Degringolade

A Different View

2012-02-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

So, I can't remember how I ended up on this picture, I think that Busted Knuckles had something to do with it somehow. But the original article that I read, and the link that it sent me to, got me to thinking.

There is also a doctored second photo as well.

All of this ties in with the theme that I have been developing of late. The country is turning more and more into a pressure cooker. Now, I am not squawking at these troops, they have the God given right to their own opinion and the equally God given right granted to a gaggle of E3's and E4's to jump to the wrong conclusions and not see the big picture. Damn good kids probably.

What kind of bothers me is the comments between the blog author and a demi-troll in the comment section at the end of the pickyourbattles piece. I have no doubt that both parties display points of view that reflect big swathes of the thought in the US military. The point I am trying to make is that the military is going to be a player in the dénouement.

I would guess that there is quite a bit of steam being generated in mess halls of late. We are demobilizing and getting troops back home. We are also in the throes of one of the worst economic downturns in our nations history, so the amount of money going into the military and the troops will be decreasing. We have generated a fairly separate military caste that will be getting screwed pretty soon.

Now, something similar has happened in the past. We went through the same thing at the end of Vietnam. The cost of the Vietnam war and the ruthless vote buying of the Great Society led to a precipitous loss of revenues and power to the military complex.

The difference this time is the way that the hoi polloi think of the military. The end of Vietnam had a country that thought the troops were drugged-out baby killers and were not in any mood to brook any nonsense. The Generals were cowed and disgraced. The military pretty much slunk back to its bases and licked their wounds.

This war is really different. All the troops are "heroes". The Generals have ruthlessly exploited the docile media to paint this as a win and themselves as the current reincarnation of Scipio fucking Africanus. The military is in a completely different space this time.

Things are going to get interesting. I have no opinion right or wrong on this one. Just sayin'

I am OK with this

2012-02-17T04:49:00.000-08:00

Consider a moment this little tidbit.

I am personally sick of every halfwit who reads an article in the national enquirer and feels that they are now a practicing physician. Doctors are by no means perfect, but the worst of them are better than the half educated morons that make up shit and then inflict it on their kids.

Look, vaccines aren't for the individual, they are pretty much a duty to the whole society. If we, as a society, can take the steps to eradicate a plague from the books, then we should do it. There will be a vanishingly small minority that will have a bad reaction. A couple of people in a population of millions will die. Can't be helped, but the chance should be taken. In an over-populated world, if a epidemic is allowed to get traction, a lot more than "a couple" of people will die.

I can't see any value in getting the government to force them...nothing but bad stuff down that aisle thank you. But these non-vaccine folks are just plain self-centered jerks who cannot see past the end of their own nose.

A Retraction

2012-02-16T04:30:00.000-08:00

Russell spent some time commenting on an earlier blog. I poo-poohed his comments and stuck to my guns about doing business with thieves. That may have been a mistake and I think that it may well be time to serve up a big portion of crow for self-consumption.

Theft is theft. The big boys have been doing it on a progressively greater scale for quite some time now. I have a tendency of forgetting that the amounts that they steal from each other are significant in the same sense that the amounts that they steal from us are significant.

I think what tipped me over to the side of seeing this as problem was the sudden realization that MF global may have been one of the bigger turning points. Where the big boys had been previously satisfied with a parasitic role of milking everyone for a small amount, MF Global was where they decided to go after big game and become a true predator.

Yes, it is all the same thing. Pervasive petty thefts in a setting of "financial services" is one thing. One has come to expect such a thing, it is the modern equivalent of the hated gabelle, irritating, good for some displays of dissension, but it just becomes part of the landscape. It is a wholesale operation where the weakness of the host can be masked.

MF Global showed that the big boys would be more than willing to pull down one of their own without even a trace of hesitation.

Now I am worried about what they would decide to do if us low lifes who have been milked for what we are worth are now found to be worthless. Now that the big boys have thrown away any semblance of respect for the rule of law, what are the rules of the game?

Cross Posting

2012-02-15T04:30:00.000-08:00

From Jesse's Cafe Americain

Please Read and pass this on

Chris Whalen: JPM and the Banks Have the MF Global Money And the Status Quo Is Protecting Them

"But please, to our friends in the Big Media, could we stop saying that we don't know the location of the missing $1.6 billion of client funds from MF Global? The money is safe and sound at JPM and other counterparties. As with Goldman Sachs et al and American International Group, the banks have been bailed out at the cost of somebody else. And the various agencies of the federal government are complicit in the fraud...

The effort by former New Jersey governor and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine to save his firm by stealing customer funds seems to warrant further discussion, yet instead we have silence...

So why is it that the Large Media have such trouble reporting this story? The fact seems to be that the political powers that be in Washington are protecting JPM CEO Jamie Dimon from a possible career ending kind of stumble with respect to MF Global."

Chris Whalen, Institutional Risk Analyst

Chris Whalen at The Institutional Risk Analyst lays out the entire MF Global scandal in a few plain words, taking the Wall Street demimonde to task in the process.

It is nice to see that someone who occasionally appears on the mainstream media can tell the truth on this. Usually one has to look for sources overseas, small cafes, and the occasional economic maverick to hear what really happened.

