German word for Insatiable
Saw this picture at Spokane News. An old Lincoln draped over the top of a guard rail after a wild chase. The driver bailed and ran, and the K9 caught him.

Driver's name is Wegleitner. I crudely translated that as road-conductor, but it turns out that Leitner has a much more specific meaning than Leiter. According to a genealogy website, Leitner means "dude who lives on top of a hill", and Wegleitner is "dude who lives on a road at the top of a hill." Perfect.

Urban Dictionary claims that Leitner has an even more precise connotation. I've never heard the word used in English, so it's possible that some of this is parody:

Leitner: meaning one who lives on the hill in German, Leitners are usually found in rich towns in big houses. Those lucky enough to befriend them know that they are caring, loyal, and just all-around amazing. They are natural leaders and will not back down from a challenge. Will destroy those who have the courage, or stupidity, to challenge them. Have women (the guys), and men (the girls) falling all over them.

On the dot. Insatiables as seen by other Insatiables. Bonus for Sailerish observation that Insatiables live on hilltops.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Language update

  ¶ 2:46 PM

  Other way?
When I was writing the satirical piece on eliminating all streets with South in their name, I looked at a 1940 map of Ponca to see if there was a quick way to illustrate the point. Decided it wasn't worth the trouble, but then got an unexpected bonus:



Did Ponca go the other way? Rename North Ave to Overbrook? Further examination showed that North wasn't the specific target. The city planners were just normalizing the grid so that each latitude and longitude had one street name. Developers had chosen their own names for streets, and it's easier to get around when you can count on one name per latitude. This works best with numbered streets, or alphabetical or presidential names, but it still helps with non-sequential names. When you see Overbrook, you know you're between Summit and Roosevelt.

Whoops! The same planners DIDN'T extend the Roosevelt name to cover Greenwood.



You can see how Overbrook was pulled over to normalize North, Illegible, and Edison; but Roosevelt wasn't pulled over to normalize Greenwood. Both names remain today.

Still doesn't indicate a pattern. If the Overbrook pull indicated a desire to wipe Yankee crap from the map, the planners should have pulled Greenwood to erase Roosevelt, and they shouldn't have extended Albany to cover Illegible.

More likely the planners were retaining names of streets that were already settled, and renaming new or sparse streets. Simply minimizing inconvenience.
  ¶ 12:06 AM

  Preparing?
Been a LOT of low-flying helicopters over this part of town in the last two or three weeks. No major wildfires near Spokane, so they're not doing splash duty. Preparing and drilling for Operation Slam-Dunk to slay the basket?

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter

  ¶ 10:48 AM

  Snowflakes that shit on my nose and eyelashes
ZH features the latest snowflake idiocy. A Korean-origin announcer named Robert Lee was pulled from a Virginia sport game because people might think he's a long-dead Confederate General.

What will ESPN do when it comes time to hold their annual year-long celebration of Stonewall, the 1969 event that turned ordinary homosexuals living ordinary lives into lethal weapons for the Left?

Will they have to rename it to Rock Fence? Oops, fences are TROLL TRUMP HITLER. For that matter, Stonewall was already hopelessly profane by association with NIXON TROLL TRUMP HITLER.

If you want to get technical and linguisty, Koreans who use Lee as the English spelling aren't really named Lee at all. The actual Korean name is just ee, sometimes pronounced as Yee. The L is typically added because EE or I is confusing in English.

The logical end of this idiocy is total si.....

WHOOPS!

SILENCE IS VIOLENCE!



= = = = =

Later idenote: Hit! I jut realized the tremendou tak awaiting all nowflake. We need to rip up 1/4 of all the treet in UA TRONG becaue 1/4 of all the treet begin with the obcene and unpeakable word OUTH. And after we finih that job, we mut eliminate the letter _ from the language ENTIRELY becaue the letter _ remind people of the unpeakable direction on the compa. Then we mut rewrite all GP oftware o the GP never direct people to drive _____ward. Needle to ay, I have already fulfilled the requirement of directional purity in thi idenote. No inconitency or herey i permiible!!!!!

