War or not?
Andy McCarthy at NRO, who prosecuted earlier terrorism trials, knows whereof he speaks:

What made the United States most vulnerable in the Nineties was our enemies' perception that they were at war and we were not. They gave us bombs, we gave them rights. That encouraged them to attack us more often and more audaciously — which is exactly what they did.

If we are at war, and the Attorney General said this morning that we are, we have to treat it like a war. Pressed by Sen. Graham this morning, the AG could not name a single time when, during war, we captured an enemy combatant outside the U.S. and brought him into the United States for a civilian trial — vesting him with all the rights of an American citizen. That's because hasn't happened. That's not how you treat wartime enemies.

Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians.

In short, McCarthy says:
If we are at war, we must treat combatants as combatants.

Conversely:
If we aren't going to treat combatants as combatants, we aren't really at war.

And if we aren't really at war, then we should bring our troops home, because what they're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is not part of a war. If we are not fighting back against a military attack, by definition we are an aggressor; but we're a mighty peculiar and self-defeating aggressor, requiring each bullet to be rationed by pro-enemy lawyers.

Meanwhile, our alleged "government" can only ask whether we should send 45000 more troops or 46000 more troops or 47000 more troops or 48000 more troops or 49000 more troops or 50000 more troops or 51000 more troops or 6,000,000,000 more troops. And the only important criterion is whether this particular number of troops will be enough to help the Afghan government fight corruption.... even though everyone understands that the Afghan government will always be corrupt, and even though all the experts openly state that no amount of soldiers will clean up the Afghan government, and even though the legitimacy of the Afghan government has precisely zero connection with any American national interest, and even though Afghanistan played only a minor part in the 9/11 hijacking.

Insane. Bonkers. Loony. Gaga. Decerebrate. Anencephalic. Treasonous. Suicidal.
  ¶ 10:57 AM

  Must be Sweeps month......
Yep, sure enough it's November.
  ¶ 9:07 AM

  Who's behind cap & trade?
Here is an excellent piece of investigative journalism, by John Hull in the new Examiner.com online paper.

Hull traces the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) back to its start.

It is no secret that Al Gore has been at the forefront of the global warming and carbon credit hype and also worked to pass legislation dealing with these topics. What is a secret, albeit not a well kept secret as much as it is ignored, is that Gore and his associates are getting richer with the passing of each new regulation. ...

The CCX was co-founded by Richard Sandor and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. CCX received start-up grants from The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001, during the time Barack Obama served on the Board of Directors. ...

CCX is also partially owned by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management (GIM) through which carbon credits may be purchased. The co-founder of GIM, David Blood, was formerly the chief of Goldman Sachs, which heavily invested in CCX.

Nuff said. Comrade Gore and Imam Hussein Obama are the political frontmen, Shotgun Paulson and Goldman Sachs are the criminal underbelly.

The underbelly is always the same for everything in this doomed country; only the frontmen change for different times and different projects.

So far at least, this particular criminal enterprise is not doing very well; the shares on the CCX are stuck in the penny range, and the Senate's natural constipation may hold back the Scheißflut long enough for the paradigm to switch in the world of science. Other disciplines like geology and physics are beginning to strike back at the utterly criminalized field of climatology.



One can only hope and pray.
  ¶ 6:07 AM

  Random stuff
(1) Something odd must be in the air around Spokane. In the last two days, two unconnected 56-year-old hikers fell. The first one sprained her ankle, spent a cold night in a ditch, and was fortunately rescued. The second one fell down a long hill and unfortunately died.

(2) A CBS news item about Palin's book mentioned denials by McCain staffer Nicole Wallace.

In an interview with CBS News, Wallace said none of the conversations Palin quotes in the book ever took place.

Obviously the word quotes here is meant to be taken with a grain of salt, but how in the world would you express the salt?

In writing:
...none of the conversations Palin "quotes" in the book ever took place.

Verbally:
...none of the conversations Palin, and I quote, quotes, end quote, ever took place.

Or in McCain's own style,
...none of the conversations Palin quote quotes in the book ever took place.

This is the sort of recursive notation that drives programmers crazy.

(3) In one 1942 episode of Information Please, which was the best entertainment ever regularly produced, the special guest was biologist Julian Huxley. The show's editors always saved appropriate questions for special guests, so Huxley got a question about mating rituals in various animals.

Host Clifton Fadiman: Now let us suppose that three male admirers are courting their girls, and these girls are all girls in the animal kingdom. The first one waved a large claw in the air, the second offered a package of food as part of his courting, and the third showed his intended some building material.

Huxley: The first would be a fiddler crab; he'd be waving his large colored claw in the air. He has one large one and one small one. He keeps the small one for eating. The female has two small ones. (Audience laughs)

Fadiman: And what does the female do when she watches this claw-waving? Does she wave back?

Huxley: No, she keeps it to herself, but sometimes she gives in. (Audience laughs)

Fadiman: You've apparently watched this sort of thing going on? By the way, what is the female fiddler crab called?

Huxley: She's just called a fiddler crab.

This is an interesting category error by Fadiman, who was a lover and analyzer of words. And it's the sort of error that makes you realize the true category after you hear it. The exception that reveals the unwritten rule. Common domestic mammals and birds do in fact have separate names for male, female and child. Bull, cow, calf; dog, bitch, puppy; cock, hen, chick. And most of these male animals have accessories of various types or distinct colorations, while the females mostly "keep it to themselves". So the analogy was irresistible, but Fadiman clearly didn't realize that the rule only applies to domestic livestock.

Here's the whole show, which also features the absolutely delightful Jan Struther.

(4) And speaking of arthropod courtship rituals, here's a bird that sings by vibrating its wing feathers, similar to the stridulation of crickets and other insects. Appears to be the only higher animal that uses the method. Wonder why? The sound isn't special; other birds make similar sounds by the regular old air-driven flute (syrinx) method.
  ¶ 5:52 PM

  Get a flu shot? Nah, just catch cold.
From the latest New Superstitionist:

In France, flu cases rose in early September, then stayed at about 160 per 100,000 people until late October, when numbers started rising again. The delayed rise was puzzling, says Jean-Sebastien Casalegno of the French national flu lab at the University of Lyon.

He reports that the percentage of throat swabs from French respiratory illnesses that tested positive for swine flu fell in September, while at the same time rhinovirus, which causes colds, rose. [Then] in late October rhinovirus fell at the same time as flu rose. [Casalegno] suspects rhinovirus may have blocked the spread of swine flu via a process called viral interference.

This is thought to occur when one virus ... turns on your antiviral defences, and excludes the other viruses.

And why do colds reliably peak in early fall? Because that's when kids go back to school, sharing new viruses with each other.

The question unasked in the article: By cautioning everyone to wash hands, sneeze into elbows, wear masks, stay home, are we actually making swine flu worse by slowing down the vaccination effect of the cold virus? Are we breaking up natural feedback systems?
  ¶ 12:49 PM

  Simple, isn't it?
I've always wondered how modern Commies decide the natural direction of history. It's certainly a Marxist concept, designed to put all the levers of culture in the hands of a few decision-makers. When everyone agrees that Progress runs along a fixed track with no exits or branches, the elites don't have to persuade or argue for a change that will give them even more power and privilege. They can simply declare this change to be Progress, and dispute becomes impossible.

For instance, everyone in the so-called "news" business knows that homosexual "marriage" is the natural direction of history. Anyone who doesn't love and celebrate the idea is not merely reactionary but logically unimaginable, like running time backwards.

The best way to explode this tyranny is to ask: Well then, what's the next step? Since you know that homosexual "marriage" is the only possible course of history for this decade, you must also know what comes next. Is it polygamy? If not, why not? If "Heather Has Two Mommies" is automatically necessary, shouldn't we be agitating next for "Heather Has Two Mommies and One Daddy"?

And on the rare occasions when this basic and perfectly logical question is asked, there is no coherent answer, just a lot of predictable Tourettist-Leninist cussing and screeching.

I realized last night that the screechiness (=cognitive dissonance) on this particular question doesn't really come from the Marxiness of our traitors; it comes from their snobbishness. Homosexuality is the inevitable stage of history because rich secular New Yorkers are homosexual. Polygamy can never be a stop on the subway line of history because polygamists are poor Protestant Southerners. If rich secular New Yorkers were currently polygamous, polygamy would be the current logically necessary stage. QED.

Snobbishness may also explain why our internal destroyers love al-Qaeda despite its violent disagreement with everything else they love. Though the destroyers always recite the standard absurd nonsense about terrorism arising from poverty, they know that Sheikh Osama is rich and well-educated, and the inner core of al-Qaeda is also rich and well-educated. Doctors and engineers.

