First thought, second thought
The sales end of Romneycare seems to be having serious tech problems, beyond the usual startup strain. It's taking info from users and giving the info to insurers in faulty form, with bad addresses and all sorts of missing data.

First thought: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. EAT IT, MONOPOLY INSURERS. YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING MILLIONS OF NEW FORCED CUSTOMERS WITH NO SALES EXPENSE. HA HA HA HA HA. JOKE'S ON YOU, ASSHOLES.

Second thought: The Post Office has been using computerized addresses since the '70s, and they have a complex but well-formed set of systems for handling variations in addresses.

For many years Repooflicans have been saying "You don't want health care to work as badly as the Post Office, do you?" I always thought that was a PHENOMENALLY STUPID comparison because even before Romneycare American health care was INFINITELY LESS competent, INFINITELY LESS customer-oriented and INFINITELY LESS friendly than the Post Office. Hospitals and doctors kill 200,000 Americans each year through mistakes. Somewhere around 5% of patients are harmed by medication errors. USPS never kills anyone, and has a much lower error rate in general. The comparison only tells me that the Repooflican yappers who make the comparison are superrich fuckheads who live in a privately owned bubble with private armies of doctors and private armies of illegal immigrant slaves. They have never experienced the horrible service of a proletarian hospital or the competent service of a postman or PO clerk.

Now the stupidity becomes perfectly literal. The Romneycare tax-funded salesman system is failing to use the Post Office's OWN address-determining system!
  ¶ 12:54 PM

  Almost happened
Another 'why didn't it happen then' question.

What we think of as the Web first started in 1830. The English telegraph system was meant to be a net of households and businesses, with a keyboard and printer in each connected house. This didn't go very far, for reasons that aren't clear.

Morse intended to set up the same type of system, with businesses and households directly connected. Again for unclear reasons, he quickly settled into a commercial arrangement with telegraph stations acting more like post offices.

Several Euro countries took the analogy the other way, with telegraph systems based IN the post office. When the Web finally developed again, some of those countries expanded the postal telegraph into the postal web.

Here's an odd half-baked effort by the US Post Office in the 1920s.



The Air Mail Radio Service, initially just to keep track of air mail planes, then ambitiously expanding toward a full net of electronic communications based IN the post office.



A couple years later, the system was running weather and farm reports. Nothing beyond this point; the system appears to have faded out as radio became exclusively commercial.

Labels: Alternate universe, Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 10:31 AM

  Old motto, new motto
Old motto (carved on building): Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

New motto (in a radio ad): For rain, snow, or whatever else Mother Nature throws at us, we bring our A-Game.

Whatever, dude. At least it's realistic. UPS and FedEx have taken over the Appointed Rounds franchise. Post Office has been demoted to the When-We-Feel-Like-It Rounds League.

= = = = =

The wiki article about the old motto brings out a fact I didn't know before: The old motto wasn't really about the US Post Office. It was Herodotus describing the Persian Post Office in 500 BC! [I suspect most educated people already knew this, but I didn't.]
  ¶ 4:50 AM

  When the Post Office was Google
Another peek into an unadvertised corner of history. Via American Radio History as always, a 1926 trade journal for phonograph retailers.

Headline: Let Post Office check your mailing list.



The Post Office was a full-service communications portal in those days. Along with delivering mail TWICE A DAY, it included a bank with savings and checking accounts. Here we have a sort of AdSense function, taking advantage of the neighborhood knowledge of postmen. You could ask the PO to update your mailing list to reflect the actual occupants of addresses.

= = = = =

By 1970 our PO had abandoned its central role. The bank was gone, the clerks were replaced by computers, and the goal of serving business was gone. In some Euro countries the PO moved the other way, becoming the coordinator for ALL communication. So it became the manufacturer of the systems as well as the carrier of information.

Labels: defensible times

  ¶ 2:46 AM

  Pork-busters are always idiots
I haven't mocked pork-busters in a long time.

While looking up old info about IBM systems, ran across this 1926 report from the US Govt Printing Office. It's a perfect example of idiotic penny-pinching.

Someone in the GPO had the idea of saving cost and eliminating "unfair profit" by making their own tabulators.

Negotiations are in progress with the Post Office Department, and with other departments and bureaus of the Government which are engaged to any considerable extent in statistical work, for the purpose of introducing the tabulating machinery which has been invented, developed, and manufactured in the bureau's mechanical laboratory.

The representatives of the Post Office Department have arranged for a practical test of the tabulating machine. This machine can also be used advantageously on cost accounting, and the bureau is already making such use of it, with highly satisfactory results. It makes possible the preparation, with a minimum of time, labor, and expense, of either general or detailed cost statements, in accordance with the “classification of objects of expenditure" adopted by the General Accounting Office.

I feel very strongly that a material saving can be effected by the introduction of the bureau's tabulating machinery in other branches of the Government.

But those other departments were already using Hollerith machines and Hollerith cards. They didn't WANT to switch, and they didn't even want to start using GPO cards in the Hollerith machines, based on experience. The GPO cards didn't fit right.

