Thursday, December 24, 2015
Actually,
Headline #1:
U.S. Plans Mass Deportation of Illegal Central American Migrants
Headline #2:
Revealed: 20 British Muslim families 'stopped' from entering US
Wait! Hold on! Didn't you just finish telling us that both of those actions were UNTHINKABLE UNACCEPTABLE UNAMERICAN NOT US NOT OUR VALUES?
Oh. Yes, I understand. Those actions are UNTHINKABLE UNACCEPTABLE UNAMERICAN NOT US NOT OUR VALUES when Trump proposes them. They are NECESSARY AND PERFECT EXPRESSIONS OF OUR HIGHEST AND BEST VALUES when Obama does them.
Just like monkey cartoons.
Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. You unimaginably hyperevil hypermonsters DARE TO WONDER why people want SOMETHING DIFFERENT, to put it indescribably gently?
Actually, here's what I want for Christmas.
Labels: Asked and answered
¶ 3:08 AM
Annoying as usual
Watching my blog stats is a source of amusement and annoyance. Mainly futility.
I've written about 5600 items. Maybe a dozen are worthwhile in my own judgment, but those dozen ALMOST NEVER get read. Exactly three items show up reliably and regularly in the blogspot stats. The first one is probably the only 'public service' this blog renders. I haven't seen it in a few months; the last time it got read was by the IRS, which MAY account for the lack of new references. Probably not, though. That assumption would make sense, and nothing makes sense now. The other two reliable regular items are just stupid, which explains why they're comparatively popular.
Right now the three reliables are not showing up. For some reason the above TEN-YEAR-OLD item has become popular. It shouldn't be. At that time there were no recordings of FDR's D-Day prayer online, so I pulled a poor clip from an OTR cassette tape and transcribed it. Now there are MANY better recordings online. It's easy to find. So there's no reason to use the one I made.
Why are so many people hitting that item now? Who knows. Maybe it's become a subject of bullying and ridicule on some Facebook page.
= = = = =
A similar annoyance in email. I'm constantly getting notices of new updated software from stuff that I bought only once and haven't used for 15 or 20 years. I didn't even know DivX still existed; it was a poor format and deserved to fade. But I NEVER get update notices for software I bought recently and still use.
¶ 2:28 AM
Right now the three reliables are not showing up. For some reason the above TEN-YEAR-OLD item has become popular. It shouldn't be. At that time there were no recordings of FDR's D-Day prayer online, so I pulled a poor clip from an OTR cassette tape and transcribed it. Now there are MANY better recordings online. It's easy to find. So there's no reason to use the one I made.
Why are so many people hitting that item now? Who knows. Maybe it's become a subject of bullying and ridicule on some Facebook page.
= = = = =
A similar annoyance in email. I'm constantly getting notices of new updated software from stuff that I bought only once and haven't used for 15 or 20 years. I didn't even know DivX still existed; it was a poor format and deserved to fade. But I NEVER get update notices for software I bought recently and still use.
¶ 2:28 AM
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Best picture of the season
Spokane-News often invites readers to take pics of current weather. Today's pics are appropriately miserable, but one breaks out of the mold. Literally. Young engineer cleverly making an igloo from molded snow bricks, with dog guarding the worksite. This is why life exists.
¶ 1:53 PM
Ockham and cults
BBC has an interview with a former cult member who has made a career out of analyzing cults. The BBC interview doesn't name the cult, but it's named and fully described elsewhere. It was an unexpectedly small operation that lasted at least 20 years, centered mainly in the Minneapolis area. Cult members received memos from the nameless leader, telling them which jobs to take, what to eat, where to shop, who to marry, when to have kids, how to raise the kids ... essentially all the details of life.
Supposedly the cult was running a revolution based on Maoist ideology. It began with a violent takeover of food coops, but after that it did nothing at all. Members lived rigidly middle-class lives in middle-class neighborhoods, doing the same things as other middle-class parents. The only difference: these middle-class parents were living their ordinary middle-class lives under specific direct orders from the Leader, while other middle-class parents were living their ordinary middle-class lives under broad indirect orders from the TV.
What was the purpose? Unanswered in the various narratives. The only possible answer is simple raw power and money for the Leader. He got a more direct dose of powerjuice than the management of BBC or NPR or Fox or Apple or Google or USA STRONG. Those larger cult leaders know that their orders are being obeyed by millions, but they don't have direct personal feedback to WATCH the robots obeying them. They have to rely on polls and "elections" and NSA monitoring, which must be less satisfying than personal spies.
Non-cult observers tend to overthink the purposes of power, always seeing a complicated chain of ulterior purposes. Nice example in ZeroHedge today: "Our foreign policy is designed to perpetuate the failing petrodollar system." Nope. Just raw psychopathic genocidal powerlust.
¶ 5:08 AM
Det Snow at work
Good old Detective Sergeant Snow. No need for dogs or helicopters when criminals forget about Nature.
¶ 3:50 AM
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
First interesting idea. Won't happen.
Hillary's proposal to close failing public schools is the FIRST interesting idea by a non-Trump politician in 12 years. Trump has been producing plenty of specific solutions to real problems. Until today, all non-Trumps in "both" "parties" have been simply replaying one standard sentence.
The main advantage of charter schools is that they can be shut down when they fail. This motivates the admins to do the right thing. Public schools, partly by inertia and partly by Parkinson's Laws, have become permanent landmarks. Admins know this and perform accordingly.
If Hillary means what she says, there would be no real reason for separate charter schools. All educrats would be under pressure to perform.
I'm pretty sure she'll back off quickly. Union thugs will NOT allow this proposal. Here in Wash, the union thugs ordered their employees in the "supreme" "court" to get rid of charters, specifically because charters require teachers to get results. Intolerable, unacceptable, all options on the table, all options implemented.
¶ 5:34 PM
The main advantage of charter schools is that they can be shut down when they fail. This motivates the admins to do the right thing. Public schools, partly by inertia and partly by Parkinson's Laws, have become permanent landmarks. Admins know this and perform accordingly.
If Hillary means what she says, there would be no real reason for separate charter schools. All educrats would be under pressure to perform.
I'm pretty sure she'll back off quickly. Union thugs will NOT allow this proposal. Here in Wash, the union thugs ordered their employees in the "supreme" "court" to get rid of charters, specifically because charters require teachers to get results. Intolerable, unacceptable, all options on the table, all options implemented.
¶ 5:34 PM
Frum GETS IT.
Amid the huge ocean of pundits and politicians who completely misunderstand the Trump thing, only two or three pundits get it. The best is Frum, writing in The Atlantic.
He pins the facts and the emotions EXACTLY. I'd only quibble with one point. The following paragraph is 'numerically' accurate, but Frum doesn't see the inappropriate use of terms......
The Great Recession ended in the summer of 2009. Since then, the U.S. economy has been growing, but most incomes have not grown comparably. In 2014, real median household income remained almost $4,000 below the pre-recession level, and well below the level in 1999. The country has recovered from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Most of its people have not.When most incomes have not grown comparably, you can't say the economy is growing. When most people have not recovered, you can't say the country has recovered. These inappropriate terms are universal, and they show the problem perfectly. It's a question of metrology, a question of which variable we choose to measure. We no longer pay ANY attention to the condition of the people. We only measure Goldman. When Goldman is growing, the country is growing. ¶ 3:06 PM
Storm mode 2
Interesting snowstorm yesterday. For most of the day the temp was around 35 here, which meant that the snow stayed on places that were already snow-covered but melted on open cement and grass. Nominal total was 6 inches, but the 'shovelable' amount was more like 3 inches.
The Weather Bureau missed this, and most of the TV/radio "meteorologists" mindlessly went along with the Weather Bureau. Mark Peterson of KXLY predicted it right. Snow in the morning, rain-snow mix in the afternoon. Peterson has a good record of accurately describing reality instead of quoting the Official Version.
Note from the Weather Bureau, by their measurements: "With yesterday's storm, Spokane has now had more snowfall so far this season than all of last winter! This year so far: 18.5 inches. Last year (total): 17.6 inches."
I did some intensive raking, adding the third section to the rake pole for the first time and reaching higher on the roof. Cleaned the outer half of both sides, making ice dams impossible.
Oddly, it seems like I'm the only 'raker' in town, at least on the streets I normally see when walking or busing. In previous years a few other raked roofs were starting to appear at this point in the season.
One welcome difference from previous snowy years: More people with snow-blowers are clearing the sidewalk on their entire block. Previously, each homeowner cleared his own frontage and maybe one or two lots beyond it. There are always non-shovelers in each block, which means that everyone's work is useless. It's like vaccination. When the blower owners catch the unshoveled lots, everyone's work is worth doing. Thanks, blower owners!
The sidewalks are especially welcome because the alleged "city" is doing a bad job on the streets. Copkiller Condon, Bloomberg's best bitchboy, is too busy sulking about the police rejection of his NYC "husband" Copkiller Straub. No time or energy for optional hobby-type activities like PLOWING AND SANDING THE FUCKING STREETS.
= = = = =
12/25 update: Now I see two other rakers. One is familiar from previous years and sort of minimal, clearing only the first foot above the eave. The other is fresh. A nearly new house, a block west of me, and he seems to have emulated my technique of baring the bottom half. Are we starting a trend? Raking up with the Joneses? Probably not, but I can pretend.
1/1 update: Now we have two more rakers along my street. Still none visible on other streets. We got a Convoy!
1/2 update: One more. Total of 5 rakers, all within about one block of my house. Still none visible elsewhere.
I did some intensive raking, adding the third section to the rake pole for the first time and reaching higher on the roof. Cleaned the outer half of both sides, making ice dams impossible.
Oddly, it seems like I'm the only 'raker' in town, at least on the streets I normally see when walking or busing. In previous years a few other raked roofs were starting to appear at this point in the season.
One welcome difference from previous snowy years: More people with snow-blowers are clearing the sidewalk on their entire block. Previously, each homeowner cleared his own frontage and maybe one or two lots beyond it. There are always non-shovelers in each block, which means that everyone's work is useless. It's like vaccination. When the blower owners catch the unshoveled lots, everyone's work is worth doing. Thanks, blower owners!
The sidewalks are especially welcome because the alleged "city" is doing a bad job on the streets. Copkiller Condon, Bloomberg's best bitchboy, is too busy sulking about the police rejection of his NYC "husband" Copkiller Straub. No time or energy for optional hobby-type activities like PLOWING AND SANDING THE FUCKING STREETS.
= = = = =
12/25 update: Now I see two other rakers. One is familiar from previous years and sort of minimal, clearing only the first foot above the eave. The other is fresh. A nearly new house, a block west of me, and he seems to have emulated my technique of baring the bottom half. Are we starting a trend? Raking up with the Joneses? Probably not, but I can pretend.