They defend Nidal Hasan because he's a psychiatrist. They didn't bother to defend John Allen Williams alias Muhammad because he was a poor and uneducated man.
  ¶ 7:14 AM

  Crashing the moon
NASA is spending billions to prepare for its next utterly pointless trip to the fucking moon.

Polistra has a better and vastly cheaper idea, called Project Falcon.

Kill two birds.......



= = = = =

Hmph. Try to be funny or satirical, and reality immediately catches up with you.
  ¶ 10:19 AM

  Important lesson
Listening to the usual experts discussing the upcoming civilian trial of KSM and others. One expert struck an important point, though he didn't realize it. "We've been running these military trials at Gitmo without much success, leading to some bad guys being released. The civilian courts have a better record of conviction."

Think about that. I'll grant that a big part of this specific problem is Bush's moronic confusion, throwing cases into military or civilian courts for no particular reason.

But there's still something dramatically wrong when military courts are softer and less pro-American than Federal civilian courts. Add in the Army's total inability to spot Hasan as an enemy penetrator even when he explicitly and openly adheres to the enemy every time he opens his mouth. His open advocacy of jihad was bizarrely labeled as "lack of academic rigor." And add in the well-documented brigade of lawyers who must give permission for every shot fired in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Conventional wisdom for a long time, especially among conservatives, has been that the military is the only competent part of the Federal gov't, the only loyal and decisive part.

Nope, this is obviously false. We should learn now that the military is the softest, least competent, most thoroughly subverted part of the gov't.
  ¶ 7:17 AM

  Fire! Fire! Fire! Pollution! Carbon Alert! Oops.


Self-Explanatory Picture from local TV website.
  ¶ 6:34 AM

  Obama's inheritance
Enemy operative Holder is effectively freeing the 5 masterminds of 9/11.

How can we be sure?

"The transfer of cases to federal court is a huge victory for restoring due process and the rule of law, as well as repairing America's international standing, an essential part of ensuring our national security. We can now finally achieve the real and reliable justice that Americans deserve. It would have been an enormous blow to American values if we had tried these defendants in a process riddled with legal problems," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU.

That's how we can be sure.

Joe gets it almost right:

Senator Lieberman said, “The terrorists who planned, participated in, and aided the September 11, 2001 attacks are war criminals, not common criminals. Not only are these individuals not common criminals but war criminals, they are also not American citizens entitled to all the constitutional rights American citizens have in our federal courts. The individuals accused of committing these heinous, cowardly acts of intentionally targeting unsuspecting, defenseless civilians should therefore be tried by military commission rather than in civilian courts in the United States.”

Almost right because the underlying problem here is Bush's weakness, not current procedural errors. If Bush had been even 1/10 of the "Texas Cowboy" that the Commies say he is, these defendants would have been shot instead of captured. And then Enemy Operative Holder wouldn't have the chance to set them free.
  ¶ 8:43 AM

  One fine exception
MSNBC's fairly new morning host Dylan Ratigan has emerged as the most even-handed, sane, factual and pro-American commentator anywhere on cable TV.

While the rest of MSNBC, and all of the other cable channels, descend ever deeper into fantasy, mindless partisanship, and pure falsehoods, Ratigan holds steady.
  ¶ 7:36 AM

  Car theft = free taxi?
Heard something amazing and sorta disgusting on KHQ-TV just now.

Car theft is running wild in Spokane, with 31,000 thefts reported so far this year. That would be about 1 of every 6 cars. According to police, many of these thefts are "free taxi rides" where the thief locates a warming-up car, hops in, drives it to where he wants to go, and parks it. Doesn't keep it, sell it or strip it.

The cops have basically stopped handling car theft, and in this case I can't blame them. Common law and common sense agree that possession is not passive. To fully possess property, whether a car or a copyright, you have to defend it, make it hard to steal or invade. If you invite theft by leaving the car unlocked and running, you've weakened your claim to the car.

= = = = =

After a bit of checking on the outrageous 31000 number given by the TV station, I'm pretty sure it's off by a zero. Journalists nowadays are mainly girls, and Math Class Is Hard. According to this insurance industry source, Spokane had 2122 officially listed auto thefts in 2008; so an increase to 3100 would be more likely.
  ¶ 6:41 AM

  Illustrating Orlov
Polistra has been following Dmitri Orlov for a while.

Orlov lists many reasons why Russia has survived its 1991 collapse while America is far less likely to survive its ongoing collapse.

This struck me as especially important:

To keep evil at bay, Americans require money. In an economic collapse, there is usually hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. There is also rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless.

In the Soviet Union, very little could be obtained for money. It was treated as tokens rather than as wealth, and was shared among friends. Many things – housing and transportation among them – were either free or almost free.

Here's a little set of pictures from Russia in the '60s, illustrating the point. Most of the pics are organized events which don't tell us much, but look closely at the 1st and 11th pictures, where people have spontaneously arranged themselves. What would that park bench look like in modern diversity-poisoned America?
  ¶ 7:34 AM

  Diversity is weakness
Leaving aside Enemy Operative George Casey's purely Orwellian use of diversity to mean mixing jihadi soldiers with American soldiers, there has been a broader and more productive discussion on the pain of diversity lately.

The Putnam study showed that people who live amid ethnic diversity (in modern American cities) become suspicious and mistrustful, not just of the other ethnic groups, but of everyone. Though it may be news to Putnam, it's not news to the planners who created the modern form of forced diversity. Mistrust was their mission, and they've achieved it.

Putnam seems to miss this point. Our modern problem is not the mere mixing of different types of humans in the same community, because the New World has always been a mixture. Other parts of the New World don't have the same degree of mistrust, and our country didn't always have the same degree of mistrust.

Our modern problem is twofold.

(1) Certain privileged groups are strongly encouraged to flaunt their stereotypical differences. Blacks are encouraged to show Stone Age tribal behaviors; homosexuals are encouraged to scream and swish; Jews are encouraged to be money-grubbing robber barons; females are encouraged to take on the airs of delicate Victorian ladies, fainting at the slightest offense. And worst of all, Mohammedans are encouraged to wear their primitive disguises, perform their primitive idolatrous ceremonies, kill their daughters who try to assimilate, and spread jihad inside our Army.

(2) Simultaneously, we are forbidden by law to mention any form of difference, even while the differences are rubbed in our face, even while the Religion Of Peace expresses its most holy theological principles with bullets and bombs.

It's not the existence of differences that creates the modern sense of rage and mistrust; it's frustration and futility. Learned helplessness.

It wasn't always this way.

Before the Cultural Revolution (1948-1968) we didn't have this problem.

(1) We were free to talk and think about categories. Free to distinguish males from females, English from Irish, black from white, Jewish from Christian. Some of those distinctions may have been inaccurate stereotypes, but most were reasonably true. (One exception: we didn't talk about homosexuality in public because we didn't talk about sex in public.)

(2) There was no cultural encouragement for certain groups to display their distinctions in public. If you wanted respect and advancement in the common arena, you had to speak standard English and behave within civilized norms.

(3) Outside the common arena we had all sorts of "comfort zones" for all sorts of people, and the "comfort zones" were free to be exclusive. Men's clubs, ladies' clubs, Little Italy, Chinatown, etc. Some of these still exist, but now only the officially privileged classes can protect their zones from outsiders. (Example: the Wymyn's Bookstore is free to kick out males, but the Fifty Yard Zone Sports Bar will be shut down and burned if it dares to kick out an obnoxious bulldyke.)
  ¶ 5:33 PM

  An analogy
Dreher is moaning and groaning about a vigilante who beat up a Greek priest. The vig apparently believed that the priest was a jihadi, or else believed that the priest was making a sexual advance. There's obviously more to the story than meets the eye. I'm not really concerned with the details, which may never be clear.

Here's the point: Vigilantes are often sloppy and unprofessional, often hit the wrong target. But when the professionals (police, judges, military) refuse to do their job, refuse to protect the people from regular criminals or Wall Street criminals or foreign attackers, someone has to do the job.

Consider an analogy with blogging. Professional journalists have stopped doing their job. They no longer tell us what's happening, no longer try to find facts. Most of the time the pros work very hard to present the exact opposite of the facts.

Bloggers, who could be called vigilante journalists, grew up in response to that total failure by the pros. Bloggers are sloppy, often hit the wrong target, often exaggerate, but they do not intentionally and consistently present complete falsehoods, nor do they intentionally and consistently delete the real story.

Same with science. Many branches of science are still honest, but climatologists have gone rogue, surrendered their grasp of reality to the bizarre Gaia religious cult. We're blessed to have amateurs like Steve McIntyre volunteering to do the real job.

In all cases the professionals could stop vigilante action by simply doing their assigned job, doing the job they are nominally PAID TO DO. This won't happen, because the people who pay them are obviously happy with the total betrayal of duty.
  ¶ 10:49 AM

  Got one.


