Rusted Sky

Pay attention to what they do, not what they promise. If the promises match what they do - then... vote as you think best.

Me? I'm voting against Obama.

J.

Posted by at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kenya.

Hawaii.

Say them both three times really fast. See how easily you can mix up the two sounds?

So when someone says Obama was born in Kenya, they're actually saying Hawaii. Right?

(Sigh.)

I've never been much of a birther. I've always believe that Obama was a citizen, no matter if he were born in Hawii or Kansas. I've not had much liking for the 'natural born citizen' argument, that he had to be born on US soil - that was seemingly based on some pretty tortured interpretations of the law.

But apparently one of Obama's publishers identified him as 'Born in Kenya, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.'

Hmmm.

You know, I can understand how a literary agent would want to 'spice things up', so to speak, for prospective buyers of what he's pushing. But come on - to change the country of birth?

From ABCNews -

"According to a promotional booklet produced by the agency, Acton & Dystel, to showcase its roster of writers, Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."

Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

"This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me--an agency assistant at the time," Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more."

....

"It is evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times."

And it's interesting how this is being treated... as just a simple mistake. From a literary agency. About one of its authors it was pitching. Who, as we know, is a bit of an egotist. If there was an error in a bio, you could be pretty certain that the error would have been corrected in the draft stage.

Roger Simon's got an interesting take on it.

Reading the extraordinary revelation about Barack Obama’s youthful literary career on Breitbart.com — that his agents published a promotional book in 1991 with a bio of Obama saying he was born in Kenya — set my old mystery writer mind ablaze.

How could that be? Why would they think such a thing?

There are only two forks in this road — either he was born in Kenya or he wasn’t.

I have never been a conspiracy theorist and will assume the latter, although I have to confess that for the first time, given this revelation, I have the tiniest soupçon of doubt.

Nevertheless, the more interesting, and actually frightening and depressing, conclusion is the former. So what if he was born in Kenya? At least we know why he lied about it. He wanted to be president.

But why did Obama’s agents think he was born in Kenya? That’s a more interesting question. (Obama, of course, is a liar either way.)

I will leave aside for the moment the question of whether he vetted the agent’s material himself. As the author of eleven published books and seven produced feature films, I have had plenty of dealings with agents and publicity people and always looked over the bios they had written about me. Every author I ever talked to about it always did too. We’re those kind of egotists. But I have no way of proving that Obama did — although I would faint if he hadn’t.

If he were a sufficient liability, would he be tossed out by the DNC to make way for someone more electable? Yes, it'd make them look like fools for supporting him in the first place, but let's face it - with Reid and Pelosi as figureheads, it'd be difficult to argue that the DNC isn't a flippin' clown college in the first place.

Makes me wonder who's going to be the Dem candidate in November... Obama, or someone else to be determined later?

J.

Posted by at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This is a rant, pure and simple. Something tripped my "YGBSM" switch today, and I hope to have it wired back down soon.

You know, when you're in the military you're under constraint to respect your superiors. It is, after all, a heirarchial organization, and as you climb the ladder inside it you're going to run up against folks who aren't exactly sterling examples. In that case, you respect the position and rank, not the person involved.

Well, I respect the position of President. Wasn't impressed with Nixon, Ford was a blank, Carter was ... well, I wasn't too concerned with him. Reagan? I know that a fair number of the SF community loved to hate him, (Especially Spider Robinson, who wrote some great stuff I liked a lot) because he wasn't liberal enough. Oh, and he hated that dreamland, the USSR. He must have hated it, because he wanted to put up a missile shield to prevent them from a first strike, which they'd only do when they thought we were getting ready to, so a missile shield would be proof we were getting ready to... oh, never mind.

(Well, sometimes dreams are best appreciated with they're far away, and not a reality you've got to actually deal with. I think most fen in the west wouldn't have much liked being transplanted to their dream environments, whether it be Darkover, Pern, or the USSR.)

The solution to all our problems was simply applying enough money to them. The poor? Throw money. Bad schools? Throw money. Race relations? Throw money. Social ills? Throw the moolah.

What we didn't want to hear at the time was that there wasn't enough money to both keep the country safe and do everything everyone wanted. Nobody likes it when Daddy says he won't buy you something.

Bush the elder was okay. Clinton wasn't bad - the man knew his limitations, and mostly kept his fingers out of places they shouldn't have been. (Other portions of his anatomy, not so much - but we're talking political instead of personal.)

And then Bush was elected. I saw the Democrats do everything they could to win the election in Florida, and it was 'enlightening', the lengths they went to in an attempt to conjure up enough votes for Gore. Whether what they were doing was right or not didn't seem to matter - the dumping of military absentee ballots wholesale made a mockery of their claims that they wanted every vote to count. I really started to pay attention at that point - and the more I saw of the Democrats, the less I liked them.

9/11 hit - and for a few days I had the hope that no matter how much the Democrats were against Bush they'd recognize that as Americans we needed to pull together.

Well, that didn't last.

Kerry in 2004... man, I'm convinced that the parties have a seniority roster. In the off year elections, they toss up someone who they KNOW doesn't have a chance, just to let them have the experiences. Kerry came close to winning, though, thanks to a compliant, unquestioning media and a few tankerfulls of money from his spouse.

Obama won in 2008 - and though I couldn't see anything in his record (as opposed to Bush's) that gave any indication that he could manage a McDonald's, much less the nation, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Didn't vote for him, but he won anyway. McCain was uninspiring, another example of a "We'll let you run just for the fun of it" candidate - until he selected Palin.

And... this'll be continued below the fold.

Continue reading "President Tacky Whinypants..." »

Posted by at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At 6:10 in the morning... my son was born.

He's about to get out of 8th grade.

He's 5'11". Brown hair. Brown eyes.

He's got a quick mind, a sound body, a good sense of humor, and a loving heart.

Unfortunately, he inherited my eyesight. But overall? He's one heck of a package, a fine teenager, and I believe he's going to be a fine, fine man.

I'm a very, very lucky man to have him as my son.

Happy Birthday, Aaron...

J.

Posted by at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For decades, we've had a two-party system. You could vote for an all Republican ticket, or an All Democrat ticket - or mix and match to suit your fancy.

But this was interesting...

ACOSTA: The town’s mayor Robert Hardy, like tens of thousands, voted for Keith Judd, who is currently in a federal prison in Texas. Hardy said he had no idea Judd was behind bars.

HARDY: I didn’t even know he was a prisoner.

ACOSTA: You voted for the prisoner?

HARDY: I didn’t even know him, but I voted against Obama.

What does this portend for the November election? We'll have to wait and see.

I'm thinking Obama's in serious trouble, and we'll be seeing more and more 'interesting' moves as time goes on. His announcement of support for gay marriage yesterday boiled down to "I believe it should be legal, but I'm not doing anything to support it." - a fine piece of fence-straddling while appearing to take a side.

I don't think he can do that much more.

J.

Posted by at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Circle Cycle Engine.

The videos are entertaining, too.

It MIGHT make it - we'll see.

J.

