Complete waste of money
From Wired mag:

(1) Scientists funded by the Pentagon are developing ways to hide devices and soldiers by bending light.

(2) Scientists funded by the Pentagon are developing ways to hide events by delaying the transmission of electrical or light waves. So far they've managed a delay of a few picoseconds, which won't even hide one digital bit in a Web stream.

Both are a complete waste of money. Totally silly use of Big Science to do things that have been done for thousands of years in cheaper and more effective ways.

Disproof: Sheikh Osama didn't need sheets of carbon nanotubes to weaponize airliners. He didn't need to use quantum methods to defeat our trillion-dollar completely useless NORAD, nor to conceal the hijacking from air traffic control.

He simply took advantage of our suicidal adherence to Die-Versity, which has made us completely blind to criminal and warlike acts when committed by Persons Of Colour or Persons Of Gender.

Disproof in the other direction: Stuxnet. US and Israeli intelligence didn't need to use light-benders or quantum time-shifters to sabotage the Persian nuclear program. They simply took advantage of blind spots in the software and security of the facilities. The virus was apparently brought into the system by an innocent-looking CD or USB thumbdrive.

Spycraft or deception is as old as the Trojan Horse and as new as Stuxnet, and it's vastly cheaper and more reliable than brute-force stealth technology. (Actually it's a billion years older than the Trojan Horse, if you look at nature's cornucopia of deceptive colors, behaviors, sounds, smells, and shapes.)
  ¶ 5:59 PM

  Ashamed to admit
Frankly, I hadn't paid any attention to Santorum before his tied finish in Iowa. He seemed to be appealing purely to Catholics, and sounded weak.

There's really no point in imagining anything, because Rominee the Nominee has been Rominee the Nominee since 2008. It's His Turn. He's Next In Line. Nothing will change that fact.

Still, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend this is a peculiar sort of America, an America where those little decorative X's on ballots actually serve to decide an election. Strange idea, I know. Hard to digest. This is, after all, America! USA! USA! USA! We're Number 1! We're Number 1! (Well, actually we're Number 33 by most measurements, but who's counting?) I pledge allegiance to the Mortgage-Backed Security and to the Casino for which it stands. One mafia under Gaia, fully divisible into Senior Tranches and Junior Tranches, with liberty for Jewish billionaires and justice for Jewish billionaires. All others are free to starve. Amen.

But what would happen in an alternative America? In my weird little fantasy America where X's on paper decided elections, Santorum would be a worthy candidate against Obama.

The two men are stylistically and physically similar but have totally different thought patterns and agendas. They could be half-brothers in face, body and movements; both have the same intellectual and indecisive manner, the same speech prosody with end-of-sentence clipoff, and the same Senate career experience.

But Santorum emphatically does not think the same thoughts as BushObamaRomney. Santorum seriously opposes the "human rights" agenda, and has been serious for a long time in opposing Gaia. Of the Three Horsepersons of the Modern Apocalypse, Santorum supports only Free Trade[SEE BELOW!], while BushObamaRomney supports all three.

Check this paragraph from a Greenie website:

Before it was fashionable for Republicans to deny the science supporting the existence of man-caused climate change, Santorum pushed the issue. In his failed re-election bid for the Senate in 2006, Santorum said, "scientists have not decisively concluded" that global warming exists, and that government should react cautiously to calls for mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

Santorum has often rubbed environmentalists the wrong way, but he drew the most criticism in 2005 when he supported what has become known as the “smokestack rule.” With Santorum’s help, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Bush administration rolled back limitations on the amount of mercury that can be emitted from coal and oil power plants in the United States. Santorum’s support for this plan, and the totality of his record, earned him a score of zero from the League of Conservation Voters in 2006. The organization said defeating him in 2006 was a “top priority.” ... Time and again Santorum has voted to allow for drilling in ANWR.

I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't paid any attention to this! He has a remarkably solid and courageous record.

This is a man I could actually support.

Rominee The Nominee is the other way around. He looks and acts different from Obama, has an entirely different biography, but shares precisely the same thoughts and agenda. Guaranteed 100% identical.

= = = = =

Later: Doubly ashamed. I was also wrong in thinking Santorum was in favor of free trade. A quick Google seemed to indicate support. A closer look by Brits picks up his true and consistent record:

He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey...

In short, Santorum is the ONLY national politician who is right about everything that matters.