But in quiet whispers, the Street knows the truth, that the money was stolen, not once but twice. And even these hard cases are shocked. The first time by MF Global and from the very top, and then afterwards in the courts and the regulatory bodies that used the bankruptcy to take the funds from the customers and give them to the creditors.

And it does stink to high heaven. But the clean up men are giving the evidence a thorough scrubbing while justice waits, Chicago-style.

It has placed a chill on those trading in the US markets. Even they are frightened of such lawlessness. They can't help but wonder, who's next? And how far will they go?

Please distribute this as widely as possible.

"Where is the lost customer money? At JP Morgan Chase and other banks, or course. See, "How JP Morgan and George Soros Ended Up with MF Global Customer Money", www.clearingandsettlement.com.

So why is it that the Large Media have such trouble reporting this story? The fact seems to be that the political powers that be in Washington are protecting JPM CEO Jamie Dimon from a possible career ending kind of stumble with respect to MF Global. By stuffing the commodity customers of the broker dealer via an equity bankruptcy resolution supervised dutifully by SIPIC, JPM and Soros apparently get to benefit at the expense of the commodity customers of MF Global. This situation stinks to high heaven and everyone on the Street we've spoken to about the matter knows it. As the article above notes:
"Rather than being treated as a bankruptcy of a commodities brokerage firm under sub-chapter IV of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy law, MF Global was treated as an equities firm (sub-chapter III) for the purposes of its bankruptcy, and this is why the MF Global customer money in so-called segregated accounts "disappeared".
The effort by former New Jersey governor and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine to save his firm by stealing customer funds seems to warrant further discussion, yet instead we have silence.

Here's a question: When is Corzine going to be indicted for securities fraud and other high crimes and misdemenors? The answer seemingly is that the Obama Justice Department is afraid to go there. Thus the fraud at MF Global continues and Washington does nothing to inconvenience the banksters as customer funds are expropriated.

But please, to our friends in the Big Media, could we stop saying that we don't know the location of the missing $1.6 billion of client funds from MF Global? The money is safe and sound at JPM and other counterparties. As with Goldman Sachs et al and American International Group, the banks have been bailed out at the cost of somebody else. And the various agencies of the federal government are complicit in the fraud."

Chris Whalen, The Institutional Risk Analyst

"But where says some is the king of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter...that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that."

Lord Acton

Drei Groschen Oper - Die Moritat von Mackie Messer English translation.

Solution Spaces

2012-02-14T04:34:00.001-08:00

Getting out of bed some days is an absolute bear. Old men need their eight hours of sleep and getting them gets to be harder and harder to do.

I think that one of the real issue that people have to come with is the human desire to set boundaries. Stating that "here is the border of right and wrong, good and bad" seems to be the fundamental issue why we can't seem to get a grip on the issues facing us.

I think that folks are trying desperately to find a set of variables that will give them a linear equation moving in a defined direction. They want a clear point on the solution line that will define the halfway point. They want to subtract out the "statistical noise" to deliver them a straightish line that will tell them what to do.

For a while "chaos theory" came into fashion in the science community. Strange attractors and Mandlebrot sets were all the rage for a bit. I notice that their use and their press has lessened precipitously since the time that most scientists figured out they really didn't understand them and the results that they delivered really didn't give fund-able conclusions.

We move through a multi-dimensional ( I am thinking that N is approximately 15) solution space, with boundary conditions that fluctuate rapidly. Such equations do not usually lend themselves well to linear solutions.

We are winging it. In truth, we always have been winging it. Been winging it since we got together in groups greater than fifty. When folks like Hammurabi and Salon starting laying down rules for play, things have gotten even more ad libitum.

So I am thinking that maybe we should figure this out and admit we don't really know what the hell we are doing. Out political leaders are even more constrained by their Olympian view. The number of data points and the number of variables is beyond a structures ability to cope.

We are going to keep extemporizing and hoping. It is called the human condition

Positive Signs

2012-02-13T04:30:00.000-08:00

Over at Mishland, where economics are the religion and anything that interferes with personal profits is a crime. A big hullaballo is being made over the fact that we are using less oil and gasoline.

Consider the following three graphs

Man..thank you Baby Jesus.

It would appear to me that in the last couple of years, we have been curbing our stupid, stupid running around and getting a grip on the amount of money that we are putting into those idiot ideas called automobiles.

Mish is a little freaked because:

Rather, the huge dropoff in gasoline and petroleum usage in the US, coupled with falling shipping rates, a drop in Japanese Exports Three Consecutive Months, and a European Recession poised to get much worse, makes a strong case that a collapse in global trade is underway.

Dude, the collapse train left the station four years ago. Are you really all that surprised because the train is now starting to pick up steam?

Then Chuck Smith over at "Of Two Minds" came out with this little histrionic nugget:

If we stipulate that vehicles and fuel consumption are essential proxies for the U.S. economy, then we can expect a steep decline in economic activity to register in other metrics within the next few months.

Jesus Christ, can you guys give me a break. Running around like a brain dead chicken in your car is "an essential proxy for the US economy"? My god, what are you..worried that your GM stock and your BP stock aren't gonna get you a vacation this year?

Folks, the car culture has to come to an end. These charts just might mean that people are finally looking at their energy use and seeing the shallowness that it brings.