Posted by at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In order to belive X is true, you need to be taught that it's both true, and not see any information to the contrary. When you get differing information, that when you were taught X, factors pertaining to X were left out which would have shown you that what you thought was X is instead Y - you can either refuse to believe it, or go look for yourself.

And with Google, it's SO easy to verify things...

The OWS crowd, for the most part, is made up of individuals who are remarkably empathetic. They feel for their fellow man. They feel the burning sting of injustice. They feel that something's wrong, and want to correct it.

And they've been carefully taught, through education and group thinking, that what they believe is correct. It MUST be correct, because they've never heard anything different. They're comfortable in their worldview. Reality is messy and chaotic - their pure worldview is simple and straightforward. Of COURSE they don't want to change it, or bring in any extraneous info that'll sully their pristine thinking.

Then some nutcase has to come along and rock this poor OWS fool's world...

Man Who Escaped The Soviet Union Schools Occupier On Socialism
Here’s further proof that world history isn’t being taught in American schools.

Young man's brain was idling along - hadn't had any real fuel in years. Chugging along on low-octane stuff - the guy who was filming gave him a shot of 110-octane reality with a nitrous chaser.

The OWS guy wanders off - he's got a lot to think about. Will he go back to his bumper-sticker thinking? Will he google up some of the realities he's been avoiding through the use of slogans?

We'll never know. But I think a seed's been planted here... (among the mixed metaphors. lol...)

J.

Posted by at 9:45 AM | Permalink

There's movies that I go and see that are... forgettable. Then there's ones that make you go "Oh, man..."...

And then there's the ones that make you go "WOW!!!" and you start bouncing in your seat like a 10-year-old that's sucked down a half-gallon of Coke and a box of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.

THAT was "The Avengers".

Slack-jawed, gape-mouthed amazement doesn't begin to cover it, even if overlaid with a painfully happy grin. The movie just "fit" on so many levels that by the time the second credits ending scene hit, I felt like a wrung-out sweaty t-shirt, and I was ready to see it again.

(And yes, I did indulge my inner 10-year-old, with a medium Frozen Coke and a box of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.)

I liked this movie so much, I took my lovely bride to see the movie the next day. SHE liked it as much as I did.

(And yes, I repeated my dietary choices.)

Look, the movie's a cartoon, right? In live action? The science is lousy (did a brief figuring on what it'd take to get one location where it needed to be, and there's no way it could fly...), the physics are lousy, biology and physiology aren't even remotely realistic... but I didn't CARE. It didn't MATTER.

It was FUN.

In the Marvel Universe, there's certain things that you take for granted as simple background noise.

1. People don't bruise. They may DIE, but they'll look good doing it.
2. Bones don't break. Joints don't dislocate, tendons and muscles don't tear. Ever.
3. Reflexes on the heroes (and villains) are between 50 to 75% faster than for regular people.
4. Cognitive perception is equally quick, as is their thinking and decision processes.
5. Voluntary muscle movements are equally sped up - especially in combat.

Add all those things up, and you're in for a heck of a movie.

The Avengers is a full-screen, live action comic book of the BEST kind. Like introspective whine-fests? This isn't one. Like long boring stretches where the protagonists stare bleakly off into the distance across a heath? You won't like this. Like long, soulful conversations filled with deep meaning? Save your money.

Do you like action-adventure? With wise-cracking characters that you can care about? Spectacular sights, and battles leavened with humor?

This is the movie for you. Go. Watch. Enjoy. And report back, and tell me what you thought of it.

J.

Posted by at 7:31 AM | Permalink

Ninja Nun - Stealth is a Habit

It's rather badly drawn.

The font chosen for the word balloons makes you think your eyes are going bad.

And it's hilarious. Try out a few strips, see if you like it.

(One brief hint: Catholic Buddhists. And it gets stranger from there. What's not to like?)

Enjoy!

J.

Posted by at 11:46 PM | Permalink

"Obama’s New Nomenklatura"

One of the problems with a nominally classless society is that your social status is pretty much irrelevant. Your family connections, with few exceptions, doesn't give you prestige - people won't automatically defer to you, they won't move aside to let you pass to the head of the line, and it's kind of difficult to get good lackeys on the open market any more... You can build your status through celebrity, however... and adherence to the proper philosophies, and making the proper friends... however, that status will end with you.

We don't have an 'elite' - an aristocracy that 'runs' the country.

But the left, I think, would love to change that.

They set great store in figureheads, preferably from an 'old', politically active family (Kennedys, for example...) who are rendered essentially untouchable (no matter their actions) by slathering on layers of moral authority that (supposedly) insulate them from a need to pay attention to reality - or they're found in celebrities that spout the proper attitudes. After all, if they weren't celebrities they wouldn't be worth listening to, would they?

In essence, they seriously want to create an 'elite' they can defer to, that they can admire, that they can aspire to raise themselves to one day... yet not be disappointed if they fail because becoming 'elite' is difficult - and they don't really expect to. What's important is that they think they can be come 'elite', not the actuality.

Now this is rather a redundant question - but what makes the elite the 'elite'?

Visibility. Power. Influence. Connections. Community selection. Money. Pick any (or all) of those you like. What matters is that the whole concept is self-reinforcing... they're the cool kids, so to speak, because they're the cool kids - and they define what's cool... and what - andwho is not.

And what's not, who is not, is eminintly disposable while they and their opinions are infinitely valuable.

They're the new Nomenklatura - and they don't understand just how much of a problem what they want so badly would be.

We have a country that doesn't have a designated 'elite' by design. Our 'elite' have traditionally been people who added significant value to our lives - Fulton, Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, Bill Gates - people who made things, people who created. Celebrities come and go, but things (and concepts) of value endure. (Sadly, so does the concept of Communism, but that's working its way out. Another couple of decades, and I think it'll be history.)

It'd be good to jettision those who would love to create a new Nomenklatura - because they've got little to nothing to contribute except their 'cool' - which (along with five bucks) will get you breakfast at a Waffle House.

(Which they wouldn't be caught dead eating at anyway...)

J.

Posted by at 10:32 AM | Permalink

You ever notice the love-hate relationship that the 'progressive' left seems to have with corporations? Particularly WalMart?

It's hard to argue that WalMart is 'bad', per se. Are they a corporation? Yes. Do they make a profit? Yes. Do they employ a lot of people? Yes. Could they pay their people more? Possibly. Could they provide better benefits? Possibly. Could they provide better working conditions? Possibly... but in the range of stores I've shopped at over the last few decades, across the country, WalMarts rank just under the two big locals in this area, and occasionally beats one of them. They have been consistently clean, well-stocked, and the prices are quite good.

It's also been documented that if it WASN'T for WalMart, the poor in the US would likely be considerably worse off. They've got wholesome food for low prices, they allow the poor to get the trappings of a good standard of living - and they provide jobs.

They also have a logistics chain in the US that's unparalleled. (Home Depot comes close - if you had to ship a half-dozen semis of bottled water and tents to a disaster site, I think WalMart would get it there first, while the HD trucks would be slightly delayed while they loaded generators on, and then stopped at WalMart to get tents...)