1/1 update: Now we have two more rakers along my street. Still none visible on other streets. We got a Convoy!
1/2 update: One more. Total of 5 rakers, all within about one block of my house. Still none visible elsewhere.Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 3:13 AM
Really dumb idea
Krauts are thinking about analyzing Mein Kampf in schools, supposedly to 'inoculate' kids against Hitler's approach. Exactly wrong. Terrible idea.
When you've ALREADY CREATED the conditions for a new dictator to emerge, you DON'T WANT to have the students reading the instruction manual for building a new dictatorship. Some of them will read it anyway; can't do anything about that.
The best way to avoid a revolution is to STOP DOING all the things that GUARANTEE a revolution. Stop forcing people to accept millions of criminal migrants. Stop wasting money and soldiers on pointless invasions that create more migrants. Remove the central banks from all control of the economy. Start 'trust-busting' to break up monopolies. Delete the EU entirely. Stop forcing totally suicidal cultural insanity into our minds.
All of these factors lead SANE people to want an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT form of government. This desire is SANE AND PROPER AND NORMAL.
What happens AFTER the revolution is the problem. Revolutions always lead to even worse situations. No amount of reading will control the course of a revolution; reading can only IGNITE the revolution faster.
Labels: Asked and answered, defensible spaces, Natural law = Sharia law
¶ 2:52 AM
Monday, December 21, 2015
Better understanding
After listening to lots of old radio shows about scams and rackets, I've come to understand the Carbon Scam in a more refined way. It's a two-part racket with a typical form. Setup and Payoff.
Setup is a fortunetelling scheme.
Payoff is blackmail by the parasitic parts of society against the productive parts.
A fortunetelling racket typically persuades the mark that her money is cursed, and requires her to turn over all of her money to the scammer for purification. (Historically the most successful instance of this racket was Catholicism.)
The carbon racketeers have mobilized the media, schools, government, army and churches to persuade all suckers that all productive activities are cursed. Making things is a Mortal Sin, because making things always generates Waste and Carbon. (Again the Catholic racket is a major player because of its superior experience.)
The priests (scientists) get lots of money (grants) for establishing this delusion in "scientific" form, but that's NOT the payoff. Priests are a necessary expense for the scammers.
Rackets are never something for nothing; on average the ratio of payoff to effort is within the same range as a regular investment. Scammers run scams because they are criminals. Doing things dishonestly brings them intrinsic pleasure. You can see this clearly in the 2009 Climategate emails. A few of the "scientists" are honest men who don't quite know what's happening; most are criminals who get their kicks from stacking the deck and lying.
The payoff starts AFTER the priests (scientists) have firmly established the delusion. After everyone 'knows' that all bad events are caused by Carbon Curses, the parasites (reinsurers, lawyers, bankers, speculators, journalists, EPA) can blackmail all producers. Give me your money and I'll remove the curse. (Curse = bad publicity, legal troubles, protesters.)
As with any blackmail, the amounts are carefully chosen. Big suckers can be milked for a long time; small marks are simply killed with the first lawsuit or fine.
Labels: Carbon Cult, Make or break
¶ 2:11 AM
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Spain wins, EU loses!
Polistra and friends do a quick salute to Spain, where the anti-EU parties just won a firm majority. It's split between Podemos and Socialists, but they should be able to get along.
Later, quote from Podemos leader:
"Our message to Europe is clear. Spain will never again be the periphery of Germany. We will strive to restore the meaning of the word sovereignty to our country."
I hope they can hold firm. The allegedly anti-EU leaders of Greece started with equally harsh language, then wilted under Kraut pressure. We shall see.
¶ 4:00 PM
Polistra and friends do a quick salute to Spain, where the anti-EU parties just won a firm majority. It's split between Podemos and Socialists, but they should be able to get along.
Later, quote from Podemos leader:
"Our message to Europe is clear. Spain will never again be the periphery of Germany. We will strive to restore the meaning of the word sovereignty to our country."
I hope they can hold firm. The allegedly anti-EU leaders of Greece started with equally harsh language, then wilted under Kraut pressure. We shall see.
¶ 4:00 PM
Best comment of the year
A surprisingly good article in Wired. Normally Wired is pure tech-tyrant propaganda and anti-Christian bigotry.
This author sets out a solid framework for thinking about cybersecurity, based on three main goals: Confidentiality, Availability and Integrity. Unfortunately the author fails his own standard of Integrity, and the first commenter NAILS IT. Best laugh I've had in many moons.
¶ 5:19 AM
Why do they bother?
Constant theme lately. Why do monopolistic elites even bother to say this crap? When you own everything, it doesn't matter what you say. Might as well be honest.
A little personal example: I've been using Group Health for about 6 years now. I had been on an individual plan for $300/month, which was tolerable. When Romneycare went into effect in 2012, the plan instantly jumped to $500 "to cover pregnancy services". I couldn't afford that amount for long, but tolerated it for a couple years because I was close to Medicare. After 65, the Group Health basic Medicare B plan was only $50. Extremely tolerable.
Last month GHC was bought by Kaiser Permanente. Everyone knows what happens when a bigger monopoly takes over a smaller one. Prices go up, services get worse.
Nevertheless, GHC sent out a letter claiming the opposite. Everything will be the same but better.
Well, except that prices have already gone up. The Medicare B plan jumped from $50 to $79 per month, and I'm sure more increases are on the way, followed by severe cuts in service, then complete wipeout of the entire enterprise. Count on it.
This is, of course, the total and exact purpose of Romneycare. Obvious from the start. Infinite monopoly, infinite riches for the rich, zero service to the proles.
Labels: STRONG!
¶ 2:57 AM
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Miss Gödel 2015
From UK Telegraph coverage:
Mireia Lalaguna, 23-year-old Spanish Model won after winning Top Model and giving an impressive speech in which she said "Just because I am beautiful on the outside does not mean I am not beautiful on the inside, too."Self-disproving sentence. The usual notion of 'beautiful on the inside' specifically excludes saying "I'm beautiful on the inside." As soon as you say it, you're not it. The usual notion is pointless and meaningless, of course. There's no such thing as internal beauty. Only external beauty matters, and it matters more than all other human qualities put together. Internal modesty and nobility get you spat on, shat on, and starved. ¶ 4:57 PM
Good try, won't work
This is genuinely unprecedented. The few remaining sane "scientists" called a conference to see if they could bring their crazy colleagues back into reality.
Too soon to predict what will happen. I'd give 95% probability to pure status quo. Modern physics and cosmology will continue to roar beyond all bounds of sanity. 5% probability to a minor twiddling, perhaps a required disclaimer on physics articles saying that "Deniers, who need to be tortured and killed NOW, deny this theory because they are deniers."
Crazy is really an understatement. I've known some genuine schizies and some manic bipolars. Those folks are nowhere near as crazy as "scientists", because their theories are intended to explain reality. The schizy will construct a hugely complex pattern involving all sorts of organizations and spiritual powers. When you follow all of its connections and convolutions, you'll see that his theory WORKS. It EXPLAINS why the authorities are reading his mind, or why he needs to stand on top of the bus wearing 37 beer cans on his head.
The theories of "scientists" are even more complex and they DON'T WORK**. They DO NOT EXPLAIN reality and they ARE NOT INTENDED to explain reality.
Crazier than a schizy.
= = = = =
**Footnote: Well, of course the theories DO WORK for their ACTUAL purpose and intention, which is to bring trillions in grants. It's an addiction. A hunger that can't be satisfied requires infinite input. A theory that will never be proved requires infinite research.
Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult
¶ 8:31 AM
Unthink in action
The crime committed by a hypersatanic "school" "board" in Virginia illustrates how totally we've been Unthinked.
The syllabus (not just the teacher) required students to write Allahu Akbar in Arabic. This was not "just some calligraphy" as the teacher claimed.
Hypersatanic "school" "board" responded in the drably predictable way. Christians were talking, so it was necessary to SHUT DOWN THE WORLD FOREVER to prevent Christians from talking. It's just fine to require an Islamic credo for a grade, but any expression of any sort by Christians anywhere in the universe requires EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE.
Every sane human is asking: "What would happen if a teacher required students to write
The question fails ab initio because NO teacher would require that. It wouldn't even ENTER A TEACHER'S MIND, and it would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER be contemplated as a written exercise IN THE OFFICIAL CURRICULUM.
So it's meaningless to ask what would happen. It's like asking "What would happen if the students were required to travel backwards in time?" or "What would happen if the students had to transform themselves into broccoli plants and start growing florets?"
The question fails ab initio because NO teacher would require that. It wouldn't even ENTER A TEACHER'S MIND, and it would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER be contemplated as a written exercise IN THE OFFICIAL CURRICULUM.
So it's meaningless to ask what would happen. It's like asking "What would happen if the students were required to travel backwards in time?" or "What would happen if the students had to transform themselves into broccoli plants and start growing florets?"
Labels: STRONG!
¶ 6:01 AM
Pigment vs mechanism
Humans have developed two ways of recording and playing sensory impressions.
For each sense, two-dimensional pigment application or 'writing' came first, and mechanical methods came VASTLY later or not at all.
Cave paintings are about 30k years old. Representing phonemes with symbols is nominally about 5k years old, but that's a fine distinction. We were really painting stories for future reference. Why did Og bother to paint an elk? Not to deconstruct neomaterialist pansexuality. He was expressing a sentence that could also be spoken. "I killed this elk here."
So cave paintings count as a simultaneous development for both vision and speech. Though we can't get into the heads of those ancients, I expect a cave painting was meant to call up the entire sensory picture of the elk or waterhole or tree, including smell and taste and the action of hunting or drinking or picking. Distinctions came later.
= = = = =
On the mechanical side, output devices came first, followed by input.
Output of vision: Magic lanterns or phantasmagoria, around 1600. Projected paintings or drawings.
Input of vision: Photography, 1840s.
Output of sound: Signal drums and bells, extremely old. Maybe older than painting.
Input of sound: Phonograph, 1877. As I've noted, this is the ONLY major invention that happened exactly once without any gradual buildup of ideas.
= = = = =
Well, where are the other senses? Specifically, where is smell? We don't even have a 'writing' for smell. We have a dozen words that can be applied loosely, but without any precision or validity. We can name the emitters of a few smells validly: skunk, marijuana, rose.
If our visual representations were as poor as our olfactory, we wouldn't be able to name colors or intensities; we'd only be able to say "Draw a house" or "Draw an elk". As with smell, this would only work for animals and plants, because human products are non-standardized.
Mechanical playing of arbitrarily chosen smells, parallel to the magic lantern, has been around for a long time. It began with incense in religious ceremonies, and branched off to the rare and brief Smell-O-Vision in movies around 1930. Some computer-based smell generators have been advertised, but none have become commercially available. It's not clear that they even exist. (Try to find actual reviews by people who have actually tried the gadgets!)
