment, and may be outputtable in some understandable form.

Picking up the commands in stage (3) would be the most direct; we know where each of those muscles is represented on the motor strip, and the outputs are analog voltages that could be fed directly into a synthesizer. But this wouldn't help many of the people who really need such a device. If the lesion is outside the brain, as in bulbar polio or spinal injury or ALS, (3) could help. But with stroke or CP the motor commands themselves are distorted, so you'd have to go inward to (2).

Good tech, bad tech

2012-01-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

While napping, halfway listened to a BBC tech feature with two dramatically contrasting news items. I doubt they intended the contrast, but it banged into my mind.

First item: Young tech types in Afghanistan have set up an open-source clearing house for practical ideas to improve life in their country. Their basic notion is that the cell-phone system must become the backbone of not only tech but government and civilization. There's very little infrastructure outside the cell network. Afghanistan has about 18 million mobile phone users* in a population of 30 million. Covers just about every household, so it's a good choice for a backbone! These techies are starting with a 'promo' to show their abilities: an app** to schedule and register for the Hajj. Since every Muslim should make the Hajj at least once, it's a universal need, and the American puppet gov't is apparently doing a poor job of organizing the trips. Beyond this, the techies are working on many ways to streamline commerce and other activities.

Second item: London sidewalks are often tilted heavily toward the street to aid drainage. Wheelchair users have some trouble navigating the tilt. So a "human factors engineering" laboratory has built a small streetscape and a full set of telemetry equipment to "solve" the problem. Human subjects are weighed down with all sorts of stress analyzers, accelerometers, gait-analysis laser points, and cameras; then they do things like pushing wheelchairs around the sidewalks. Cost must be around a million dollars, and the result will be a bunch of numbers. Even if the numbers somehow lead to a proposed engineering solution, the solution would require rebuilding the whole city to compensate for a minor problem experienced by a few people.

= = = = =

Perfect parable of Good Tech and Bad Tech.

Good tech is simple, uses minimal equipment and directly solves the problems of real people.

Bad tech uses lots of money and equipment and serves only to generate more grants for the researcher.

How would you apply Afghan Tech to the London problem? There can't be more than a thousand serious chair-users in a town that size. Offer each of them a mechanism that senses tilt and biases the electronic steering controls accordingly. This isn't fancy; could have been done mechanically 200 years ago or electrically 100 years ago. Now it could probably be done with a hacked Wii or Kinect thingie.

If you get a thousand takers, you've spent maybe half a million and you've directly solved the actual problem without affecting anyone else. No need to measure human factors, analyze gait, or rebuild the city.

= = = = =

* Footnote 1: 18 million cell phone users in a pop of 30 million. Think about that. Meanwhile, American Repooflican commentators are still repeating the same old tired shit about Afghanistan being a 5th-century country where people don't have watches or calendars. Hmmmmmm. Who's behind the times?

** Footnote 2: The Hajj App. I can't imagine Western techies designing an app to assist ordinary people in the performance of their religious duties. Western techies are civilization-smashing commieshit fuckheads, as evidenced by their unanimous commieshit fuckhead response to the SOPA/MegaUpload situation. You couldn't pay them enough to write a program that would help people register for baptism or arrange a proper two-gender marriage.

Duh

2012-01-31T03:41:00.000-08:00

Headline:

Longtime Allies, Egypt And U.S. Now Have Differences

Well, yes. That was the whole fucking point of their revolution. The people were tired of a leader who primarily served US and Israel. They wanted new leaders who would serve the FUCKING PEOPLE OF FUCKING EGYPT for the first time in 50 fucking years.

At the moment the new leaders aren't meeting all expectations of the people, but that's normal in a revolution or reform. The people always expect changes that aren't practically possible. Nevertheless, the new gov't is doing pretty well on the most basic goals of national sovereignty and Islamic dominance.

Do you suppose London papers in 1776 had headlines like this?

Longtime Allies, American Colonies Now Have Differences with England

No, because they weren't fucking idiots. Only modern American "journalists" are idiotic, infantile and egocentric enough to believe that every revolution should advance the aims of Feminists, Fags, Amorphodites, Bulldykes and Graduate Queer Culture Studies.

Only way to profit?

2012-01-28T12:31:00.001-08:00

Supposedly Steve China-Jobs set up the huge Foxconn factory in his beloved motherland of China because Apple couldn't make a profit on its phone devices otherwise.

Let's think about it. Did we always need to have slaves working 35 hours without a break, ruining their bodies, just to supply all Americans with telephones?

Hell no. For 70 years Western Electric supplied phones for every American. WE's Hawthorne Works employed about 50,000 Americans, and was famous for good working conditions. In fact it was a laboratory for improving working conditions.

Are the new devices so complicated that they require a different level of labor? I doubt it. In electronic terms the iPhone is literally a billion times more complicated. But in terms of human labor the old and new are about the same, with roughly two dozen parts needing human assembly. So the comparison is valid.

Was the old Bell System actually able to make a profit, despite using those horrible lazy unskilled American workers and paying them actual money in exchange for labor? Hell yes. Back when stocks were bought for steady dividends instead of picosecond-scale pico-variations in share price, ATT stock was the gold standard.

So what's the difference?

Industrial policy.

Bell insisted on protection against foreign competition because its executives liked America and understood Henry Ford's correlation between contented workers and contented customers.

Apple insists on "free trade" because its executives are sadistic treasonous monsters who hate America, love slavery and enjoy using Chinese slave labor. This system is called "The Free Market" or "Individual Liberty".

That's the difference.

Do cats like water?

2012-01-28T06:10:00.000-08:00

No.

Eating the seed corn

2012-01-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

Yet another example of the Death of Storage. USDA is trying to cut a piddling $150 million. This will prevent exactly one hour of Federal borrowing from China. Whoooooieeee! Free at last! Free at last! For one hour!

Well, how do we accomplish this full hour of freedom and frugality? By closing 250 service and research offices. Many of those offices have been running local research with connections to local crops, to develop new seeds and stop plant diseases.

We're starving our own future, making a huge disinvestment in our own economy's growth potential, in order to satiate the hell-bound Tom Coburn. Your time is short, Tom. Satan is impatient.

Garbanzo is mad enough to BUST the nearest pork-buster! Polistra and Happystar stand in solidarity with him.