These charts lend me some hope. Maybe, kicking and screaming and struggling against the injustice of it all, we are beginning to do what needs to get done. We have hacked off around 12% of our energy use. A very good start. If we can drop our gasoline use by around 35% on top of this and manage to maintain our productive (read here: NON-AUTOMOTIVE) use of energy in ramped-up production to compensate for those damn container ships from China, maybe we will be on to something.

NKVD, Statsi, and other such organs

2012-02-11T08:21:00.000-08:00

Not everyone gets memos like this. But one should expect that a group with bearing the name of a man who espoused interfaith dialog, and lived a life of voluntary poverty and charity would piss someone somewhere off.

And a lot of folks are giving up their usual "I'm shocked" routine, replete with righteous indignation. I am not so sure.

Disagreeing with government policy has always pissed the government off. J. Edgar and his merry band were up to their elbows in surveillance of groups that didn't toe the company line. Beria was ruthless and more into the violent part of suppression. Statsi infiltrated everything and had files on everyone.

We are on the path to a much more authoritarian government. I don't like, but there it sits. But the actual path is looking pretty set, so why is everyone feigning surprise and claiming innocence lost?

Yes it pisses me off, but that is not what I am trying to say here.

What I am trying to say is, that if the FBI is expending resources on things like this, they are beginning to lose it. We are in a beginnings of a catabolic collapse here in the USA. The long term is not looking good, and there are movements around in the public and private which are the seeds of a major change in the American Experiment.

The authority of the executive branch is being balkanized in a serious way. DHS and the FBI retain their own power base, DoD is an empire within itself. DHHS has its own low level power. Memo's like this just underscore the lengths that the petty bureaucrats will go to to blow their own horn and advance their own agenda. People want to blame the President for what happens, but I am reasonably sure that BHO with a couple of drinks in him would bitch long and hard about the straitjacket that he has to operate out of with respect to these power bases.

The overall process continues. Be careful, try to look beyond the headlines and the initial rush of emotion. Sometimes a little bit of thought will show weaknesses, not strengths.

Empires

2012-02-10T04:30:00.000-08:00

In a rare moment of dissent with the archdruid, I offer the following.

Consider the following quote from his most recent posting.

The path ahead leads straight into a theme that most Americans don’t want to discuss at all, and that they and the rest of the world’s population desperately need to discuss: the political, economic, ecological, and military implications of the twilight of America’s global empire.

Now, I agree that we are looking at a decline in relative American power over the next years. Much can be done (and it would appear, is being done) in Washington DC to exacerbate this trend, but, if you take the issue out of a one way street approach and analyze it in a manner that takes in all possibilities, I would posit that the empire isn't going anywhere and will remain temporarily stronger.

Our society has made a couple of choices over the past century. We generated a couple of French-style mass levies to fight a couple of big wars. This grew an arms complex second to none. It also generated large residual populations of arms trained veterans who were not going to go back to the farm after they saw Paree. The wealth of the post WWII period and the poorly thought out overall strategy in Vietnam produced the Westmoreland doctrine with its tacit understanding with the then-upwardly mobile middle classes that their precious sons would no longer be required to bleed out on foreign shores.

But these doctrines are now coming to fruit. We have developed a military technology and capability as frightening to a potential foe as can be imagined. We have developed a class of soldiers (just for giggles, look into who is in the military and establish what they came out of, I would propose that we are rapidly developing a true Kshatriya class here in the US). While they have started out as an appendage of the political branch of government, true warrior castes are not usually content to be dogs.

We are living in a world where access to raw materials and wealth will become increasingly more competitive. The competition will not be in terms of price points or the invisible hand of the market, but rather, who is in physical control of the resource. Physical control of the resource is what is going to be the limiting factor soon.

Just remember that our most reliable method, and to honest, the most time tested of any method of obtaining control of something is to march in with a military force and take it. When push starts coming to shove, those who push and shove rise in relative status. For the past thirty or so years, the free -market types have had their little fling. They have attempted to use arbitrage sneaky business deals to buy access to resources not properly ours.

But the business deals that are held so sacrosanct right now are pretty slender reeds. Rest assured that they will bend in the wind. They will also break at any serious pushback from the opposite side of the equation. When petty little business arrangements start drying up, you can rest assured that the arms complex and the new warrior caste will see to it that the resources and power that now comforts them will continue.

I truly expect that the military will begin to rise in the near future. I think that the shallow and short-sighted in Washington and New York will try to disband them and leave them in the cold in order to save costs and funnel the savings into business coffers. It won't work. Just ask the folks back in 17th century England who tried to disband the New Model Army. Cromwell was the end of that process, and he was nothing but good at what he did.

I don't really regret it having to come to this. It will be a phase in the overall process. The military junta that will achieve control will fail, they all do. But it will allow the system to right itself and allow for a renewal.

I will try

2012-02-09T04:30:00.000-08:00

I hafta get better at responding to comments.

I read them all. It is just that I am lazy. I take the comments and use them to sweep my brain for material for another post, so I have a tendency of thinking that I have responded when really I haven't.

Well shit, another social Faux Pas by the fat kid.

I will try folks....I don't think that you realize how important these comments are to me.

But I did mention the lazy part didn't I?

You Like me...You really like me

2012-02-08T04:30:00.000-08:00

I am Honored....