Mechanical recording of smell is supposedly in development, but it's solely in the hands of tyrants who will use it to spot bombs or other illegal chemicals. Dogs perform this job so beautifully that there's no major pressure to develop electronic devices.
= = = = =
Beyond smell, we have a few other well-defined senses. Taste doesn't really count; most of what we call 'taste' is just smell. Skin can detect light, heat, pressure, and 'presence', but those are so localized that there's no good reason to record them.
Kinesthesia is the most important. Position, velocity, acceleration. There are systems of 'writing' for kinesthetic variables like Labanotation. We can record these variables accurately with photocells and accelerometers, and we can replay them directly with big expensive flight simulators. We can also replay them with magnetic stimulation of the cochlea, but this is so invasive that it's not likely to become commercial, and probably shouldn't. A similar method can invoke smells, but again could be too dangerous for common use.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 5:29 AM
Putin did it.
Looks like the Syrian war is getting wrapped up. Kerry has basically allowed Russia to do the right thing, and the right thing has done what the right thing always does.
No surprise. As I wrote in October:
Clearly Bush/Obama LEARNED THE LESSON OF HISTORY. Bush's puppetmasters studied how Wilson built a slipshod tyranny that lasted only a couple of years, and FIGURED OUT HOW TO MAKE IT PERMANENT. Remember all that talk about "long twilight struggle" and "bitter-enders" and "generational struggle"? They knew what they were doing. Lesson #1 was: Don't let foreigners start wars. Foreigners may have an actual goal in mind, which will lead to a quick end and firm victory. Always start wars before anyone else has the chance. Lesson #2: DON'T LET A WAR END. Start a war, then do whatever is necessary to prevent either side from winning. Keep it running and running and running. Now: What happens when a foreigner surprisingly intervenes to STOP a war? Clearly this wasn't part of the plan. We had Syria set up to run forever, and this horrible Putin roars in to UNCONFUSEDLY support ONE SIDE. That's a recipe for disaster. Peace is disaster.Amazingly, Obama/Kerry has decided to STOP committing the Wilson crime in Syria. Even infinitely evil bullies surrender to the cop when the cop has more guns. It's clear that Officer Putin has more nukes. Obama is trying to save face by attributing this change to his own actions, but it doesn't work. USA STRONG has been acting in Syria for a couple of years with NO sign of an end, because we were fighting FOR our employees and agents al-Qaeda and ISIS. Now that we have quietly decided to follow Russia's guidance and leave Assad in power, we are helping to end the war. An EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE position for USA STRONG, since our sole purpose for existence is to destroy everything. I'm sure this discomfort will lead to an identity crisis and more internal tyranny, but it's worth the trouble if it ultimately leads to total collapse of USA STRONG. Constants and variables, fuckhead. THANKS, PUTIN! THANKS, RUSSIA!
Labels: STRONG!, Гром победы
¶ 3:11 AM
Friday, December 18, 2015
Polarizing
Trump is polarizing the world.
All Repooflicans and all Democrats and all EU politicians are against him. Good.
All media, including both Fox and NPR, are ferociously against him. Good.
Now we hear that the satanic Pentagon generals who have been turning the military into a fairy bathhouse are against Trump, while the front-line soldiers are mostly for him. Good.
Putin respects Trump, and Trump had already expressed respect for Putin. Good.
You couldn't get a more perfect alignment. Evil wackos hate him, sane normal humans respect him. Literally polarizing, like an electromagnet.
¶ 3:32 AM
Storm Mode
More snow, another 4" or so. (Smooth this time, not all lumpy and cicatrixy like previous snow.) This winter is looking normal despite the El Nino crap. Sort of annoying, but sufficient snow is critical for agriculture and hydropower, so I mute my annoyance and rake the roof.
Local TV website makes a big deal of switching into 'storm mode' when weather is tricky.... but maybe they should choose a different background for their 'storm mode' announcement.
Snow White and the Three Freezing Rains? Which one is Freezy and which one is Rainy? I never remember the third one (Snizzly?), so I guess it doesn't matter.
= = = = =
Vaguely related and equally stupid observation: One neighbor (thankfully not very close to me) goes all out for Xmas decorations every year, with lights AND music AND animated figures. As I walked by yesterday, the music was playing Jingle Bells in a MIDI chime arrangement, and dogs inside the house were barking in rhythm. Yes, it sounded exactly like this. Saints preserve us.
= = = = =
And a NON-stupid thought... TV stations properly pay lots of attention to driving conditions. Which mountain pass is closed, which major arterials are plowed, etc. They NEVER pay attention to walking conditions. Correlation is mainly negative. Freezing fog is often OK for cars but totally impassable for walkers.
Two or three inches of fresh snow can be nasty for cars but wonderful for walkers. Good traction, cushioned steps. If we're trying to make cities more walkable, a walking condition update would help.
¶ 2:56 AM
Snow White and the Three Freezing Rains? Which one is Freezy and which one is Rainy? I never remember the third one (Snizzly?), so I guess it doesn't matter.
= = = = =
Vaguely related and equally stupid observation: One neighbor (thankfully not very close to me) goes all out for Xmas decorations every year, with lights AND music AND animated figures. As I walked by yesterday, the music was playing Jingle Bells in a MIDI chime arrangement, and dogs inside the house were barking in rhythm. Yes, it sounded exactly like this. Saints preserve us.
= = = = =
And a NON-stupid thought... TV stations properly pay lots of attention to driving conditions. Which mountain pass is closed, which major arterials are plowed, etc. They NEVER pay attention to walking conditions. Correlation is mainly negative. Freezing fog is often OK for cars but totally impassable for walkers.
Two or three inches of fresh snow can be nasty for cars but wonderful for walkers. Good traction, cushioned steps. If we're trying to make cities more walkable, a walking condition update would help.
¶ 2:56 AM
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Tech note on 'Exploit SWF_C'
Last night I started getting this warning from AVG antivirus. AVG was catching several types of Trojans, mainly from Googleapis. All of them reduce to Exploit SWF_C, according to AVG's info. Seems to be a common problem, reported by lots of people in lots of forums yesterday and today.
AVG gives reports like this:
"Trojan horse Exploit.SWF_c.APS, imasdk.googleapis.com/flash/core/3.220.0/adsapi.swf";"Secured";"12/17/2015, 4:31:13 AM";"URL"
After searching a bit more, I could see that this stuff is part of AdBlock Plus. Removed AdBlock Plus from Firefox, and now I'm not getting the virus warnings.
Correlation isn't causation, but it's working so far. I hope the AdBlock people get it fixed soon. I'm willing to turn off AdBlock selectively for websites that have 'polite' ads, but a few websites (eg ZeroHedge) are totally unusable without AdBlock.
Few hours later: Nope, spoke too soon. Still getting the imasdk shit from UK Telegraph.
24 hours later: All of the shit is gone. Turned AdBlock on again, tried all the sites that had been throwing trojans before. Nothing now. Points to a single source that fixed the problem. Was it in Googleapis itself? We'll never know.
¶ 5:26 AM
Ruling with consent
Watching Putin's year-end press conf on RT.
He knows how his country works. Details about how oil moves from pipelines to railroads, how nuclear plants are constructed....
Thanks the engineers who have made this possible ....
Thanks the pensioners who endured hardships during WW2 and during the 90s. Endurance is patriotic....
Yamal is our oil treasury, our gas treasury...
Defense spending will need to be frozen because of oil revenue problems, but projects that have been started will be completed. It's more expensive to halt a project, because you have to keep engineers and others on the payroll to avoid losing their talents.
= = = = =
Catch the pattern? He's talking to ALL the people of Russia, trying to bring ALL of them along with his intentions.
No USA STRONG president would ever do that. No USA STRONG president would thank Oklahoma for being our "oil treasury", or thank the engineers, or thank the pensioners. USA STRONG presidents always give the following speech:
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
MY PARTY GOOD.
OTHER PARTY BAD.
Labels: STRONG!, Гром победы
¶ 4:20 AM
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Mother-in-law, Caddy, cliff
Or better, "with friends like these ...."
The quasi-female professor at Wheaton who has been wearing a hijab and emphasizing the shared points of Christianity and Islam, has now been fired for violating basic rules.
I would LOVE to see Christians and Muslims putting aside theology and working together against secular satanist monsters. I've been pushing this point for a while. Theory is evil, and theory includes theology.
On the surface that's exactly what this quasi-female prof is doing. Unfortunately, after reading some of what s/he is saying, it's clear that s/he is NOT a Christian. S/he is NOT trying to reunite Christians and Muslims; it's just feminist shit. It's ALL about the wyymmmynseseses.
In other words, s/he is pure Satan.
So no mixed feelings about the firing, but still ... rueful? ... feelings that the only public move in this necessary direction is coming from a destroyer.
Labels: Natural law = Sharia law
¶ 11:27 AM
Cicatrix snow
First proper snow of the season this morning. About 3" here. Snow is mid-heavy but oddly turbulent. Rough surface everywhere. Weirdest part: Every expansion joint in the street, and every little crack in the sidewalk, grew a huge mound or cicatrix. About 1" extra height, about 4" wide. The mounds aren't harder or softer than the regular snow; feels the same underfoot.
Picture is non-ideal, taken after the snow has settled for a few hours. Still, it shows one good mound formed over a line between older pavement and a newer patch. The crack itself is not a gap or a bump; it's just a very slight offset.
What's happening?
Conditions are strictly normal. 32/20 for several days, no wind. (Thank God!) The only variable I can imagine is the heavy rain about 9 days ago. Maybe the cracks and joints are still full of warm moisture, which sort of soufflés the snow above them?
Picture is non-ideal, taken after the snow has settled for a few hours. Still, it shows one good mound formed over a line between older pavement and a newer patch. The crack itself is not a gap or a bump; it's just a very slight offset.
What's happening?
Conditions are strictly normal. 32/20 for several days, no wind. (Thank God!) The only variable I can imagine is the heavy rain about 9 days ago. Maybe the cracks and joints are still full of warm moisture, which sort of soufflés the snow above them? Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 8:08 AM
Not so silly 2
Local news:
Homeowners in Spokane Valley are pleading for drivers to slow down after a beloved neighborhood animal was run over. A pair of resident ducks, Rufus and Mable, used to visit them almost every day until the male duck was killed in early December. Now, it is just Mable. Rufus was found run over on the side of the road. “She just wanders around, like she's lost without him," said neighbor Monica Maynard. Neighbors on Mission just off of Baker have had problems with speeders for years. "The problem is getting out of control. We did lower it to 30, and nobody seems to do it," said Maynard.Trivial? Silly? I suppose you could call it that. I'm more inclined to say that this is why life was created, and why humans were given superior intelligence. We know that male and female were made separate for a purpose, and we know that we've destroyed the purpose. Birds remind us of the correct purpose, so we get especially pissed when some dickhead ruins the reminder.