Polistra and Happystar celebrate the execution of Jihadi John Allen Williams alias Muhammad.

Justice is rare nowadays, so a bit of jubilation is called for.

Somewhat puzzling why the Federal system allowed this execution to proceed so "quickly" (6 years instead of the usual 20) ... and why the usual enemy operatives (ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, FBI, Federal courts) were so uninterested in blocking this one. Normally those saboteurs conspire to break the back of justice with eternal delays. [ Later I figured out this puzzle. ]

This case also includes a more natural and delicious application of justice. Chief Moose, the racist monster who acted as an accessory to those 10 murders by intentionally obstructing the capture of Williams and Malvo, ended up as a rookie beat cop in Honolulu. Quite a comedown from big-city chief, and ever so richly deserved.

= = = = =

Buzz buzz buzz! Preposition at end of sentence alert! The second sentence will not be readable by conservatives as it stands. In order to be comprehended by Fox viewers, it should be changed to:

Justice is rare nowadays, so a bit of jubilation is that for which is called.
  ¶ 5:56 PM

  The best video on the "global warming" hoax
Finland's national TV network has presented a solid, factual and clear program on the basic scientific fraud behind the "global warming" crime.

In a nutshell: Out of the dozens of ways to gather an average global temperature, only one set of alleged "real data" supposedly agrees with the computer models that claim the last century (and the last decade) as the warmest in history. All other data sets, including averages of real temperatures, show an unremarkable set of ups and downs, with the 20th century warmer than the 19th but nowhere near the balmy medieval era, and with the current decade unquestionably trending downward. Only one data set matches the carbon dioxide curve, and this set turns out to be based on the rings of exactly 10 trees in Siberia.

The Finnish TV program shows how Steve McIntyre pursued the truth about the tree-ring data. He finally proved that these 10 trees not only disagree with all other real data, they even disagree with other trees in the same area!


This graph is the key to the story. The red line shows the scary temperature pattern derived from the rings of those crucial 10 trees. The black line is derived from a larger set of trees in the same area. Note that even the black line doesn't resemble other direct and proxy measurements of temperature, which tells you that perhaps tree rings are not a good proxy in the first place. The green line shows what happens when the 10 trees are mixed with the larger set with proper weighting. All of this is standard procedure in any scientific study: you examine all available data points, and if a few of the points are wild, you leave them out unless you have an extremely good factual reason to include them. (For instance, you'd include them if you were specifically studying why these points are different; perhaps studying the insects or disease that affected this forest.) In any honest scientific endeavor, a study that included only the outliers would be rejected and condemned. Unfortunately, "global warming" is the exact opposite of honest science, so we are busy destroying Western civilization on the basis of these 10 unusual trees.

Here's the video in one piece with English subtitles.
  ¶ 9:34 AM

  Dorothy hits it
Dorothy Rabinowitz, the only legitimate reporter on any major American newspaper, always hits the point, always asks the right question.

This morning:

"This terrible event," Gen. Casey noted, "would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty."

To hear this, and numerous other such pronouncements of recent days, was to be reminded of all those witnesses to the suspicious behavior of the 9/11 hijackers who held their tongues for fear of being charged with discrimination. It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11.

The latter point is critical. During these 8 years of sorta-halfway-wartime, authorities have constantly propagandized about the need to be preventive, the need to think in a "post-9-11" way. But underneath the propaganda, those same authorities have relentlessly and fiercely punished anyone who dared to follow the propaganda, anyone who dared to name the enemy. Those same authorities have guaranteed that our soldiers are maximally vulnerable to enemy attack, forbidden to fight effectively. This treasonous policy of national suicide has been obvious in Iraq and Afghanistan from the start, and it's finally come home to America.

And no, this is not an "unfortunate and unintended consequence" of anti-discrimination laws. This is the single solitary purpose and goal of anti-discrimination laws. Anti-discrimination laws are designed to collapse civilization by preventing rational thought, by halting self-preservation. We are required by law to be less intelligent than bacteria.
  ¶ 6:05 AM

  The ultimate SES
Polistra makes a habit of noticing and recording Self-Explanatory Sentences.

Well, what is the ultimate SES?

Allahu akbar.

When you hear those words, the speaker has described his complete life to you.

He has also told you that his life is now complete.

He is a bomb about to detonate.

That's all you need to know.

You don't need to investigate connections.

You don't need to probe complex psychological aberrations.

You only need to duck and cover.
  ¶ 7:48 AM

  Bravo Lieberman!
While the enemy-controlled Army and the enemy-controlled FBI continue to vomit the standard vicious and murderous pro-Mohammedan lies about "diversity" and "the potential for backlash" and other criminal and treasonous snakeshit, Joe Lieberman speaks the truth and starts a separate investigation.

Lieberman is properly cautious about fact-checking, but after a few disclaimers he says exactly what every American official should be saying.



Bless you, Joe!
  ¶ 11:16 AM

  Morse in Prudential advertisement


Prudential Insurance is running a series of TV ads using SOS in Morse.

Mixed feelings. On one hand it's nice to see an ad aimed at folks who are old enough to know what SOS is, and aimed at technical types of any age. On the other hand, the SOS is badly pronounced. The dots and dashes are all there, but the rhythm is wrong, so it sounds more like VMS than SOS.

An analogy for non-Morsians. Suppose a company wants to attract old movie fans, and it runs an ad with Clark Gable saying to Carole Lombard, "Frankly my dear, I don't give aaahhhdamn." What? Did he say Adam? Odd ham? Or a damn?

This is what happens when you trust book learning and Google, and fail to test the result on actual humans with actual experience. You get an ad that misses its target because the targeted listener is too puzzled to focus on the product.

= = = = =

As a sidenote ... or perhaps sidetone ... Here's Shep discussing how Morse is used and misused in movies and other entertainment. Along the way he also covers Morse as a way of thought, Joseph Conrad, ionospheric skip, the Lake Erie Swing, and TV DXing. Naturally.

= = = = =

Update 11/25: Prudential has changed the code in their ad, with perfect rhythm this time so it's unquestionably SOS, not VMS!

I'd been noticing lots of purposeful links to this entry, including some hits from Prudential itself. The search terms indicated that lots of other folks were perceiving the same problem. (i.e. "prudential morse wrong" and "prudential sos vms")

Feels good to witness a real consequence from what I write here, even though it's a tiny victory on a symbolic question.

Thanks, Prudential!
  ¶ 9:34 AM

  Casey says it all
Enemy Agent George Casey, serving illegitimately as "Chief of Staff" of the Army, says this morning in a CNN interview:

"As great a tragedy as this is, it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity became a casualty as well."

Diversity = allowing enemy soldiers to operate within the Army.

And we wonder why we have problems.

Casey should be tried and hanged for treason.
  ¶ 9:04 AM

  When the lights come on again ... no, they won't
Here's an excellent essay on the continuing unstoppable collapse of America, including a remarkable eyewitness account of the moment when it started.

While the brand-R traitors and the brand-D traitors in the Upper and Lower Nuthouses sling meaningless words at each other, the real economy continues to dissolve. And it's dissolving because of conditions that the Nuthouses could fix in one day.

The problems are:

1. The 9th Circuit Court (and generally the unchecked imperial power of courts)

2. Regulations that make nuclear power impossible.

3. Uncontrolled trade with China.

None of these problems are scientific or economic, none require further analysis.

JUST ONE DAY of well-directed legislative activity could solve every one of these problems with absolutely zero cost. American industry could then start on the road toward real recovery, with enough growth to take care of the national debt. This is what happened after WW2, when our debt was equally large.

Needless to say, this ain't gonna happen. We will continue downward until some governor has the guts to secede, or the guts to disobey a law that really counts, a law that serves the Planet Goddess Gaia, a law that serves our Chinese masters. Then Civil War II will start, and the Feds will finally use those long-stored H-bombs and A-bombs. They never had the balls to send ICBM's against real attackers like Arabia, but I guarantee the Feds will launch against heretics. In a New York second. And then, glory of glories, we will finally have plenty of nuclear energy across the American plains! Cockroaches and Goldman Sachs will survive.
  ¶ 7:27 AM

  Idiots on parade
Watching C-span coverage of the Big Health Care Debate in the Lower Nuthouse. All the fagass Repooflicans are rising in sequence to squeal and whine about the lack of fairness in committee or some such shit. Sorry boys, you had your chance. You had full control of all branches from 2002 through 2006 and you didn't do ANYTHING about the problem. You didn't enact tort reform, you didn't revise patent laws, you didn't encourage electronic medical records, you didn't remove the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies ... in short, you didn't take a single one of the supposedly Republican-type steps to improve the situation. That's why you lost in '06 and '08.