Phae 2: Intruction to the Godde Gaia. The following are Afe And Correct Nowflake:



You mut intantly ceae production of Oldthink Unafe Nowflake. From now on all nowtorm mut conit olely of Newthink Afe Nowflake. Thi will alo olve Climate Change, becaue it i obviou that the _____ part of any object i warm. Licing off the hot _____ ide, leaving only the cool North ide, will top Warming in it track.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter

  ¶ 7:08 AM

  Se-lu 6, HP edition
My cheap HP 'all-in-one' printer started giving a Print Cartridge Error message. At first it halted after printing a few lines, then it wouldn't print at all. Persisted for several days.

Tried all the online hints, which are basically the standard Unplug and Plug In Again. Unplug the power, unplug the USB, unplug the cartridges. Replaced both cartridges with new. None of it helped.

Time for se-lu. LOOSEN YOURSELF.

Instead of sticking with the usual, I started piddling around, doing things that couldn't possibly have any connection to the problem. The little useless touch-screen on the front of the printer has some arrows and a red X and an OK. I tapped all of them randomly for a few minutes.

Presto. Tried to print, and it worked. Tried several more pages, still good.

Se-lu = so-lu-tus = solution.

= = = = =

Best guess: The memory in the printer's onboard CPU must have been stuck in some kind of improper mode which couldn't be changed via software commands. The manual controls loosened the stuck bits.

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 4:01 AM

  Maduro's elevator pitch while the elevator plummets
Maduro is making a last-ditch effort to defend his regime. Sounds like he's attempting to form ties with BRICS, and hoping to keep his people with him when USA STRONG attacks, as it surely will. Now that Trump is fully and enthusiastically owned by Deepstate, nothing can stop the obliteration machine.

Russia hasn't been friendly to Maduro, and doesn't seem impressed by the speech.

Maduro makes a few strong points:

Venezuela has never attacked or invaded anyone. Narrowly true. Venezuela has been disputing the eastern border with Guyana for 200 years, but the dispute never expanded into a real war. Similarly with the western border with Colombia.

His regime has followed the rules of "democracy". Mostly true, and overall better than USA STRONG's commitment to "democracy". Maduro holds elections and allows most of the results to stand.

Now he wants to expand the economy to include more than oil. This point is deeply annoying. As I've discussed before, Chavez and Maduro have run the country into the ground by Graybill's Law.

Venezuela has a tremendous variety of natural resources. Minerals, valuable crops like coffee and cocoa, valuable and unique types of wood, and oil. Previous governments were more self-sufficient, developing all the resources and all the skills needed to make value from the resources. When you make lots of different things, nobody can pin you down.

Chavez and Maduro got lazy and chummy with Exxon, letting everything else decline. When you let a globalist corporation run things, you're trapped. The corporation can smash you any time it wants, and Exxon has done just that.

It may be too late to follow Brazil's example of self-sufficiency.

Even so, the speech is a noble effort. Maduro is pleading humbly for forgiveness.

Will he pull away from globalism and become a fit ally for the independent side? Based on long habits of dependence, it's not likely, but I wouldn't blame the people for giving him a chance.

= = = = =

Relevant footnote: Looking again at the source of info on Venezuela's exports in earlier decades. Here's coffee in 1898:



V was second after Brazil. More appropriate comparison, V was producing three times as much as similar-sized Colombia.

Now current rankings:



V is now 26th instead of 2nd, and is now producing 1/27 of Colombia instead of 3 times Colombia. That's an 81-fold reduction. Couldn't ask for a better illustration of Graybill.

= = = = =

Irrelevant metrology footnote: In the same book, a peculiar usage in the section on climate:



DEGREES AND MINUTES OF TEMPERATURE! Clearly an inappropriate transfer from angles. It's doubly out of place in the tyrannically decimal metric system. The writer uses the minutes casually, so it must have been a common habit. /// Later: No, those aren't even proper minutes. If you're going to use minutes and seconds, you can't have 67 minutes. The author or typesetter must have been misusing the minute mark to represent decimals.

Another table lists the length of rivers in kilometers and the drainage area in square leagues. Equally inappropriate.

Labels: Make or break, Metrology, skill-estate

  ¶ 2:15 PM

  Aberree and CIA, sort of
A letter in the Nov 1955 Aberree mentions something written in another para-Hubbard journal:



Relevant text: The vague reference to a 'person or persons unknown' feeding insanity-producing drugs, especially that tidbit of the psychiatrist of 'russian origin'...