Santorum has been working against all three Horsepersons of the Apocalypse for many years. Opposing the murderous pseudoscience of evolution and "global warming"; opposing the civilization-smashing "human rights" agenda of homosexualism and feminism; opposing the Wall Street Mafia and supporting real productive business.



I didn't notice any of it. I'm ashamed.
  ¶ 3:13 AM

  Third time's the harm
Just now struck me.

World War 1 was a completely futile war, and it gave the American people a fully justified disgust with all wars. This disgust was immediately echoed by the ruling class and government.

Vietnam was a completely futile war, and it gave the American people a fully justified disgust with all wars. This disgust was immediately echoed by the ruling class and government.

Afghanistan AND Iraq 1 AND Iraq 2 were THREE completely futile wars, and they gave the American people a fully justified disgust with all wars......

But the ruling class is still roaring ahead with plans for more wars.

Only Ron Paul is echoing the popular disgust, but the rest of the ruling class is trying very hard to delete him from any chance at power. They will succeed one way or another, even if they have to suicide him.

In 1918 and 1974 our government was somewhat responsive. Not now.
  ¶ 1:12 PM

  Glad I didn't know this
Why we're failing:

Celebrity-who's-famous-for-being-famous Kim Kardashian will be paid $600,000 to host a New Year's Eve party at the Tao nightclub in Las Vegas' Venetian hotel and casino and then return to the Tao a few more times in 2012 to make "special appearances."

"It happens a lot ... It may be $100,000 for just showing up and then, if you're a singer and you're asked to perform ... open your mouth to sing and you're looking at a seven-figure payment."

Of course, that doesn't mean a club such as the Tao won't be getting back some if not all of its money. Casinos are, after all, very good at that.

$600,000 for showing up at one party.

That's exactly what I earned from 40 years of honest skilled labor.

I suppose it's good that I didn't know facts like this when I was young. Good that I didn't understand how the system works when I was young. If I had known how totally fixed and fucked the system was, I would have just gone on the dole and stayed there.

But maybe the system wasn't quite so thoroughly fucked back in the '70s. It was still possible for an American to receive money in exchange for making things. Now, of course, that's a tiresomely quaint analog concept, a weird bizarre fantasy of proportionality. Does not compute. Cannot be tolerated. Unacceptable. Unthinkable.

The modern rule is more appropriate for a binary age:

Them as has gits.
All others starve.

Welcome to 900 AD redux. Or reflux.
  ¶ 4:39 AM

  Rooting for Persia
As Persia gets closer to some form of nuclear capability, our political psychopaths on both "sides" are shouting louder and louder, but in this case they're agreeing.

Any time both "sides" loudly agree on a course of action, you can be sure it's false, evil, Satanic and suicidal; any time both "sides" loudly disagree on an issue, you can be sure it's either (1) utterly trivial or (2) a basic and unalterable law of Nature.

Why the shouting this time? Easy.

A non-nuclear Persia makes a great target for our mindless infantile saber-rattling and wild feral rhetoric. When Persia has nukes, we’ll have to treat them with respect, and that’s an unthinkably horrible prospect for the Bushobama dynasty. It means one less excuse for infinitely increasing military budgets, one less country that we can casually invade and occupy forever, one less source of profit for military contractors.

I hope and pray that Persia can decisively establish its weapons before we stir up enough rancor to "justify" an invasion.
  ¶ 3:39 AM

  Must Read: 'Peak Money'
A long article at Economic Populist explains fully and brilliantly how the current economic crisis started and why it will inevitably lead to complete collapse.

Most people in the West understand this problem in an intuitive and emotional way, but that doesn't matter. Our "governments" understand it precisely and enjoy it, because their bosses at Goldman enjoy it.

= = = = =

An interesting echo of the 'loss of confidence' theme in this New Year essay by one of the few old-fashioned poets still writing for newspapers.
  ¶ 3:21 AM

  Temporospatial incomprehension
The unutterable monstrosities who run the Western "media" and "governments" are still completely misunderstanding the Arab Spring. BBC asks: "Will the revolutions lead only to new authoritarians?"

Yes, they will. But that's entirely the wrong question. The Arabs were not seeking "democracy", whatever the fuck that means. They were emphatically not seeking to be ruled by egregious suicidal wacked-out lunatics like Cameron, Bush, or Obama.