Russell over at Reflexiones Finales gave me a gift.....

I am quite pleased and hope that you take some time to head over to his place.

Here are the rules of the game:

The rules as such:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it.

So here are my votes:

This one is kinda cheating, but I have to give John Michael Greer a huge thumbs up for his efforts over at Stars Reach. This is his fiction side blog and I cannot tell you how eagerly I await the next installment. (134 Followers)
Being of fallen borderer stock, I really appreciate the musings of Demetrius over at The Cynical Tendency. Hearing the pains of our relatives on the British Isles is an important part of my day.(41 Followers).
Muddome over at All You Need is Mud lives the life I wish I had to courage to try. (35 Followers)
Oldfool is an absolute must. I am especially drawn to his drawing and description of a very nice lifestyle. (95 Followers)
And how could one possibly forget the inchaote rantings of The Onery Bastard. I will praise him even though he ignored my invitation to come over and drink during super bowl. (118 Followers)

Thank you all for being a part of my life.

Location, Location, Location

2012-02-07T04:47:00.000-08:00

Folks who have been up in the rarified atmosphere of lower middle class have a spot of bother thinking that they might have to live down in the upper lower class.

The neighborhood I live in is a bit "mixed". My youngest's middle school basketball team consisted of four blacks, three Mexicans, two Asians, a Russian, and a couple of gingers. Great kids. I hung out with all the families during games, except the ginger parents who kinda clung to the edges, not wanting to be contaminated with minority cooties.

Ours is the bad neighborhood. The ex-mother in law is constantly harrping about the drugs and violence in our neighborhood. Funny that, I have been living here for nine years now and haven't seen either. Oh I am fairly certain that there are folks in the neighborhood who smoke dope and maybe there is a cook shack here, but in my walks, I certainly can't see it.

Everybody minds their own business. Everyone says hi during my walks if I see them.

Just Barely > 200%

2012-02-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

Got some folks coming over for super bowl. Making green chicken chili, baked beans, sausages, hot dogs, chips, mexican dips, nachos and other such health food. Can't say as I care too much about who wins. I do think that Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, et al do have some 18-1 memories to expunge.

$19,090.00 is the poverty level for a family of three in the United States in the year of our lord 2012. So sayeth the US Department of Health and Human Services. None can question this wisdom. God Save the enlightened ones in Washington DC.

I am going to try not naming blogs whenever I read something that I disagree with.....Oh well, so much for that.

One of my pet peeves is that folks in bloggoland are spending a great deal of the their time bitching about how we have to leave our lifestyles behind. How the world is running on less and less and how we need to make due with less. OK I agree.

Then folks go and start bitching about how anything less than 200% of the official poverty level is an insult to anyone and anything and that, at this level (200%), they and their offspring will be cast into outer darkness, residing there with Fuller brush salesmen and podiatrists.

OK, everyone agrees that getting from point A, the current wasteful and excessive state of affairs, to state B, the future is going to take a bunch of cutting. Most folks will be living in what, in today's parlance, is poverty. But it isn't. Guys, real poverty is not having anything to eat or anyplace to sleep. 19,090 in the US of A is pretty damn low on the totem pole of life, but it is just barely doable.

200% of that level is just fine thank you....that says a beater car, a small rental house, and lots and lots of home cooking. Vacations are camping in the national forest, days out are hiking and beating around town. Kids will get to college, they will just have to work along with the parents wanting them to go. They won't go to Harvard on that amount of coin, but there are degrees to be had. They will have to work, same as us, but was there ever any doubt? Hell some of them, the ones with brains and drive will probably get into the second estate after all.

Look, we are going to be poorer. So what? Do you really think that the lifestyles we have now are non-negotiable? They most certainly are. We are going to be downsizing a lot of things soon. Government statistics don't change anything. No one believes them anyway. But the society will change itself to adapt to new reality. Some of the rich will be richer. Some of the rich will be poorer.

We have to get over the idea that winners and losers in society aren't natural. We do have to keep it from getting out of hand. Implying that a family making less than $38,180 are losers and will be left behind is just silliness.

Long Days

2012-02-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry about being a bit short on postings lately. Been working OT and I am a little on the tired side. I am off this weekend and will take the time to clean the house and get ready for the Super Bowl.

Having trouble getting into the swing of prepping lately. Mostly it is because I am starting to wonder if I am prepping for the right thing.

Most survivalist types which folks mistakes for preppers are planning for some sore to libertarian (read here..nihilist) auto de fe which will leave them in their well-armed and well-stocked freeholds, lording over the auto da fé, sneering at the uninformed.

You are all fully aware of what I think will happen to these poor sad sacks. Should this scenario occur, when some truly nasty, truly weapons trained types with a modicum of organization hear tell of a stockpile in the woods defended by some "patriots", they will descend on the goodies with real organization and real tactics and the goodies will very rapidly change ownership. They will probably appreciate the fine equipment and food available at the post-apocalyptic fast food market in the woods.

Nope, the prep in our lifetimes will be a ossification of the social structures we are currently a part of. The middle class (read here: bourgeoisie) and the financial elite (read here: noble) are in the process of solidifying their hold. The masses are to be put into an awkward form of debt peonage which will fund the lifestyles of the elite. The middle class will work for the elite, gathering the rents, but will decrease in size due to the low-value added of such endeavors.

