Juiced metrology
We seem to be stuck with juiced-up fake measurements. Unemployment numbers are juiced to make the current admin sound better, stock markets are nothing but juice, interest rates are juiced by QE to make life easier for the Chosen Ones and harder for honest people, house prices are juiced to force ordinary people into bankruptcy so JPMorgan can grab the houses for less than real value.

Why do we allow weathercasters to use "feels like" temperatures to juice up the drama? Wind chill is arbitrary and meaningless. Real temp is what affects houses and cars and dogs and people. Right now the real temp is dramatic enough in the eastern half of the US. No need for juice.

Would you buy a steak labeled as "Tastes like 10 pounds"? Would you buy one gallon of gasoline labeled as "Powers like 3 gallons"? A cup of espresso labeled as "Buzzes like 5 cups"?

Okay, you probably would. I give up.

= = = = =

Sidenote: Polistra prefers natural human-scaled measurements where they make sense. Wind chill pretends to be a natural measurement, but it's not. Real natural temp measures are unfortunately too specific to have any common meaning, so the thermometer is the only practical choice. Each type of animal and plant and object has its own max, min and optimal temp and its own calibration curve. People of different races and different experiences have different max, min, optimal, and calibration. The jokey Annotated Thermometer gives us excellent natural temp measures. British cars won't start at +30 degrees, Jap cars won't start at -30 degrees, Minnesotans think about closing the windows at -40 degrees, etc. We had an actual Annotated Temperature in the news last week: "-20 degrees, Duluth closes its ice rinks."

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 3:12 AM

  The mysterious Big Horn
In the era of satellite pix and Flickr and Instagram, odd places are thoroughly documented online in precision digital form.

Mysterious places that disappeared before the current era have to be pulled back to life by sloppier analog methods. I've pulled back several such places in my graphics freestuff.

One mysterious place in Enid sent me an ethereal ping tonight, asking to be pulled back. I don't have enough time this month to make a proper model, and I don't have a clear enough memory of the place anyway. I'll try to cobble together a picture from pieces of my other models and pieces of my cloudy memory.



This is a vague impression of a building called THE BIG HORN. Its address would have been about 1340 N. 13th St in Enid. When I lived near it in 1972 it was abandoned, nearly hidden behind trees and fences in the middle of a residential block. It appeared to be fairly well-maintained and intact with restaurant fixtures inside. I've "drawn" it here as a drive-in, but I suspect it was intended as a walk-up, with the arches covering an outside picnic-style eating area. The location, just south of a major railroad yard and grain elevator, would have made sense as a walk-up lunch counter for working men.

I guessed from the intact condition that the building had been fully abandoned for only 10 years, but it couldn't have been an active business through the '50s and '60s. Trees and fences were much older. City directories listed The Big Horn exactly once, as a "club" in 1938. In Oklahoma, where nominal Prohibition lasted until 1959, a "club" was a speakeasy.





A modern aerial view and Googlestreet indicate the former location. I've sort of superimposed the driveway on the aerial. This part of 13th hasn't changed much since 1972. Davis and 12th have been largely stripped of houses and turned into industrial areas. Probably a good thing in terms of employment.

Much of the east side of Enid has been de-housed in the last 10 years. Not quite Detroit, but getting there. Perhaps wisely, the area that suffered the worst flooding in 1973 has been returned to prairie, though it was fully rebuilt after the flood and occupied for 30 years.

By the numbers, it looks like Enid is back in a boom phase. After dramatic drops in income and population during the '90s, its current pop and income levels are back to normal and growing fast... but abandoning the East side. This is just the latest repetition of the boom-bust ratchet that keeps Okla towns fresh. Booms bring in new workers who can afford new houses. New subdivisions sprawl. When the boom breaks the temporary workers leave, and the remaining locals bubble upward, level by level, into better houses which are now more affordable. The bottom level, the worst houses, are abandoned and eventually torn down.

Continued the topic here.

= = = = =

Footnote for clarity: The Big Horn, an attempted restaurant that probably never opened for business, is NOT to be confused with the Longhorn at 4th and Willow, a highly popular and successful restaurant that served big steaks and yummy Mexican food.