GPO tried to assert conflict of interest:

In a letter of August 19, 1925, the Postmaster General wrote as follows: Under the terms of the Hollerith contract with the Government, their machines are leased with the express stipulation that they be used only for the tabulation and assorting of cards of Hollerith manufacture. The Federal Trade Commission also stated in its reply of August 4, 1925, that it had entered into a similar contract with one of the tabulating machine companies. Admission of this exclusive and tying contract, which appears to be a violation of the Clayton Act...

But it didn't work in the end. Hollerith had perfected the SKILL of making tabulating machinery AND the cards to match. This was the unique American advantage, before we threw it away in the '70s. We knew how to turn an invention into a SYSTEM, with all of its pieces and connectors working together.

Using machines that don't work as well, with no service available, and with cards that don't fit, is NOT the way to save costs. The most important cost is downtime, not initial expenditure.

SKILL is always the most important variable. The SKILL of the various departments would be wasted by forcing them to use inadequate and unserviceable machinery. Human capital matters infinitely more than money capital. IBM made huge profits BECAUSE it understood this point.

Now, of course, we aim for Share Value instead of profit, so 100% downtime is the sole purpose and goal of the economy. No work, no skills, no production, no employees, no products, no customers, no humans. Just Bezos and machines.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 11:03 PM

  Double shared lie
Linked via NakedCapitalism, more totally wrong dysdefinitions of socialism.

“The 2018 PRRI American Values Survey offered respondents two definitions of socialism. One described it as ‘a system of government that provides citizens with health insurance, retirement support and access to free higher education,” essentially a description of social democracy. The other was the full Soviet dose: “a system where the government controls key parts of the economy, such as utilities, transportation and communications industries.’

Neither of these conditions has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with socialism.

"Health insurance, retirement support and free college" was the US standard from 1940 to 1980. The first two are still there. We still supply single-payer Medicare for 70% of all medical COSTS, because 70% of all medical COSTS are in old age. Retirement support = SS, standard equipment since 1936. College ranged from free to affordable. Two-year community colleges, which are the ONLY post-secondary education needed by 98% of the population, were usually free.

"Government controls utilities, transportation and communication": Again standard in 1950 USA. Utilities were mainly municipal, sometimes state. Privatization of utilities started in 1980, expanded with the Enron laws in 1999. Transportation was railroads and bus systems. Railroads were a strictly regulated utility. Bus systems were municipal. Communication was the post office and Ma Bell. The post office was purely federal, and Ma Bell was a strictly controlled utility, not owned by government but serving government.

We don't want these good things because they're socialist. We want these good things because we FORMERLY HAD THEM and we remember that LIFE WAS BETTER when we had them.

= = = = =

Tiresomely repeating:

Socialism means that the SUPPLY of capital for business is CONTROLLED by government, not by Jamie Dimon. That's all.

In the Soviet system, businesses were expected to make a profit by creating real value. Government shared in the profit via VAT. Government used some of its tax income to invest in new or improved businesses, aiming to maximize the use of human skills.

In the modern US system, businesses are FORBIDDEN to make a profit and FORBIDDEN to allow customers or employees to survive. All employees and customers must die. Government gets nothing because tax is also forbidden. Everything, including government, runs on debt supplied by NYC banks. No value is generated. All value is destroyed. The Dow exponentially rises toward infinity as the population declines toward zero.

= = = = =

Why is PRRI distorting the definition so grossly? Who is PRRI? Quick answer by looking at their connections: PRRI is a branch of Deepstate.

So: Deepstate has figured out that "socialism" is popular. Deepstate must associate "socialism" with free stuff from government, to accelerate the push toward zero real value and infinite debt.

Using this definition also discredits Bernie, who is trying to restore the CORRECT definition of the word. Come to think of it, maybe discrediting Bernie is the MAIN purpose?

The big problem again: This definition of "socialism" misses the crucial role of PROFIT in both the old US setup designed by FDR and the Soviet setup. None of the services and products in those actual systems were free. Everything had a cost, and both government and business tried to operate on the profit side of the ledger. Medicare and SS brought in more tax revenue than they paid out. Municipal utilities and Bell Tel were profitable. Colleges were affordable and profitable.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Shared Lie

  ¶ 11:19 PM

  Measurement of postal importance
Do we still use and need the Post Office? A pretty good comparative indicator:

In 1937, as narrated in this episode of 'Can You Imagine', a Brooklyn postman got lazy and tossed several hundred pieces of mail over the course of several days. Customers complained loudly and the postman was caught quickly.

In 2010, a postman near Portland got lazy and tossed at least 35,000 pieces of mail over the course of a year before the Post Office caught him.

Looks like the 'Postal Importance Ratio' between 1937 and 2010 is about 100 to 1.
  ¶ 2:35 AM

  Infrastructure
You really have to wonder why the Republican "party" is so determined to eliminate itself completely. First it votes enthusiastically for Shotgun Paulson's monstrous Hanukkah gift to his Jewish friends; then it votes against the smaller auto company bailout; now it votes 100% against the large and admittedly messy infrastructure package.

At least they're consistent. They want to give the entire economy to people who are already obscenely rich, and they want to get absolutely nothing in return for the gift. The Dems are less consistent. They voted for the original Hanukkah gift, but they have also voted (less than 100%) for the other two bailouts.