They were throwing off rulers who satisfied the will of Cameron and Bush, and replacing them with rulers who satisfy the will of THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

= = = = =

Okay, I've said that a hundred times already. What occurs to me today is that the same misunderstanding applies to our own revolutionary history. The 1776 rebels were emphatically not seeking "freedom" or "democracy" or "In Di Vid U Al Lib Er Ty" in the way our modern roaring psychopaths "define" those words.

Look at actual history; read the Federalist Papers; read the actual Constitution. You'll find that several of the colonies had distinctly authoritarian governments. Some had strict Christian laws about religious belief and family structure, not all that different from modern Islamic laws. That was NOT THE PROBLEM. That was NOT WHAT THE REVOLUTION WAS ABOUT. It was NOT ABOUT ELIMINATING STRICT RULES. It was solely about throwing off FOREIGN DOMINANCE and replacing it with LOCAL DOMINANCE, solely about DECOUPLING from England and DECOUPLING the states from each other.

The new governments of the several states were meant to earn the consent of the people in each state, and they were meant to reach that goal by satisfying the particular religious and cultural needs of those people. The gov't of Vermont was NOT meant to satisfy the tastes of an effete New York aristocrat; the gov't of New York was NOT meant to satisfy the tastes of a rural Vermont Protestant.

Now, of course, we expect every government in the world to be designed solely for effete super-rich New York Gramscian fairies and bullbitches. Anderson Cooper and Chaz Bono are the new Adam and Eve, and the world must be reshaped to fit around their hellish tastes.
  ¶ 5:02 AM

  Random note on housing cost


Because I happened to figure it up recently, thought it might be worth planting these numbers on the web. Might serve as an example of how cheaply you can live in a decent neighborhood if you stay frugal.

I described the house and its location more fully here.

Just the numbers this time:

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

Mortgage, 15 years at 9.5% interest, paid off in 2006.

25000 basic cost of house (equity)
25000 interest, property tax, insurance
=======
50000 total

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

Repairs, mostly after the mortgage was done:

3500 replace septic tank with sewer connection in 2004
500 fix fence (poorly) in 2004
600 new water heater in 2006
2700 new roof in 2007
1500 kill termites in 2008
1100 new foundation under back wing in 2008
300 new toilet and misc plumbing in 2009
1800 cut down trees in 2011
1000 fix fence properly in 2011
======
13000 total of repairs

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

After end of mortgage,
property tax = 600 /yr,
insurance = 200 / yr.
======
Total 4000 for 5 years

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

For 20 years of living: equity, interest, taxes, insurance, repairs:
Grand total 67000 = about 280 a month.

As it happens, that's exactly what the monthly mortgage payment was... so the expense on a yearly basis has continued to be about the same with and without the mortgage.

Compare with the median national housing payment, about 1100 a month, from this source. (Interesting bit of web technology on that website: you can leave a comment on each bar of the graph!)

More appropriately, how does $280 a month compare with renting? Well, a little house two blocks away makes a good 'comp'. That house is in the same position on its block and has the same tiny lot as mine. The house may be a bit smaller than mine, but it's also a bit newer and appears to have a more usable floor plan. According to Zillow, it rented for $450 the last time it was available.
  ¶ 6:31 AM

  Why do I hate Romney so much?
Trying to figure out why I hate Mitt so ferociously, when he's by no means the only candidate of the Wall Street Mafia. Both Newt and Obama are Goldman slaves, and I don't hate them in the same way.

Basically it's the sheer chutzpah and blasphemy when Mitt cites "capitalism" as the cure to our problems:

"I want to use the experience I have in the free enterprise system to make sure America gets working again."

He has NO EXPERIENCE in the free enterprise system. His business career consisted solely of BREAKING INTO EXISTING FREE ENTERPRISES, ROBBING THEM, TAKING THEIR CASH, AND SENDING THEIR JOBS TO CHINA. That's the experience of a criminal, not the experience of a businessman. That's the life of a man who knows how to DESTROY VALUE AND DESTROY JOBS, not a man who creates value and creates jobs.

= = = = =

But there's more to it. I've already talked at length about Romney's father, who I respected greatly. George Romney was all about free enterprise. He took over Nash in 1954 at a time of extreme crisis, when the corporate prognosis was terminal. He used the corporation's own traditions, plus American workers, plus his own talent and vision, to beat Plymouth for 3rd place. All of that in 7 years, from 1954 to 1961. Now that was a man with real experience in creating American jobs. Not only that, he pulled sales and jobs away from foreign manufacturers, because the Rambler helped to suppress the invasion of Volkswagens.