I cannot see this trend changing for the rest of my lifetime (which, granted is not that long...I figure that at best, I have around 10-11 years). So what I have to do for prepping is to set my kids up in a manner that they can best ride the wave coming at them.

So, my savings won't be....work til I die with money going to education and training in useful things that will allow the future to continue the great game we call history.

Now we are all terrorists

2012-02-02T13:02:00.001-08:00

Privacy is a clue

http://info.publicintelligence.net/FBI-SuspiciousActivity/Internet_Cafe.pdf

Kinda Dumb Smart People

2012-02-01T04:49:00.000-08:00

By the time I post this, the references will be kind of dated. Such is life, I started the outline during my week off and didn't want to spend too much time on it.

So, read this piece here.

Now, Krugman is a smart guy. One of those folks out there who make sense a lot of the time. His views may piss off some of the rabid, but they are usually reasoned and worthy of your time and thought. Here he is saying is that what we need to do is just spend a ton more money. I will even allow that it appeared to work fairly damn well in the period 1940-1960.

The long term consequences of his central thesis (just spend money) are hidden by the convenient fact that we had free rein over the industrial world (which we had conveniently left as a monopoly thanks to the US Army Air Corps) and the Marshall Plan, which allowed us to keep our factories running at full tilt, rebuilding the rubble that Mssrs. Lemay and Doolittle so politely left us.

He also stubbornly refuses to note the serious problems that the country went through re-integrating the troops. Please note below the unemployment rate in the years following the demobilization. (Thanks to the folks over at Calculated Risk). Please note that the current recession is around 1/2 the depth of the bad boy following WWII.

Think Hard On This

2012-01-31T15:08:00.000-08:00

Long crappy day today. Trying to keep focused on the vets, but the drama queens keep trying to get me to pay attention to them.

I work at the VA. Bust my ass there a good deal of the time.

The guys are getting poorer, I am seeing some real looks of desperation. There are a group of twenty or so guys who are there when I walk through the door at 5:30 and you just know that this is where they slept that night.

The folks who are at the clinics are looking worse. Some of them don't seem to be eating as much as they would prefer. I have a nasty feeling that things are going to be made more difficult for them. We treat these guys like plaster saints now, but when they come between us an a low tax rate, I am pretty sure that we will screw them like we did in the 70's.

No don't kid yourself, It ain't gonna be us at the VA doing this, the congresscritters and their masters will be the ones cutting the pie. Rest assured that those of us in the trenches will be doing every damn thing that we can.

Make sure you do your share too.

The Colbert Report

Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archiv

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition. And then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

– Stephen Colbert

The Sad Irons

2012-01-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

Spent two hours this morning at a laundromat plowing through dirty clothes since the washer ist kaput. You know, there is something to this. No maintenance, no initial cost, no water usage, no electrical usage. Do all of your loads at one time and be done in two hours versus stringing it out over the entire day. Another big plus is that the boys can come with me and everyone can do their own clothes in a constrained time frame and get the whole process done at once.

Folks ought to take some time reading this. I think that it will take a lot of romance out of your quest to go out and become one with nature.

Remind yourself over and over and over again that your cherished, non-negotiable American lifestyle is based around the most profligate bout of energy consumption that will ever happen in the history of our planet. It can't last.

The Kunstlers of the world want to selectively view the past as an ambrosial time, where picturesque peasants laughed while the toiled in the field and then gathered around a hearth to a healthy meal grown by their own hands. These peasants would then gather around and sing picturesque song for the lordly writers who flew over them at 32,000 feet, going to their next conference.

As the energy available to us low-lifes becomes more and more limited, expect that your life choices and the petty luxuries you currently find essential to begin the process of vanishing. The next ten years will probably not be that bad. As economies are squeezed out of the energy usage equations, you will find that you have no effective loss of function, you will just be doing it more efficiently.

But sooner or later the drop in available kilo-calories will start to get some real traction. And you will be doing with less. It is time to start figuring out what is essential and what is disposable. It is also time to start figuring how to do it with a bit of class.

Now this is Funny

2012-01-29T04:00:00.000-08:00

Potential Energy

2012-01-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

Waking up early this morning to head into work to get caught up. Saturdays are productive as hell as everyone is gone and not pestering me. But it still involves getting up and going into the salt mine.

You spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell is going on. All of us probably have spent time thinking about what we would do if we had the power to set things right. Then, after these little thought exercises (or navel gazings), we look out on the world and pronounce the current leaders inadequate because they have not accomplished what we have already accomplished in our mind.

I am coming more and more to the conclusion that we really don't have a leadership structure at the national level at this point. The President (the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD) and Congress that we elect and grandiosely project our inner desires do not really have that much power.

Consider for a moment the full text from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Definition of POWER1
a (1) : ability to act or produce an effect (2) : ability to get extra-base hits (3) : capacity for being acted upon or undergoing an effectb : legal or official authority, capacity, or right

2
a : possession of control, authority, or influence over othersb : one having such power; specifically : a sovereign statec : a controlling group : establishment —often used in the phrase the powers that bed archaic : a force of armed mene chiefly dialect : a large number or quantity

3
a : physical mightb : mental or moral efficacyc : political control or influence

4
plural : an order of angels — see celestial hierarchy

5
a : the number of times as indicated by an exponent that a number occurs as a factor in a product <5 to the third power is 125>; also : the product itself <8 is a power of 2>b : cardinal number 2

6
a : a source or means of supplying energy; especially : electricityb : motive powerc : the time rate at which work is done or energy emitted or transferred

7
: magnification 2b

8
: ¹scope 3

9
: the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis in a statistical test when a particular alternative hypothesis happens to be true.