The Dems and Obama are somewhat closer to common sense.

Basic rule: If you must go into debt, use it for something meaningful and permanent, something that will improve life for your family and descendants. Buy a house for a reasonable price, buy an education. Don't use it to buy Hanukkah gifts, don't use it to impress your neighbors, don't spend it at the casino. The latest infrastructure package satisfies the basic rule. This money is mainly going toward permanent improvements in our national "house". And the brand-D politicians are on the common-sense side by supporting it. Brand-R is on the side of waste, dissipation and collapse.

= = = = =

Polistra has been pushing for infrastructure funding from the start.

Here's a reprint of an April 2007 thought:

Maybe we'd do better to bring bureaucracy backward and away from technocracy. It would do a better job of serving the poor and elderly with a more human approach, and just might be more efficient in the ways that really matter.

Example: Until 1950 the Post Office delivered twice a day, and until 1970 it could find an address without any Zip Codes at all. You could send a letter to "March of Dimes, c/o Postmaster", and the local post office would know where to put it. Now we have to put 9-digit Zip Codes on letters; if I were to send a letter to my next-door neighbor, it would have to go to Seattle for sorting and return to Spokane. This is high-tech but it is NOT EFFICIENT. My home-town paper sometimes takes 18 days to reach me from Oklahoma, which is literally horse-and-buggy speed.

The overall point is this: Much of the technocracy was planned on the basis of ever-increasing population. Malthusian theories, implanted by the Left, led government to get ready for exponential increases. We haven't had exponential increases. America now has twice as many people as in 1940, not six times as many. Thus we could be delivering mail once a day with the same lo-tech and efficient system that delivered twice a day in 1940.

When our population starts to decrease, as many Euro countries are already seeing, we'll be stuck with a lot of systems planned for a non-existent future. Technology can help, but perhaps government can find a different niche, a more personalized way of doing things.

Another helpful backward move that requires considerable government action, though not strictly a gov't matter: Rejuvenate the railroads. We have allowed them to decline dangerously. Trains are hugely superior to trucks in energy usage, especially because trains can be switched to electric power. Even in America many railroads are already electrified, and the standard diesel locomotive would be easy to convert. There's no way to electrify long-distance trucks.

Rails are somewhat more secure than highways; though nothing is purely terrorist-proof, tracks have limited access by definition, and you can't steer a bomb-carrying train into a destination that isn't on the tracks. Also, building more trains - and building more nuclear reactors to power them - would be an excellent use for the dozens of automobile plants and thousands of workers now abandoned by Ford and GM. A competent wartime government would have started this process on 9/12/2001.

= = = = = end reprint

  ¶ 8:53 AM

  After the dysrapture.....
I had a moment of despair after looking again at the forms of misdirection.

Is there ANYTHING in the modern EU/US/UK that is NOT utterly false and infinitely infinitely infinitely evil and crazy beyond crazy beyond crazy and more and more and more and more and more and more????????

If all the evil forces were suddenly dysraptured off the world, what would be left?

If you eliminated false facts and intentional misdirection from the media, what would you have left? Absolutely nothing.

If you eliminated false facts and reverse causation from science, what would you have left? Very little, at least in the public and academic sphere. You'd have engineering and some parts of medicine.

If you eliminated false facts and misdirection from government... You'd have the Post Office and road repair. Since the Post Office is quickly turning obsolete, we're really down to infrastructure. Roads, sewers, dams. Engineering again.

If you eliminated false facts and misdirection from religion... You'd have faiths based on experience-determined Natural Law. Most of Islam, some Pentecostals.

From business.... you'd have the entire agriculture and food industry, plus service firms like contractors and beauty salons.

What do these saving remnants have in common? MAKEFORCE. Physically building or repairing or maintaining things or people.

SKILLS DON'T LIE.

Here's the saving grace for the saving remnant: MAKEFORCE doesn't have to be explicitly serving a fact-based industry. MAKEFORCE is just as important ... maybe more important ... when it's tied to a fake entity or organization. Not INSIDE the fake organization. When you're INSIDE you're corrupted.

Classic example is the Gold Rush phenomenon. The 1849 Gold Rush, like all bubbles, was fake. Most prospectors lost everything. Many people made good money by physically providing hardware and groceries to the rushers.


= = = = =

Continued in next item.
  ¶ 2:37 AM

  Postal savings returns?
Dayen notes that the Post Office is thinking about bringing back Postal Savings.

YES! YES! YES! Excellent idea!




We had a Postal Savings system from 1910 to 1966; other countries had it much earlier and some still use it. This original 1910 proposal summarized how Postal Savings worked in other countries. The authors seemed desperate to reassure banks that the PO wouldn't compete with them. Repeatedly made the point that Postal Savings intended to serve only "widows and orphans", offering very low interest rates. [Very low = 2%, which is of course unimaginably stratospherically high by today's criminal standards.] The European experience showed consistently that a customer who got prosperous enough to seek higher returns would move up to commercial banks, and the proposed US Postal Savings was designed to force such moves. Obama's new Myra proposal for low-income retirement forces the same intro/moveup paradigm.