Romney Senior was also a realist. He didn't cheerily chirp about our Perfect Educational System or our Perfect Health Care or our Special Exceptional Moral Exceptionality Which Gives Us The God-Insured Exceptional Privilege To Do Any Fucking Exceptional Thing We Want. No, he simply named our problems and virtues as accurately as he could.

So the contrast between America-helping father and America-killing son is sharp and dramatic.

= = = = =

There's some personal resonance as well. Five times I've seen the devastation when Mitt types took over businesses where I worked, or colleges where I studied. In each case the business or college had a solid set of traditions that kept it going, kept its employees and customers/students in harmony. The institution had a SOUL.

In each case the Mitt type, the Numbers Man, the Turnaround Man, the Efficiency Expert, took over as CEO and destroyed the tradition, destroyed the harmony, destroyed the SOUL. The Mitt type ruled purely by NUMBERS, looking only at the bottom line and systematically tearing down the family-like connection that made the place worthwhile for its workers and customers. In each case there was a brief burst of profit, then a rapid decline as workers and customers/students abandoned ship.

= = = = =

America has been suffering the same fate for 22 years now, and it will get much worse if Mitt takes over. Bush and Obama are not expert criminals, and they don't know all the tricks of the Wall Street Mafia. Mitt is an absolute expert in cracking safes and cracking souls.
  ¶ 3:45 AM

  Theory dominates politics as well
Polistra constantly hammers on the idiotic dominance of pure mathematics and untestable theories in science.

The problem has also invaded politics.

Easiest example: the evangelicals who can't vote for Romney because his theology is wrong, even though his marriage is better than most Protestant marriages. There are a thousand reasons to reject Romney, but this is probably the only reason to favor him!

Somewhat less obvious: Our two Goldman Sachs labels have different theologies, but commit the same crimes in practice. Steal all productive economic activity from America. Donate the jobs to China and the money to Goldman. The two labels accomplish this evil purpose by exactly the same laws and regulations and subsidies and blackmail payments. There is no measurable distinction between the output of a Bush and the output of an Obama.

But their texts, their theologies, are quite different. Goldman Sachs dba "Republican Party" quotes verses from the Bible, the Constitution, Reagan, von Mises and Hayek. Goldman Sachs dba "Democratic Party" quotes verses from FDR, JFK, Comrade Martin Luther King Boulevard, and Paul Krugman.

These distinct sets of platitudes and quotations, all equally irrelevant to political reality, give the two labels something to "debate" and "campaign" about, so that each can have the privilege of doing exactly the same things under its own name.

= = = = =

On the state level, you can still occasionally spot a politician who understands reality, who can cut through the irrelevant verbal shit of "laws" and "constitutions" in order to improve the real situation of real people.

Here in Wash there's a growing movement away from the Fed prohibition on marijuana. As with the earlier prohibition on alcohol, the first step was to create a fraudulent "medical" exemption. This has already led to serious contradictions, with the Feds coming down hard on "medical" marijuana laws.

And now the healthy distinction between theory and reality.

Theory:

Backers of an effort to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana use in Washington state submitted more than 340,000 signatures to try to qualify their initiative on Thursday, a move protested by legalization supporters who say the proposal harms medical marijuana patients.

I-502 would create a system of state-licensed growers, processors and stores, and impose a 25 percent excise tax at each stage. Those 21 and over could buy up to an ounce of dried marijuana; one pound of marijuana-infused product in solid form, such as brownies; or 72 ounces of marijuana-infused liquids.

It's a beautiful idea on paper, especially the excise tax. Instead of pouring out big dollars for vicious "enforcement" that turns dumb kids into criminals while leaving the problem unsolved, let's earn some money from the problem.

Versus one blessedly practical politician:

Initiative opponent Don Skakie, of Renton, said the law proposed by the initiative will be pre-empted by federal law, and that he would rather see the state eliminate all state penalties tied to marijuana. The drug remains illegal for any use under the federal government.

“When you eliminate penalties, there’s no new law to conflict with federal law,” he said.