But in my opinion, the real reason certain folks hate WalMart is because it exists, and it works, and they didn't have any input. It's not something that's promised - a gleaming possibility. It isn't a potential thing, shiny and visualized as a project that will feed millions upon millions. It isn't visualized, capable of being argued about and planned for months by focus groups until the consensus says it's perfect - and then throwing billions upon billions into creating something that doesn't quite work the way they visualized.

It's real - and it's got the normal problems that anything real has. It's not perfect - it's run by people and people make mistakes, but the mistakes are largely self-correcting and when they aren't they're corrected from outside.

And they provide food for millions, and jobs for hundreds of thousands if not millions by the time you include suppliers and the entire logistics chain...

Isn't that reason to hate them?

J.

Posted by at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Nice, clean and shiny...

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38&vq=medium

And a bit more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GXO_urMow&feature=relmfu

So many things have come along - yet there's so many things to come...

J.

Posted by at 8:23 AM | Permalink

When you've lost James Lovelock, who originally supported the AGW catastropy thesis, you're looking at having to rethink things...

James Lovelock just admitted this week that he does not know what the climate will do.

Lovelock is the godfather of global warming.

Losing him comes after three major discoveries announced this month that refute several gloom-and-doom predictions.

Officials in Canada discovered more polar bears than they thought they had. The reason polar bears are thinner and heading south is classic overpopulation, not melting ice.

The second revelation is that we have twice as many Emperor penguins along the coast of Antarctica as we thought. Using satellite pictures, scientists counted nearly 600,000 penguins in 44 colonies, including seven previously unknown colonies.

The third revelation is that far from disappearing by 2035, the glaciers of the Himalaya Mountains are stable and expanding in some areas.

Now the adherents to this theory have lost Lovelock, the godfather of global warming.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing,” Lovelock told MSNBC on Monday.

“We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.”

How nice of him to finally admit what was obvious to some of us all along: We don’t know.

Along with microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that everything on the planet is closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system.

Some say it is another New Age religion.

When you base your thinking, your decisions, and your entire economic future upon a religion, then you're primarily affecting yourself. When a government signs onto that religion... or onto a theory that's based on an almost religious belief, then you'd best be certain that the theory is as close to matching reality as it possibly can be.

And AGW simply hasn't held up.

Honestly, as proposed there was no way it could. You take the raw temperature data, 'adjust' it in various ways, feed it into a modeling program, and then base your decisions for the next 50 years on the output of that program.

Where could it possibly go wrong? Let me count the ways! Just remember the old phrase - 'Garbage In, Garbage Out.' And what we've gotten is garbage, plain and simple.

Finally, the man who pretty much sparked it all has said he overreacted - that he was in error. Day late and a dollar short, but it's better than nothing.

It won't convince the folks who have this belief at the core of their psyches though - or at the core of their employment. To them, the warming is 'hidden'. The warming is 'delayed'. The warming is there - we simply can't see it. You have to BELIEVE in the warming, because the warming is there even if you can't measure it. Really. Trust them, you're going to boil in your own juices if you don't.

Or drown, because of the ice melting and the sea level rising.

Or not.

Especially in Texas. If everything's bigger in Texas, you'd think the warming would be also...

And the Germans, those eminently practical people - have pretty much dumped the green idea.

Reality doesn't care about your ideology, and cuts you no breaks for 'good intentions'.

J.

Posted by at 1:44 PM | Permalink

From Don Surber - Advice to Journalists

If you are studying to be a journalist, switch majors and get a useful education in something involving science because there is no money in journalism.

Failing to persuade people of that, may I suggest switching from Harvard, Northwestern or any of those other overpriced tax-exempt corporations to your local community college. Borrowing $20,000 a year for the privilege of cranking out the Harvard Crimson is financial folly.

If I had it to do over again — if I knew blogging would be available when I turned 50 — I would likely have stayed at the factory, worked my way up and made a lot more money to provide for my family. I like newspapering. I love blogging.

That’s hindsight.

Here is the insight from the Chronicle of Higher Education: “As someone who teaches humanities in an expensive private liberal arts college, I like to keep abreast of the trends in the job market for my students. This useful chart from the Chronicle of Higher Education takes US Census data and breaks out the median income for graduates depending on their major. As you might expect, some of the tastiest salaries come from the toughest subjects. Petroleum engineering majors earn $120,000. Brown jobs really do rule. Ecology majors on the other hand get a little more than one third of that: $44,000. And remember: that isn’t a starting salary; it’s the median income for all the people in the field up to age 65. Stuffing envelopes for Greenpeace does not often lead to great things.”

It's not easy to figure out what the future holds. But it's pretty clear that actually being able to do something material will be key in the upcoming years.

J.

Posted by at 1:30 PM | Permalink

I'm glad you're there.

Every so often, XKCD really hits the nail on the head. Who among us hasn't had relationships where you go "Oh, man - I'd rather stick my (appendage) in a garbage disposal than go through that again!"?

And it makes you appreciate the good ones so much more...

This year, I'll have been married to my lovely bride for 19 years. It seems like forever - and it seems like just a day...

J.

Posted by at 8:28 AM | Permalink

Hatch looks to free up House-passed energy bills in Senate

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Wednesday is expected to introduce an omnibus energy/federal land use bill combining several bills that have passed the House over the last year but have stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition. These include bills calling for expedited consideration of permits to drill in the Gulf of Mexico and ending what Republicans say is a moratorium on new offshore drilling, as well as bills limiting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.

...Hatch's bill would include language found in three energy bills the House passed in May 2011. These are the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work act (H.R. 1229), the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act (H.R. 1230), and the Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act (H.R. 1231).

Also included will be the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act (H.R. 2021), which passed last June. That bill would make it easier for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf to comply with the Clean Air Act.

Hatch's bill is also expected to include several House-passed bills that would ease federal rules on land use. One is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act (H.R. 1837), which would ease Endangered Species Act rules that diverted water away from certain parts of California to protect the delta smelt.

Honestly? I don't expect these to get far. Reid's already announced that he's not going to do a blessed thing to get any sort of energy bills passed.

Perhaps the ultimate example of what the Senate is all about emerged yesterday when Majority Leader Reid said he would not help in the House Republicans’ effort to force President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which could bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the United States (as well as jobs, economic growth and tax revenue). “Personally I think Keystone is a program that we’re not going — that I am not going to help in any way I can,” Reid said. “The president feels that way. I do, too.”

Under Reid’s leadership, that’s the name of the game in the U.S. Senate. Regardless of the country’s exploding debt, soaring energy prices or 12.7 million unemployed workers, Reid and his like-minded colleagues are flat out refusing to do the job they were hired to do, all in accord with the president’s agenda. So if you’re wondering what the Senate’s thinking, now you know. Unfortunately, the country’s best interests aren’t what they have in mind.

And Salazar's announced there's no solution to the energy problem. Except, of course, through the usual green handouts.

In a stinging rebuke to the administration's critics, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar strongly defended his department's record on energy policy.