Labels: Danbo, Heimatkunde

  ¶ 5:45 AM

  Clone car
Aphids are stupid by any standard, even compared to most other insects. Their intelligence and adaptability comes from an unmatched ability to choose different life cycles.

The default aphid is female. In some conditions she turns out live-birthed direct copies of herself at a remarkable rate. Under different conditions she switches some of those copies into males that can fly elsewhere to spread her genes. Under different conditions she has sex with a male from a different location and lays eggs like most insects.

This BBC clip is time-lapsed, but not all that much. The cloned copies are fully developed aphids about 1/4 the size of the female. In the clip they seem to be emerging from the female's rear end every few seconds. In reality they emerge every 20 minutes during a birthing process.



Makes you wonder why mammals spend weeks or months growing a baby. It can be done in 20 minutes!

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 6:06 AM

  Facts as vectors 1
In 2009 Mr FOIA's "revelations" about the climate criminals were not really news. Lovers of reality had known most of that stuff for 20 years, and had been able to presume the rest by induction. Still, he did something significant. Because of the way he moved the facts, governments had to pay attention. Response was slow, but we're finally seeing real movement in the system of crime. Canada and Australia have firmly pulled out of the syndicate, and most EU countries are quietly cutting their subsidies to genocide. A few pieces of Satan's media (notably Reuters and The Economist) have pulled out, but most are still actively and enthusiastically supporting mass murder of the poor to enrich the rich.

In 2013 Snowden's "revelations" about NSA were not really news. Tech types have known and induced most of this stuff for a long time. Still, he did something significant. Because of the way Snowden moved the facts, Satan's media had to pay attention. And the continued movement of these facts has caused all sorts of perturbations in a criminal system that was remarkably static since 1948. Governments in some countries are pretending to protest, which doesn't matter. What does matter is the breakdown of the evil alliance between NSA and tech corporations. These companies have sold their products and services on a promise of privacy and security, and now we have documented proof that they were simply working for NSA.

Both of these syndicates served to corrupt and criminalize the world of science in different ways.

In climate, a demonstrably false theory about CO2 has been defended with infinite clusters of epicycles because that's where the money is. So far I don't see evidence of significant change in this funding. Canada has stopped its governmental funding, but that's a very small part of the international crime.

In communication, the problem isn't a false theory. It's a valid set of operations and observations (Number Theory) that was a trivial playground for pure mathy types until Big Crypto started pouring money into it. Now the commercial uses of numerical cryptography are known to be pointless because NSA designed and corrupted all of them for its own purposes. It will be interesting to see what happens to the funding. Will any university have the guts to refuse NSA's secret money?

Labels: Real World Math

  ¶ 4:45 AM

  Bedpost
Snapchat refuses buyout offer from Google. Immediately thereafter, Snapchat is hacked in a highly organized way.

Now, boys and girls, can we spell An offer you can't refuse? Very good! Now let's sing! "Does your horsehead lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?" That was a very nice song. Now we're going to learn a new word, boys and girls. Hackmail.
  ¶ 4:16 AM

  Broken English = the language of questions
I've noticed an odd phenomenon for 20 years. With remarkable consistency, most callers to "Money-talk" radio shows are not native English speakers. Half of them are squeaky-voiced Hindooos, and the rest are mainly Spanish with a scattering of Slavic or maybe Arab sounds.

The same thing happens in a very different environment, which I've also noticed for a long time but didn't connect until just now. Online questions about computer programming. Lately I've been working rather desperately to convert courseware into SCORM-compatible form. This involves a mix of HTML5, SVG, JS and the mysterious SCORM API. Most of my questions don't have an online answer. Nevertheless I always search first in the vain hope of saving time, and I find that 90% of the relevant-looking questions are written in barely comprehensible semi-English. It's harder to spot 'accents' in writing, but from the names it appears that India dominates here as well.