Bravo! There's a man who understands reality. No point in creating a verbal heresy that the Feds can inquisit. Instead, leave your legal formulas the same, including the requirement to impose a fine. Just make the fine equal to zero. The Feds won't be able to use their black-robed saboteurs to rewrite the law, because the law itself will still be Orthodox.
  ¶ 5:49 PM

  Nice to know....
The best defense for Big Science has always been its ability to predict things in advance. In some important cases this has turned out to be true. Kepler's laws of planetary motion enable us to predict lunar eclipses with perfect accuracy; the equations of electricity and magnetism enable us to design new components and circuits that work.

In most recent cases, though, relying on theories and expensive instruments only blinds you to reality.

If you're willing to observe all aspects of reality, as biologists generally do, you won't go far wrong. If you totally refuse to acknowledge the existence of facts, as "climatologists", quantum physicists and cosmologists do, then you're committing a crime against science.

Seismology falls between those two extremes. Willing to read what seismographs actually record, willing to listen to real observations from non-scientists, but slow and reluctant to learn from the sensory systems of animals, which are already able to predict earthquakes.

Example of that middle-ness: A huge undersea volcano has popped up in the Red Sea near Yemen, reaching the surface to form a new island. Seismologists had no predictions of the event, and no idea it was happening. They learned about it through reports from Yemeni fishermen, and then spotted the plume on satellite photos after they heard the direct news. It's bad that their expensive computers and instruments didn't detect it, but it's good that they actually listened to people without college degrees.
  ¶ 5:17 PM

  Fine journalism
Why do they hire illiterates to write and edit the webpages for newspapers and TV stations? It's equally true of large and small outfits, equally true in US and UK.

Wonderful example from KREM in Spokane:

Peggy and Dwaine Brown were rudely awakened Tuesday night when a car smashed into their home.

KREM 2's Ashley Korslien spent part of Wednesday with the family.

Just before midnight, a man in a stolen car led police on a pursuit, which ended in the brown's front yard.
...
Glass shards cover the carpet and half the living room wall is boarded up.

Even though their house is in ruins, the browns are staying positive. They say they'll get through it together.

Police say 21 year old, Joseph wilder, was arrested and charged with "attempt to allude," and "theft of a motor vehicle."

Hmm. Wonder what 21 year old, Mr. wilder, was alluding to? Was his artistic penetration a fairly obvious Freudian allusion with Oedipal overtones? Or was he alluding to the emptiness and bleakness of suburban life by breaking the fourth wall of the brown's dull repetitive domicile?
  ¶ 4:45 AM

  Oh goodie.
Jesus. Here we go again. We just got clear of one useless pointless war that killed thousands of Americans to serve the interests of Israel. Now we're getting all rowdied up for another useless pointless war that will only serve the interests of Israel.

Persia is talking about blockading a waterway that is partly Persian territory. The waterway is NOT AMERICAN TERRITORY. The Gulf is ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING EARTH FROM AMERICA. It is NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS.

However, this ramp-up is entirely different from the 2002 ramp-up.

When we ramped up for Iraq (WMD, Unacceptable, Will Not Tolerate, All Options Are On The Fucking Table) the administration was wearing shirts with an R on the front.

Now that we're ramping up for Persia (WMD, Unacceptable, Will Not Tolerate, All Options Are On The Fucking Table) the administration is wearing shirts with a D on the front.

This means that the two "sides" of the propaganda machine will be saying the same things as before, but with the labels switched.

At least it's efficient and Green. You don't need to write new scripts for the TVocracy and Radiocracy. Just recycle the scripts with a little Edit-and-Replace action. Switch Republican for Democrat, and switch Iraq for Iran. Efficient!

We have always been at war with Eurasia, etc.
  ¶ 4:21 AM

  What in the motherfuck is motherfucking wrong with these motherfucking idiotfucks?
What in the fuck is wrong with these fucking idiots? Local "weathercasters" will spend 5 minutes reading the temperatures in every nearby town even when they're identical (Spokane is 46, Deer Park is 46, Cheney is 45, Medical Lake is 47...) but totally ignore the other trivial bits of weather, such as the bits that can KILL YOU.

KXLY radio is the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst.

This morning we have 46 degrees, as part of a typical Chinook pattern which includes 30 to 45 mph winds. All sorts of stuff is blowing around; presumably some tree branches and powerlines are down.