Labels: Grand Blueprint, Natural law = Sharia law
¶ 3:56 AM
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Waaaay out of character but RIGHT.
This little quote just popped up on newsfeeds:
Lindsey Graham on potential terrorists: "We have to offer a hopeful life to compete with a glorious death."
Graham has been universally wrong on everything. I can't think of a single major politician (well, except McCain) who manages to be so totally wrong.
And yet.... unless the quote is entirely misleading and out of context, this one statement is POWERFULLY RIGHT and CONCISE and COMPLETE. If we IMPLEMENT THIS, carefully targeting young males who have no hope of useful work or loyal wives, we'd massively diminish all of our mass-violence problems. Gangs, school shootings, "terrorism". All the same problem masquerading under different superficial ideologies.
Unfortunately, Graham is also proposing a whole bunch of wrong stuff along with this one BIG right policy.
Labels: Make or break
¶ 4:30 PM
And yet again....
Yet again the country gets all weeweed up about a "threat" that didn't exist.
Everything we get excited about is totally fictional.
That's a rule.
In this specific situation there's a more specific rule. It should be perfectly obvious by now that all threats are hoaxes. Real school shootings, like real 'major' terrorist acts, occur without a threat.
A real perpetrator of real violence wants total surprise. He doesn't want to see his bombs or bullets stopped before they can do the requisite amount of harm. What's the point of that?
Simple logic. If there is an advance warning, it's a hoax.
PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT.
If you want to run a life or government or culture properly, you have to start by understanding the different TYPES of people. If you don't understand professional criminals you shouldn't be running courts and police departments. If you don't understand what makes some students smarter than others, you shouldn't be running a school. If you don't understand why Trump is popular, you shouldn't be in politics.
¶ 3:58 PM
¶ 3:58 PM
Not so silly
New Zealand, mainly known as a haven for tax evaders, is choosing a new flag for unknown reasons. Up till now they've been using a version of the Union Jack, like most Commonwealth countries. A referendum will choose between the Union Jack and ONLY ONE new alternative, which was personally chosen by the prime minister.
The alternate choice is hopelessly boring, and the referendum itself is boring, but some of the 'silly' proposals in social media are NOT boring. This one features a kiwi shooting laser beams from its eyes.
Non-silly point: Flags continue to use heraldic traditions dating from the 1100s. Lion rampant has a specific meaning, three crossed swords have a specific meaning, etc.
Now, for the first time since 1100, we have a NEW heraldic language via emoji and anigifs. Kiwi shooting laser beams has a specific meaning, speaker with a slash has a specific meaning, trash barrel, eraser, pencil.....
Most of these icons can be still or moving, which alters the meaning just as soaring vs volant alters the meaning of an eagle. Why not an aniflag?
Let's give the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant and the Clarenceux King of Arms some real work to do! (Come to think of it, the typical anime dragon strongly resembles the old Rouge Dragon. Maybe the new isn't all that new.)
¶ 2:51 AM
Workarounds
Every single aspect of our "legal" and "political" system and our "culture" is pure infinite evil, pure infinite crime beyond all previous imaginings.
Truth is illegal, normal life is illegal, breathing is explicitly illegal. Normal decent activities must operate outside the "law". This is obvious.
Occasionally it may be possible FOR A FEW MOMENTS to operate within the WRITTEN "laws" for a while, via some kind of workaround.
Earlier this year, the nine maximally evil Mafia thugs who criminally occupy the building known for arcane historical reasons as the "state" "supreme" "court" committed a crime against both the voters and the children of this unfortunate fucked "state". The nine maximally evil thugs overturned a referendum that made charter schools possible, because charter schools take money away from the mass-murdering Union Thugs who pay the "supreme" thugs. This crime was committed AFTER several charter schools, mistakenly and delusionally believing that "law" existed, had started their school year.
Now the charter schools have found a rather peculiar workaround, which may hold up for a day or two.
The Mary Walker school district in the small town of Springdale in Stevens County raised its hand and volunteered to host these schools. This does not mean kids will have to move, it just makes these schools part of the Alternative Learning Experience model. This new model just means these charter schools can stay open and running as public schools. Washington State Charter Association leaders said this is still just a temporary fix for a long-term problem. Association leaders said it expects to hear a decision from the lower court within these next couple of days.BRAVO to the Springdale board. It has courageously volunteered to be shut down, bankrupted and imprisoned by the "supreme" genocidists, but at least the charter schools will have a nominally official path to continue their good work for a few minutes. ¶ 12:34 AM
Monday, December 14, 2015
New toy: windup shaver
After the 8-day power outage, I decided to buy some stuff for better preparation next time. Most urgent was more propane; got that easily at WalMart. Next was some extra towels to extend time before laundry, so I could take one or two showers without having to walk to a coin laundry. Got those from LLBean.
Finally, for preparation AND for fun, I wanted to try one of those Soviet mechanical shavers. Call it a birthday present to self.
Shaving isn't nearly as important as cooking, but even for a semi-retired coot who no longer works in an office, the sense of being 'normally neat' makes a difference in morale.
I've never learned to use a blade-type razor. Or more precisely, I did learn when I was in prison in 1969, and swore never to do it again. Part of the old Don't Look Back superstition. Worked so far, no reason to stop.
There are lots of modern portable shavers, but all are indirect with a generator and a rechargeable battery, which is NOT reliable. I've used a cranked radio and a cranked light; the batts in both devices failed just when they were needed. Exactly the wrong quality for a gadget that needs to be READY after a long wait.
The only purely mechanical shaver available is this old Soviet windup rig.
So I ordered one from an Ebay merchant in Moldova. Doing the unboxing or review thing.......
Must admit I enjoy receiving mail from those countries: they have an old-fashioned level of bureaucracy with stamps and signatures everywhere. Full employment. Maybe I've got some stamp collector genes.
Removing the wrap reveals the original box... Mechanical razor SPUTNIK ...
containing the usual OTK approval and a little 4-page manual and the shaver in its pouch. The pouch is heavy 'pleather'.
Scan of the OTK approval slip and the manual. Date on OTK is June 1980.
The shaver from the back, with windup key:
And from the front, with cutting head.
Note on ruggedness: I don't know how much this razor was used before it was sold, but I know it got one good hard knock just before I opened the box. The postman, apparently disgruntled at working on Sunday, opened the screen door and literally SPIKED the box into the room. BLAM! I wasn't sure if the shaver would be intact, but it was just fine.
Notes on action: The cutting head comes off easily for cleaning, with a bayonet-style twist. The windup key doesn't turn while the head is running, so it doesn't bother your hand. Must be a ratchet inside. You start and stop the cutter with a little thumbwheel on the side. Seems to need two windings for one full shave.
And here's a narrated audio clip made with my Campbell's Condensed/r Microphone.
Conclusion: Works VERY NICELY. Cuts closer than my Norelco, but not as fast. That's okay. This is solely for emergency use, and the direct mechanism will insure that it's ALWAYS ready for emergency use.
= = = = =
Irrelevant sidenote: Windup is the greenest way to shave. Disposable plastic razors are the worst, requiring weekly inputs of petroleum and metals and electric power to manufacture, plus shaving cream generally in an aerosol can. Electric rotaries are vastly greener than disposables. The shaver is more complex but requires new manufacture only once per decade versus once per week. The electricity consumed for one shave is insignificant. Windup is the same as electric in terms of rare manufacture and zero aerosol cans; zero current per shave makes it marginally greener.
Relevant: Seems like an opportunity for a Made-In-America entrepreneur. Hit both the 'prepper' market and the 'greenie' market. And while you're at it, how about a little windup refrigerator?
Must admit I enjoy receiving mail from those countries: they have an old-fashioned level of bureaucracy with stamps and signatures everywhere. Full employment. Maybe I've got some stamp collector genes.
Removing the wrap reveals the original box... Mechanical razor SPUTNIK ...
containing the usual OTK approval and a little 4-page manual and the shaver in its pouch. The pouch is heavy 'pleather'.
Scan of the OTK approval slip and the manual. Date on OTK is June 1980.
The shaver from the back, with windup key:
And from the front, with cutting head.
Note on ruggedness: I don't know how much this razor was used before it was sold, but I know it got one good hard knock just before I opened the box. The postman, apparently disgruntled at working on Sunday, opened the screen door and literally SPIKED the box into the room. BLAM! I wasn't sure if the shaver would be intact, but it was just fine.
Notes on action: The cutting head comes off easily for cleaning, with a bayonet-style twist. The windup key doesn't turn while the head is running, so it doesn't bother your hand. Must be a ratchet inside. You start and stop the cutter with a little thumbwheel on the side. Seems to need two windings for one full shave.
And here's a narrated audio clip made with my Campbell's Condensed/r Microphone.
Conclusion: Works VERY NICELY. Cuts closer than my Norelco, but not as fast. That's okay. This is solely for emergency use, and the direct mechanism will insure that it's ALWAYS ready for emergency use.
= = = = =
Irrelevant sidenote: Windup is the greenest way to shave. Disposable plastic razors are the worst, requiring weekly inputs of petroleum and metals and electric power to manufacture, plus shaving cream generally in an aerosol can. Electric rotaries are vastly greener than disposables. The shaver is more complex but requires new manufacture only once per decade versus once per week. The electricity consumed for one shave is insignificant. Windup is the same as electric in terms of rare manufacture and zero aerosol cans; zero current per shave makes it marginally greener.
Relevant: Seems like an opportunity for a Made-In-America entrepreneur. Hit both the 'prepper' market and the 'greenie' market. And while you're at it, how about a little windup refrigerator?Labels: defensible spaces, new toy, Patient things, TMI, Гром победы
¶ 2:56 AM
Saturday, December 12, 2015
'Scalable'?
More piddling with old maps.
BBC has an interesting article on totally planned cities. Verdict: They usually fail. They're built to satisfy a private delusion by an Emperor or by an avant-garde murderous sadist (aka "architect"). Nobody wants to live in a murderous vision.
Commenters bring up an alternate view: Small totally planned cities often work. It's a question of scalability.
Thinking about it... I'm not sure what scalability means in this context, but I can see a definite distinction among American cities. I'd call it extensibility instead of scalability. An extensible city should hold some basic element of its original texture as it grows. The original pattern should express the terrain and culture so well that new developers can't help but follow it whether they intend to or not.