Of course broken English is expected online. The Web is innately international. Still, why so few questions from regular old Americans? (Or Aussies or Englishmen, for that matter?) Are all native English speakers working in corporate situations where questions about money and programming are answered by official sources?
  ¶ 3:29 AM

  Dogs of hell, dogs of heaven
Several years ago, when I was still in the grip of the Neocon idiocy, I wrote a lengthy piece lamenting the "fact" that Muslims were hopelessly uncivilized because they hated dogs.

Like all Neocon propaganda, this is an invalid conclusion from partly true facts. It's true that Mohammed disliked dogs and wrote his dislike into the form of rules. It's true that desert Arabs still dislike dogs. But most non-Bedouin Muslims (ie Turks, Persians, Egyptians) keep and love dogs in the same way that most non-Bedouin Christians do.

After I pried loose from the Neocon line, I was able to think in terms of constants and variables. You can find the same hatred of dogs and the same use of 'dog' as a metaphor for nasty and brutal in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and you can find it in all Western literature up to the 1800s. Think of the etymology of cynic, and all the old sayings about going to the dogs, laying down with dogs, etc. Those were not Muslim sayings.

Dogs had been helpful to farmers and hunters for a long time, but their helpfulness wasn't absorbed into common wisdom and language until the era of Dickens and Twain.

Before the switch, dogs were commonly treated as the guardians of Hell. Now we see them as the proper inhabitants of Heaven, who may occasionally allow an especially good human through the gates.

The true variable is not religion but type of culture. Nomadic warrior cultures have dogs but don't see them as companions. Dogs are just garbage collectors. Settled farm and village cultures learn to appreciate the herding work and civilizing influence of dogs.

Most Europeans had been settled villagers for 1000 years before their narratives and metaphors reflected their practical attitudes. Why?

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 5:30 PM

  Gap
News item:

"Toronto's Beleagueredmayor Rob Ford files for re-election."

Leads to a thought: After you're publicly known as a hopeless drunk who smokes crack in drunken stupors and engages in illegal and dangerous sex, what jobs are you qualified for?

Armed robber.
Unskilled day labor (eg Sweeping up dog poop in parking lots.)
Whore.
Mayor.
Congressman.
Senator.
President.

Hmm. Seems to be a gap in the middle of the list, somewhere between Whore and Mayor.

Later thought: No, it's even worse. Mayor, Congressman and Senator are jobs you can get and keep while actually serving time in prison. It's happened many times. You can't be a robber, laborer or whore while actually serving time in prison.  ¶ 7:10 AM

  Out of the memory hole
Listening to old radio broadcasts, heard a brief mention of a piece of WW2 that I hadn't been aware of.



Just after we hit Japan with A-bombs, Russia declared war on Japan and moved in quickly, grabbing Manchuria and part of Korea in one month. From this news account it sounds like Stalin was being opportunistic as usual. It seems a bit out of character because Russia had been purely defensive up till then, purely focused on defeating the Krauts and driving them out of Russia.

A Wiki article gives a more complete picture. This move was part of the 1943 Yalta agreement. Stalin was supposed to join us against Japan as soon as Germany was safely down, and the date of August 1945 was determined in advance by the agreement and the events. Russia was, of course, well aware of our A-bomb program since the physicists at Los Alamos were Soviet spies. Because Stalin understood the potential, he didn't think the A-bomb would be enough to stop Japan.

And in fact it wasn't the prime determiner. Japan's government surrendered after the A-bomb and the equally deadly firebombing of Tokyo, but the Jap military was still in fighting mood. It was the surprise Soviet second front that finally dispirited the Jap army.

This series of events doesn't fit the crazed wacked-out modern narrative that we suddenly and illegally attacked the poor innocent peaceful long-suffering Zen Buddhist Japanese Peoples in 1945 without any provocation, so it has been in the memory hole.

Russia kept Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands but wasn't interested in occupying Manchuria, and officially handed it back to China in 1955. Korea was set up as a divided occupation zone like Germany, but the North quickly became a Chinese tool even while nominally Soviet. And of course it remains a Chinese tool.
  ¶ 3:09 AM

  The time zones they are a-changin dood
News item:

At the stroke of 8 a.m. on Wednesday Colorado became the first state in the nation where small amounts of retail marijuana legally can be sold in specialty shops.