Referring to a world of fairy tales and falsehood in the nation's capital, Salazar said in a speech at the National Press Club that "it's in that imaginary world where we see the continuing and growing divide in the energy debate in America."

"The imagined fairy tale world is the invention of campaign years and political rhetoric. I think you can find its edge when you walk out of the House of Representatives," he added.

Salazar's comments come as the White House works to shake off any taint from surging fuel prices ahead of the presidential election in November.

Instead of calling for more U.S. oil and gas drilling, Salazar said lawmakers should recognize that there is no silver bullet for high gasoline prices

Unfortunately, Reid still has 4 years to go in his term. (Last elected in '10, so...) And he's pretty much retired-in-place, not bothering to fulfil his basic duties to the country like pushing to get a budget through...

Thanks, Nevada. You really picked a winner with him...

J.

Posted by at 2:24 PM | Permalink

You might have heard about the scandal. Secret Service agents, sent down to Colombia to scout ahead for a Presidential Visit - had some serious TDY fun... which came to light when one of them refused to pay a prostitute the amount agreed upon.

Okay, regardless of your feelings on prostitution (I'm kind of 'eh' about it, don't care one way or another) - I think the agent really messed things up when he refused to pay the agreed amount. It's like any other agreement between a service provider and a customer - you accept the services, you pay the amount you agreed upon. If you think it's too much, negotiate that up front. If you CAN afford it, pay it. If you're not sure - don't enter into the contract. Simple, right? That'd solve a lot of problems if people stuck to that generally... but I digress.

What bothers me about it is that these are the supposed best of the best. In charge of protecting the PRESIDENT, fer cripe's sake. They mess up, and we lose our President. (Don't like Obama's policies - but the man's my President, and I don't want to see him assasinated.) This reeks - positively REEKS of rot at the highest echelon of their management. When did it become culturally acceptable for them to do this on duty?

The more we see of the folks in Washington, the more apparent it is that they don't really know what's going on - but they're going to have fun with what they've got as long as they can. You see extravagant parties thrown by the GSA. You see this sort of action by the Secret Service. When you see massive spending and massive deficits, you've got to wonder just how much of the money is being wasted.

How much of YOUR money, and MY money is being wasted...

How much did you pay in taxes this year? How many minutes of fuel for AF-1 did you pay? How many Cartagena, Colombia protitutes did you subsidize?

Did YOU get to take an all-expenses paid trip to Vegas? Isn't it great you can buy one for people you don't even know?

And as Glenn Reynolds says...

"If the federal government can’t keep the President’s bodyguards from drinking and whoring on duty, how likely is it to be able to run anything competently?"

I'm also thinking it's long past time to take their credit cards away.

J.

Posted by at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"All Transactions To Be Conducted In The Presence Of A Tax Collector"

In the terminal collapse of the Roman Empire, there was perhaps no greater burden to the average citizen than the extreme taxes they were forced to pay.

The tax 'reforms' of Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century were so rigid and unwavering that many people were driven to starvation and bankruptcy. The state went so far as to chase around widows and children to collect taxes owed.

By the 4th century, the Roman economy and tax structure were so dismal that many farmers abandoned their lands in order to receive public entitlements.

At this point, the imperial government was spending the majority of the funds it collected on either the military or public entitlements. For a time, according to historian Joseph Tainter, "those who lived off the treasury were more numerous than those paying into it."

$16 trillion debt.

$2 trillion income from taxes.

$3.5 trillion a year in spending. (Aren't you glad to know that GSA folk can party on that in Vegas?)

$413 billion a year spent on just interest on the debt.

Man, what about that doesn't reek of 'sustainable' to you?

J.

Posted by at 12:45 PM | Permalink

Lately, President Obama has been talking a lot about “fairness.” He wants to make our society more “fair.” I was raised a bit differently than the president, so I’ve been struggling with this concept. My parents always told me that in life, as in poker, I had to play the cards I was dealt. Whenever I complained that something was unfair, my parents would respond, “Whoever said life was fair?” This concept — that life itself was unfair — was even part of my religious upbringing. The 10th Commandment says, “Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s.” Obviously, if everyone had exactly the same stuff, there would be no reason to covet anything, and thus no point in having such a commandment. So even God recognized that life was unfair.

Toward Fairness - Some Modest Proposals.

It was clear to me when Obama started talking about using the Capital Gains Tax Rate to be 'fair' that something was seriously wrong. If you're looking at a hideously complex system, 'fairness' doesn't enter into the equation - you're looking for what works best. You WANT to generate the most income with the least amount of effort. Raising a tax rate, even though it would reduce revenue over the long run, isn't a smart thing to do.

Unless you're explicitly trying to CAUSE problems.

We're $16 tril in debt.

The IRS takes in roughly $2 tril a year.

We're spending about $3.5 tril a year.

To refuse a method of increasing revenue through economic growth because it's not 'fair' isn't just stupid - it's almost obscene.

Or so I think. Maybe there's some way a 'fair' system could be made to work through massive overspending and undercollection of taxes, but I sure don't see it.

J.

Posted by at 2:51 PM | Permalink

What is seen isn't necessarily what's real.

For decades, we worried about the USSR. Now, research since the fall of the Wall shows that what we thought we were seeing wasn't 'the tip of the iceberg', it was more like the top of an ice cube tray. This isn't to downplay the threat of the USSR - it's just that we overestimated their abilities.

But then again - you don't win a war by underestimating what the enemy can do. And in a case of 'he who laughs last' - they're still flying Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS, while we've grounded our shuttle fleet. Might be a lesson there. But anyhow...

The emphasis inside the late, unlamented USSR was of control. Control of the population. Control of the media. Control of the schools. Control of farming. Control of industrial production. Control of every facet of life. A control so complete, so overwhelming that people who may have been dissatisfied with what was going on felt like THEY were the only ones who felt like that. And, eventually, when people started realizing that they weren't the only ones they grouped together... and the USSR fell apart. (Yes, I know it's horribly simplified - but bear with me.)

Now, for decades it was accepted that what was broadcast on the nightly news was honest reporting of the day's issues. Walter Chronkite, the Huntley-Brinkley Report - those were the gold standard as far as TV news went. They said it - you could trust it.

Except... they weren't quite so unbiased as we thought. Yes, they shaped opinion - but there was no guarantee that the opinion was based on reality.

Fast forward to the fantastic world of the Year 2000. Network news has managed to get Bill Clinton elected - twice! They're starting to think that they control (as the old Outer Limits show started with) all that we see and hear, and therefore think. What we don't see from them is irrelevant - it doesn't exist as a factor in the elections.

So you had these two candidates for President. One was the chosen of the media - a sitting VP that could do no wrong, and the other was an ex-governor of Texas that could do no right... or so it was reported. And amazingly - the hick won.

Then, despite EVERYTHING the media attempted as far as blowing apart his persona, the gullible saps voted him into office again!

Immediately the spin started, painting the economy as the Wurst EVARRRR! and the only possible way to save us from a spiralling crash would be to elect a Democratic House and Senate! So in 2006 - the kids got the key to the candy store, and proceeded to gorge themselves. Spending went WAY up, the economy started to suffer - and they doubled-down on the borrowing and spending.