Since this is a vague reference to a vague reference, it's hard to place in context, but the date and flavor lead me to think that rumors of MKULTRA were circulating in offbeat parts of the culture. MKULTRA was going strong in late '55. The 'russian origin' strengthens the CIA connection since CIA has ALWAYS attributed its demonic evil to 'russian origin'.

Labels: Aberree

  ¶ 2:34 AM

  Null politics
I still get emails from Repooflicans because I supported the party from '96 to '06. This email from Chris Vance, former head eunuch of the Wash State Eunuch Repoofs, is a new form of nullity, a new form of politics based on delusion:

There has been a mountain of words written in recent years — and particularly since the 2016 election — about the dysfunctional state of U.S. politics. All the data shows voters are fed up with both parties, Donald Trump and the status quo. I haven’t been alone in speculating that some new third force must inevitably emerge.

Well, I am here to report that it already has.

The Centrist Project invited me to attend its first “Pioneers Summit,” held last weekend in Philadelphia. This is a Political Action Committee focused on winning elections ....

Already lost me. Centrist is meaningless, and there's no point in winning elections unless you're going to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. But I kept reading...

I was one of roughly 50 people in attendance. There were nationally known media figures such as William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, Michael Smerconish of CNN, Joe Avlon of the Daily Beast and Matthew Dowd of ABC News. There were a handful of top-flight political professionals, both former Republicans and former Democrats. There was a cadre of major donors who clearly had the capacity to give and raise significant money. We heard from one of the leading organizers of Emmanuel Macron’s victorious independent campaign in France.

Kristol, Smerconish, MACRON?????

Jesus. These are not "independents", they're perfectly standard traditional globalist neocons. They're Repoofs and Democrats. Bush and Clinton.

We already have FOUR neocon globalist parties. Repoof, Dem, Libertarian, Green. The latter two pretended to be "independent" and then officially endorsed Hillary.

We don't need a FIFTH neocon globalist party, and we don't need a THIRD fake "independent" Clinton organization.

As mentioned many times, here's what we need:

Radical NYCectomy, radical DCectomy. Nothing less will do.
  ¶ 11:38 PM

  Politics of nullity
Continuing from previous.

Last year fashionable idiots replaced their Facebook icons with rainbow shit, in honor of trans nonsense. This year fashionable idiots are replacing their Facebook icons with a No-Swastika thing, to oppose fake "neo-Nazis", who were built by the same Sorosian forces that are building the symbolizers.

In other words the fashionable idiots have switched from FAVORING a non-existent thing to OPPOSING a non-existent thing.

There's nothing wrong with being a fan of a fictional character or thing. You can represent yourself as a fan of Betty Boop or Doctor Who or Downton Abbey. Those fandoms may get intense but everyone understands the subject is fictional.

This is different. These fans are creating ACTUAL TYRANNY and ruining ACTUAL LIVES with their support and opposition of nonexistent entities. They are ganging up on people who prefer reality, and governments are cultivating and assisting the gang warfare.

Oh. Sudden realization. This has become a religious dispute, not a political dispute. Catholic vs Protestant, Sunni vs Shia, Calvinist vs Arminian.

Well, no. That's not right. Those older religious disputes are between two groups that ACTUALLY FOLLOW different versions of the scriptures.

In this new dispute the warmakers are targeting and persecuting people who are BELIEVED to be against trans or BELIEVED to be for neo-Nazis, even though the targets have no connection at all with the fictional items. "Silence is violence." Your lack of opinion on the subject convicts you.

It's like Catholics fighting Hindus because they think the Hindus are Protestants, or Shia fighting Buddhists because they think the Buddhists are Sunni.

It's CRIMINALLY INSANE. That's all.

(Pretty sure I made this same point before in a different context, but it's not worth trying to find the earlier version.)
  ¶ 3:19 PM

  Non-barking dogs
For the first time ever, I'm using the tired cliche literally!

Right now is the 'peak' of the eclipse here. Nothing dramatic, just looks sort of hazy, which is common in wildfire season. If I hadn't been reading about it, I wouldn't think anything was unusual.