You are therefore not entitled to complain when the other party takes some supposedly Democratic-type steps to improve the situation.

Neither side is willing to switch to a complete single-payer system, which is the only way to fix the problem.

So it doesn't really matter, but at least the brand-D side is attempting to follow the will of its constituents.
  ¶ 8:59 AM

  Ft Hood timing
The brainless traitors in the media, and our brainy traitor of a President, are busy stuffing the Ft Hood terrorist attack in the Memory Hole. No, no, no, Hasan wasn't a Palestinian jihadi, he didn't intend to kill people, he was just a poor misunderstood Troubled Youth who somehow found a gun and pulled the trigger a hundred times. Maybe it was an epileptic fit caused by prescription drugs. Yes, that's it. He needs Celebrity Rehab. He needs the services of Dr Phil. Then he can be appointed as Secretary of Defense.

= = = = =

This is the first time I've called Obama a traitor. Up till now I truly believed he was a smart man who wanted to accomplish several things ... most of which would be good for the country ... but who was firmly under the thumb of Goldman Sachs.

Now, seeing his response to the Palestinian jihadi, I know which side he's on.

Bush fucked up the war entirely, ended up doing just what the enemy wanted us to do, but at least he knew an act of war when it happened. Obama refuses to state the obvious. He ain't dumb, so we must conclude he's a traitor.

= = = = =

Sidenote: Maybe Hasan didn't just choose a random date for his act of war. Consider that his jihadi predecessor John Allen Williams alias Muhammad, is due to be executed on Tuesday. And another mass-killing jihadi, Naveed Haq, is being tried for the second time this week because the first trial was spoiled by Commie idiots on the jury. Now consider that jihadis, especially the Palestinian tribe, like to commemorate executions and trials with attacks.
  ¶ 6:21 AM

  Ft Hood
Predictably enough, the enemy-controlled media are sympathizing with Hasan, an enemy agent who acted on behalf of the enemy. No surprise there. He will undoubtedly be treated as "innocent by insanity" because he heard lots of terrible war stories, even though he didn't experience war himself.

CNN just now: "It may be some time before we know what motivated him."

No, you monstrous traitors, we already know. He belongs to the enemy.

He started his attack by shouting "Allahu Akbar!" That tells us all we need to know.

Told ya so.

However! The media are wrong about this specific man but right in a general way. When a nation behaves insanely by fighting nonsensical wars that harm all sides including our own, even rational people will respond irrationally.

In WW2, proportionately few soldiers came back with "battle fatigue", though the absolute number was fairly large because the total number of soldiers was huge. Everyone understood what we were fighting for in WW2. All wars since then have broken that basic rule, and the current wars match Vietnam in absurdity if not in size.

= = = = =

One refreshing exception: Col Jack Jacobs on MSNBC just now described the situation accurately. Hasan is not suffering from PTSD. He's just an enemy soldier who infiltrated our ranks.

= = = = =

Aaaarrrrgghhh!! Now the fucking idiots are wondering how a psychiatrist, whose job is to help soldiers, instead decided to kill soldiers. You unspeakable brainless cunts, his job as a Mohammedan is to kill infidels. He was doing his job. No shocker, no mystery. The only mystery is why our Army hires and pays enemy soldiers.

One thing genuinely shocked me: I had always assumed that an Army base would be a well-armed population, assumed that soldiers carried their sidearms routinely. Nope, this isn't true. Army bases are "gun-free zones" just like college campuses, thus Army bases are vulnerable target-rich environments for terrorists.

We never learn one goddamn thing. Not one goddamn thing. We always learn the fucking reverse of each and every obvious lesson.

We don't even allow soldiers to defend themselves.
  ¶ 3:40 AM

  Not quite the same, but still....

The online store where I sold most of my Poser-type products has suddenly closed. The owner left this heart-rending letter online, and simply locked the place.

Practically speaking this doesn't mean a real loss of money for me. Poser stuff is not my main source of income, and I can move products to another outlet where they will sell better anyway. Nevertheless, I like this store and feel at home there, so this feels like a lost job.

Was it "the recession"? I suppose partly. Mainly it was bad decisions by the store's owner. Last year he accused one artist of copyright violation; I don't know the facts for sure, but it appears that the accusation was false, and it caused a huge foofaraw in our little graphics community. Many people swore never to buy anything there again. This year he decided to change the site's software to a new look and somehow lost track in the middle of the process, leaving the site unusable for several months. After the hiatus, the new software didn't work as well as the old. So customers who didn't have an emotional stake in the place found no particular reason to buy there.

The owner could have avoided both mistakes by asking a few people for advice. As in (1) Check the facts carefully before accusing an artist of theft; (2) Be sure new software works fully before turning off old software.

This morning at least three people have publicly expressed interest in taking over the business, so maybe all is not lost.
  ¶ 6:51 AM

  Good day for rail


Polistra and Happystar are celebrating the complete purchase of Santa Fe by Warren Buffett's outfit.

Polistra strongly believes that reborn railroads are a critical part of a reborn America, and also believes that private ownership is better than stock-traded ownership.

Buffett takes care of his properties and likes to run them for long-term profit, not for short-term Wall Street bets.

If there were lots of Buffett types in this country, we could get rid of the Wall Street Mafia by attrition. Unfortunately there aren't, so the Mafia will retain total control of the government.
  ¶ 6:27 PM

  Spoiler
Third-party candidates should be called fresheners, not spoilers.

The rotten smell in politics belongs to the two main parties, Goldman Sachs dba "Republican Party" and Goldman Sachs dba "Democratic Party".
  ¶ 11:40 AM

  Department of Redundant Naming Department
Names in the political headlines today:

Chris Christie
Creigh Deeds
Dede Scozzafava
Abdullah Abdullah


  ¶ 1:08 PM

  Examiner.com
This could become the model for new journalism, the replacement for newspapers. So far it's a bit scattered and undefined, but its editors seem to understand which questions are missing from other journalistic sources. Also, Examiner has brought in one of the regular OTR bloggers as a columnist, and he may be able to bring along some of the old radio-style quality.

I'll be reading regularly to see how it develops!
  ¶ 9:15 AM

  Maybe a lesson for newspapers
Warning: Half-formed thought.

Polistra has pointed out before (and others have made the same point in other ways) that newspapers have survived two centuries of new technologies, each of which was supposed to kill papers but didn't. So they can't blame the Web for killing them this time.

Maybe there's a useful analogy in the death and rebirth of AM radio.

It's generally believed that AM radio died in the '60s because TV and FM grabbed the audience. This is partly true but doesn't explain why the audience was grabbable.

Before TV and FM offered serious competition, AM voluntarily abandoned its own audience. In the '30s and '40s, network radio carried a huge variety of material from comedy to commentary to intellectual discussion to religion. Local stations carried music, commentary and poetry by local talent. After WW2 this began to disappear, and by the late '50s drama and comedy turned bleak and dismal. The turning point was the Army-McCarthy hearings, which broke the will of anti-Communists and allowed the formerly blacklisted Soviet writers to roar back into Hollywood with a vicious vengeance.

Westerns like Gunsmoke and Paladin were no longer about good triumphing over evil; instead they were full of subversive messages against religion and bourgeois values.

What's the point of listening to crap that makes you feel worthless? If Soviet propaganda is the only thing available on both TV and radio, you might as well abandon your intellect and watch TV, which at least has visual interest.

The same thing happened to newspapers in more recent decades. The big turning point here was the Watergate hearings. After Watergate, young journalists saw their vocation as protecting Democrats and smashing Republicans, protecting blacks and smashing whites, celebrating homosexuals and crushing marriage, freeing criminals and jailing law-abiding citizens, advertising scams and anathematizing facts. There is no room for open discussion, no time to investigate real corruption, only room for a primitive single-command operating system. Just as a termite's ROM contains nothing but "EAT WOOD!", a journalist's ROM contains nothing but "EAT CHRISTIANS!"

Again, what's the point of reading crap that tells you how worthless and contemptible your life is? What's the informational value in this?

= = = = =

Well, how did AM return from the dead? One word: Rush. His single-key math system is no more complicated than the Soviet system, but it pushes the opposite key. And he also added more subtle and open-ended commentary with a positive tone, opposing the universal bleakness of the Leninist line. He has degenerated over the years, more of the partisan keystroke and less of the commentary, but nevertheless this was enough to bring an entire medium back to life.

If papers are going to return, they need to find a new keystroke, perhaps on religious grounds instead of partisan politics.

Most of all, they need to restore variety and quality, stop insulting their readers, and start asking real questions. Even now, more than a year after Shotgun Paulson's daylight robbery of an entire nation's economy, no paper has even asked what happened. We still don't know what "event" (if any) justified his robbery.