With the 2008 elections coming up - a fresh, charismatic persona was needed. Enter Obama. Put fresh and charismatic Obama up against old and tired McCain... well, it wasn't much of a contest, I'm sad to say. Again, the media did their best to hide Obama's flaws, and concentrated on slamming McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin. Never mind she had more leadership experience than Obama did - she wasn't appreciated by the political 'good old boy' network inside the Beltway, and she wasn't quite used to the way they'd manipulate people.

They pulled out all the stops - and got a charismatic candidate into office, who almost immediately started showing he didn't have the chops for the job. The economy got worse - and the elections in 2010 were painful for Democrats. Too many people now understand what the media did its best to conceal in 2008 - that Obama's a con man who has no talent other than telling people what they wanted to hear.

And that if you're really looking for what's really going on, you need to unplug the media and plug into the internet. Yes, it's chaotic, and it's hard to find honest sourcing. Verify all information, go to original sources where you can. Do the work the media won't, if you value the truth over a convenient fiction.

I expect the media to do one of two things this upcoming election cycle. I give 'em a 75% chance that they're going to cover for Obama like crazy, with many attempts to keep negative information from spreading, and every possible effort to slam Romney. We've already seen the opening salvo - the attack on Ann Romney as being an out-of-touch stay at home mom. This has severely ticked off the stay-at-home mom crowd, and a whole lot of people who were just kind of ignoring things have started paying close attention. This will not bode well for Obama's campaign.

I give 'em a 25% chance they're going to have a 'Come to Jesus' moment and understand that if the country fails, they're going down with it. They've squandered a LOT of their trust, however, and their credibility is very, very low at the present time - and they can clearly see it reflected in their ratings and viewership. Another election cycle where they lie like crazy to get their chosen candidate into office will wreck them as any sort of political force.

We'll see which way it goes. But either way - their power to control what's seen has been shattered.

J.

Posted by at 11:52 AM | Permalink

"It takes one to know one"?

If a con man says Obama's a con man, would it be so?

In "It Takes One to Know One", a lifelong con man explains the concept of the "Organized Con". And it fits Obama like a glove.

The takeaway paragraph is...

Post Mortem of the Obama Presidency so far: Whoever is behind the created persona that calls himself Barack Obama sure isn’t getting their money’s worth. He isn’t glib when not in a scripted setting, he is a poor student of the subject matter (he wouldn’t make it as a con-artist without big money and powerful political connections) failing to stay current on what his persona demands in order to be believable. It is my considered opinion that his legend and persona are about to blow up in his face. Having experienced that a couple of times myself, I recognize the signs."

This is GOOD stuff. Go through his whole blog - at "An Ex-Con's View" - it'll explain a lot about what's going on.

The con's coming unravelled. The question is - where are they going to run when it collapses?

J.

Posted by at 11:45 AM | Permalink

It strikes me that some politicians are VERY good at getting elected - but can't tell the difference between millions, billions, and trillions.

Here's a clue for them. Feel free to pass it along.

A McDonald's McDouble cheeseburger goes for $1.

A Samsung 55" LED TV goes for $2000 at WalMart. That's 2,000 burgers - 4 burgers a day for 500 days. Monotonous diet, isn't it?

A million is what I might make during my working lifetime. That's 500 52" LED TVs. Maybe a few less, if I decide to actually eat and get a roof over my head.

A billion is a thousand millions. Picture a superfreighter loaded down with a thousand shipping containers, each with 500 52" LED TVs. That's what a 'modest' program coming out of Washington might cost.

A trillion is a thousand billions. Picture a fleet of those freighters - 20 freighters wide, by 500 deep, one thousand in all.

Isn't that an amazing picture? Just think how it would look, all those ships lined up in formation... going along, maintaining a steady speed and course...

Now, think of 5 fleets of those container ships - five thousand or more. That's the amount added to the debt over the last 4 years. All powered up, shining in the sunlight...

Sailing away from the US, as those fools inside the Beltway borrow our bloody asses off to maintain the idiotic fiction that the Democrat party is the party of the working stiff!

That's all. For now...

J.

Posted by at 8:58 AM | Permalink

One of the things that I was a bit frustrated about with Bush was that he'd never take on his critics. The media owned the battlespace, so to speak, so without him attempting to push back and explain what he was doing, the battlespace was controlled by his opponents.

In 2008, McCain was running a classic, respectable campaign. He wasn't going to aggressively attack Obama - and again, the battlespace was occupied by Obama's defenders who quickly shouted down any suggestion that their candidate wasn't the super-capable Community Organizer that they made him out to be. Objections and questions were pushed aside quickly, and the "Racist!!!!" label was used whenever anyone would go "But what about..."

Now that Romney's the candidate (can't say I'm all that happy, but he'll be better than Obama) - you can expect the previous election tactics to return with a vengence. This time, however, Obama's got a much more skeptical audience, and the 'RACIST!!!1!' card has been overplayed. His record, in addition, is downright abysmal. (As I used to say about the Palestinians, Obama's never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to make things better.)

So he has no chance if he runs on his accomplishments. The Chicago way, then, would be to tear down the opponent.

And that's already started. Romney's been portrayed as 'out of touch', one of the '1%', and not at all conscious of what Joe and Jane Six-Pack have to put up with in their daily lives. A look at the candidate instead of the spin reveals something different, but I'm not going to go into that here. Suffice it to say that the standard class-warfare

As part of the Last night, Hillary Rosen, a Democratic 'strategist', attempted a slam at Ann Romney. Let's see... weren't candidate's wives and children supposed to be off-limits? What happened to that civility? Oh, wait - it might give an advantage, so it's perfectly ok (or at least excusable) to portray a woman with 5 sons as "Never having worked a day in her life."

Romney's apparently learned from Bush's mistake - if you're attacked, don't turtle up and accept it while figuring the truth will come out eventually. As the saying goes, "A lie can get around the world before the truth even gets its boots on." (And with the internet, a lie can get around the world before the truth even touches a keyboard...)

Who better to fight back against Rosen's smear than Ann Romney? Her response to Rosen's slam...

And then, just like that, a familiar name popped up on Twitter: @AnnDRomney.

“I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work,” Ann tweeted.

The Romney campaign confirmed to ABC News that the account belongs to Ann Romney.

Predictably, folks blogged about it, and news agencies covered it. And in the comments sections, feeling was running pretty high against Rosen.

However, there's always somebody...

Its not a job you uneducated twit. I raised 4 children , one being special needs while working a job 60 hours a week BY MYSELF.

If you need to tell yourself its a job to help yourself sleep at night, so be it. But its not a job and honestly you just sound lazy. What do you contribute to society besides saving us from having to see you by staying home all day?

No one said it was easy, but don't make it sound like its the "hardest job ever" or whatever you said. You sit around all day while your kids are at school, man your working SO hard.... really????......

This isnt the 50's. You don't have to just be a vessel for child birth, you know you can be a productive member of society.

Why is this noteworthy?