Their newscaster just now said "With these wonderfully warm temperatures, bicyclists will be out and about. Be careful and watch for bikes; there's still ice on the roads in some places."

No, you fucking idiot. Bicyclists will not be out and about with a 40 mph wind. If they are, they'll be falling down for a fucking different reason, not the fucking ice.

Aaaggghhh! The traffic reporter just called in with a report of a powerline down, and still NO FUCKING MENTION OF FUCKING WHY THE FUCKING POWERLINE IS FUCKING DOWN.

Must be the wonderful tropical fucking temperature that's bringing down the fucking trees and fucking powerlines, you monstrous format-bound fuckhead. Just think, if the fucking temperature had been a frigid 45 instead of a tropical 46, we wouldn't have any fucking problems at all.


= = = = =

Later: Hmm. After re-reading the above, looks like I probably need to bite a lawn mower.

Also later: This is a perfect illustration of why wind "power" is such a fantastically stupid idea. First time this winter I've been able to turn down my electric baseboard heaters. First day I've used less electricity than normal.

Wind "power" gives you more electricity than usual at the exact times when you need less electricity than usual.
  ¶ 5:05 AM

  Traitor
Rominee the Nominee, answering Newt's weak but correct promise to hold black-robed saboteurs accountable:

Romney, asked by a voter how he would curtail “extreme rulings,” said he would appoint members of the Supreme Court who would overturn extreme rulings. Romney said he would not allow Congress to subpoena judges to explain their rulings or to remove judges. “Then we make a super branch known as Congress,” Romney said. “We have a balance of power constitutionally, and I don’t want one branch, Congress, or even the president, to assume power above the other branches.”

Mitt, you are criminally insane. You are completely out of touch with reality if you think we have three branches, let alone three equal branches.

The black-robed saboteurs hold all the power, even though they can't call out the tanks and snipers directly. The other two branches have abjectly surrendered to the Soviet "judiciary" for 50 years.

Comrade Romney, you are a traitor. Comrade Romney, you need to be tried and hanged for treason RIGHT NOW.
  ¶ 6:22 PM

  Congress does One Good Thing! (by default...)
Amid all the misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance typical of the times, Congress has actually done one thing right!!!!!! Of course they didn't actually take real action to make it happen; they just allowed the subsidy to expire. But in this case, urgent action would have been normal, while inaction required some courage.

The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Congress adjourned for the year on Friday, failing to extend the tax break that's drawn a wide variety of critics on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Critics also have included environmentalists, frozen food producers, ranchers and others.

The policies have helped shift millions of tons of corn from feedlots, dinner tables and other products into gas tanks.

The subsidy has provided the oil and agribusiness industries with 45 cents per gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline. By some estimates, Congress has awarded $45 billion in subsidies to the ethanol industry since 1980.

Jesus. 45 cents a gallon! No fucking wonder the subsidy worked!

The envirowackos are pleased by this move, which is another small sign of returning sanity. Until a couple years ago the Greenies were all for the subsidy, because they imagined it was Sequestering Evil Carbon or some such shit. For unknown reasons they decided to admit the truth about this.

Most of all, the poor people of the world will enjoy this move. Eventually, more corn will be available for its PROPER FUCKING USAGE. It will take a while for the ethanol production system to shut down, but it will certainly shut down with the welfare stopped.

The timing of this move is most amazing of all. Just before the Iowa Caucuses, which were the sole reason for the long-running push for corn alcohol. In the '30s it was Agrol, in the '70s it was Gasohol, and more recently it's Ethanol; but under each name it's nothing more than an auction of tax money to influence the few thousand people who vote in the Caucuses.

= = = = =

Later: Nope, it was a fake as usual. One subsidy nominally went away, but it was just moved around, and the other subsidies and requirements remain.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 5:46 PM

  Out Marie-ing Marie
A gang of hyper-rich hyper-thieves, mostly Jews, have banded together to "shape the national agenda."

As if they haven't already shaped our national agenda into a pile of recycled ratshit.

= = = = =

Just a few wonderful quotes:

Bernard Marcus, CEO of Home Depot, isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.

“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”



John A. Allison IV, a director of BB&T Corp. (BBT), the ninth-largest U.S. bank:
“It still feels lonely."

Allison speaking about the Occupy-ers: "Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive. This attack is destructive.”



Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman speaking about lower-income U.S. families who pay no income tax: "You have to have skin in the game. I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system."