Unavoidable thought: "dood what's this eight A M shit dood? some new variety dood? good shit dood?"

Nope, wrong. There were plenty of customers who knew the proper meaning of 8 AM. They were waiting in line at 8 AM, and it sounds like most of them were old. Us old coots get up at 3 AM. Gives a whole new flavor to the traditionally nighthawkish pot culture, and a new meaning to the P in AARP.
  ¶ 1:50 PM

  Synesthesia
This clip is a New Year fireworks display in Taiwan. It's not as big or noisy as some displays, but it's fantastically structured. Strikes me as the exact visual equivalent of formal music, with themes and tonics and dominants and ritornellos. If you wanted to show a deaf person what a Mozart piano concerto feels like, this would do it.
  ¶ 5:43 AM

  Amazing!
Sotomayor has approved an emergency injunction stopping the Romneycare provision that required explicitly Catholic organizations to pay for abortion and contraception.

Truly amazing. I'd assumed that Sotomayor was just another orthodox Satanist/Stalinist, but she seems to have a dim understanding that religion exists, and that government occasionally has other purposes besides its normal and typical duties of mass murder and SMASHING civilization.


A good start for the new year.

= = = = =

Sidenote: Clearly the "religious exemption" still has some power against the all-consuming tyranny of the Feds, even after 60 years of constant violent SMASHING by the Supremes. Churches are exempt from Die-Versity requirements. Black churches are free to be all-black, and astonishingly even white churches are still free to be all-white. Preachers are able to speak truth in the context of reading Bible verses, while ordinary people in a secular setting would be instantly Unpersonned and Banished for speaking the same truth.

Given that churches are the last bastion of actual freedom, why do so many Libertarian types hate churches? If they really want more freedom from legal prosecution, they should be sincerely joining large recognized denominations.
  ¶ 1:58 AM

  Superpower Uganda
Interesting development. Hope it's a trend. The latest civil war in South Sudan appears to be ending (for the moment anyway) in response to pressure from united African countries. Specifically pressure from neighboring Uganda, acting as the spearhead for a united Africa.

There have been "all-Africa" organizations since independence in 1960, but they were useless. Typically they sat back and let the UN commit its usual evil acts, resulting in longer and harsher wars. This time Uganda is exerting real moral pressure and implied military pressure, and the Sudanese sides appear to be respecting the pressure.

Uganda and Rwanda are turning into moral superpowers. After experiencing long periods of maximum evil and maximum corruption, both countries are exercising a new brand of moral strictness coupled with a firm desire to improve the condition of their own people.

Labels: Zero Problems

  ¶ 3:44 AM

  Validate?
NPR was running some standard commie shit about The Imperative Requirement For Die-Versity In The Cinemaw. Quoted a black woman: "I want to see my life as a Black Wyymmyyn validated in the movies."

What a fantastically stupid idea. Nobody wants to see their own life validated by entertainment. Obviously mass media like The Cinemaw have to speak in a language that most folks understand. Shakespeare and Chaucer won't do for modern audiences. But beyond that, the whole point of entertainment is to see someone else's fucking life, for fuck's sake. And ideally we want to see their life de-validated, not validated. We want to see tyrants and tycoons slipping on a banana peel (comedy) or we want to see tyrants and tycoons knifed by ambitious underlings (tragedy).

I don't want my life validated. I like the way my narrow little life runs. Took many years of work and sacrifice to reach the point of zero drama, and this is exactly how I want it.

But a life with zero drama would be excruciatingly boring for anyone else to watch, and completely pointless for me to watch.
  ¶ 7:44 AM

  Whats the opposite of Healthcare.gov?
Romneycare, a Repooflican program, is used by Repooflicans as evidence that government can't do anything right. Aside from the wild tangled garble of cross-party rebranding and contradictions, the basic point is unfortunately correct. Every aspect of Romneycare is utterly wrong and utterly incompetent and totally destructive, and it will never go away. It will grow multi-layered convoluted exceptions and exemptions and epicycles until it brings the whole country to a grinding halt.