Remember what I said about 'preparing the battlespace'? On line, that's done by flooding comment boards, beating down your opponents quickly, and... 'maintaining control of the narrative'. The narrative that they're trying to establish is that Romney's clueless and out of touch, so when he mentioned his wife they had to establish she was clueless and out of touch also.

And they failed.

One of the interesting things about the Disqus commenting system (which isn't implemented here, and likely will never be...) is that if you click on the profile picture of someone posting, you'll see their on-line activity. When you click on 'Amanda' - you see the profile of someone named 'Patrick'. You'll also see that Amanda/Patrick hasn't commented on ANYTHING but that particular post. I call them 'one-topic wonders' - almost as if the persona had been created in Disqus expressly to comment on that particular thing.

Then there's the 'One-Post Wonders' - or drive-bys who post one thing (as it seems in their profile) and are never seen again. Why, you'd almost think that there were people who were trying to control multiple IDs to make it seem like more people had that particular opinion...

So - if you're on line, browsing around, and you see a topic that's got a lot of comments, and they use Disqus - take a look at the folks presenting each side. My thought is that the side with the most Wonders - whether One-Post or One-Topic - is the one in the wrong... especially if there's rarely any sort of reasoning expressed, but a lot of unpleasant insults are hurled.

In the end - information warfare is about getting ideas stuck in the mind of the reader. But a little knowledge about information warfare tactics is a good thing.

Unless you're Patrick/Amanda.

J.

Posted by at 12:55 PM | Permalink

Then finally realize it's not going to happen.

George Lucas has axed plans for a sprawling film studio on farmland north of San Francisco because he doesn't want his company to be seen as 'an evil empire.'

Lucasfilm, the force behind the Star Wars franchise, surprised officials in Marin County by pulling the plug on the controversial Grady Ranch project citing bitter opposition from neighbours and delays in the approval process.

The axed plans included a 269,000-sq ft digital media studio, a 51-ft tall mission-style compound with two 85-ft towers, two indoor sound stages and an outdoor stage of nearly 7,000 sq ft.

There would have been screening rooms, guest housing, a general store, employee cafeteria and wine cave for private tastings and storage at the venue about 15 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2128134/George-Lucas-pulls-plug-studio-rustic-San-Francisco-valley-objections-locals.html#ixzz1rkeBiq9F

Basically, it became apparent that no matter what he did to accomodate the local objectors, it wouldn't be good enough for them.

So -

The company said it would construct new facilities elsewhere and hoped to sell the historic farmland to a developer interested in building low-income housing in the region.

Way to go, guys - you sure showed that smarmy Lucasfilms a thing or two! Now instead of a high-tech wonderland that could well have ended up apumping millions into the local economy at little cost to your infrastructure and services, you'll end up with 'low income' housing. Nice trade, guys!

J.

Posted by at 12:49 PM | Permalink

There’s times I’ve got serious doubts about the folks in Washington.

On the one hand, they’re trying to supposedly improve the economy.

On the other hand, they believe that it’s necessary to have high energy prices, to force us (for our own good, of course) to inhabit some sort of green fantasy utopia down the line. Where we will all have electric cars, running off of (I suppose) algae-oil power plants. The future will be GREEN, ecologically correct, and we will be so in harmony with nature that not only will we all smell good, the entire planet’s population will be above average in looks and intelligence…

Sigh.

All we’ve got to do is let the folks in charge do whatever they want. High gas prices? They’re of little consequence – by driving them up, it’ll make people use smaller cars. High energy prices? It's for your own good and the good of your children, so you're not raping Mother Gaia.

However – how are they supposed to afford those smaller cars? The economy is, judging by objective evidence, in pretty sad shape. Unemployment numbers are slowly getting down to the 8% limit Obama said we’d see IF we spent money on ‘stimulus’ – which doesn’t seem to have done much in the way of stimulating the economy, and apparently the only reason the number is drifting down is because of people leaving the work force by the millions.

It’s hard to buy a new car if you don’t have a job.

I look at what’s going on, and it appears on the one hand that they’re trying CPR (fiscal stimuli of various types, ranging from Cash4Clunkers to Quantitative Easing) and on the other, they’re choking the poor sap the other hand is doing CPR on with high energy prices. (Stifling drilling on government land, refusing permits, refusing to create jobs by allowing the Canadian pipeline – and I get the feeling if they could totally cease US oil production through some means, they’d do so.)

How on earth is a country supposed to prosper with such mixed messages?

I paid close to $4 a gallon this morning for gas. When I bought the car I'm driving about ten years back, gas was going for about $1.29 or so. That means I'm paying about $2.50 a gallon more.

Taken by itself, that's not a horrible hit... but how many cars do you know that only have 1 gallon gas tanks? (Motorcycles need not apply.) Figure my gas tank hold 13 gallons - so that's around $32.50 extra each time I pull up to the pump.

3 fillups, and I'm down $100 or so. That directly decreases what I can afford to buy, without going into debt. (Don't want to do the debt thing - I'm not the government, can't afford to spend incessantly and put it on the credit card...)

And think about it - how do goods get to stores? How do raw materials get to factories? How is it assumed, apparently, that jacking up the price of energy for transportation will somehow improve the lot of the common man?

That $100 I've got to put in my tank could have bought 4 new shirts, or a couple of pair of work pants, or a pair of good shoes. Steaks at the store (and it can't have escaped notice that the cost of groceries have gone up...) or other luxury goods... but instead, that money's gone to preserve some fever dream cooked up inside the Beltway.

I'd like to believe they've got some overall plan for actual prosperity - but to me it looks like they're attempting to create a severe Depression (which may not be their intent, but certainly seems to be the result) all in the name of some vague ideology that earns them great satisfaction from destruction.

I will not be voting for Obama in November - assuming there's not some 'emergency' that requires we suspend the election. We will see how determined the wreckers are to hold onto their power - and if it has to be pried from their clutching fingers.

J.

Posted by at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No place on earth is safe... or in space.

Diary of a Space Zucchini

You can't get away...

J.

Posted by at 2:46 PM | Permalink

Might as well check the weather.

Star Wars Weather Service...

Enjoy!

J.

Posted by at 10:14 AM | Permalink

In case you missed it (or are missing it, or have missed it - being aware that the blog post will be around long after this particular event is over) the current payout of the March 30th MegaMillions jackpot is about $500 million.

Lump sum would be probably about $360 mil, before (of course) the IRS gets their share. Even so, after all's said and done you'll end up with about $200 mil.

Not too shabby for a $1 investment, is it?

I've talked with the little guy about gambling. I've pointed him to the odds on something like the MegaMillions lottery. (1 in 175,711,536, in case you're wondering and the link doesn't work) - and emphasised that it IS a waste of money, with a 1 chance in 40 of winning any prize at all.

In fact, your odds aren't materially improved by actually buying a ticket. 1 in 176 million isn't vastly different than 0.

But... it does provide for some interesting imaginative exercises.