Manhattan fails this test. The original townsite plan paid NO attention to geography or terrain. It would have been nicely extensible in a flat riverless spot, but failed in the actual situation. Rivers on two sides, bluffs on the other two sides. The most noble and elegant parts of the original plan, the market squares, failed to extend at all. They were never actually built.
Here's a blinkyGIF that attempts to illustrate the failure to extend. Starts with the original townsite as of 1885. Note that the meandering rivers had already spoiled the E and S sides, and the steep bluffs were about to mess up the N and W. The GIF gradually fades into 1950 then 1965, showing how the bluffs required a more curvy and twisty street pattern. Entirely separate from the original grid. Strictly modular.
= = = = =
Spokane, by contrast, is highly extensible. I've used only the NW quarter, partly because I know it best and partly because the whole city is too big for clear mapping at blog-size. Starts with 1912, fades into 1960 or so. Note how newer additions extend (or extrude?) smoothly from existing patterns. Also note the area I've shaded purply-gray. This is a steep hillside, which was platted with appropriate curves in 1912 when curves were NOT the normal way to plat a city. Didn't need any change when it was actually built much later.
Why was Spokane set up appropriately from the start? Not any grand vision for damn sure. No Brasilia or DC. More like a lack of grand vision. Do what works. Maybe because the railroads were here at the start, which forced platters to pay attention to terrain.
Non-humble artistic note: Both of these blinkies came out a lot better than I hoped! They actually illustrate what I wanted them to illustrate.
Humble artistic note: Thanks to excellent old cartographers. I expect the USGS maps to be good; they were made with aerial photos and a large surveying staff. But I didn't expect the 1885 and 1912 maps to line up so perfectly with the USGS. Those early mapmakers didn't have airplanes and big budgets.
= = = = =
Spokane, by contrast, is highly extensible. I've used only the NW quarter, partly because I know it best and partly because the whole city is too big for clear mapping at blog-size. Starts with 1912, fades into 1960 or so. Note how newer additions extend (or extrude?) smoothly from existing patterns. Also note the area I've shaded purply-gray. This is a steep hillside, which was platted with appropriate curves in 1912 when curves were NOT the normal way to plat a city. Didn't need any change when it was actually built much later.
Why was Spokane set up appropriately from the start? Not any grand vision for damn sure. No Brasilia or DC. More like a lack of grand vision. Do what works. Maybe because the railroads were here at the start, which forced platters to pay attention to terrain.
Non-humble artistic note: Both of these blinkies came out a lot better than I hoped! They actually illustrate what I wanted them to illustrate.
Humble artistic note: Thanks to excellent old cartographers. I expect the USGS maps to be good; they were made with aerial photos and a large surveying staff. But I didn't expect the 1885 and 1912 maps to line up so perfectly with the USGS. Those early mapmakers didn't have airplanes and big budgets.
Labels: Grand Blueprint, Heimatkunde, infill
¶ 9:27 AM
Why no Babylonian amplifiers?
Following on this.
Despite the universality of valves and diodes in Nature, the valve didn't get no respect from historians. It's not on any of the Big Lists Of Major Inventions that I can find. This long list by Encyclopedia Britannica includes a number of Babylonian and Roman inventions, but not the valve.
Early humans mastered the art of diverting flow in the context of irrigation and dams. Babylon had mechanical wells and pipes but apparently didn't use valves. Rome had checkvalves on pumps (diodes) and controllable faucets. So 'real' valves have certainly been familiar for 2300 years, maybe longer.
Well then. Why did it take so long for humans to figure out the principle of the amplifier? Why did it have to wait until the early experiments with electricity?
The engineers who developed those fantastic water clocks around 1100 AD must have noticed the power of valves. A small hand force can create a massive change in flow, which can move just about anything. With enough flow, you can move a house with your little finger. In fact water clocks used digital fluidics (eg flip-flop) but not analog fluidics.
Amplifying sound wouldn't work well with water-based fluidics, but the Romans could have developed a servomechanism to power a construction crane or stone-lifter. Control a big strong arm with your little weak arm. They could have adapted their existing catapult:
Hmph. I thought this was going to show how Romans could use analog fluidics to advantage, but it shows the opposite. If the lever arm was properly balanced, Polistra could control it easily with a rope tied to the long end. No water needed! Or for more precision, she could use a cranked winch to regulate the rope.
In other words, the catapult as originally designed was sufficient for this job. Lever, crank, windlass. Classic machines solved classic problems.
The idea of the amplifier was first imagined in 1840, as part of the huge burst of electrical invention. By bringing a static field near a wire, could you repel part of the charges in the wire and thus 'pinch off' the flow gradually? The idea didn't work with a wire because the charges move too easily. It was like trying to restrict a deep river with a single tree. The idea had to wait until we could run the whole river through a gravel bed, making it harder for the flow to reunite behind the tree. Semiconductors finally provided the gravel bed.
But why was the amplifier necessary (thus imaginable) for electricity when it hadn't been needed before? The answer pops out. When you're trying to control fast precise movements in an intangible medium, levers are useless. You need amplifiers. The first amplifier was digital: the telegraph relay. After the signal has weakened over miles of wire, the relay uses the faint ons and offs to switch current from a 'new' local battery. Much later, after the telephone introduced analog signals, the triode tube finally used the original 'pinch valve' idea with vacuum as the gravel bed. Better materials led later to the field-effect transistor, which is an EXACT implementation of the 'pinch valve' with silicon as the gravel bed.
Hmph. I thought this was going to show how Romans could use analog fluidics to advantage, but it shows the opposite. If the lever arm was properly balanced, Polistra could control it easily with a rope tied to the long end. No water needed! Or for more precision, she could use a cranked winch to regulate the rope.
In other words, the catapult as originally designed was sufficient for this job. Lever, crank, windlass. Classic machines solved classic problems.
The idea of the amplifier was first imagined in 1840, as part of the huge burst of electrical invention. By bringing a static field near a wire, could you repel part of the charges in the wire and thus 'pinch off' the flow gradually? The idea didn't work with a wire because the charges move too easily. It was like trying to restrict a deep river with a single tree. The idea had to wait until we could run the whole river through a gravel bed, making it harder for the flow to reunite behind the tree. Semiconductors finally provided the gravel bed.
But why was the amplifier necessary (thus imaginable) for electricity when it hadn't been needed before? The answer pops out. When you're trying to control fast precise movements in an intangible medium, levers are useless. You need amplifiers. The first amplifier was digital: the telegraph relay. After the signal has weakened over miles of wire, the relay uses the faint ons and offs to switch current from a 'new' local battery. Much later, after the telephone introduced analog signals, the triode tube finally used the original 'pinch valve' idea with vacuum as the gravel bed. Better materials led later to the field-effect transistor, which is an EXACT implementation of the 'pinch valve' with silicon as the gravel bed.Labels: Asked and answered, Danbo
¶ 3:22 AM
Friday, December 11, 2015
Thanks, Ralph 19
In Central Wash a real estate developer tried to ruin a competitor's development by poisoning trees. He was fined for malicious mischief, which is appropriate but not the real justice.
Real Emersonian justice: By removing KILLERS from the competing subdivision, he was actually improving it. People who buy lots in the OTHER development will now be more secure. They will have more electricity, less damage and less death.
Meanwhile here in NW Spokane, people are finally figuring out that trees are KILLERS, and are removing the KILLERS as fast as possible.
I can't be hard on them ... I was only a little bit faster. I managed to get my KILLERS removed in 2011 before they had a chance to kill me or my neighbors. Should have done it MUCH earlier. Dumb.
Labels: Emersonian justice
¶ 6:47 AM
GOOD, BY FUCKING GOD.
Trump hasn't spoken to this point before. Now he's on it, and gets it EXACTLY GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING RIGHT.
¶ 6:00 AM
Donald Trump vowed on Thursday to issue an executive order mandating the death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer. Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, made the promise while speaking in Portsmouth, New Hampshire alongside the New England Police Benevolent Association, which announced its endorsement of Mr. Trump at the event. “Anybody killing police officers, the death penalty is going to happen,” Mr. Trump said.
¶ 6:00 AM
Constants and variables 33
Another convective thought on Trump vs the elites...
The political, cultural and "scientific" elites will sacrifice anything, including millions of lives, to preserve the leftist lie that humans are identical and all differences are ideology.
On the surface the elite vs populist conflict looks like an ideological battle. Nationalism is not just a heresy, it's inconceivable to the satanic mind. Borders and tariffs and Natural Law are Unideas that can't be imagined by Satans. Anyone who advocates against outsourcing and Die-Versity is an Unperson.
Down deep, it's not ideology at all. It's PURELY genes.
Why? Because the Satans are perfectly capable of adopting nationalist views when it suits them. Even after adopting sane views, they continue to shun and banish Real Nationalists.
Look at Orban in Hungary. Even after Merkel finally started imposing her own border controls, Orban's border controls are still UNTHINKABLE INTOLERABLE ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE. Orban is the wrong sort of person. Not one of us. His ideas are still absolute heresy even after we're doing the exact same thing.
We have a PERFECT controlled experiment with Trump and Sheldon Adelson. Trump and Adelson are direct opponents in the Vegas casino industry, so they should be equivalent in terms of meritocracy. Both are hugely rich, both are capable of moving lots of money around; both hire and fire lots of people.
All the other Repooflican candidates have shaped their agendas to obey Adelson. Adelson is the only voter who counts. 310 million residents of this fucked former country do not exist. Only Adelson exists.
Trump is paying attention to the 310 million residents, appealing to what we know is true, offering solutions that will actually work. Therefore he's a fascist buffoon.
Another experiment: Eric Schmidt and Donald Trump are proposing the exact same type of Internet censorship to filter out ISIS.
Eric Schmidt is obviously correct because he is the right sort of person. Trump is a dumb fascist buffoon for proposing the same thing because he is not one of us.
Here as everywhere else, ideology is just a cover for good old-fashioned caste. Blood-borne aristocracy.
Labels: Asked and answered, Constants and Variables
¶ 2:46 AM
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Failure of careerism
Convective thought as I watch the endless parade of politicians and countries loudly disowning and banishing Trump.
This isn't normal behavior among the powerful. Normally countries and politicians are cautious when dealing with people who may become their boss. These idiots are ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENT that Trump couldn't POSSIBLY get elected, so they feel free to create grudges.
A few pundits seem to be catching on, dimly starting to realize just how delusional they've been, how utterly removed from the reality of normal Americans. Until now they've always managed to halt populists and nationalists at the starting gate. Ross Perot got slightly past the gate, but the Bush family neutered him with some weird stuff about their daughter's wedding, and Perot gave way to the neutering. Trump hasn't consented to be fixed, and (so far!) shows no signs that he ever will.
If he does get elected, there will be a WHOLE BUNCH of Repooflican Congressmonsters, and a WHOLE BUNCH of countries, who find they need something from a President. They will be faced with a President who holds grudges and remembers insults.