Here's a clear description of how Postal Savings actually worked in 1911. You could save up to $500 (about $10k today). Twice a year you could roll over part or all of your account into 20-year maturity bonds, with clippable coupons for 3.125% interest; so your liquid account was limited but your total federal account wasn't limited.



Ideally, a new version of Postal Savings should have the opposite purpose. PS should work hard to corner the market on all banking services because banks no longer offer banking services. Banks no longer want savers. Banks no longer pay interest. Banks no longer want to make loans. Banks are solely playgrounds for the Chosen, who have the unique gene-based privilege of taking all the money in the world AND MORE, plus infinite amounts of counterfeited QE "money" AND MORE, just because they're Chosen.

Thus the Post Office could make a profit from the entire market of poor and working class (i.e. non-Chosen) savers, simply by paying NON-ZERO interest rates and making small loans.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Danbo, the broken circle

  ¶ 6:31 AM

  Newt and Malthus
Newt is doing something truly interesting. While the other candidates are busy ginning up millions so they can bash each other over the head for two years, Newt is simply organizing a new party.

He's doing it within the Republican structure, thus avoiding the McCain-Feingold obstacles to a named third party, but it's still a party. His main goal is to run lots of like-minded folks for state, local and federal offices, and then use their power to influence the government.

This is exactly what a party does. 1. Gain a majority. 2. Use it.

Since the Republican club isn't a party by this definition - it gained a majority and the Presidency, and then allowed the Kennedys and Clintons to continue running the country as usual - it's a good 'vacant shell' to build a new organization on. As the informal leader of this new party, Newt will have more genuine power than any Republican president. And if the process of building the organization leads to a groundswell of support, he could become the candidate as well. However: I suspect he understands that no Republican will be allowed to win against Hillary, so it's more important at this time to construct a genuine opposition party.

= = = = =

Newt's platform is correct on the basics. Focus on rebuilding civilization, bring bureaucracy forward into at least the 20th century if not the 21st, put a leash on lawyers. I don't think he goes far enough on the latter; he's ready to dissolve the 9th Circuit but not the entire Federal court system.

I've got a contrarian thought on the middle point. Maybe we'd do better to bring bureaucracy backward and away from technocracy. It would do a better job of serving the poor and elderly with a more human approach, and just might be more efficient in the ways that really matter.

An example, derived from listening to old radio shows.... In the '40s the Post Office delivered twice a day and took care of finding addresses without any Zip Codes at all. You could send a letter to "March of Dimes, c/o Postmaster", and the local post office would know where to put it. Now we have to put 9-digit Zip Codes on letters; if I were to send a letter to my next-door neighbor, it would have to go to Seattle for sorting and return to Spokane. This is high-tech but it is NOT EFFICIENT. My home-town paper sometimes takes 18 days to reach me from Oklahoma, which is literally horse-and-buggy speed.

The overall point is this: Much of the technocracy was planned on the basis of ever-increasing population. Malthusian theories, implanted by the Left, led government to get ready for exponential increases. We haven't had exponential increases. America now has twice as many people as in 1940, not six times as many.

When our population starts to decrease, as many Euro countries are already seeing, we'll be stuck with a lot of systems planned for a non-existent future. Technology can help, but perhaps government can find a different niche, a more personalized way of doing things.

Another helpful backward move that requires considerable government action, though not strictly a gov't matter: Rejuvenate the railroads. We have allowed them to decline dangerously. Trains are hugely superior to trucks in energy usage, especially because trains can be switched to electric power. Even in America many railroads are already electrified, and the standard diesel locomotive would be easy to convert. There's no way to electrify long-distance trucks.

Rails are somewhat more secure than highways; though nothing is purely terrorist-proof, tracks have limited access by definition, and you can't steer a bomb-carrying train into a destination that isn't on the tracks. Also, building more trains - and building more nuclear reactors to power them - would be an excellent use for the dozens of automobile plants and thousands of workers now abandoned by Ford and GM. A competent wartime government would have started this process on 9/12/2001.
  ¶ 9:59 AM

  From an extremely different era 9
Just for fun I'm continuing to look for the mysterious mythical Prueter. Searches are often serendipitous. [Later, solved the mystery in a prosaic proofreadery way.]

A 1924 issue of Electrical World seemed to get close but didn't help with Prueters. It did contain two nice examples of Federal SANITY during Harding's era.

Harding wanted the Federal government to insure EQUIPOISE, not EXPERIMENT. He wanted the government to slow down booms and busts instead of accentuating them, and he wanted the government to control frauds and chicanery. As seen by modern Libertarians like Bezos and Soros, Harding was an outright Commie.

Example 1:

NO SUFFICIENT reason exists for much of the foreboding prompted by the west coast drouth, in the opinion of Major H. S. Bennion, assistant chief engineer of the Federal Power Commission, who has returned from a trip through the Pacific states. Rainfall has its peaks and valleys, he points out, just as has the demand for electric power. When a trough happens to dip a little lower than has been the case for fifty years, there is no more reason to think the curve will stay at that point any longer than it did fifty years ago when there was a comparable drouth.