I've bought some chances - figure $10 is about right. If we won - I'd immediately pay off the house, and see about getting some renovations/repair done. Some donations of the church, and the little guy's school. I'd put about 20-30 million into savings, at the best rate I could get. Then I think I'd look for some land - maybe in Arizona, maybe Nevada or NW New Mexico. 200-300 acres, enough room for a good-sized 'vacation' house, and no neighbors close by to complain about noise. Room enough for a LONG distance target range and a runway. Room enough and money enough to try out some interesting ideas - maybe high power rocketry?

And there's be some money to help friends and family, of course. (The question is, how to do it responsibly. Just tossing out cash seems like a good way to wreck lives.) and money to speculative investments... it's likely none would hit - but wouldn't YOU have wanted to be an original investor in Microsoft?

$10 isn't much - but it can fuel a lot of daydreams. And even though the odds are abysmal (actually, worse than abysmal, they suck tremendously to the third power) its the imagining that's fun.

What would YOU do if someone dropped $200 mil, after taxes, in your lap?

J.

Posted by at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sigh.

From Air and Space magazine...

Now it's up to SpaceX.

40 years back, I never thought I'd see us go this route...

J.

Posted by at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Saw "John Carter" yesterday.

Wow.

I was never much into the "*.* of Mars" series he had - preferring more hi-tech oriented SF. But that may well have changed my mind.

First - the CGI was darn near flawless. Let's face it, 4-armed aliens are going to be difficult to model correctly (and doing them as tall, skinny, and looking at lot like humanized walking-stick insects was the right move) and the 8-legged 'horses' were good background. The sets? The sets... and the flyers, and the crowd scenes... oh, man. This was complex, rich, and VERY well done.

The plot? Action-adventure with comedic overtones. "Tharks do not fly!"? Right. You know then that before the movie is over the whole tribe'll be on the wing. (With predictable results - tharks DO fly, but they ain't ready to solo and their insurance rates will be through the roof after their first attempts...)

The actors? Good. Believeable. Dejah Thoris is a warrior princess all right - and played by Lynn Collins to very good effect. When John Carter tells her in their first meeting to 'stay behind him, it might be dangerous', she gets a sword and plies it to such good effect he comments "Maybe I should stay behind you..."

Overall? On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate it a 9 - it was just too short.

It'd be interesting to see this movie get enshrined in the Disney Princess Pantheon, with Lynn/Dejah as a new one - but then again, animated princesses are a bit easier to market, and I didn't see her in a single sparkly gown you could market to the kidlet crowd. (Some of the stuff she wore, oh, you could market it all right... but NOT to a pre-teen crowd!)

I'd suggest seeing it before it goes away. It's not a stupid rehash of an insipid plot idea, so the possiblity it won't be around long is high.

Which is a real shame.

J.

Posted by at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Doesn't care who it bites. Or for what reason, as Germany's finding out.

Take water consumption... Going with EU mandates to reduce water usage (though Germany's not a country that will ever have problems with water in the first place) yields interesting problems...

Our consumption has declined so much that there is not enough water going through the pipes to wash away fecal matter, urine and food waste, causing blockages. The inert brown sludge sloshes back and forth in the pipes, which are now much too big, releasing its full aroma.

The water authorities are trying to offset the stench with odor filters and perfumed gels that come in lavender, citrus and spruce scents. But toxic heavy metals like copper, nickel and lead are also accumulating in the sewage system. Sulfuric acid is corroding the pipes, causing steel to rust and concrete to crumble. It's a problem that no amount of deodorant can solve.

The waterworks must now periodically flush their pipes and conduits. The water we save with our low-flow toilets is simply being pumped directly through hoses into the sewage system below. On some days, an additional half a million cubic meters of tap water is run through the Berlin drainage system to ensure what officials call the "necessary flow rate."

Green Extremes: Germany's Failing Environmental Projects

Of course, actually rolling back the more extreme items isn't to be considered. Everyone seems to look on 'green' attempts as an unmitigated good, never to be even questioned as to actual utility or side effects...

And any attempt is met by (or WAS met by) derision. As time goes on, it's becoming clear that the greens don't have the solutions we need, and that their attempted fixes have unpleasant side effects themselves.

J.

Posted by at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ignition

Ever wonder how they developed rocket fuels in the '50s and '60s? It's a pretty geeky work, but there's parts of it that are hilarious.

How to deal with a metal-fluorine fire? "For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes."

How to deal with Chlorine Trifluoride? "It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water —with which it reacts explosively."

(Hypergolic is the term for spontaneous ignition when two solids or liquids (or a liquid and a solid) are brought in contact. It's very useful if you don't want to worry about igniting the mix in a rocket exhaust.)

If you've got any interesting in energetic chemistry, or simply want to read about the research process of just HOW they tried to figure this all out (without losing arms, legs, eyes or lives) it's a fun read.

Thank you, John B, for pointing this out!

J.

Posted by at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

How much electricity do we get from windmills?

Answer here...

If you've got an 'energy solution', that solution has to actually work. Yes, I know, it's not much of an idealistic slant - but when you're making decisions that have real-world effects you have to base your deciding criteria on real-world situations.

The 'threat' of global warming was simply from computer projections of highly selected evidence, extrapolating supposed 'trends' that would lead to an irreversible warming with catastrophic effects if something wasn't done immediately. And, amazingly, the folks pushing the problem also had the solutions.

They didn't even take into account solar variability, or natural cycles.

All in all, it's starting to remind me of this particular song. Get a grifter in, gin up a 'crisis, and all of a sudden you've got money coming in.

Until the marks wise up. As they're doing...

Yeah, wind energy's going to solve all our problems. Along with solar - which has the same inconstancy trouble that wind has, coupled with weather problems.

Just something to think aobut....

Posted by at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Dollar Shave Club

The commercial on their main page is fun. (Slightly NSFW, but... so's a lot of prime-time TV these days.)

The descriptions of the goods, however... Dollar Shave Club - Blades - someone had a lot of fun writing those.

"This blade comes from the future and lives in outer space."

"Reliable; this is the ’82 Wagon that starts when the temp’s below zero."

Nice to see 'em have a sense of humor.

Me? I use a Gillette Fusion Proglide, and use Barbasol shaving cream. Using the blade until it gets noticeably dull takes about two, three months - I usually swap it out when the 'lubricator' strip is gone, or roughly quarterly - whichever comes first.

Fun site - but I don't see myself signing up for their services...

J.

Posted by at 11:11 AM | Permalink

... when you least expect it.

On the walls of many maintenance shops you'll find the following sign.

The implication being that 'cheap' and 'right' won't be fast, that 'fast' and 'right' won't be cheap, and that 'cheap' and 'fast' won't be right.

It's remarkable, really, just how often that holds true.

Take the case of AGW mitigation, for example. We were told that the earth was warming, and we only had a short time to fix things. The solutions were expensive, the need so urgent that it was almost impossible to get anyone to slow down and go "Hey, wait a sec - all we've got to prove this thing are computer models. Let's wait and see what's happening before we throw billions of dollars at this."