The (if any) part is the real answer, of course .... there wasn't an emergency at all. Shotgun was assigned by his Chinese associates to grab it all before the election, in case the next President dared to show independence. Luckily for China, the next president has turned out to be an equally loyal servant.
  ¶ 6:25 AM

  Shep, OAE, Halloween

Oddly enough, two weeks after I rather clunkily and arbitrarily connected Jean Shepherd with my magnum opus, I've found a Shep program from 1965 that makes a very direct connection.

In this 7-minute segment Shep expounds on the mysterious case of Dorian Ficadero of Miami. Ficadero suffered a concussion and then started to hear strange noises in his head. Squishes, howls, sirens, bells. Nothing mysterious so far: tinnitus is common, well-known, and sometimes triggered by a concussion. (Comedians have made good use of punch-drunk boxers hearing bells.) The mysterious part was that Ficadero's noises were audible from the outside, up to ten feet away. Shep builds this into a thoroughly scary story, appropriate for today.

For some reason the phenomenon didn't get noticed by scientists until 1978. By now it's been labeled as Oto-Acoustic Emissions and studied quite extensively, making it vastly duller than Shep's version. OAE turns out to be almost universal. Only a few people emit loud squishes and sirens like Ficadero, but every functional ear puts out very faint sounds in response to what it's hearing at the time. Thus OAE has become a valuable tool for studying the inner workings of the auditory system. It's especially useful with patients who are unresponsive, either because of physical limitations or because they're trying to establish a false insurance claim for hearing loss. OAE, properly measured, gives a good sense of what the ear is actually detecting.

I became familiar with OAE while doing electronics work for a prof at KU who was among the first to explore it; then I devoted two chapters of Audin (Lessons 701 and 702) to OAE, using it as an introduction to the inner ear.
  ¶ 7:11 AM

  All options
Polistra's Law of Tables:

When a government official says "All options are on the table", he always means "All evil options are being considered. We will consider doing a lot of evil, a whole hell of a lot of evil, or a nearly infinite amount of evil. We will most likely compromise on the middle choice, a whole hell of a lot of evil. Any option that might help the American people is absolutely unthinkable, unimaginable and incomprehensible, and you are officially insane for even trying to suggest it."
  ¶ 12:06 PM

  Exceptionalism
Today's standard conservatives always begin with the notion of American exceptionalism, the idea that America stands on a sacred principle and is uniquely blessed by God.

Think about this: when a person considers himself to be exceptional by this definition, he's a psychopath, a jihadi, or a crackhead. If I claim to be uniquely blessed by God, I don't have to listen to any mere mortals; I don't have to take care of anyone around me; I'm free to commit every crime in the world because I'm the right arm of God.

Same deal with a nation. When you have the aura of blessing, you don't need to protect your people, you don't need to preserve your industries, you don't need to follow ordinary logic. It doesn't matter if you're #33 by most objective measurements because you're #1 in the eyes of God.

= = = = =

In fact the only truly exceptional thing about America is this: We are the only country that consistently, intentionally and knowingly sabotages itself, consistently acts against its own interests. We are the country that specializes in national suicide.
  ¶ 3:40 PM

  Historical first
From an article on parenting in NYTimes:

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”

In the absence of tools that really work...

This fact has never before been admitted by a "respectable" writer. All the way back to Dr Spock, the standard Commie line has always been that spanking doesn't work; that spanking only "teaches the child to use violence as a solution".

Could the elites actually be learning something, instead of the normal mislearning, dyslearning and antilearning? One can always hope.
  ¶ 10:10 AM

  Stupid science
MSNBC is interviewing their Science Correspondent on the subject of cancer from cell phones. He stated correctly that there's little reliable research making the connection. He then stated incorrectly and deceptively that the amount of radiation you get from a cell phone is the same as the radiation you get from a flashlight.

In terms of watts per square centimeter this may be about right, but he's missed the most important variable: the frequency of the waves.

A flashlight emits only visible light, which doesn't penetrate and interact with bones and tissues. Thus a flashlight has no possible effect on our tissues unless it's used as a baton. A cell phone radiates electromagnetic waves in the range of 800 MHz, which penetrates a few inches into tissues and wiggles atoms around. It is thus capable of heating or potentially causing chemical reactions in the tissues. In other words, its effect on our innards is more like a microwave oven than a flashlight.

This doesn't prove that cell phones cause cancer, but it emphatically allows the possibility.

= = = = =

Later: Fox covered the same story without the same stupidity. Their Dr Alvarez observed that brain tumors have recently become much more common than before, which tends to support the connection. Comrade Shep said "But what are we going to do? We all use cell phones."

What you mean we, extrovert man? I've never owned a cell phone, never even touched one. Not from fear of cancer, only because I don't need to talk all the time. I use a phone once a month or so, to make dental appointments or other arrangements that can't be handled online. My standard dosage of conversation is around one hour per year, so I truly don't understand people who need to talk one hour per hour.

I'll also admit having a direct bias against the gadgets, since the young dickhead who mashed me with his SUV last year was gabbing to his girlfriend on his cellphone at the time.
  ¶ 8:39 AM

  If only
If only Obama were as tyrannical as the right-wing talking point heads claim he is, we'd be better off. And if only Bush had been as fierce and anti-Arab as the left-wing talking point heads claim he was, we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

Unfortunately both Bush and Obama are pissant chickenshit cowards who refuse to take the obviously correct action.

After 9/11 the obviously correct action was to depopulate Arabia, vaporize the primitive "holy cities" of the primitive Mohammedans, and intern all Mohammedans and Arabs inside this country for the duration.

Instead, Bush started two dainty wars in semi-relevant places, and carefully prosecuted a handful of semi-relevant people.

After the 2008 meltdown of the financial system, the obviously correct action was to eliminate Wall Street, shut down all companies involved in the crime, and order the non-criminal bankers to resume normal lending or face instant jail.

Instead, Obama has subsidized and rewarded the criminal companies, encouraged them to become even more "too big to fail", and now as the crowning insult he daintily suggests that perhaps it's finally time for the banks to consider the possibility of lending money, but we won't really do anything if they don't consider the possibility.


And how do we know which actions are "obviously correct?" Easy. Look at FDR's response to similar situations, and change the names to fit the times.

= = = = =

Later thought: the lefty pointheads love to call Bush a "cowboy". Nope, exactly diametrically wrong. Bush is not a Texan but a Connecticutian. (Connecticutite? Connecticutitititian? There isn't a word for this!) More to the point, he's not a cowboy but an Episcopalian Yankee.

Cowboy rules are as follows: "You mind your business and I'll mind mine. You attack me and you're dead."

Episcopalian Yankee rules are as follows: "I'll mind your business. I care deeply for your soul, so let's work together to comprehensively reform your way of thinking until it agrees with mine in every respect. You're attacking me? Oh, I'm sure this reflects a traumatic experience in your childhood, requiring years of therapy. Let's try to talk this over until we can reach a robust consensus."
  ¶ 8:19 AM

  Wind power = fossil fuels
From NRO:

= = = = =

Wind power is now the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme and possibly the next subprime mortgage meltdown as well. As Professor Michael J. Trebilcock, professor of economics at the University of Toronto, said in testifying before the Canadian Parliament last April:

Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone). . . . Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15¢/kwh compared to Ontario’s current rate of about 6¢). Niels Gram of the Danish Federation of Industries says, “windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.” Aase Madsen, the Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament, calls it “a terribly expensive disaster.”

= = = = =

Repeating those figures:

Denmark now gets 19% of its electricity from wind.

This requires 50% more coal, and produces 36% more pollution than before.

In other words, "wind power" is not a source of power at all. It's a use of power. Turbines are just a fashionable hippie style, and the price of this fashion is increased use of fossil fuels and increased pollution.

Wind power advocates in America have been surprisingly honest about this; TBoone has made it clear that his sole reason for pushing windmills was to sell more of his natural gas. And yet the fucking idiots in DC continue to sell wind. (Which is what they've always done anyway.)
  ¶ 9:49 AM

  Good move
The Obama admin Emergency Declaration on Mexican Flu is a rare sensible move.

Originally and 'lexically', the purpose of a D of E is to literally pull out all the stops. Eliminate the usual obstacles and formalities so that cops, firemen, or doctors can do their work without interference.

In recent years the procedure has usually been backwards. The typical modern D of E leaves all the rules and obstacles in place ... often clamps down even harder ... thus making quick action impossible. Instead, the gov't pumps billions of dollars into the situation, which may allow some people to work around the obstacles, but mostly goes into the pockets of big business. See Katrina.

This time the Obama team has done it the old way and the right way. No extra money, just remove the obstacles.