Major Bennion understands how the serious difficulties occasioned by the drouth are calculated to depress those who have to meet the situation, but as one who is not so close to the picture, he feels that there is no reason for serious concern.

Nature moves in CYCLES and has PREDICTABLE PATTERNS. Nature never does infinite linear or exponential expansions. Modern governmental "scientists", whether dealing with economics or climate or viruses, always assume UNCONTROLLED expansion with NO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

Example 2:

Official approval of the final plans of the home lighting contest being conducted by the lighting educational committee has been received from the Post Office Department at Washington, so that nothing stands in the way of a successful campaign. Strict regulations are in force by this department of the government to assure that contests of this nature will be perfectly legitimate.

Amazing. The Post Office was guarding against cheating and fraud.

Unimaginable in modern times when the government ACCENTUATES and ACCELERATES all cheats and frauds.

Labels: Alternate universe, Carbon Cult, Equipoise

  ¶ 1:36 PM

  Hi-tech solutions
The ZIP code, when written out fully with all 13 digits, contains all the info necessary for one specific house or apt or office. I've wondered why the PO still requires name and address and city along with the ZIP. What would happen if you sent mail with only the 13-digit ZIP? For the first time I've seen a test of this question.

I ordered printer ink from LD Products as usual. The package arrived early this morning while I was out on my morning walk.



The labels from LD have lots of numbers and QR squares and UPC lines, but absolutely no name or address or city. The 9-digit ZIP appears once in readable form, but it's the ZIP for the branch post office, not the 9-digit for my block or the 13-digit for my house. Presumably the info is in the QR.

Somebody at the branch office wrote my address on a PostIt note and tacked it to the package!

So that's how they do it. High tech!

Labels: Asked and finally answered

  ¶ 7:27 AM

  Anti-which-government?
I've been roaring lately about the idiocies of USA STRONG, with good reason.

Listened this morning to a local Repooflican radio talker, who was also roaring against the government in the usual Repoof style.

My roar and the Repoof roar are equally loud and equally futile, but the actual subjects are COMPLETELY SEPARATE AND DISJUNCT.

Repoofs will constantly bash the 'mechanical' parts of govts. IRS, IRS, IRS, IRS, IRS, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Drivers License, Post Office. They never criticize FBI or Defense or CIA or Federal Reserve. They occasionally say mildly unpleasant things about the EPA Terrorist Army, but when in office the Repoofs expand the EPA Terrorist Army faster than the Dems do.

I've never had the slightest problem with those 'mechanical' parts. All of them have worked perfectly and smoothly and accurately, providing a reasonable amount of customer service when needed.

I pay my taxes. IRS sometimes finds errors. They refund or ask for payment depending on which way the error runs. No problem. All fair and friendly.

Lately I was comparing the performance of SS with the performance of Group Health. I've been using GHC health insurance for about 7 years now. My address and employment haven't changed during those years, but GHC has made 4 mysterious changes of program or format or something. Each time I've had to re-enroll from scratch, involving huge piles of paperwork and several months of confusion and uncertainty, with no indication that they remembered my previous enrollments. The recent switch from individual coverage to Medicare Advantage was the paperworkiest and confusedest of them all.

SS never gave me a single problem. I got my SS card 50 years ago and still have the same card in my wallet. Since then I've run through about 30 addresses and 15 jobs. SS kept up with all of those changes WITH NO EFFORT ON MY PART. When I hit 62, I used their website to 'turn on' SS payments. The process took a few minutes, no paperwork, no confusion. Since then the checks have been coming every month, automatically adjusted downward to compensate for my other income. When I turned 65 last month, Medicare clicked in WITH NO EFFORT ON MY PART.



SS has been doing the same near-perfect job for about 350 million Americans since 1936, making it look easy.

That's an unbelievably magnificent level of performance. [Sidenote: This article shows how SS was fanatically devoted to perfect sorting and filing from the start, always looking for the best coding methods and the best storage and recovery methods. As a former office manager and current programmer, I find it inspiring. Too bad the NON-GOVERNMENTAL contractors who run GHC and Romneycare weren't inspired by the same spirit of service.]

= = = = =


Conclusion: USA STRONG is an Alzheimers patient. The heart and lungs and kidneys are still pumping vigorously and properly, but his judgment is fucked. He's expertly driving the wrong way down the interstate at 120 MPH.

After feeding those organs for 50 years with my taxes, I appreciate the way they function on the output phase, and I hate the fucked judgment. Repoofs hate the functional parts and LOVE the Alzheimers part. More blood! More squash! USA STRONG! USA STRONG! USA STRONG!

Labels: STRONG!, Zero Problems

  ¶ 12:49 PM

  Hacking was hard!
Hacking wasn't easy before the internet. You had to figure out a way to SEE or HEAR the adversary with actual EYES and EARS.

= = = = =

Example 1:

Collectible Auto this month has a historically important biography feature. The focus, Bill Robinson, wasn't one of the big names, but he's unquestionably the last survivor from the era of big names, the last man alive who knew Exner and Engel and Earl. He worked at Chrysler from '48 to '80, and had a major part in designing the '57 to '60 models. At 93 Robinson is fully active and extremely sharp.