Could get interesting.
¶ 4:20 PM
Why do they keep it up?
Why do evil monsters continue to say such obvious nonsense? Don't they realize the curtains are open?
Volkswagen investigators have determined that engineers cheated U.S. emissions tests in part because they could not figure out how to meet the standards, the company said today. Volkswagen Group chairman Hans-Dieter Potsch told reporters that engineers erred by developing manipulative software to fool regulators because they "quite simply could not find a way to meet the tougher" limits for nitrogen oxide pollutants in the U.S. Potsch said engineers should have persevered until they found a solution. He said the company has suspended nine managers who were "possibly involved in the manipulations" and he pledged to assign.... etc, etc, etcJesus. Even before the Web started to open new channels of info, this was OBVIOUS RATSHIT. Engineers ALWAYS persevere until they find a solution, and Kraut engineers MORE THAN ALWAYS. The only thing that stops an engineer or a Kraut is a SPECIFIC COMMAND FROM ABOVE. Couldn't find a way? More ratshit. There's always a way to solve a problem like this. There may not be a cost-effective way; the solution may cost .0000005 cents per vehicle. Corporate bean-counters can't find a way to spend an extra .0000005 cents because spending an extra .0000005 cents may cause the CEO's bonus to slow down its annual acceleration by .0000005%, which is UNACCEPTABLE INTOLERABLE ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE. There's your fucking couldn't find a way, in every fucking case. Presumably Potsch is counting on another characteristic of both Krauts and engineers. Discretion, enforced by careerism and NDAs. He knows that any VW engineer who brings out facts or lab records to contradict his nonsense will be permanently unemployable. We see similar nonsense in connection with Trump's attempts to break up the usual Robust Debate with a little bit of truth. After he said that some Brit cities are 'no-go' zones for cops, the Brit establishment came down on him with a lead weight, as seen in UK Telegraph. Impossible! No such thing! Meanwhile, other Brit papers were quoting British police officials who had already said the exact same thing. Does the Telegraph assume nobody reads the Express? ¶ 6:00 AM
WPA abides
Now that I'm on a Manhattan history kick again, I started looking for web refs. Unsurprisingly the Kansas State Historical Society is still the best source of heavy documents and articles. The Riley County Museum has a moderately active page with occasional articles.
Sunset Zoo is highly active. The zoo has used social media to create a serious fanbase that knows all the animals by name. Smart! Built-in lobby for city funding.
Sunset Park, like most of Manhattan's visible infrastructure, was built by WPA. When I lived near there in the '60s, the zoo was badly maintained and deteriorating. Nobody would have bothered to name those raggedy animals. A family lived in a cottage on the grounds, taking care of the park and feeding the animals, with occasional intervention by the K-State vet med school. In the '70s K-State took more control, turning the zoo into more of a practicum site, and the city modernized the rest of the park. Even after lots of remodeling, the original WPA cages are still in use, unchanged since the '30s.
Probably for litigious reasons, the cleanup also removed the part of the zoo that was most interesting to kids:
The rides!
Kiwanis maintained this little amusement park and ran the rides on weekends in summer. There was no fence around the area, so I was always wandering and climbing when it wasn't in use. Mysteriously, I somehow survived and didn't feel the need to sue anyone. Obviously this was impossible. No kid could survive such a horrible experience.
The rides!
Kiwanis maintained this little amusement park and ran the rides on weekends in summer. There was no fence around the area, so I was always wandering and climbing when it wasn't in use. Mysteriously, I somehow survived and didn't feel the need to sue anyone. Obviously this was impossible. No kid could survive such a horrible experience.Labels: Danbo
¶ 5:22 AM
One correct, a million still wrong
For the first time in the history of "science", a study about human characteristics gets the chain of causation right! After 200 years of perfect wrongness, somebody accidentally mistypes the usual shit and publishes a FACT.
A study published on Wednesday in The Lancet, following one million middle-aged women in Britain for 10 years, finds that the widely held view that happiness enhances health and longevity is unfounded. “Happiness and related measures of well-being do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality,” the researchers concluded.Meanwhile, other social "scientists" still run merrily along the standard track of idiocy:
The authors of the latest research – led by Susan M. Resnick, the National Institutes of Health’s chief scientist on brain aging – attribute the long-term effects of negative attitudes toward aging to stress. Live long enough in the belief that older people are afflicted with physical, cognitive financial and even sexual woes, and the stress of believing you are marching toward the same end takes its toll.Nonsense. If you have a more negative image of aging, it's because you've SEEN** people aging badly. Unless you work in a nursing home, the people you SEE are YOUR RELATIVES. And if YOUR RELATIVES age badly, there's an increased chance that you will age badly. Hmm. This is an interesting possibility. I wonder if humans could be intrinsically DIFFERENT? I wonder if there's some mysterious way that parents could pass DIFFERENT characteristics to their kids, other than the scientifically proved way of choosing the correct Party-owned daycare and the correct Party-owned schools? Nah. No scientist has ever seen such a connection. Everyone knows that all humans are passive identical mechanisms, and the only way we can become different is through government-funded Party-approved training from birth to death. = = = = = **Sidenote: Aging badly is one of the very few subjects where the media are NOT an important influence, leaving direct perception as the sole input. TV spends very little time on this subject, and you won't find a lot of Facebook pages creating self-sustaining bubbles of delusion. There are all sorts of delusional subcultures based on race and gender and various diseases, but there isn't a subculture of teenagers who think they're 95 years old.
Labels: Blinded by Stats
¶ 3:39 AM
Tuesday, December 08, 2015
Here we go again /// EDIT: Not really.
Superstition: Showing the colors again.
Non-superstition: Got re-stocked on propane and canned food.
= = = = =
Next day:
All gassed up and no reason to cook. Thank God.
This was predicted to be a serious storm, possibly a rerun of the 11/17 killer. Turned out to be the default windy day. 25G35 with a brief 30G50 at the start. Noisy and a little scary but not worth panicking. One or two trees dropped, no major power outages. Not even a blink at my house. Worst outage was caused by some fucking idiot hitting a pole with a CAR.
If nothing else, this caused me to re-stock in a hurry, so I'm still prepared for the NEXT big one. I don't quite feel like saying YAY! .... maybe a yay will do.
Superstition: Showing the colors again.
Non-superstition: Got re-stocked on propane and canned food.
= = = = =
Next day:
All gassed up and no reason to cook. Thank God.
This was predicted to be a serious storm, possibly a rerun of the 11/17 killer. Turned out to be the default windy day. 25G35 with a brief 30G50 at the start. Noisy and a little scary but not worth panicking. One or two trees dropped, no major power outages. Not even a blink at my house. Worst outage was caused by some fucking idiot hitting a pole with a CAR.
If nothing else, this caused me to re-stock in a hurry, so I'm still prepared for the NEXT big one. I don't quite feel like saying YAY! .... maybe a yay will do.Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 2:50 PM
Another Orwell domino flipped
Orwell was not a technology expert. He was a supreme expert on human nature and the use of language and culture by tyrants. In designing his dystopia he threw in some tech stuff but didn't think about it deeply. Specifically, the telescreen was dubious because total surveillance via telescreen would require one full-time spy per citizen, or three spies working 8-hour shifts. Dictatorships are always willing to support huge spy agencies, but this degree of imbalance between spies and workers would have been economically impractical.
But we've made tremendous "progress" since 1948, and finally we have a SPECIFIC proposal for the telescreen by a company that can make it happen. More precisely, we can be sure the company has ALREADY made it happen.
"We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media - sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment. We should target social accounts for terrorist groups like the Islamic State, and remove videos before they spread, or help those countering terrorist messages to find their voice.NSA has been working on this for 30 years, so we can be sure it's already in place. Now the Google division of NSA will make money from it through various forms of blackmail. The latter part still runs beyond Orwell. He didn't foresee government surveillance as a profit-making venture by government contractors posing as "business". CS Lewis did. = = = = = A bit later: Trump has said EXACTLY THE SAME THING as Schmidt. All the usual suspects are thoughtfully stroking their chins and saying "Yes Sir Mr Schmidt! We hear and we obey! Shut down all hate NOW! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" In response to the same proposal from Trump, the very same usual suspects are saying "christ! trump is hilarious that bloody idiot we have to go see bill gate about closing up that internet what is he 4? oh wait thats his iq." [Direct quote from typical Arstechnica commenter.] Hmm. I wonder why the EXACT SAME PROPOSAL is "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" when Eric Schmidt proposes it, but "wait thats his iq" when Trump proposes it? I can't hope to answer this total mystery. Can't even begin to parse the difference between these two men. Must be something, but it's utterly beyond me.
Labels: Asked and answered
¶ 3:34 AM
Monday, December 07, 2015
Think it might rain? Nah.
Sure cure
An instant cure for a large part of USA STRONG's satanic infinite evil:
Total strike by all police until the evil is halted.
Conditions to end the strike: No more TV "news" aiding and abetting Sharpton, no more encouragement of cop-killing by the Feds, no more "investigations" every time a cop DOES HIS JOB PROPERLY.
The general strike would require total surprise to be effective. The Chosen don't need government-paid police for their own safety because they have huge armies of private security forces. But they do need to travel on streets that aren't piled 80 feet high with dead bodies. If the cops give the Chosen a week of warning, the Chosen would be able to move into their offshore bunkers before the piled bodies make it impossible for armored SUVs to travel at their expected and entitled 220 MPH speeds. The cowcatchers would get jammed up, requiring frequent stops to pressure-hose the bones and livers and brain fragments of Negative Externalities. Highly inconvenient.
¶ 9:11 AM
Ignorant stupid thoughts
As fucking usual. The idiot UK government stopped performing normal infrastructure duties, stopped doing THE ONE FUCKING THING A GOVT SHOULD BE DOING. Result: Lots of damage from a flood.
How do governments get away with it? Because flooding is now a religious question. They can now blame Our Manifold Sins Against Gaia, not their own wild murderous negligence. They can lay off the repair costs onto Evil Petroleum Companies Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch. No need to prepare, no need to prevent, no need to warn the Negative Externalities. A few thousand non-respirating Negative Externalities means less CO2 being pumped out by Evil Humans Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch Koch.
Waaaaaay back in the primitive unenlightened neanderthal past, before we SCIENTIFICALLY understood that all weather arises from Our Manifold Iniquities And Sins, we had the strange ignorant superstition that mysterious magic thingamajigs called "Dams" and "Levees" and "Overflow Channels" would protect us against floods, and we had another superstitious pseudobelief that strange devices called "Sirens" and "Radios" could be used to warn Negative Externalities when an emergency was approaching.