So you had billions spent on projects that... basically wasted the money. In the case of those that actually came to fruition (and we're not even talking about the billions thrown down that fiscal black hole called 'carbon trading', or epic fails like Solyndra) there's pretty much no way that they're ever going to make back through energy sales the amount that it took to build them. You had ethanol plants that failed. You had 'green' energy projects that were cancelled because of (amusingly enough) environmental objections by other 'green' groups. you have other 'green' solutions (like the Chevy Volt, and CFLs) that weren't palatable to the public at large. Overall, it's been a mess.

But that didn't matter at the time. It was far more important to our politicians and policy makers to be seen as "doing something about the problem" - no matter how ineffective or expensive that 'something' turned out to be. It was not THEIR money that was being spent, after all - and if they weren't seen as very visibly trying to take care of the long-term crisis du jour, they would get hammered in the next election by someone promising more than they did.

As bad as things have been in the US, over in Europe things have been worse. In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany decided to (quite noisily) swing away from nuclear power and transition to... solar. (Germany being well known for it's consistently cloudless skies.) Again - it was a case of politicians trying very visibly to be seen as 'doing something' about a percieved non-problem. (Last I checked, Germany was neither earthquake prone or troubled by tsunamis.)

And let's not even talk about windmills in the North Sea.

Well, the "fast" and "cheap" route is usually the way that the Law of Unintended Consequences takes a severe bite out of your pocketbook. What they thought was 'fast' and 'right' certainly wasn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination, and turned out to be pretty wrong - and likely unneeded in the first place.

But just try getting a politician to admit that they've thrown away billions to no good use.

Remember:

Fast and Cheap isn't going to be Right.

Right and Cheap isn't going to be Fast.

Right and Fast isn't going to be Cheap.

Live it, learn it, love it - because when you don't, you're about to take a solid hit to the wallet.

J.

Posted by at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now.

The Winds of Change.

I've had severe doubts about wind and solar. Yes, it's 'doing something' about the supposed problem of AGW. And there's no question it's made a lot of folks a lot of money - but it hasn't made a lot of electricity.

It's a dead end.

I'm thinking it's only going to take about one more year and the whole green AGW scam is going to implode. And there's going to be a lot of people sweating out their associations with it, and just hoping that no forensic accountants show up asking just where the money they got went.

J.

Posted by at 10:21 AM | Permalink

The message had been surprisingly unambiguous, considering it came from an alien culture. Of course, they HAD had the 'Voyager' plaque to use as a standard, but what are you supposed to do when the first message you get from outer space resembles graphical IKEA assembly instructions designed to transcend spoken or written languages?

You do what they ask. A 'space station' put into orbit that resembled two shipping containers butted together, with a clear partition in the middle, with two small airlock pass-throughs installed. No life support on one side, whatever you wanted on the other. (And the graphic sequence for THAT one was a doozy.) Whatever you needed for docking on your side, leave the other one plain.

It was built, and launched – on time and amazingly under budget.

The thing was in orbit two weeks when an alien ship dropped in around Mars with a terrific flash, then zipped into place next to the Contact Station at a rate that left the astronomers tracking it dizzy. There was a flurry of EVA activity, and the alien craft grafted itself onto the bare end and the alien half filled with air slightly lower in pressure and higher in oxygen - a very good sign.

Cameras showed three very hairy starfish going in and out. The Russians launched the waiting Soyuz-V with an international delegation, docking with the Contact Station in short order.

And the hatch opened. The play started, all parts pre-scripted.

On the other side of the partition, two starfish were in isolation suits. The third shaved off some of its ‘hair’, put it in a vented container, then put it in one of the airlock chambers. On the human side, a volunteer unsuited, shaved a patch of scalp, stuffed, and stuck the container in the other. Both chambers bled down to hard vacuum for several minutes so atmospheres wouldn't mix. Then the starfish unsealed the human's airlock, and pulled out the container while the human did the same to the alien's airlock.

The alien lifted the container slowly, pivoted to the other two, then opened the container to what appeared to be a breathing orifice and sniffed deeply, paused for a moment…

And screamed a basso profundo note, throwing away the container and stuffing three of five tentacles into the orifice, digging and prying to the point where the flesh ripped and yellowish fluid spurted.

The other two restrained the third, dragging it back into the ship. The opening disappeared, the craft separated and headed off FAST the way it came. Just before it flashed out, one last set of glyphs were sent.

The astronauts looked at the unsuited volunteer, holding his container the way someone would hold a live grenade with the pin pulled. He swallowed audibly, and gingerly placed it back in the partition airlock and closed it - then beat all records getting back into his suit with the helmet on. When done, the container was put into a secure container - and all went back to Earth.

Translated, the glyphs essentially said "Biochemistries completely incompatible - don't call us, we won't answer." Earth scientists were puzzled - proteins spun the right way, test animals exposed to the hair were fine, and another (highly paid) human who sniffed the hair reported a faint minty aroma but had no side effects (other than boredom) over the course of a year in isolation.

The volunteer who's donated hair had such an effect pored over the reports while waiting for his isolation clock to run out. There wasn't anything else to do, there wasn't even cable, much less WiFi. Isolation meant isolation – plain, pure and simple. There WAS a weekly phone call, however.

"Jan, I sure don't see it. All I did was clip some hair and it may have killed him? Her? It? Whatever."

"Come on, Pete - don't worry about it. It's not your fault, we just did what seemed to be their first contact routine."

"Yeah, still.... Anyway, you got the list handy? I want to add a couple more items. Another toothbrush, some dental floss, some toothpaste other than that nasty stuff they've issued. Let's see - oh, some soap and some dandruff shampoo."

"Who ya dressing up for, one of your keepers?"

"Hah, just this stuff they gave me doesn't have selenium, and my dandruff's come back big-time."

A pause. "Oh, good lord... Pete, did you tell them..."

"About the dandruff? Yeah."

"Tell me you weren't using that before..."

"Well, yeah. Been using it for the last decade. Why?"

"Selenium? You DO know that stuff's poisonous, don't you?"

"And he sniffed... Oh, no."

"Yeah. But look on the bright side."

"What bright side? I may have killed the first alien ever!"

"True... but they didn't find us... edible."

----------

J.

Posted by at 1:46 PM | Permalink

On a similar vein -

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2011/oct/5/miller-emily-gets-her-gun/

Follow the whole series. Talk about jumping through hoops.

Stuff like this really makes you wonder about how many layers of government we actually need - and whether some people who are in it shouldn't be allowed to have any authority at all.

J.

Posted by at 2:57 PM | Permalink

http://www.adistinctiveworld.net/?p=6091

A "Farm to Table" party, on a farm, forced to throw away food because (among other reasons) there were no reciepts for the food. The folks holding the party jumped through all the assigned hoops - but missed some which weren't being held up when they started, apparently.

And the food couldn't just be given to the hogs - it had to have bleach poured over it.

There is such a thing as way too much bureaucracy, and these folks were the recipients of it.

(Yeah. Irregular posting. I know. Sorry...)

J.

Posted by at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Things I won't work with.

Seriously, when you START with gaseous florine, things only get more interesting...

Posted by at 1:39 PM | Permalink