Attacking the banking system is a mistake because it contributes to “a healthier economy,” he said...

[Orwell would love you, Schwarzman. You've sliced and diced our economy into a terminal and non-recoverable puree, and you call that "healthier".]



Tom Golisano, founder of Paychex Inc: "If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit."



Leon Cooperman, formerly of Goldman Sachs: "Capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be” ... "the wealthy aren’t a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot. They make products that fill store shelves at Christmas and provide health care to millions."

[Incorrect, Cooperman. Chinese slaves make the products that fill store shelves at Christmas, so that Americans can buy the products with money borrowed from rich bankers.]


= = = = =

Marie Antoinette is a piker.

The good part, I guess, is that they don't even realize how perfectly their own statements destroy their own credibility. Maybe I should thank the Lord for self-contained elite bubbles.
  ¶ 3:44 AM

  See what happens when you experiment?
In New Superstitionist, an interesting account of reptilian intelligence. Until recently, turtles and lizards had been tested in various lab experiments, but had performed dismally compared to any bird or mammal.

Easy assumption from "evolutionary" theory: they're more primitive, thus we can't expect them to be as smart as the later-evolved critters.

Nope.

Wilkinson and Hall were now interested in why reptiles had performed so poorly in previous cognitive studies. Taking a closer look at the reports, they found the problem. The earlier research had been done at cool temperatures, which left the cold-blooded animals feeling sluggish. Moses, by contrast, had performed at 29C, near the average temperature of the red-footed tortoise's native habitat in Central and South America. The warmer temperatures boosted Moses's metabolism, making him alert, lively and ready to conquer a maze.

Behavioral labs are designed to be comfortable for humans and rats. Nobody stopped to think that reptiles like it hot!
  ¶ 6:45 PM

  Century temperature animated
Got bored and felt like doing something graphical, so decided to rig up an animation of Wash state temperatures. The data is derived from these NCDC sets, for the 10 'climate divisions' of Wash.

Now that I've got the graphics and data processing built, I'll re-use them soon for precip and wind, and possibly for wind turbines, bat population, and pine beetle infestations to examine this connection. For now I figured the plain temperature map might be interesting to someone.

The underlying data is annual temperature averages from 1911 to 2011, with each year starting in September. First the map in still form, with the division numbers on it:



1 is the super-rainy Olympics; 2 is ocean and the San Juan Islands; 3 is Seattle-Olympia urban area; 4 doesn't have a name that I know of; 5 is West Slope of Cascades; 6 is East Slope of Cascades; 7 is Okanogan Highlands (including Grand Coulee); 8 is lower Basin (semi-desert); 9 is Northeast Mountains; 10 is Palouse.

Spokane sits at the T between 7, 9, 10. The horizontal bar of the T sometimes shows up in storm movements as a sharp linear barrier blocking progress of a northward-moving storm. You can imagine a very high wall along that line!

= = = = =

In the animation, black is the lowest annual temp and bright red is the highest. Annuals range from 40F for the coldest year (1955, zone 5 west Cascades) to 54F for the hottest year (1934, semi-desert zone 8). So the distinction between black and brightest red is only about 14F altogether. Most of the zones stay close to 48F most of the time.

Here's the animation in an embedded Windows Media Player, which may or may not work in your browser:




If it doesn't work, or you want to play with it offline, here's the movie file by itself. It's about 2 megabytes:

Download this.

= = = = =

Now here's the annual precipitation done the same way from the same set of data. Again the dark (closest to black) is the lowest precip, and the bright is the highest.

The max and min here are much more impressive: Rainiest year was 1997 in the Olympics (zone 1) with 137.5 inches. Dryest year was 1924 in semi-desert zone 8, at 5.2 inches. Another impressive thing is the effect of the Cascades rain shadow. As Niña and Niño years alternate, the rain coming from the Pacific varies widely; but after the Cascade wringer does its job, the zones east of the mountains scarcely change.



And again if it doesn't work, or you want to play with it offline, here's the movie file by itself.

Download this.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 7:25 AM

  Must read
Via Economic Populist, an illustrated list of 50 numbers that show just how bad our situation is.

A few of the numbers are contrived or hypothetical, and some of the housing-value numbers really mean a return to normal after an unhealthy bubble. But the majority are serious indications of deadly problems.
  ¶ 10:20 AM