Now that we are enlightened and SCIENTIFIC, we are rapidly obliterating all of those primitive useless superstitious devices, and we are using the "Radios" solely to warn people when a biological P____t is attempting to repossess her child from State Control. The continued horrible existence of biological P____ts is so filthy that we appropriately call these warnings Piss Alerts or something like that.
= = = = =
Nevertheless, you can see how those absurd primitives came to acquire the infantile superstition that Dams Work. Here's a map of Manhattan's floods, taken from this PDF by Kansas Historical Society.
The text lists major floods in 1903, 1908, 1935, and 1951. No damage since then. We've had plenty of major rain events since 1951. Rivers still flood when there's too much rain. But for some inexplicable reason the floods are no longer damaging cities. What made the difference? In the primitive minds of the unenlightened, it was those bizarre Dams and Levees that our primitive government built after 1951. Ha ha ha ha ha. How could they possibly think such ignorant stupid thoughts?
The text lists major floods in 1903, 1908, 1935, and 1951. No damage since then. We've had plenty of major rain events since 1951. Rivers still flood when there's too much rain. But for some inexplicable reason the floods are no longer damaging cities. What made the difference? In the primitive minds of the unenlightened, it was those bizarre Dams and Levees that our primitive government built after 1951. Ha ha ha ha ha. How could they possibly think such ignorant stupid thoughts?Labels: Asked and answered, Carbon Cult
¶ 3:08 AM
Sunday, December 06, 2015
Counties
The San Berdoo mass shooting was in a COUNTY GOVERNMENT facility, by a COUNTY employee.
A month earlier, two COUNTY sheriffs (Seattle and Spokane) ordered all their deputies to start carrying their sidearms at all times. Clearly responding to info not publicly available.
Counties are the last governmental entity with some degree of independence. States have been completely emasculated by Federal money and power, and cities are being neutered by Bloomberg's money. Clearly somebody has decided it's time to clip the counties. I doubt that ISIS "headquarters" in Syria has a strong feeling about American counties.
¶ 3:22 AM
Poor old Satan
Booker reports that Maurice Strong has finally removed his unspeakably monstrous presence from The Planet. Strong was not directly active in recent years. He invented and cultivated TOTAL GENOCIDE, an idea that continues to kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill the poor, and continues to enrich and enrich and enrich and enrich and enrich the Chosen.
A wonderful day for Earth, more work for poor overburdened Satan. Need to build yet another special Circle for yet another unprecedented level of infinite x infinite x infinite evil.
Broader thought.... There have been thousands of locally destructive ideas and impulses. Thousands of psychopathic rulers have made local wars and genocides to increase personal power or riches for the ruler and his family or buddies.
In all of history there are only TWO globally destructive ideas. One is the basic leftist insistence that ALL HUMANS ARE IDENTICAL. This has done more generalized harm than any other idea, and continues to kill wherever it's adopted. The other is Strong's Carbon Cult, which has infected nearly all governments and cultural institutions. The Carbon Cult EXPLICITLY AND OPENLY intends to kill ALL humans. Except, of course, for the Chosen, who will enjoy a robot-powered paradise on a new planet after all the Negative Externalities are eradicated.
Booker reports that Maurice Strong has finally removed his unspeakably monstrous presence from The Planet. Strong was not directly active in recent years. He invented and cultivated TOTAL GENOCIDE, an idea that continues to kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill the poor, and continues to enrich and enrich and enrich and enrich and enrich the Chosen.
A wonderful day for Earth, more work for poor overburdened Satan. Need to build yet another special Circle for yet another unprecedented level of infinite x infinite x infinite evil.
Broader thought.... There have been thousands of locally destructive ideas and impulses. Thousands of psychopathic rulers have made local wars and genocides to increase personal power or riches for the ruler and his family or buddies.
In all of history there are only TWO globally destructive ideas. One is the basic leftist insistence that ALL HUMANS ARE IDENTICAL. This has done more generalized harm than any other idea, and continues to kill wherever it's adopted. The other is Strong's Carbon Cult, which has infected nearly all governments and cultural institutions. The Carbon Cult EXPLICITLY AND OPENLY intends to kill ALL humans. Except, of course, for the Chosen, who will enjoy a robot-powered paradise on a new planet after all the Negative Externalities are eradicated.Labels: Carbon Cult
¶ 2:02 AM
Surprising!
A hugely surprising academic "study" of education in Norway!
Well, let's qualify that. Nothing IN the study is surprising. Everything agrees with reality. What's truly surprising is that a study agreeing with reality got PUBLISHED instead of quietly shelved.
Now researchers have checked the grades of more than a hundred thousand students in Norwegian secondary schools to look for a correlation with teacher competence. Their findings might surprise you. Length of education, grades and years of professional experience among teachers—none of them appear to guarantee strong student achievement.Doesn't surprise me.
The only variable that researchers found to have a positive effect was the length of time teachers had worked at the same school. This particularly affected the mathematics grades. For each additional decade teachers had worked at the school, students' grades increased somewhat. So this was only a weak correlation, Schøne said.Doesn't surprise me. If you stay in a profession, it means you're competent AND getting intrinsic pleasure from the profession. Intrinsic pleasure for a teacher is the positive delta of the students. When you see those AHAs dawning fairly often, you stay around. If you're not connecting with the kids, you won't get many AHAs. This effect can be halted by educrats who won't allow you to do what's needed... but in a tight well-disciplined ethnically simple society like Norway, I suspect discipline isn't the major problem.
There was also a strong positive relationship between parental education and children's achievement. Students who had at least one parent with a college education got better grades than students with parents who had only primary or secondary school educations. A previous study showed that primary school grades also depend on the parents' education. The study concluded that social inequalities in Norwegian schools are on the rise.In other words, GENES COUNT. And it sounds like Norway is losing its ethnic simplicity, thanks to satanic EU Open Borders. The "study" can't acknowledge the existence of genes, of course, but the reality still comes through.
Labels: Experiential education
¶ 1:48 AM
Saturday, December 05, 2015
Cave gas
During the week of shivery darkness I accumulated a need to MAKE.
Nothing in the electronic realm struck my fancy, so I returned to a graphics project that had been waiting for a long time. Continuing a series enshrining obscure landmarks that nobody else seems to have noticed.
This is a gas station in a cave. I explored it in 1965 when I was wandering around Manhattan. At that time the bluff had already collapsed the inside of the structure and was starting to override the front, so I doubt that it lasted much longer. From the style, and from a few car parts that were visible on shelves inside, I guessed it had been built in the '20s.
The station was near the south end of a bluff along (what is now) Rosencutter Road, about 3 miles SW of Manhattan. This road had been a fairly important entrance to Manhattan from the south, justifying a little community near the bridge with a few businesses. After the '51 flood broke the bridge and ruined several buildings, the community faded. The station's condition in '65 seemed consistent with abandonment in '51.
A blinkyGIF made from two USGS topo maps. The older one (contours all red) was nominally dated 1950, which seems about right from street details in town. The bridge was present on this map. The newer one (contours red and green) was nominally dated 1955, but its streets and houses are somewhere between 1965 and 1970. Bridge was gone, and road beyond the bridge was also gone. When I explored in '65, the bridge structure was still there but closed and unusable. The newer map was drawn more carefully, showing more of the houses and landmarks that had always been there. It shows the cave gas station. (Brief arrow.)
In my digital version I've tried to 'liven up' the station with a couple of fictional additions. The doors and windows and pump island are drawn from memory, or as close as I can get after 50 years. The arch is purely imaginary. Arches are typical of well-built cave structures, which this one wasn't. There may have been some kind of arch that had already collapsed; more likely the structure relied on a heavy straight-across lintel like a mine adit. I've also included an office room and greasepit ... and I've used warm colors for a completely non-mysterious reason!
Jan 24: Finally released the set in Poser form, on ShareCG.
This is a gas station in a cave. I explored it in 1965 when I was wandering around Manhattan. At that time the bluff had already collapsed the inside of the structure and was starting to override the front, so I doubt that it lasted much longer. From the style, and from a few car parts that were visible on shelves inside, I guessed it had been built in the '20s.
The station was near the south end of a bluff along (what is now) Rosencutter Road, about 3 miles SW of Manhattan. This road had been a fairly important entrance to Manhattan from the south, justifying a little community near the bridge with a few businesses. After the '51 flood broke the bridge and ruined several buildings, the community faded. The station's condition in '65 seemed consistent with abandonment in '51.
A blinkyGIF made from two USGS topo maps. The older one (contours all red) was nominally dated 1950, which seems about right from street details in town. The bridge was present on this map. The newer one (contours red and green) was nominally dated 1955, but its streets and houses are somewhere between 1965 and 1970. Bridge was gone, and road beyond the bridge was also gone. When I explored in '65, the bridge structure was still there but closed and unusable. The newer map was drawn more carefully, showing more of the houses and landmarks that had always been there. It shows the cave gas station. (Brief arrow.)
In my digital version I've tried to 'liven up' the station with a couple of fictional additions. The doors and windows and pump island are drawn from memory, or as close as I can get after 50 years. The arch is purely imaginary. Arches are typical of well-built cave structures, which this one wasn't. There may have been some kind of arch that had already collapsed; more likely the structure relied on a heavy straight-across lintel like a mine adit. I've also included an office room and greasepit ... and I've used warm colors for a completely non-mysterious reason!
Jan 24: Finally released the set in Poser form, on ShareCG.Labels: Make or break, new toy
¶ 4:21 PM
More sonic meteors?
Interesting set of inputs on the Spokane-News facebook page, which is the ONLY source of actual local news.
Several people report hearing gunshots or fireworks at the same time. If they were in the same neighborhood, you could assume it was gunshots or fireworks. Or a repeatedly backfiring car, which can be much louder than gunshots. But they're all over town, and each of them says the sound was close by.
A couple years ago there was a similar set of "close everywhere" booms. Those were definitely traced to a large meteorite that passed over Spokane and fell somewhere in Montana.
¶ 2:28 AM
One good thing
It's clear from actions, not words, that USA STRONG is finally cooperating with Russia. Kerry appears to understand that our maximal infinite evil has been overpowered by a sane country with an equal number of nukes, and is allowing sanity to prevail. (I doubt that Kerry sees the two sides as evil and sane. Doesn't matter as long as he's DOING sane things.)
Headline 1: U.S. puts request for bigger Turkish air role on hold
Headline 2: Kerry: Syrian Rebels, Govt Could Cooperate against ISIS without Assad's Ouster.
Meanwhile, the public voice of our "government" continues to bash Russia, continues to claim that Russia is obeying our infinite evil. Who are they fooling? They're still fooling the mediasatans and the mindless R and D partisans, but nobody else.
Labels: STRONG!, Гром победы
¶ 2:13 AM
Friday, December 04, 2015
What's really important
Oswald goes to Russia and returns with a wife provided by KGB.