Robinson tells some details that I haven't seen in print before.

Each of the Big Three had a spy system. We had a full-time spy, and when he would go to Ford he would rent an Olds so they would think GM was spying on them. We built a U-shaped wall adjacent to our building so nobody could see in. It was made of telephone poles. We called it The Fort. But there was a house in Highland Park with a third story on it, and we found out that GM was renting that house. Another incident: I was working on a concept car, full-size, and they decided not to do it, and I threw the drawing in the trash. I got a call later from a friend at Ford who said "Bill, we've got your drawing here." They were buying our trash.

= = = = =

Example 2, from Telegraph Age in 1906, p 339 of the PDF. Several radio and TV shows about rackets featured variations on this time-shifting system, and I've always been suspicious. It didn't seem plausible. Seemed like way too much effort and expense for the payoff. Obviously I was wrong!

The scheme of tapping race wires and returning a false winner is not by any means the most up-to-date method of affecting the poolrooms. In fact, it is regarded nowadays as crude, risky and uncertain. There are other methods more elaborate, but less dangerous, by which, it is said, eight or ten men have cleared between $75,000 and $100,000 a year out of the poolrooms for the past few years. It is a game upon which even the law would find difficulty in laying its hands.

At this season of the year certain men meet in New York, the leader of whom is known as Big Al, to formulate plans for the season. A week later these men will have scattered over the country, North and South. They begin by spotting poolrooms and “clocking” them to ascertain the exact time between the start of a race and the cessation of betting. They also take note of the windows of the poolrooms, and the availability of securing rooms on the opposite side of the street.

An important essential to the plan is the establishment of a central telephone office. This central office is connected with a telephone overlooking the racetrack, from where a view of the finish can be obtained. Now suppose that the conspirators have planned to fleece half a dozen poolrooms in New York on a certain race. Each one of these poolrooms has a window opening on the street, on the opposite side of which Big Al's contingent has hired a flat or a room or a real estate office, or whatever they may choose to call it. These rooms or offices are fitted with telephones.

On the race programme each horse is given a certain number. Previous to the race to be beaten Long Jack, who next to Big Al is the most prominent in the gang, takes up a position in the infield from which he can command a clear view of the race. At a window of the house outside the track where the telephone is worked stands one of the men with a powerful field glass watching Long Jack. Another man sits at the telephone connecting with the central office.

At the central office are two telephone men, one at the race track wire and the other at the wires connecting with perhaps three “real estate" offices opposite the poolrooms to be fleeced.

In the real estate offices men are at the phones and also at the windows. In the poolroom about the time the race is to be run a harmless looking young man takes his stand near the window, where he can be seen from the street. Thus the entire gang is set up and ready for business.

The horses get away from the post. Long Jack never moves his eyes from them, and the man outside the ground never takes his eyes from Long Jack. Half a furlong from the finish Long Jack, with his wonderful gift of race reading, knows just how the race is going to finish. He looks over at the telephone house and raises his left hand with his glasses high in the air. The man at the window without losing an instant, says, "Left hand up.” “Left hand up” runs along the wire from the track to the gang’s central office. “Left hand up” races along the wires to the real estate offices.

There the operators call out the signal to the man on watch, who raises his left hand in the air. The man at the poolroom window rushes over to the poolroom man and bets all that he can get down on the horse which by this time has won. Only an instant is required to make the bet. A few seconds later by the telegraph route comes the customary “They’re off!” followed by the usual calling of the race to the finish.

= = = = =

BUT: Even now the real hackers still use eyes and ears. Every day we read about 500 billion identities hacked at some named company or website. Those hacks never lead to real losses. The real losses come from visually observing your PIN number at an ATM, or from buying your trash, or persuading you to give your data in exchange for a nonexistent reward. Just like 1957.

= = = = =

Later thought: The real difference between then and now is the ease of renting storefronts and rooms with a view. Before 1970, most downtown buildings had an assortment of rentable rooms, often serving as apartments. Malls and restrictive zoning and "fair" housing laws eliminated most of those rooms from the market.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 3:37 PM

  Pigeoneers and Pigeons 2
Continuing from here, with a few more pictures and a surprise.

A stationary loft served as the home base for the pigeons. They were trained in the stationary loft and learned to regard it as home.



A typical military loft had three or four rooms.



The Detention Cell, with a separate entrance, held misbehaving or ill pigeons. The ill birds needed to be separated because the healthy pigeons would otherwise try to kill them. Birds are Darwinians. The bad birds were kept separate so they could be retrained without affecting the others. A central hall led to a main residence and a workroom. Each room had a set of nest boxes and a set of perches.



Nest boxes were just large enough for one pigeon to sleep and eat; but pigeons were generally free to fly around the rooms when not locked in for bedtime. Water and food were available in the main room.

Pigeons are a one-way communication device. When men were sent out to the field for reconnaissance or battle, they carried pigeons from the stationary loft. Sometimes they carried in trailers,



and sometimes in carrying cages in trucks.



Each pigeon was equipped with a Message Capsule.