I've been keeping my ears open in case dogs or squirrels or birds are talking about it. Not a peep or a chirp or a bark or a b'gawk. Dogs barked at the mailman to verify their existence, but otherwise quiet.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Zero Problems

  ¶ 10:28 AM

  Graybill and transportation
Reviewing Graybill's Law:

The people of Free-Trade countries are therefore driven into the few occupations which are left, by reason of the destruction of their formerly more varied pursuits. Hence those diversified talents with which men are endowed are not developed but remain latent and unused, an incalculable detriment to the prosperity of their respective countries.

I've applied this to currencies and resources.

It also applies to modes of transportation. When a city or country is self-sufficient and self-contained, it develops a WIDE VARIETY of everything. Skills, resources, ways of getting around, newspapers, anything you name. Having a wide variety of transportation and services makes it possible to KEEP a wide variety of people employed and paid, which makes it possible to KEEP a wide variety of transportation and services running.

When globalism CLAMPS down, each city and country is required to perform exactly ONE service or provide exactly ONE resource. Everything CLAMPS down to serve the ONE purpose.

= = = = =

Small towns always built more than one way of getting around. Streets for horses and cars, streetcar tracks, and sidewalks. Even the TINIEST towns had sidewalks.

Let's look at Coyville, a town that hasn't changed much since its non-globalist founding.

Original town, 1886:



Current map, 2017:



I see one new block at the NE corner, otherwise the same.

Coyville wasn't quite large enough for a newspaper. Its population peaked at 232 in 1920. The minimum to sustain a weekly was around 400. Nearby Fall River, at 383, did have a paper:



Googlestreet's view of the "center" of Coyville:



And a typical busy boulevard elsewhere:

Except for Main (Decatur), which is a county road, the streets haven't been paved or maintained. Most of them are a single pair of wheel ruts. But the sidewalks abide.

Admittedly this is a little unfair. Coyville is in SE Kansas, an area that doesn't get serious snow or serious cold. No frost-heave, not much ice, no evil pine roots. So sidewalks have a decent chance of survival.

Still, this is a universal pattern in small towns everywhere. Some blocks never got houses or pavement, and most blocks have lost their houses and pavement. Sidewalks abide.

Labels: Patient things, skill-estate

  ¶ 9:31 AM

  Politics of negativity, literally
"Story" in "local" fake news on a standard Sorosian protest at WSU. As usual the faculty are pushing the idiot infantile students toward even more infantile idiocy instead of trying** to teach adult sanity to the students.

One poster says "Silence is violence".

An adult teacher could use this for all sorts of lessons.

First and most obvious: The student is now fully committed to the worst form of totalitarianism. Robespierre, Stalin, Kim. No metaphor, no analogy. Already there.

Every action by the heretic is evidence of heresy. Even total lack of action is evidence of heresy. There is no guidance or training or justice. We know who the Wrong People are, and we will use every breath and every word and every lack of breath and every lack of words as evidence of their Wrongness. Anything you say and anything you don't say and anything you do and anything you don't do will be used against you.

Second: Judging people on their mere existence, regardless of actions, is PREJUDICE and bigotry BY EXACT FUCKING DEFINITION.

Third: A lesson in logic. If you think "Silence is violence" can be used rationally to judge and train correct behavior, you need to stop and think about what you're measuring. Baselines and deltas. If you're punishing NOT-X, how do you know which X the heretic is negating?

WHICH SILENCE are you punishing? When the heretic keeps his mouth shut, how do you know he's being silent ABOUT your favorite topic of this millisecond? Maybe he's not quite up on the latest trends in idiocy. Maybe he's silent about your favorite topic of the previous millisecond, which you are now protesting against, in which case he's actually with you by default. Maybe he's silent about the poor food in the dorm cafeteria. Maybe he's failing to condemn the annoying teacher who gave him a C instead of a B. Maybe he's deaf, you horrible ableist. Maybe he's silent about your tyranny. Maybe he's silent because you've given him NO ROOM FOR ANY ACTION AT ALL.


The soap-opera of Cable Fake News prepared the ground for this form of tyranny. Every conversation on Cable Fake News is about "Failing to Condemn" or "Refusing to avoid condemning" or "Not avoiding the topic of your opponent's failure to condemn the lack of condemnation", etc, instead of real action.

= = = = =

** Footnote... Since I've been paralleling this shit with 1969 shit, I need to do the same here. This is THE ONE SITUATION where 1969 was unquestionably different. In '69 the faculty were NOT inciting the hippies. They were TRYING to calm us down. The advice didn't click immediately, but left a memory trace that I later used as a ground point when I lost the buzz of radicalism. As in "Hmm. What did the prof mean by that? Oh. Now I see what he meant."