Though it's probably too late, I like to remember that the government can do some things well. It does an excellent job on hydropower despite an increasing pile of genocidal Gaian limitations imposed by evil parts of the same gov't. Most of the govt's efforts in agriculture are competent and useful.

MyPlate.gov is a website that communicates its main point perfectly and helpfully. It's a vast improvement over previous attempts at nutrition advice, such as the idiotic Bush-admin recommendation of "5 to 9 portions of vegetables and fruits". What's a portion? What's a vegetable? Raw or cooked? Does that mean you should eat 9 meals per day? Or just 9 blueberries? How in the fuck are you going to acquire "5 to 9" whatevers without spending all your time cooking? Result: Let's just go to McDonalds and have a Happy Meal.

In stark contrast, MyPlate shows you visually what a balanced meal should look like, and shows you how to get there. It's a perfect use of graphics and a well-built lively website with lots of resources for different types of people.

However..... a short article reports on a survey of households. Only 10% of "trendsetting moms" (huh?) were even aware of MyPlate.

Bring back Home Ec, dammit!
  ¶ 5:08 AM

  Constants and Variables 7
If Romneycare premiums are a "tax", as the Supremes claim, then those premiums should be uniform by state. Standardization is pretty much the main point of rolling a system into the federal government. And it's required by the old Constitution, not that any "judge" has ever read the old Constitution.

"..all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

Well, is Romneycare a uniform Excise? Not hardly. An easy-to-read map from Health Research Institute shows the high points and low points. The data is for certain counties or cities, not for the whole state. Still the same problem. Non-uniform by city is still non-uniform.

Constants and variables.

These points stand out:

AK and HI are at opposite ends of the premium scale. Both states have extremely high prices and wages, essentially a different value of the dollar because of shipping costs. If we're going to ignore the old Constitution and allow differences based on dollar value, BOTH should be up at the top.

WY is far above all its neighbors, despite having the same demography as its neighbors.

MS is far above all its neighbors, despite etc.

IN is far above etc.

My first thought was "Aha! Malpractice! Mississippi is notoriously litigious!" Nope, doesn't work. This hard-to-read graph (an outstanding example of overgraphication) destroys that hypothesis. Look down to the Per-capita payouts section. MS, despite reputation, is near the bottom in malpractice payouts. IN is also near the bottom and WY is in the middle.

So we have a tax that fails every possible test. It fails the old Constitution's requirement of uniformity. Ignoring that, it fails to adjust for cost of living. Ignoring that, it fails to adjust for legal costs. Ignoring that, it fails the ideal of progressivity. MS, the poorest state, has some of the highest Romneycare taxes.
  ¶ 2:44 AM

  Bullies need theories. Theories need bullies.
Polistra has been hammering on this point forever, and it's hardly an original one. Still, the above six-word title seems to pull it all together nicely.

Tyranny runs on theories, and theorists depend on tyrants for work.

A highly centralized political system always has an intense ideology behind it. Marx, Nietzsche, Locke. All of these systems eventually go wild and collapse. A more natural parliamentary system runs without ideology, without a written constitution. It simply adapts to circumstances like any living thing.

A highly centralized religion always has a complex theology, a set of strange statements about God and angels and saints and grace and trinities. Entia multiplicant like rabbits. Centralized religions seem to last longer than centralized political systems, but they last in a collapsed and corrupt condition. A more natural religion runs with minimum theology, relying on direct personal experience with God, plus a set of experimental observations about human behavior and consequences. (eg Proverbs and Leviticus.) Natural religions stick to the basics, leaving details to individual churches or provinces.

A highly centralized economic system relies on economic theories, and economists invent those theories to enrich the masters of the system. Friedman and Krugman feed the two complementary bellies of our modern all-consuming beast, and their theories would be treated as evidence of schizophrenia if the beast wasn't roaring ahead and "creating" "prosperity" for the friends and relatives of Friedman and Krugman. Healthy economic systems take pains to avoid all abstractions. No options, no interest, no bets. Simply exchange money for various forms of labor.

A highly centralized scientific system is NOTHING BUT weird theories. Global warming, evolution, big bang, multiverse, quantum. These theories are either obviously wrong or essentially unprovable, which makes them ideal vehicles for intensive and unending research. Just like grace and trinities. The granting bureaucracies and educrats need the theories to maintain their ever-growing budgets, and the theoreticians would be harmless cranks without the bureaucracies.