When the field unit wanted to send reports or requests for support back to headquarters, they would write a message on a standard form, roll it tightly, insert it in the capsule, and launch the pigeon. Automatic communication, no radio waves, no visible transport on the ground.

= = = = =

The one-way-ness would limit modern uses, but a Guild of modern Pigeoneers could find ways to use pigeons for off-grid banking and communication. A load of pigeons could be taken to a Branch Bank or Branch Post Office at intervals, then launched back to the central office with checks or letters. A capsule could carry massive amounts of information in digital form (eg USB stick).

= = = = =

Surprise: During WW2 the Army's pigeoneers had bred and trained two-way pigeons, or more precisely two-home pigeons. The birds knew two locations. When released at point A they would fly to point B, and when released at B they would fly to A.

At Fort Monmouth a true blue-blooded pigeon named Mister Corrigan was taken, whose ancestry was known for 525 pigeon years of life. 167 famous champion racing pigeons appeared in his pedigree, including the names of some famed army message carriers.

On such aristocratic material Major John K. Shawvan, of the U. S. Signal Corps, set to work. A short while ago it was announced that under the Major's tutelage Mister Corrigan had made pigeon history. He flew twelve miles from his home loft to a small container around which crouched a small group of soldiers. Five minutes later this history making pigeon was winging his way back on the return trip to the loft he had left not many minutes before.

Today Fort Monmouth claims to have a flock of nearly a hundred of the only two-way homing pigeons in the world—birds able to carry messages on round trips across battlefields

The article also describes a similar French project in more detail. Was this line of work continued or expanded later? I can't tell from online material, but two-way pigeons are definitely possible. (Nice choice of name for the main pigeon!)

I'll bet you could train for more than two locations by using an aerial picture of the uniquely marked landing zones. Show a picture of Zone C, and the bird would know how to get there.


= = = = =

Poser models released at ShareCG.

Labels: Patient people, Patient things

  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Alternative transportation, 1942 style


I've often compared FDR's deft approach to wartime propaganda with Bush's basically nonexistent communication. But even the Office of War Information didn't always hit the right note. In the spring of '42, OWI decided that returning to horses would be a good way to save gas and rubber, and issued a 'suggestion' to the media to push horses. As always, Fibber McGee's writers grabbed the ball and ran with it; Fibber bought a horse named Lillian, who became part of the plot. (The horse was a low-budget character, since she consisted solely of one recorded neigh.)

Returning to horses wasn't as strange in '42 as it would be now, since many farmers and a few businesses still used oat-powered vehicles. Here in Spokane, the Post Office used what Ernie Pyle described as 'chariots' for mail delivery. (I really wanted to include one in this cartoon, but couldn't find any reference pictures!)

Even so, somebody must have realized that the idea wasn't catching on, because Lillian quietly disappeared after a few weeks.

To introduce the idea of substituting horses for cars, the show's musicians came up with a rather nice little song:

Listen.
  ¶ 8:01 PM

  They did it!
I wasn't initially sure that the Lower Nuthouse's repeal of Obamacare was worth noticing. Decided it's worth a brief comment.

I really didn't think those fuckheads would actually do something. I was sure they'd just continue business as usual, debating the rules for debating the vote on the rules for debating the rules for debating the vote on the rules for debating the rules for debate on a resolution to rename the North Mooselookmeguntic Heights Post Office in honor of Victorious High School Coach Augustus "Bud" Squires Junior.

The simple fact that legislators are doing their own job for one day is unprecedented.

Their own job is to represent the wishes and needs of the voters. Before this, they were doing everything except their own job. They were weeping in public, naming post offices, weeping in public, honoring Lesbian Kumquat Awareness Week, weeping in public, and above all representing the wishes and needs of China.
  ¶ 7:07 AM

  Instructive
I've been following the nasty case of one Dolezal, a serial faker with a LONG record. Dolezal formerly headed a "human" "rights" organization in Idaho, and made news for reporting a bunch of nooses and KKK Honky Ofay Hate Crimes perpetrated against her.

The media went into a Correct uproar each time. WE MUST FIND AND SLAUGHTER THESE EVIL KKK OFAY HONKY REDNECK CRACKER CHRISTIANS! We must defend our angelic Person Of Colour who is, of course, incapable of sin or crime by definition!

Dolezal got fired by the "human" "rights" organization and then got hired as head of NAACP here. She continued creating "crimes" and the media continued foaming at the mouth against OFAY HONKIES. Each time the "crimes" mysteriously faded, as police tried to find suspects but never did find any suspects. Those OFAY HONKY REDNECKS were devilishly clever! I guess we've been under-rating their BUBBA HILLBILLY ONE-TOOTH intelligence! They're in cahoots with EVIL KKKARBON, which is unquestionably causing all bad weather and every other bad event, but never shows its ugly face!!!! EVIL KKKARBON always seems to show up AFTER the crime, disguising itself as a trailing variable, even though we KNOW FOR A FACT that it's the leading variable!!!!!

Now we finally have something that looks like justice, but it's not. This time Dolezal claimed to have received "hate mail" via the post office. Again the OFAY HONKY suspects were remarkably slippery, managing to leave the "hate mail" in her post box without ever acquiring the stamps and markings that actual letters acquire in the process of mailing.