Labels: Loughnerian Logic, Make or break

  ¶ 1:02 AM

  Se-lu 5 /// and /// Thanks, Ralph 468
Se-lu:

A secondary thought spawned from yesterday's ramblings on jury service.

The primary thought was: Juries are the ONLY government function that still works properly in engineering terms, because juries are the ONLY functioning feedback mechanism. Thus juries are the ONLY piece of government that I'll work to assist and preserve.

There's a secondary reason for preservation as well. Se-lu. The county uniquely understands that the best way to solve the jury call problem is to LOOSEN THE CLAMPS and let the right people select themselves.

The natural tendency of modern governments is CLAMP CLAMP CLAMP. Every problem must be solved by TIGHTENING THE SCREWS. It's a one-way ratchet** like a giant Zip-tie or a giant cable comealong.

The normal way to solve the jury problem is to declare War On Skippers. Require 100.00000% compliance AND MORE AND MORE AND MORE. All skippers and all people who THINK of skipping and all people who THINK ABOUT THINKING ABOUT skipping must immediately be hauled off to jail without a trial, jury or otherwise, and serve an irreducible maximum sentence, after which they must be watched forever like sex predators. This is the only way to guarantee PERPETUAL EXPONENTIAL INCREASE in the budget and workforce and POWER of the jury system.

Instead, the county solves the problem by loosening. Make it clear that jury service is a duty, don't advertise that there's no penalty, and treat the people who do respond with RESPECT. Result: Minimum expense, no resistance, the appropriate people self-select and voluntarily return when called again, even after they've learned there's no penalty. Repeat customers are the best measure of success.

I've heard ancient tales claiming that most of USA STRONG's government used to work this way. I don't know if those stories are believable, but I know that this one piece in this one place DOES follow se-lu, so it's doubly worth assisting and preserving.

Se-lu.

= = = = =

Thanks, Ralph:

Intel agencies formerly worked in a looser way as well. In the 50s and 60s CIA exerted its chaotizing influence indirectly and implicitly by quietly subsidizing avant-garde "artists" and "musicians" and "architects" who seemed to be experts at ruining culture. This setup worked nicely. Chaos grew at an appropriate rate WITHOUT GENERATING RESISTANCE.

Now the CLAMP CLAMP CLAMP tendency is breaking the hold of CIA over the culture. Instead of passively encouraging chaos and ugliness and mayhem, CIA's Soros division funds "two" "sides" of violent revolutionaries to smash up everything. People are starting to SEE what's happening, and starting to RESIST passively by refusing to join either "side".



Simultaneously a brand-new tendency toward PRISSINESS is breaking CIA's formerly complete hold on knowledge. In the 50s and 60s CIA had agents and wiretaps on every group that seemed promisingly destructive. Their goal was to KNOW EVERYTHING without being known, to avoid creating alternative channels.

Now the PRISSY tendency drives CIA's Google and Paypal branches to cut off connections to groups with the wrong tone. Like the classic sniffy feminist bluenose, CIA says "Hmph. I'm sure I don't know any of the vulgar types to whom you have reference. I only know persons with whom one can have a proper and delicate conversation."

Cutting off communication and banking is a VISIBLE act which SHOWS you who is part of Five Eyes and who is not. Organizations that remain connected are Five Eyes. This VISIBILITY will inevitably create ALTERNATIVE CHANNELS for communication and banking. Nothing mysterious about this. Prohibition always generates smuggling.

Thanks, Ralph!

= = = = =

**Footnote: One-way ratchet = cogwheel rigidity. Parkinson's Law = Parkinson's Disease. Lack of inhibitory feedback results in permanent spasm.

Labels: Emersonian justice, se-lu

  ¶ 1:33 AM

  Exception to two rules
One of those jury duty scams is going around lately. Letters or phone calls that seem legit, telling you to pay a big fine to the scammer because you skipped jury duty.

"Local" fake news media were warning people about it, but not giving the information you REALLY need to counter it.

I thought about leaving a comment on the fake news story to add the appropriate knowledge, then decided against it.

This fits nicely into one big rule, and is an exception to two others.