Good show.
  ¶ 4:31 PM

  Where's that old American spirit? В Москве.
The Mayor of Moscow has taken control of the elements in a way that used to be described as characteristically American. Yuri Luzhkov has already used cloud-seeding to keep rain away from Moscow during important events. This winter he will be harnessing the same technology to cut down snowfall, thus saving on snowplow work and saving lives.

"You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather? Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won't snow as much. It will make financial sense."

Bravo!

If an American mayor suggested saving his city from snow, or avoiding a deadly hurricane, he'd be roasted alive. EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW THAT CLOUD-SEEDING WORKS, EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW HOW TO BREAK A HURRICANE, WE ARE NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO THINK ABOUT CONTROLLING NATURE. INSTEAD, WE ARE REQUIRED TO BEND OVER AND LET NATURE FUCK US IN THE ASS. THIS IS OUR HOLY OBEISANCE TO THE PLANET GODDESS GAIA [PBUH].

We are insane. We are loony. We are stark raving bonkers. We are utterly, totally lost. We have committed national suicide.

= = = = =

Polistra and Happystar, joining Russia in spirit, have volunteered to assist with the seeding....


  ¶ 5:46 PM

  Old stereotype
The media monsters are going after some editorial writer who was trying to praise thrift. The writer said that Jews have the reputation of pinching pennies, and that we should emulate this example.

The enemy-controlled media has directed its flamethrowers at the writer for using an "old stereotype" which is "offensive".

This is the usual degenerate Leninist ratshit, similar to the napalm thrown at high schools who name teams after Indian tribes to honor the warrior spirit. In both cases there's an intentional side-effect of cognitive dissonance. When you know that your use of an old saying or name is meant to be positive, and the Satanic media tells you it's negative, you will be both rebellious and confused. Intended consequence.

In this case the media monsters are making two points: (1) thrift is offensive; (2) calling Jews thrifty is an old stereotype.

Point 1 takes care of the cognitive dissonance: a not-quite-explicit message that rubs against normal American beliefs. If you think pinching pennies is a good thing, you're offensive. To gain respectability, you must go in debt up to your eyeballs in order to re-inflate the derivative bubble and to keep shifting the real economy to China at warp speed.

Point 2 is unfortunately accurate, though I doubt that the media monsters wanted us to see it. The correlation between Jews and thrift is in fact an old and outdated stereotype. Modern American Jews, at least the elite ones, are no longer penny-pinchers. They are trillion-pinchers, perfectly willing to steal an entire nation to fill their Dubai bank accounts.
  ¶ 2:42 PM

  Not so complicated after all!
From a news story this morning:

“Economic opportunity, especially job creation, is a critical part of reintegrating the foot-soldier into normal life,” Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, wrote in an assessment of the deteriorating war delivered to Obama last month.

Oh good. Maybe this will finally get the Feds to start working on economic development and job creation.

What? What's that you say? McChrystal isn't talking about our soldiers returning home to a country that has no jobs for them? He's talking about Afghan soldiers and the Afghan economy?

Well, I guess that does explain the whole mess. Our government is dyslexic. The words "America" and "Afghanistan" are sort of similar, and our government is protecting and advancing the interests of "Afghanistan" instead of "America". All we need to do is inform them of this fact, and they will straighten up and fly right.
  ¶ 6:53 AM

  200,000
Media, schools and government constantly hammer away at preventable causes of death. Tobacco is heading toward prohibition, fatty foods and sugary drinks are heading toward prohibition, kids must be strapped down in expensive gadgets when driving, and on and on.

All of these preventable deaths are dwarfed by the largest cause of all: Doctors and hospitals. Have you heard that 50,000 Americans die each year from medical errors and hospital-caused infections? You may have heard this once or twice in the last year. CBS's 60 Minutes ran one story on the subject.

But in fact the 50K number is itself a lie. The real number is closer to 200,000 per year. This is larger than any other single cause of death except "heart failure", which is really another way of saying "natural causes". (If you don't die of anything else, your heart will finally fail. That's the default.)

This number turns out to be constant among different studies with different methods, and constant across several years.

You've never heard it on TV or radio, and you've certainly never heard a public-service announcement. If we had honest institutions, the most common PSA would beg us to avoid doctors and hospitals unless we're definitely sick. Needless to say, this will never happen.

Oddly enough, the most complete source for this subject is part of the Mainstream Media: a project called Dead By Mistake sponsored by Hearst Publishing. Thus I assume readers of Hearst papers are getting this info directly, but the rest of the media has ferociously ignored it.
  ¶ 2:38 PM

  AUDIN
NOTE FEB 12, 2012: After some evidence that people were actually downloading the program, I decided to check out the setup file just 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, preparatory to building up a new installer. Turns out the existing version (built in 2004, mainly for XP) crashed in Win 7. I revised the C++ code, recompiled, and rebuilt the installer in 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.


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




Polistra decided to mark the 10th anniversary of Jean Shepherd's passing by resurrecting a program that Shep might have enjoyed.

AUDIN is a program I built in 2002 under a Federal Dept of Ed contract. It's meant to be a "virtual lab" for AUDitory INstrumentation, part of the curriculum for audiologists. My favorite part is a self-teaching introduction to electricity and electronics, which was unique at the time. I suspect other self-teaching electronics apps are available now, but AUDIN is still a lot of fun to play with, and it's still my proudest achievement.

I've built larger courseware projects since then, but those are framed around text outlines and illustrations provided by others. AUDIN was mainly my own work. Some of the text was by others, but all programming and graphics were mine. Comparing AUDIN against more recent projects, it's clear that my graphics skills have improved greatly since 2002 while my programming skills have atrophied. I can make more realistic and lively pictures and animations now, but I couldn't begin to write the delicate C++ code for the interactive experiments.

= = = = =

To install AUDIN, download the setup file:

Setup Audin

I had to rename the file with a .TXT extension because the stupid website refuses to download MSI files. Download using the link, then rename it to plain old MSI and run it. After the installer runs, you can delete the MSI file.

When AUDIN starts, it gives you a choice of running with or without grades, because it was mainly meant as a classroom aid. If you're just using it for fun, pick the Ungraded choice.

The electronics self-teacher starts at Lesson 201 if you don't want to bother with the rest. It's pretty much free-standing, doesn't assume you've read the previous lessons.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 8:51 PM

  Marcy for President 2


Polistra and Happystar are enjoying this year's nice autumn, which consists exactly of today.

This summer was steadily way above average, and now the fall has switched suddenly to way below average without ever passing through a period of normalcy. All 90s to all 40s, without the usual month of 60s. It's part of the El Niño pattern, which will hopefully give us a relatively mild and dry winter. If that pattern holds true, no complaints about the missing autumn! The previous two winters were deadly and disastrous.

Polistra is wearing a Michael Moore cap today. Only three years ago this would have been unthinkable, but the monstrous incompetence or disloyalty of Sultan Bush has turned things around. This change of mental climate wasn't quite as sharp as the summer-to-winter snap; it began in early 2006 and was finished by mid-2008. Moore's recent book-tour appearances have reinforced the changeover. At this point Moore agrees with Polistra that Marcy Kaptur should be President, and agrees on most other things. Thus the cap.

This essay does a good job of summarizing Kaptur's clear thinking.
  ¶ 11:22 AM

  Rush gets fooled
Haven't been listening to Rush lately, and never pay any attention to Sport, but this business of Rush trying to buy a football team is interesting.

Rather surprisingly, Rush doesn't understand the American class structure. He seems to believe his own meritocratic nonsense.

Nixon tried to play in the big leagues of politics using secret tapes and dirty tricks, exactly following the successful tactics of FDR, JFK and LBJ .... only to find that he couldn't get away with it. Rush is trying to play in the big leagues of the Sport Industry, only to find that he can't buy his way into the club.

Money brings power, and the office of the Presidency brings power, but neither money nor high office will give you total freedom. Only an aristocrat can do and say absolutely anything with absolute impunity. And in modern America, only three groups have aristocratic status: Authentic African-Americans, Authentic Homosexuals, and Kennedys. It's not enough to be black, as Clarence Thomas learned; and it's not enough to be homosexual, as Larry Craig already learned and Rush has now learned.

Before WW2 we didn't have so many illusions about our class structure. Common sense prevailed, discrimination was honest, and people knew in advance which clubs they couldn't enter. When you know which doors are open and which are closed, you don't waste time and emotional energy banging your head on locked doors.

Since WW2, Leninist propaganda has corrupted all of our institutions, planting the false guarantee of equality, the viciously fraudulent myth that "you can do anything if you work hard enough". This does not guarantee equality, it only guarantees frustration and hostility between classes and groups. As Lenin fully intended.
  ¶ 6:48 AM

  A witness
I'll let Nicole discuss health care.



I'm afraid she's wrong about the superior qualities of Obama's (or Baucus's) plan.