Did the postal authorities finally get tired? Did the police finally get tired of wasting time and effort on obvious fakery? Did the Usual Suspects finally get tired of being falsely accused? Undoubtedly, but the "justice" didn't come in any of those directions.

The "justice" came from the monstrous putrid illegitimate alleged so-called "city" "government", totally contaminated and toxified by Sharptonitis.

Dolezal's fault is NOT a decade-long record of filing false accusations. Her problem is falsely claiming to be a Person Of Colour on her application to serve on the Police Ombuds committee.

In simple terms: As long as she had Blood Credentials Of Aristocracy, everything she did was angelic and holy, because everything done by a Genetically Certified Birthright Aristocrat is always angelic and holy.

Now that she turns out to be a low vulgar HONKY OFAY Commoner who was falsely claiming to be an Aristocrat, the media and "law" "enforcement" are free to go after her.

= = = = =

Instant update, just a few minutes after posting: No, the "media" will NOT go after her. Apparently the Dolezal mess has gone virally twitterish for some reason. BBC mentioned the case just now, and shows us the Correct Line for media coverage. Dolezal's long record of fakery does not exist. It is an Unrecord. She is a Heroic Rights Activist who has been Criminally Assaulted by her HONKY OFAY parents who DARED to falsely claim that she was NOT a Person Of Colour by the fiendishly clever HONKY REDNECK HILLBILLY ONE-TOOTH trick of showing her birth certificate. Yes, now I see the light, Mr O'Brien.

Labels: Loughnerian Logic, STRONG!

  ¶ 2:53 AM

  Post-non-euclidean tyranny
Modern tyrants, from Robespierre to Lincoln to Stalin to Hitler, were careful to keep a Euclidean framework around their genocides. Every action was nominally legal and logically consistent. The tyrant could point to a nominally proper trial or legislative action that fully justified mass murder or mass torture or destroying half the country.

Euclidean tyranny.

Today's tyrants have gone beyond Euclid, and even beyond the non-Euclidean tradition. Lobachevsky and Riemann were also consistent within the bounds of their own systems.

From Soros to Nudelman to Bernanke to Rob Ferguson to Orrick The Third, modern American tyrants have abandoned consistency and logic. No need for frameworks, just kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. Obliterate the universe and more and more and more and more. Enrich the rich and more and more and more and more.

Ferguson and Orrick The Third exemplify the cutting edge of post-non-Euclidean "laws". Ferguson was in office when Obama passed most of the executive orders that Trump is claiming to undo. Ferguson didn't complain when Obama made the orders. Now he's suing every time Trump pretends to modify the orders. Complete violation of logic. If you think a president has the power to make an order, then logically you MUST agree that a president has the power to modify the same order. Orrick The Third stated explicitly and openly that enforcing existing law is illegal when Trump is the enforcer.

This is just raw personal BIGOTRY. Nothing else. Everything was OK when Obama did it. The same actions are NOT OK when Trump pretends to do them, because we hate Trump.

Formalized laws were originally meant to escape from personal loves and hates and cults and bigotries. Laws and courts were supposed to be neutral arbiters, removed from the heat of passion and hormones and wicked insanity.

We have now officially escaped from logic and law.

If you have enough spare blood pressure, watch some of these videos made by TVW, the Wash state version of C-Span. The videos are meant as guides and inspiration for school "civics" teachers. I don't have enough spare blood pressure to watch them steadily, but a quick skip shows what they're doing. It's like a DNC donors conference. Arrogant smug smiles and nods when Our Lord Obama is mentioned. Growls and boos when anything remotely associated with ordinary human sanity and morality is mentioned.

= = = = =

Slightly later thought: This abandonment is basically a good thing, IF sane and moral people can use it properly.

Due process and legal formalities made it impossible to ask the basic moral questions. This Guardian article about strictly Euclidean torture, celebrated and theorized by social "scientists", shows the problem. The Guardian protects Deepstate by asking whether the proof is properly constructed. Was this torture legal within the bounds of various Geneva Conventions?

Wrong focus. Now that we are free from all bounds of logic and theory, we can revert to experimentally determined Natural Law and ask the basic question. Was the Iraq war MORAL or NECESSARY? And the instant and immediate answer is NO. In 1990 and again in 2003 we were attacking a country that had not attacked us. IMMORAL and UNNECESSARY.

Natural law approves harsh methods when used for SELF-DEFENSE. If we had been torturing the Deepstate officials who set up 9/11 as a "problem" to create more "problem-solving" tyranny, every imaginable method would be justified to find the truth. But we weren't torturing CIA officials. Instead, CIA officials were torturing Arabs who had responded to the CIA sting.

Hire hitmen, then torture the hitmen after they follow your orders. Infinite evil by any standard, even by normal criminal standards.

= = = = =

Putting it another way: With modernity gone, the choice is post-modern vs pre-modern. You can't get back to modern because the structures needed to keep modern intact have been parasitized and converted to post-modern. The only way to ESCAPE from the structures is pre-modern. Old Testament.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, se-lu

  ¶ 12:28 AM