Out of the possible choices, 1B, 2D, and 9 are the only ones that have a little application here. 1B is only a possibility because of the passive nature of the description. There is a potential for power, but the potential has not passed the activation energy threshold in the current system.

It really strikes me how little these definitions apply to the residents of the District of Columbia that we hold elections to select. Yes, we ascribe to them power, but how much of that is our overweening desire to be a part of THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. I really think that the

Our power structure that guides the country's entrance into the future is too fragmented and self-referential to perform its primary task. The ability to make and implement decisions is no longer centered at the national capital (I tend to think that it never was). The real problem is that there is no coherent source of decision making in our country.

The decision making power has been devolved to the corporations, political parties, and organized groups that cluster around K Street and make their wishes known. The real problem here is that these folks serve masters whose goal is not the common good, but the narrow, rather parochial needs of the vocal minorities that are their wellspring.

We are ungovernable in our current form.

I have been trying to come up with a way that we can fix the current system. I really don't think that we can fix it. It is well and truly broken. Not broken like a machine, where you put in a couple of new parts and weld a couple of joints and back you go, but broken like Cheynes -Stokes breathing.

Comments on the Archdruid

2012-01-27T04:45:00.000-08:00

I'm back to being feeling well. One last night of too much sleep and I hope that I am good to go. Tonight is taxes and grumbling. The youngest needs to get picked up from weight lifting and I have to mend some fences and give him a pep-talk reference the grades-related reaming he got last evening.

Since I am an Archdruid Acolyte, I will begin to occasionally make comments upon the writings found there. Today the comments are on the post "Myth of Machine". Needless to say, I will also post to the Archdruid in his comment section, but as I will post here first so that I won't have to write a post that day.

I think perhaps that the one exception to the I-it relationship that the Archdruid discussed in his post this week would have to be the personal computer and the internet.

I have always had a problematic relationship with the personal auto. I have one and see it more as a ball and chain than an asset. As soon as I complete the "running children around" stage of my life, I will make the attempt to divest myself of the damn thing. TV is available in my house. There is a 2x4 with bent hangers on the south wall that allows me access to over-the-air TV. I will be keeping this in the near future as it is how I watch football during season.

Both of these machines make a minimal impact on my life. I can see them going away and have no problem with the vision.

The beastie that I am pounding on at this moment is another matter. Computers can be dizzyingly interactive Especially when text is involved. Ideas can flash back and forth across the ether, blazing across the world in days .

There is the rather petty observation that most of the bandwidth is consumed by pornography and commercial bullshit. A great deal of the remaining is ideas, written down in words, able to be picked up and mixed around in ones head with the result being a more coherent and true look at the world.

So here is to our little corner of tin-foil hat land. A lot of the ideas here are probably not all of that correct. But hopefully they will start us down the path of constructing some built to last.

Chumps and other such embarressments

2012-01-26T16:35:00.000-08:00

Back in the saddle. Work took it out of me, but I managed to finish the day. Everything was truly crazy. My co-workers don't like to do so, so when I was gone, they managed to do as little as possible. I managed to get half caught up on the work that was ignored while I was home sick. I should be able to finish the rest by the end of the week and start out fresh next week.

The real issue that we are going to have to be dealing with in the next ten years is how to tell folks that their most cherished possession isn't worth a hill of beans, let alone the price of admission?

Oh, don't think there aren't folks out there who have done it right. Locutius and the lovely and talented have a pretty good chance of sailing through their retirement in some damn fine, paid for digs.. Not 100% chance of course, but probably better than anyone else I know.

But he and perhaps our buddy Titus down in SLC are the only ones. Most everyone else I know is sitting with a living arrangement where they owe more than what their property is worth, and they really, really don't want to find out what they aren't worth in the process of price discovery.

Folks here in the USA are big supporters of free markets. Except in those cases where it applies to them. Everyone in the "powers that be" group is trying desperately to try and keep the reality from hitting, because the chances of them surviving the wrath of the chumps who thought they were rich because of a living arrangement will not be pretty to watch.

So I always am amused and surprised when intelligent people such as Stoneleigh and Illargi over at The Automatic Earth go off and come up with the goofy idea of closing out Fanny and Freddy and all the sundry federal programs that are supporting the charade.

Yeah, like that is going to happen.

Look, everyone knows that the shit is going "splat" soon. Everyone knows it. Repeat that to yourself twenty times. Everyone knows it.

But not everyone is willing to go all civil war in the treatment. Closing down the means of support is like handing a homeowner a leather strap to bite on, giving him a shot of whiskey, and then commencing to saw while the "patient" is being held down.

Of course they are going to try and cushion the fall. They won't succeed, but Good God, they gotta try. If they try and fail, folks will be pissed, but will probably handle it OK. Going civil war on a nation who has been firmly informed that they are part of an "ownership society"and rapidly pauperizing them will be a damn fine reason to start tuning up the pitchforks and trying to source lantern oil.