She's not wrong about the need for complete change.
  ¶ 8:20 AM

  Duh department
The enemy-controlled media are Outraged and Shocked this morning by a report from the insurance industry stating that the Baucus "health reform" will lead to much higher insurance costs. The anchorblondes on CNN, taking time out from masturbating to a picture of Obama, screeched that the insurance industry is only trying to derail the reform, and asked in a blondish way if there is any way to check the numbers.

Well, of course you could check the numbers if you weren't girls, but actually it's much simpler.

The insurance industry knows that it will make more money from the Baucus bill because the insurance industry WROTE the Baucus bill. This isn't a great secret, to put it mildly.

You don't even need to know that specific fact; all you need to know is that the Baucus bill was developed by some part of the US Government in the last 30 years. Everything developed by the US Government in the last 30 years is guaranteed to make life worse for ordinary Americans and to gift more more more more more more trillions quadrillions gazillions babillions kakakakakakILLIONS of money money money money money money to a few already obscenely rich companies.

Why am I so pissed about this? Because no Baucus bill, no complicated recipe is necessary. Several correct solutions are available in other countries, such as France and Australia. Twice the quality for half the cost. We just need to pick one and adopt it instantly.
  ¶ 7:47 AM

  Fantastic stupidity
From the latest New Superstitionist:

People who carry guns are far more likely to get shot than those who are unarmed, a study of shooting victims in Philadelphia has found. ... Charles Branas's team at the University of Pennsylvania analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity. The team also accounted for further potentially confounding differences, such as the socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood.

Overall, people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. ...

While people who think they are at risk of getting shot may also be more likely to carry firearms, Branas speculates that guns may give a sense of empowerment that causes carriers to overreact, or encourages them to visit dangerous neighbourhoods.

First and most obvious, the study apparently didn't bother to ask if the victims were gang members. Turf wars among gangs account for a large part of gun violence in places like Philly. The "socioeconomic status of the neighborhood" is not a proxy for gang membership, because lots of unfortunate non-gangsters are stuck in gang-owned neighborhoods, and those non-gangsters are much less likely to be carrying.

Second and most fantastic, "Branas speculates that guns may give a sense of empowerment that ... encourages them to visit dangerous neighbourhoods."

Has Branas ever known an actual human being? Why in the holy hell would anyone visit a dangerous neighborhood with a gun unless he specifically intended to commit a crime? "Oh, I'm bored this afternoon. Ho hum. Think I'll go have a cup of coffee in the ghetto just to see if their coffee is better than the coffee in my upscale gated suburb. And might as well bring along the old trusty AK-47, see if there's a gun repair shop in the ghetto where I can get it tuned up and lubricated." Is this what Branas imagines?
  ¶ 9:44 AM

  Skousen yet again
It's interesting to watch the 'conservative' establishment distancing itself (or more precisely running away at top speed!) from Glenn Beck's continual use of Cleon Skousen's writings.

(Disclaimer: I haven't watched Beck lately, so I don't know if he's sticking to the Skousen mindset or ranging way off into other unjustifiable realms. If the latter, then I can't defend him.... I'm defending Skousen here, not necessarily Beck.)

The modern establishment, conservative or liberal, in politics, religion or science, has one Prime Directive: "Any attempt to form conclusions or use logic is paranoia and must be banished."

Totalitarians always use this rule for obvious reasons. It conflates insane paranoia with plain logic.

Insane paranoia links the Illuminati, CFR, Masons, Jews and Martians to everything.

Plain logic connects Lee Oswald to the KGB, connects Betty Friedan to Stalin, connects both Obama and McCain to Alinsky, connects the Global Warming hoax to China via Maurice Strong. There's nothing conspiratorial or secret about any of these connections. Logic and known facts.

The establishment doesn't want the latter set of connections to be commonly understood, so it calls them "paranoia" and thus taints them with the schizophrenic delusions about Masons and Martians.

I've discussed Skousen several times, and don't have anything new to say except:

I participated in hard-left movements sporadically from 1969 through 1983, and everything I read in Skousen agrees with what I saw and did in those movements. When you read a book that agrees with your personally known reality at every point of tangency, you're strongly inclined to trust the entire book.

I don't know why the 'conservative' establishment is afraid to reveal facts about the long-term advance and evolution of Communist power within the United States. I can only think of two valid reasons: (1) They're stupid and gutless. (2) They're part of the advance.
  ¶ 7:51 AM

  Huh?
We know by now that the Nobel Peace Prize is given to outstanding servants of Stalin. That goes without saying. But the Nobel outfit has always been serious about the "servant" part; the prize has gone to people who have labored for decades to destroy Western civilization, often without fame and fortune. They have never rewarded a beginner before.

By the normal standards of the Nobel crowd, Bush should get this prize. Bush started two dubious wars and kept them going until they served no purpose except bleeding American resources and darkening our reputation. And Bush reduced our nuclear weapons significantly, eliminating ALL our neutron bombs to insure that future presidents will be unable to respond correctly to future Arab attacks.

Obama is continuing the two pointless wars, but he HASN'T DONE ANYTHING YET to disarm the US. I don't think he's even talked much about it.

By deeds, Bush has done far more damage to America.

Should have been an easy decision.


= = = = =

Later, listening to our enemy-controlled media: They're all over the premature nature of this award. Maybe this will cut down the credibility of future Nobels in their eyes, which will be a good thing.
  ¶ 6:03 AM

  Blooming idiot
Chinese Agent Bloomberg, assigned by PRC handlers to act as "mayor of New York", is serve glorious Chairman-Mao-Thought diligently! Agent Bloomberg trying to remove last vestige of Capitalist Imperialist Manufacturing from his assigned location. Specifically, Agent Bloomberg want to rip up the Deviationist-Roader Garment District and cram all business into just one building, so that Glorious PRC Peoples Army can finish take over all manufacture from Running-Dog Capitalist Imperialist America.

Way to going, Agent Bloomberg! Glorious Masses cheering wild!

= = = = =

Crappy parody aside, in a sane country Bloomberg would be tried and hanged for treason.
  ¶ 10:11 AM

  Mindless appeals
Listening to CNN reading some responses from its viewers on the 8-year war in Afghanistan. One response from a man who identified himself as a Vietnam veteran: "I've got one thing to say to anyone who thinks we should get out: Remember 9/11."

A fine rousing sentiment, but unfortunately it just doesn't make sense.


Why did Osama want to attack us?

From the Peter Arnett interview with Sheikh Osama in 1997: (in "Messages to the World", p. 47)

Arnett: "Will the end of the US presence in Saudi Arabia ... end your call for jihad?"

Osama: "The reaction came as a result of the aggressive US policy toward the entire Muslim world and not just toward the Arabian peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this [jihad] comes to an end, this act in turn will come to an end. So the defensive jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian peninsula; rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims through the entire world."

= = = = =

Admittedly the claim of self-defense is always part of the propaganda of any warmaker. It may be true or false, but it's always laid out convincingly enough to keep the people fighting.

There are two ways to dislodge this feeling of righteous response: (1) Remove the irritant that seems to justify the response. (2) Show the people that their effort is absolutely futile and counterproductive.

We are doing neither.

In WW2 we took path #2: annihilated Jap and Kraut civilians by the millions until they finally understood the futility of their effort. In this war we've been delicate, dainty and careful, which will NEVER accomplish #2; we've only managed to validate the feeling that we are endlessly meddling in that part of the world. Now it's too late for #2 anyway, even if we somehow miraculously acquired a sane government.

We've also put a lot of effort into "Installing Young Democracies", which translates to the people as "corrupting our culture."

So the only remaining choice is #1. Remove ourselves from the region and turn our military toward protecting our own ports and borders. (If we had been monitoring and deporting Arab immigrants in the first place, we could have prevented 9/11 completely.)

After that, Sheikh Osama and his colleagues will undoubtely continue to agitate, but their agitation will be much less convincing.
  ¶ 8:31 AM

  Sane Australia

Australia's central bank has decided to raise its prime rate to 3.25%. This isn't especially notable by itself except as a symptom of common sense. After all, the larger purpose of interest rates is to serve as a feedback mechanism, a natural cruise control for banks. Our Federal Reserve (enslaved to the Wall Street Mafia) has held its interest rate strongly and rigidly negative for several years, thus removing the natural feedback, encouraging borrowing and discouraging saving. The result was perfectly predictable, as Polistra has been saying for a long time.

A more notable fact within the Australia news item:

Nations such as Australia, Israel, Norway and Brazil that remained relatively isolated from the economic turmoil of the past 12 months for various reasons now appear to be leaning toward tightening their interest-rate policies to head off inflation.