= = = = =

Fits nicely: Real experience is the only source of knowledge. The notion of jury duty given by "education" and mediasatans is almost entirely wrong. The basic visual image is okay: You sit there during the trial and you deliberate afterwards. All the rest is wrong.

= = = = =

Exception 1: The best rule about scams is: You can't cheat a man who checks carefully before responding to a threat or an offer. In this case you can't find out the facts by checking, so the rule doesn't work.

What's the important fact that you can't check? In this county (not necessarily elsewhere) there is no penalty at all for skipping the call. Only 40% of people who get the letter show up for service, and the cost of trying to fine or jail all the skippers would drown the court system. The 40% who do show up are the RIGHT 40% by self-selection, so everything works out. If everyone knew in advance that there's no penalty, the system would stop working.

I know this fact because I've been called three times, heard the intro lecture three times, ended up in the actual box once.

[Sidenote: You might doubt the scam because you don't remember getting a summons, but you can't really check that part either. Maybe you got the letter and accidentally tossed it as junk. Aside from your own errors, the post office is getting sloppier every day. Some neighborhoods are completely without mail service because the carrier doesn't like one of the residents.]

= = = = =

Exception 2: Normally I'm all for SHOWING YOUR WORK, but I'll make an exception in this case. I won't provide the missing information.

Why? As a result of the experience I know one other thing: Juries are the ONLY REMAINING PIECE OF GOVERNMENT AT ALL LEVELS THAT STILL WORKS. The only way a normal citizen can provide CONCRETE AND CONSEQUENTIAL FEEDBACK to the system. Everything else is fully fucked. "Elections" are worse than meaningless. Calling your "representative" just puts you on a blacklist. Sending money to a candidate is a total waste. Expressing opinions in public will ruin you or kill you. Only juries still function in a small way, and that small function is even more precious because it's the ONLY THING LEFT.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 3:20 PM

  Since I'm doing this.........
Since I'm into contrary crap this morning....

We have reached a new peak (I won't say endpoint, because Satan knows no endpoints or asymptotes) in contrariness.

For a long time "Darwinians" have been violently and resolutely ignorant of genetics, and "non-Darwinians" have affirmed the facts of genetics.

You can see this contrariness nicely in Google vs Damore. Google claims to be "scientific" because it ferociously and murderously rejects all scientific facts, while Damore is seen as "superstitious science denier" because he calmly and moderately accepts scientific facts.

The latest mess about the tiny and mostly fake faction of "neo-Nazis" takes the genetic contradiction to a new peak.

The "anti-fascists" are clearly and unconflictedly opposed to every aspect of Natural Law, while the "neo-Nazis", if they exist, are clearly and unconflictedly in favor of traditional culture and Natural Law.

If you favor Natural Law, you should favor Africans and Muslims above all, and you should want to exterminate Scandinavians. Africans and Muslims have never moved away from traditional family rules and morality. Scandinavians turned tradition upside down 100 years ago and have continually raised the bar on bizarre suicidal evil since then.

So the neo-Nazis SHOULD admire and obey Africans and Muslims, and the Diversitarians SHOULD hate Muslims and admire the blondest of the blonds.

Hmm. This doesn't QUITE describe the actual preferences of these two groups.

Labels: Loughnerian Logic, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 11:13 AM

  Super-silly-ous suit
This lawsuit, as cited in ZH, is not only silly but counterproductive. It says that Poland Spring Water is "not spring water" because it comes from a well that contains "groundwater".

Absolutely no difference. Every spring and every aquifer and every well is groundwater. It all comes from rain, filters through soil, reaches a layer where it stops and pools in gravel or rocks.

There's a real difference between well water and river water. River water hasn't been filtered. It contains immediate and fresh bird poop, fish poop, and human poop.

Most city water systems are drawn from wells, which means they're just as "springy" as the imaginary "pure spring".

The only thing that matters is the impurities. Some wells contain minerals that make the water pleasantly tasty and effervescent. Other wells just taste bad. Other wells and aquifers are pretty nearly pure.

By setting up a costly legal precedent on the false distinction of "spring" and "ground", this lawsuit distracts from the slightly important distinction of tap water vs well water. When bottled water is simply taken from the city system, it's probably cleaner than "pure spring" water, thus you might want to pay more for it... if you're stupid enough to fall for the whole bottling fraud in the first place.
  ¶ 10:05 AM

  Who's smarter?
Along the same lines as previous item....