Bullies need theories. Theories need bullies.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult, Experiential education, Natural law = Sharia law, the broken circle

  ¶ 5:21 PM

  600 millibags
Heard an ad for a monstrous refrigerator.... "holds 31 cubic feet, or 32 bags of groceries."

I hadn't thought about this before, but "bag of groceries" is a natural unit that has recently changed.

Paper or plastic? A typical paper bag holds 1 cubic foot, and a typical plastic bag holds about 0.6 cuft.

This probably contributes to silent inflation, the same trick that grocery manufacturers use with toilet paper and candy bars. You're carrying the same number of bags but getting less actual content.

I'm not complaining. Though I initially resisted the change, the plastic bag is vastly superior for walking. Paper bags stand upright and fit neatly in a car seat or trunk, but there's no comfortable way to carry a full-size paper bag.

  ¶ 6:47 AM

  What's wrong with Putin?
Now is not the time to go wobbly, boy. You CORRECTLY arrested the ecopirates for piracy. Piracy is piracy. Boarding a vessel at sea is piracy, even when it's done for COOL reasons.

The CORRECT followup, the ZERO PROBLEMS step, would have been to shoot the pirates as soon as they were safely away from the vessel.

Now that you've dropped the charges, you've not only failed to supply justice, you've diluted your national sovereignty and strengthened the enemies of humanity and destroyers of civilization. They're doing a satanic victory dance.

= = = = =

Of course I'm not in any position to second-guess a competent leader; I'm really trying to observe and learn from apparent mysteries. Russia has already gone through the inevitable collapse that resulted from sticking with an ideology. Putin's mission is to pull Russia out of the collapsed condition. Some of his moves are puzzling, just as some of Stalin's moves were puzzling. In both cases I have to assume that the move is aimed at improving Russia's position, and try to learn from it. America is still on the leftward path toward our collapse. Different ideologies ... Russia followed Marx to suicide, we're following Gramsci to suicide ... same destination.
  ¶ 3:55 AM

  Manwellernomics
Various bloggers have been pointing out that Romneycare depends on the false idea of "shopping around." Economists always start with the bizarre assumption that consumers are constantly choosing all products from an infinite range of options. Supposedly we buy everything based on a precise balance between purposes and prices. If eggs go up too high, we try another store; if all stores have high-priced eggs, we buy some eggs and some cheese instead of all eggs.

This is physically impossible in health care, and it's thoroughly impractical for food and most other categories. The only way to get a lower price for health care is to be part of an insurance plan. Hospitals start with a price that's 10 times higher than necessary. If you're "shopping" on your own, you're stuck. You have to pay 10 times the normal price because the hospital doesn't give a fuck about displeasing you. If you're part of a giant insurance plan, the insurer can throw its weight around to acquire the normal price, because the hospital doesn't want to lose half their customer base at once by displeasing the insurer.

Shopping around does work in a few situations. Gas stations run solely on price. People will drive 20 extra miles to "save" a few pennies per gallon, which they've already lost by driving 20 extra miles.

Sudden realization: It's just like Manweller's Rule.

In politics, Manweller's Rule holds that elections will only happen where elections don't matter. In countries like South Sudan or Central African Republic, the opposing parties have serious differences of policy, and the winner gets serious financial rewards from oil or diamonds. Result: Decision is made by AK-47. In countries like US, all parties slavishly serve Goldman, and the winner and loser get roughly similar rewards because of Polistra's Dog Bowl Rule. Result: Winner and loser are merely symbolic, so we have merely symbolic elections to determine which letter goes on the president's shirt.

Thus in Manwellernomics: Shopping around only happens in situations where shopping around doesn't matter. You're free to choose gas stations by price, because they all sell the same gas and you'll end up using the same amount anyway. You're not able to choose hospitals by price. Only armies (WalMart, pension funds, insurers) can truly choose products by price, because they can kill a supplier whose prices are too high.
  ¶ 12:14 PM