If anyone in DC had a non-negative IQ, if anyone were capable of observing reality, this comparison would cause a firestorm of study and investigation. Why did Australia, Israel, Norway and Brazil avoid the bubble and bust, while so many others suffered? Australia especially, since it's parallel to America in most aspects. Same origin and culture, same basic approach to economics. And why did Canada have no bank failures even though its economy is tightly linked to ours? And finally, how can we emulate these more successful countries?

Needless to say, this investigation and study won't happen. Our government and academics have upside-down brains. Show them the correct way to perform a job and they will do it backwards. Show them that flexible interest rates cause a healthy economy, and they will make zero interest a permanent law, even more unbreakable and untouchable than the Endangered Species Act.
  ¶ 7:39 AM

  The real definition
The real definition of insanity is reciting the phrase "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" over and over, while doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
  ¶ 12:52 PM

  Satori
Reading Jonathan Rauch's latest piece on extroverts and introverts in politics (pointed via Dreher) was a true enlightenment.

For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.

Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. As Coolidge is supposed to have said, "Don't you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?"

...

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves.

Now I genuinely understand why politicians are so monumentally stupid, why so completely disconnected from reality, and why the teamwork principle is so powerful. Why does the wildly false theory of Global Warming continue to rule the world? Why is protecting our own industries unthinkable? Why do we continue to fight useless wars? Why are we content to remain Number 33 in the world on so many vital measurements while calling ourselves #1?

It's not campaign finance, not bribery, not corruption, though all of those things are present and problematic.

No, it's much simpler. Nearly all politicians are extroverts. This means they cannot observe reality, cannot perceive facts. They only perceive the content-free verbal excrementa of other politicians.

Rauch is one of the best thinkers around ... nearly two decades ago, long before it was obvious to most of us, he was the first to understand and describe the total paralysis of our political process. He called it Demosclerosis.
  ¶ 11:29 AM

  One for the Darwin Awards
In Caldwell, Idaho a woman who had been fired from an ambulance service tried to sneak back into the building, and the building gave her a death sentence for attempted theft.

Late at night she called in a fake auto accident, presumably knowing that all the vehicles would head for the accident leaving the place unoccupied. She was waiting near the building and slipped through the garage opening just after one of the ambulances pulled out. Unfortunately she mistimed the automatic garage door and got squashed when the door closed.

Safe bet: She was trying to steal some oxycontin. Seems to be the fashionable drug these days.
  ¶ 12:21 PM

  Politicizing
On CNN this morning, John King is interviewing Gen Jones about our activities in Afghanistan. King never once asked the ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS: "How does this make the American people safer?" When will any journalist have the guts to ask that question?

At one point King noted that Manchurian Candidate McCain has accused Jones of "playing politics" and "politicizing strategy". Jones firmly denied the charge, saying "Strategy does not belong to any political party."

Well, that's the whole goddamn problem, isn't it? If neither party is allowed to change our strategy, then why in the holy fuck should we bother to vote?

I'm ferociously tired of politicians accusing each other of politicizing a subject. You're a politician, politicizing is your damn job.

No other occupation does this. Doctors don't accuse each other of medicalizing diseases, though perhaps they should sometimes. Teachers don't accuse each other of educationalizing the curriculum, though perhaps they should sometimes.

If politicizing is forbidden, then no subject is discussable, no strategy can be changed, no law can be eliminated or modified. We will simply careen down the road toward total devastation, without steering or brakes. Which in fact we have been doing since 1973, with precisely two major exceptions.**

= = = = =

** The two exceptions, the two times when a leader dared to steer us out of a skid: 1. Reagan's decision to answer Soviet subversion and sabotage with some subversion and sabotage of our own. Previous admins had answered the USSR only by increasing our stock of missiles that would never be used. 2. Newt & Bill's welfare reform. Previous (and later!) admins couldn't imagine anything except permanent increases in the welfare class.

= = = = =

Update Monday: CNN's Rick Sanchez, bless him, is asking the basic question about our Afghan activities. Everyone else just debates the details while assuming the war is needed for some never-stated and never-defined reason.

... Well, I guess the reason is easily defined. If you're a Republican, we need to keep the Afghan war going because The Lord Almighty George Bush, the Most Magnificent President In History, the Most Masterful And Intelligent President Than Whom No Greater Can Be Conceived, said so. If you're a Democrat, we need to keep the Afghan war going because Lord Almighty Barack Obama, the Most Magnificent President In History, the Masterful And Intelligent President Than Whom No Greater Can Be Conceived, said so.
  ¶ 6:12 AM

  The Ig-nobels
My attention was caught by Comrade Shep Smith at Fox mentioning the Ig-nobel Awards in the "humorous kicker" at the end of an hour. Comrade Shep, being an imbecile as well as a loyal Communist, didn't even get the basic point. He pronounced it "Eye Gee Noble", and apparently thought the prize was given for fake science.

No, Comrade Useful Idiot Shep, the Ig-nobel is given each year for real science that sounds silly, just the sort of thing that you fucked-up "journalists" love to ridicule when discussing Federal research budgets. (Admittedly, some of the prizes are just plain jokes, but Comrade Useful Idiot Shep wouldn't understand them either.)

This year's top winner is a real and useful invention by Elena Bodnar of Ukraine. Bodnar invented a brassiere that converts to a gas mask for pollution emergencies. This is a uniquely Slavic idea in two different ways: first, the former Soviet states have serious pollution problems; second, the former Soviet states still have intact families, which means that (Caution!!! Possibly offensive idea coming up next!!!!) males and females usually live together in an arrangement known as "marriage". I know this sounds weird and icky to modern Americans, but that's how they do it. The invention would be much less useful in America, because we've already controlled pollution, and our same-sex-only living arrangements would mean that males wouldn't have easy access to the gas mask.



My favorite Ig-nobel is one of the jokey items:

MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big — by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).

Undoubtedly our Federal Reserve will benefit from Mr Gono's research in coming years, as it works day and night to reshape America toward the glorious Zimbabwe economic model.
  ¶ 6:06 AM

  Random
Been spending unwanted time and effort trying to unravel an identity theft. Few days ago my debit card didn't work; I assumed it was a glitch until the third time it was rejected. Contacted US Bank, found out they had caught and stopped a suspicious transaction (a large purchase from Bed Bath & Beyond in New Jersey) and suspended the card. They will issue a new one, so that's nicely settled.

Blessings to US Bank for having clever algorithms and fast response!

At the same time my telephone has stopped working, which may be coincidental or not. There wasn't any bad weather in the relevant timespan; the wires appear intact; and my bill is always paid. No response yet from Qwest. This is a good time to cancel the landline and switch over to Magic Jack anyway. For my extremely sparse telephone usage, paying $40 a month doesn't make sense. ($40 a month translates to about $20 per minute of talking, on average!)

With these two things happening simultaneously, my tinfoil hat is starting to twitch. Could this be related to my support of Prop 71? There have been several hits on those entries, unusual for a blog that normally receives no "theme-related" hits at all.

= = = = =

Winter weather must be approaching quickly. The squirrels are dashing around at ground level this morning, not bothering to cross the streets via the power lines as they normally do. They're dodging cars, and unfortunately one didn't dodge fast enough. Thump-thump. Neighborhood cats are enjoying the scene, trying to get a good pounce at the squirrels but not succeeding. Probably more sport than hunger.
  ¶ 1:04 PM

  The comrades are creaming
Spokane's City Politburo is getting all wee-weed up over a series of "hate crimes" in recent weeks.

One of the "crimes" is the distribution of circulars by Aryan Nation. Way back in ancient times, before Old Bipolar Abe destroyed the Constitution and killed 600,000 Americans to fulfill his manic delusions, the distribution of circulars was considered to be the main point of the First Amendment in that antique and long-obsolete document.

Notice in the linked video that the Aryan circular was tossed on a lawn next to the Wednesday advertising special from the Spokesman-Review. Does that make the Spokesman guilty of "hate littering" as well? Every issue of the paper undoubtedly contains some words or phrases that someone may disagree with. Recipes for arugula in a balsamic vinegar reduction? Gakkk!! Awful!!! Can't stand that stuff! It's a hate crime! Foodist! Foodist! Foodist!

The other subject of the Politburo's wee-weed-up-ness is the appearance of a noose on the front porch of a "rights educator", aka Soldier of the Stalinist Revolution. Again note the video: the noose is made from a child's jump-rope.

I'll guarantee you that the "noose" was placed by the "rights educator" herself. All recent incidents of this type have been hoaxes inflicted by the supposed victim, and this one will be no exception. Guaran-goddamn-teed.

Comrade Mayperson Verner and Comrade Councilperson Shogan have a right to get all wee-weed up, but they don't have a right to forcibly involve the rest of us in their peculiar fetish.
  ¶ 6:45 AM