We have made some horrible choices in our society. Having Martha Stewart as an icon and beleiving that where you live should make you rich were always recipes for disaster. But lets please get over the Calvinist crap of punishing the stupid and try to figure out how to rationally get to where need to go (read here: much poorer) without having a total collapse of what little remains of our culture.

Back to work

2012-01-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

Finally got rid of the crud. Three days of lolling around and sleeping 12-14 hours a day does do the trick.

I think that I will post today about the on-the-job dangers of a prophet, whether self appointed or otherwise. One of my favorites is Dave Cohen over at Decline of the Empire. Now, Dave is having a spot of trouble seeing what the hell is the use of an ongoing blog.

Hell, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

In the end, this piece of work is a way for me to set down thoughts. The posts aren't a way to guide the planet out of it's seemingly inexorable downhill slide, they are a way to document the choices that are seeming to be made for possible use later. I see this more like a scientists laboratory notebook than the Book of Daniel.

So, all my friends out there, and if you have been reading this for as long as some of you have, you are my friends, keep centered on what you are doing. Saving the world with a blog just ain't gonna happen.

But you might save yourself. If the blog starts weighing you down, dump it. Your friends will understand. In a way, reading other peoples blogs is kinda like being a bartender, sometimes your best customers are the ones who shouldn't be there in the first place.

A world built by hands, and machines

2012-01-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

Authors Note: I am sick today, and rather bored, so I am trying to keep myself busy with tea, lemonade, and frequent urination. This article is an effort to do something minimally useful while my fat old body fights off the nasties.

Anyone who has spent time reading my ravings knows about my love-hate relationship with Mr. Kuntsler and my unseemly adoration of the Archdruid.

I realize that I have to get a grip on these, but right now the tension between these two and their worldviews provides me with an excellent set of ideological lenses with which to view the world. As usual, I cannot thank them enough for their hard works and their insights.

When you spend a bit of time thinking about their writings, you start to fill in the gaps between the time frames that they write their readings of the crystal balls and their distaste for the way that the present is structured. They both agree that the present structure of American life is an unsuccessful attempt, but they focus on different timelines for the collapse. Mr Kunstler, in his writings and fiction focuses relatively short -term (around 5-20 years), while Mr. Greer brackets Mr Kunstler by going very near term (in his prescriptions for the present) and distant future (post-industrial America circa 2400 in his fiction)

Both of them appear to believe that electronics is gone for good. But even Mr Greer has radio in the distant future. Both of them seem to be enamored with the mystique of hand tools and the primitive nature of technology in the pre-mass market oil extravaganza. I think that this is somewhat a healthy attitude, but it kind of reeks of overshoot.

I think that there will be a place in the future for fairly serious electronics. They are just too good at being controllers and communicators to think that they will slip away to nothingness. What will slip away will be the fatuous and self-indulgent uses of electronics. The constant upgrades of technology will go away, probably to be replaced by a serious consolidation and rationalization of function to fit decreased access to resources.

I really don't see this kind of thing as a huge problem. Being able to write something like this attempt at rational thought is just as easily done using WordPerfect 4.2. Rather than the instant gratification of writing online using blogger's front-end, it would be just as easy to batch send things around using a fidonet interface with a once a day pickup. Rather than using dual-core, high end high energy consumption processors, perhaps a 80386 equivalent with low power draw and low-bandwidth access could provide enough communication for almost anyone.

Cell phones could be easily made smaller and cheaper, take away the "streaming" functions and the apps and you have a system easily capable of handling all the voice traffic that one could hope for for very low cost. Take out the intrusive monitoring of GPS systems, the pathetic desire to watch movies, and the truly sad need of young women to text incessantly and you have a global communication system for pennies on the dollar compared to current systems.

But where I see electronics having a long term impact is in localized manufacturing. Arduino makes a great little board that is currently limited only by imagination and too-big desires. These things are very simple and can be made to do some pretty amazing things. What they will never do is to make people obsolete. They can extend human capabilities, not replace them.

I guess what I think is that some maturity will be coming our way soon in the way that we look at things. Constant increases in complexity are the problem. Going back to semi-primitive systems will not be the answer. Part of maturity is knowing when something is good enough.

Long time since I heard this name

2012-01-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Saul Alinsky:

Good Lord and the wacky sixties. Saul is now being ran up the as a boogie man by the Republican scum that are currently trying to fellate us into voting for them.

Look go to the wiki article and read it and tell me what the hell is the matter with a country that is afraid of someone like this? I think it is because he told people that they did not have to be in thrall to others.

Here are Alinsky's precepts in a couple of nutshell lists. Now...go through these and tell which of these precepts are not in daily and ruthless use by those in power in the United States?

All Alinsky did was inform the underclass that the rules used by those in power were appropriate for use by those without power. This concept gives the monied classes the heebie jeebies. Because you see, the monied classes run first and foremost on the concept of privilege. (1)

You see, the powerful have never, ever wanted the less powerful to follow the same rule set used by in the daily lives of the powerful. The purpose of obtaining high office and wealth is to exempt oneself from the petty rules and laws that restrict the hoi polloi. Never, ever forget that one central fact.