Conventional wisdom says big dumb dinosaurs died out because little smart mammals outwitted them.

Nope.

Dinosaurs didn't die out. They saw the trend, became little and smart to compete successfully with mammals.

Who's smarter, the adapter or the non-adapter?
  ¶ 5:10 AM

  I doubt it
Lots of writers are earning their clickbait pay today by writing about the eclipse. Science vs superstition, bash ignorant Deplorable Denier TRUMPHITLER, all the usual ratshit.

Basic point: When an event is regular and periodic, nobody gives it occult significance. Nervous systems adapt to short periodicity (<= one year) without any trouble. A culture with a good hive brain adapts to longer periodicities. Eclipses fall into the same range as droughts and floods, with periods near a decade. Well within the realm of cultural learning. Million-year periodicities like magnetic field reversals or ice ages are not naturally learnable.

I doubt that most "primitive" people were surprised by eclipses. "Primitive" people had strong cultural memories. Modern "advanced enlightened tolerant" people, intentionally deprived of cultural learning by TV and "education", are far more likely to be surprised, and far more likely to attribute occult significance. That's the whole point of "education". Wipe common sense, make us totally vulnerable to the Official Answer given by TV.

= = = = =

Later: What about astrology? Turning regularity into occult? Partly yes, mostly no. Modern astrologers don't talk like prophets or preachers. They talk more like engineers. Adjusting your behavior to fit today's combination of quadratures and oppositions is the same as adjusting your spark timing to 5 degrees before TDC on cylinder #2. You can predict the effects of the quadratures BECAUSE they're running on the solar crankshaft, and you can optimize your power stroke accordingly.
  ¶ 3:32 AM

  A more precise thought
Earlier I placed cults and bubbles in the same category. Inaccurate. Somewhat more refined thought:

A cult always has ONE highly visible leader, who is the required object of religious and sexual desire. A cult always evangelizes to gather more power and money and sex for the leader.

Not all bubbles are cults. Real estate bubbles have no leaders, no personality at all. Earlier bubbles in railroads or automobiles or tulips were often spawned and planned by identifiable leaders like JP Morgan or Billy Durant, but Morgan and Durant were NOT the object of intense admiration and obedience. Nobody tried to live and dress like JP.

The modern tech industry is a group of cults. Its leaders (Jobs, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos) are worshipped personally, and their sayings and styles are copied and ferociously defended by the members. Jobs is still worshipped after death, like other historical cult leaders. Evangelism is explicit and organized. Tech generates bubbles, but it isn't primarily a bubble.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 1:58 AM

  Se-lu 4, Soviet edition
In making "improved" versions of Volney's meter, I found that some of my "improvements" led to failure. Turns out that the odd-looking stuff in Volney's ckt wasn't an error, it was an elegant and efficient use of real components. More about that later, after I do more experiments and learn more.

Trying to figure out some of the elegant tricks, I ran into a different form of elegance. I've often talked about superior Soviet science education, using REAL EXPERIENCE with REAL NATURAL PHENOMENA. The Soviet form of Cybernetics followed the same path, letting Nature do part of the design instead of shoehorning Nature into fashionable idiot theories.

This 1967 publication by our Air Force is part of a regular series of reviews, covering and translating Russian technical developments and patents. We obviously didn't learn anything from the reviews because we're incapable of learning.

Two of the items in this PDF are beautifully Natural.

= = = = =

(1) A co-generator for three-phase AC, designed to be inserted into a turbulent gas flow. This would recapture energy from a large smokestack or engine exhaust.



In other words, it's a cochlea.

= = = = =

(2) A simple analog-to-digital converter with a pulse-rate output.



In other words, it's a neuron with pulse repetition rate output, like a hair cell or a gamma stretch sensor.

= = = = =

Language sidenote: The USAF translator who wrote this document wasn't named. He truly deserves major credit. Name in lights. We don't have the original Russian, but it's a safe bet that the original was stilted and stiff because it was written by engineers. This document is the BEST technical writing I've ever seen. I've read and written a lot of technical descriptions, and nothing remotely approaches the readability and clarity of this work.

Labels: Experiential education, se-lu

  ¶ 4:50 PM