Farouk goes to Saudi and returns with a wife provided by ISIS.
Does this pattern suggest anything?
No, of course not. Infinitely better to have a BILLION innocent people killed than to provide even ONE loyal wife to an UNACCEPTABLE male. The principle of UNACCEPTABILITY is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE UNIVERSE. INFINITELY more important than mere survival of civilization. How could you even MENTION
¶ 5:01 AM
¶ 5:01 AM
And just to illustrate.....
Immediately after writing about the Closed-Form dream, I bumped into this article on Common Core math, illustrating the point perfectly.
EXTREMELY well-written article in the Raleigh News-Observer. Catches both sides of the argument fully and objectively. Best news article I've ever read on an educational topic.
Pro CC from an academic:
The need for the standards and the new approaches to learning math are obvious not just because the U.S. isn’t doing as well as other countries but because employers say workers lack needed skills. Jobs require workers to know math and collaborate to solve practical problems, said Ron Preston, an associate professor at East Carolina University and president of the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “The answers won’t be in the back of the book when you’re out there in the workplace.”EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. Pro CC from a teacher:
Dana Snapp, a fifth-grade teacher at Fuquay-Varina Elementary School, has students sit in groups of four to talk about multiplying with decimals. The students talk to each other and write out their answers to a problem that demonstrates that multiplying by one-tenth is the same as dividing by 10. “Before, what we had was algorithms, formulas, ways of computing numbers but not necessarily understanding what you are doing with the numbers,” she said. “I think that made it really difficult when they got to higher-level math, like algebra, for instance, when they had to do abstract math but didn’t understand how the numbers worked. It was difficult for me to learn at first, too. I can see now that the kids get it. When they get it, it’s more solid, and they don’t lose it.”EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. When you master reality first, you are prepared for reality. When you master the notation, you are prepared for the notation. And anti CC from pure Cognoscenti:
A state group... called the Academic Standards Review Commission has before it a recommendation – written by one of its work groups – to dump Common Core math. The commission is set to vote on its final report in December. “Excessive use of so-called models or visual methods of calculation is detrimental to the attainment of speed and accuracy in standard calculations since they are inherently inefficient,” the draft states. They are useful to get the concepts across or for easy mental calculations." In the upper grades, algebra, geometry, statistics and other disciplines are combined and taught in an integrated fashion over three courses. The commission is considering separating them again. Students would go back to taking two algebra courses and one geometry course.Jesus. Nasty-ass fuckheads. Let's stop doing what succeeds and go back to our dearly beloved massive failure. Let's stop giving kids a chance to "work" at non-math-professor "jobs", whatever those alien things might be. Math teaching is solely meant to prepare math professors, and pre-college math is solely meant to select out the Negative Externalities who won't make it through a postdoc. What happens to those Negative Externalities after they're selected out is none of our concern. Presumably they will do Negative Externality stuff, whatever that is. We don't have notation for such stuff. Finally, Cognoscenti doing what Cognoscenti do best:
Scheick, who led the Common Core math review, has refused twice since this summer to talk about how the recommendations were developed. Commission members decided earlier this year to refer questions to the two commission chairmen. Scheick declined to answer questions about the math recommendations after the commission’s public meeting in November, and after the chairmen said he could talk. “The News & Observer is harassing us with these public records requests,” Scheick said. “This conversation is over.”Lowered eyes, pursed lips, imperceptible shake of the head.
Labels: Experiential education
¶ 2:37 AM
Precisely circular dream
I was working on electronic stuff with a set of Euros. Precise genderless Scandinavian humanoids with precisely shaved heads and precisely circular glasses. People who had mastered the notation. They could analyze a circuit effortlessly and instantly with Curl and Del, reduce it to a Closed-Form Solution, while I was struggling with direct measurements and raw algebra.
When I asked them a question, they answered the same way Cognoscenti always answer my questions: not with words but with the Closed-Form Non-Answer. Pursed lips, lowered eyelids, imperceptible shake of the head. The Closed-Form Non-Answer says three things: (1) You don't need to know the answer. (2) I am protecting the answer from your Outsider Ears, which would sully the waves by receiving them. (3) You don't even need to know that I am protecting the answer, because you are Shit.
As I was barraged by this only too familiar process of Closed-Form Exclusion, a question took form in my mind. Okay, Euros, you've mastered the notation. You can handle your precisely shaved reality without thinking. How come you can't see why the EU is evil? How come you were totally surprised and blindsided by those migrants? How come every event is a Swan Of Colour for you?
I may be slow and sullied, but I'll keep my direct measurements and raw algebra. I'm not surprised nearly as often as you are.
Needless to say, the dream applies to the Cognoscenti species everywhere, not just Swedes and Danes.
= = = = =
Immediate followup.
= = = = =
Later sidenote: I'm unfair to the Danes, who are showing common sense, continuing their long arms-length relationship to EU. My dream-scripter runs behind the curve on current news.
Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 1:42 AM
Thursday, December 03, 2015
Why didn't I think of this 40 years ago?
Before 1940 American cars had a handbrake lever that was easy to manipulate with one hand, making it a suitable substitute for the footbrake when the hydraulics failed. Euro cars continued with hand levers, which became even handier when mounted between bucket seats. After 1980 Americans finally relearned the correct form.
In the '40s and early '50s American cars had various types of under-dash pull levers, which were unusable for emergency braking. From the late '50s through the '70s, most had a pedal with a release lever. This was usable exactly once, unless you were quick enough to reach down and hold the release lever up.
There would have been a simple way to restore the function. Screw a clasp-type gate latch under the dash, positioned to grab the release rod when you pull it up. The release lever then remains 'open' during driving, so you could use the parking brake pedal easily for hydraulic failure or fancy tricks. When you want to park, just hit the release lever downward out of the clasp, and apply the pedal.
Why didn't I think of this in the '70s when I owned some American cars with bad hydraulics? Would have prevented a lot of close calls. Too late now.
= = = = =
Later, a much more practical why didn't. When running laundry, I normally use the sofa in the living room as a sort of clothesline. Pull out a sheet early so it won't tangle up the rest of the stuff in the dryer, spread out the sheet across the sofa. Airflow on both sides. This morning I was drying a flannel contour sheet this way, and decided for some reason to pull the corners across the top of the couch. Better stretching. After it had dried, I realized: The same sofa can help to FOLD the bloody stupid contour sheet. Leave the first two corners on the back, bring up the other two, pull them across the same points. Presto! The otherwise impossible first step is done. The sheet can then be held straight and folded. Sort of. It's still sloppy compared to "proper" methods, but at least it's better than my usual total crumple.
= = = = =
Addendum: Apparently Cadillac had a "proper" method in the '60s and '70s. The ratchet would lock when the shift lever was in P or N, but stayed released when in DLR. So it was usable when the hydraulics failed, or usable for skid-turns by Bob Bondurant High Security Chauffeurs.
¶ 11:54 AM
Tuesday, December 01, 2015
No largesse here
I've constantly pushed back on the idiot 47% Moochers Takers Voting Largesse From The Public Treasury shit, the idea that people vote mainly to get subsidies from government. Life doesn't work that way. People don't want gifts and freedom. People want jobs and security. When jobs increase, voters are happy. When jobs decrease, unhappy. An unexpected pushback in a normally Randian website reminded me of the 47 shit. The columnist is reaching a poor conclusion but still pushing in the right direction.
Another indication that people aren't looking for subsidies:
The local branch of FEMA is trying to get reports of damage from last month's windstorm, so it can file more effectively for government subsidies. A few pennies may accidentally reach local people, though that's highly unlikely based on past performance. Mostly a few superrich supersatanic NGOs like Red Cross will get richer.
For the first two weeks the county says they were in the life safety mode and trying to do what they could to assist citizens. Now they are asking people to report wind damage to find out if the county qualifies for federal aid. Emergency Management needs to have reports of any damages to homes or businesses to know if Spokane county has enough damage to meet the minimum qualification of twenty-five homes or businesses affected, in order to be eligible for FEMA assistance. "I have no doubt that we have more than 25 affected," says Gerry Bozarth, Disaster Recovery Manager, "because I have a list of seventeen right here so far and we really haven't gotten the word out yet."They've received SEVENTEEN reports. Think about that. Let's think numerically. In the course of my daily walks I cover about 40 blocks. My path varies, but stays within these 40 blocks. Each block has about 24 houses along both sides. So I see the same 1000 houses each week, and unconsciously keep track of those houses by natural territoriality. I spot deltas, know which houses are normally declining and which are suddenly damaged. This part of town was NOT badly hit by last month's wind. Only 3 trees dropped, and only one house slightly damaged by a tree. (Compared to 30 trees down and 8 squashed houses in the July 2014 wind.) Even so, about 5 houses on each block have lost shingles, ranging from a few to nearly the whole roof. Correlation seems to be: any roof panel that faced south or west, and was more than 10 years old, lost shingles. New-looking shingles held up much better. 5 on each block x 40 blocks = 200 roofs that will need some shingles. Already over the FEMA threshold just within my little ambit. If we blindly apply this proportion across the rest of town, we get 20,000 households that "should be" clamoring for subsidies. But we have SEVENTEEN, not 20k.
Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 3:36 PM
Don't advise on confusion if you're confused
Steven Pinker, until now a pretty good popularizer of philosophy and cognition, has ventured into a realm that he doesn't understand.
His new book lists a bunch of "misused and confused words" and tells us to start using them CORRECTLY.
Nope. You're the confused one, Stevie boy. You've failed to understand how language works. And since language is a crucial part of cognition, you've LOST THE RIGHT to call yourself a cognitive SCIENTIST.
If an electrical engineer wrote a book about how cars CORRECTLY run on rabbit fur instead of gasoline, we'd stop calling him any kind of engineer.
If a surgeon wrote a book claiming that humans CORRECTLY have five heads, and advising readers to get four new heads installed for improved health, we'd stop calling him any kind of doctor.
Exactly the same level of error, same depth of stupidity.
Actual linguists have NEVER made this basic mistake. They have ALWAYS understood that meaning and sound and syntax change in various ways, and have spent 200 years carefully mapping HOW AND WHY these changes occur. Linguists sometimes adopt dubious theories about a specific HOW AND WHY, but they generally fix those dubious theories after more observation. They NEVER assume that one form or style is CORRECT. In other words, linguists are among the very few GENUINE SCIENTISTS in today's hopelessly fucked world.
The UK Telegraph article repeatedly describes Pinker as a "linguist", which is blasphemy. Misusing an occupational title is not a question of form or style or grammar; it's a legal distinction similar to fraud or trademark abuse, though probably not actionable.
Labels: Language update
¶ 4:49 AM