And remember, if you were to find yourself magically in that position, you probably wouldn't act a damn bit different.

Rules for Power Tactics:

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Rules to test whether power tactics are ethical:

1. One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.
2. The judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
3. In war the end justifies almost any means.
4. Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
6. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
7. Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.
8. The morality of means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
9. Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition to be unethical.
10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments.
11. Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace."

(1) From Old French privilège, from Latin privilegium an ordinance or law against or in favor of an individual; privus private + lex, legis, law.

Fighting Off Entropy

2012-01-21T13:21:00.000-08:00

Took the car over to Lupe's yesterday to have him swap out the serpentine belt for me. The battery hadn't been charging quite right and the power steering was a bit balky. Replacing the serpentine was the first step in the process of getting it right.

Luckily, the beast was still running. Went up and bought parts, came back and gave the parts, a couple of bills, and a six pack to Lupe and came back later to an installed belt. Also got the news that the power steering pump was going bye-bye, but that will be next months project (courtesy Lupe of course).

But the whole process got me to thinking about the efforts required to keep a vehicle on the road, and the somewhat limited benefits of doing so successfully. Oh, I can just hear some folks out there, gnashing their teeth in anticipation of explaining to me how a new car doesn't have these issues. Go out and either drain savings or go further into debt, and you will not have the worries of vehicle maintenance.

Idiots.

There is no situation, short of totaling your current vehicle, where buyinng a new vehicle makes sense. It is the most pernicious and widespread fable of American society which ascribes to a pricey, ill-made, mass production liability the benchmark of ones self-esteem and societal status.

The '99 Chrysler Town and Country that is imperceptibly decaying on 20th Street is a pointed reminder of my mistakes during the past ten years. I am keeping it as a form of penance as much as a means of transportation. I will be doing so for the foreseeable future.

When I bought it back in 2006, it was a stupid purchase, I had a completely functional van that had just been totaled and I bought back the hull for a pittance and had a body shop repair the minor damage that "totaled" it. But then I found out that I would have to get it re-registered and I was just too damn/lazy, busy to accomplish this and so I went out and bought this thing to facilitate this laziness. Gave the old one to the food bank at the local church's food bank where it is still earning it's daily bread.

I have put around 45,000 miles on this beastie since then. I would prefer doing less, but schlepping kids around doesn't allow it. I use it mostly on the weekend for hikes up the gorge and locally, and to pick up groceries. My work is 1.25 miles away.

I could do without it if I had to and as it stands right now, it is an expensive luxury that I haven't quite seen my way fit to dispose of.

Senator Murray

2012-01-20T05:30:00.000-08:00

Representatives of the people usually end up being no such thing.

Here is a case in point. Back in the early 1990's my ex and I moved to a tiny little town in Eastern Washington (Republic) to get away from the rat race and try again from a rural place. She ran a clinic in the local hospital, I wound up being the city planner.

Now, don't kid yourself, this was not a big operation. Tax revenues were miniscule, the City Council worked for free, the Mayor got paid $2,000 a year to help with gas and running around, and the highest paid worker on the city payroll (there were six of us) was around $30,000 (with overtime for snow removal being included in that total).

Now, as you can probably guess, a town of 1,000 in a county of 7,000 is one poor-ass town. So when I got hired to write the comprehensive plan, the first thing that I did was go out and scour the woodwork for federal grants and other freebies to pay for my salary. The State had thrown a little money to the City as part of the dumbass law that required a city of 1,000 to do a comprehensive plan, but if anything was going to get done, I had to go out and find the money to do it.

At that time, I tried to enlist the help of the folks who represented us in the Congress and the Senate. Tom Foley was still speaker of the house (and if there was ever a more likable thief in America, I would have liked to meet him), Slade Gorton was the Chief Senator, and Patty Murray was a newbie Senator with nothing going.

Now, at this time, Tom Foley was Speaker of the House. Big swinging dick in DC-Land, but he would go out of his way to do things for folks, even baby little pissant towns like Republic. His office made calls, and helped us find the money to line a sewer pond to clean up a local stream, pave a road that folks used to get to the only grocery store in 75 or so miles, managed to help us pay our two (2) cops, and gave us advice on how to keep the little industry we had (Couple of poorly producing gold mines).

Slade Gorton's office helped a bit, but they really couldn't be bothered. He was worried about Seattle, Microsoft, and Boeing, in that order. So no joy there.

Then there was Murray and her office. Democratic party zealots with no tolerance with anyone who didn't fully support their agenda. When I called and asked for help, the first thing their office did was look at how Republic voted (they went for the Republican by around around 55-45 if memory serves). When they found this out, I was told in no uncertain terms that we would get no help from her office if we didn't vote for her.

During the next two years, her office made every attempt to short circuit anything we did. When we tried to get an exemption for a 100 year old mine that was the reason for the town being there, her office tried to stop it. They made life hell for us. When we wrote letters supporting saving some of the remaining old-growth trees, her office sent copies of the letters to the local lumber mill (along with a request for donations). When we tried to keep the mines open or log some scrub, she sent copies of letters to environmentalists (along with a request for donations).

So that is who Patty Murray is. She has never had a real job. Zero. She stated out as a "citizen-lobbyist" and never looked back She is intent on forcing her dreamworld views on others, and shows a nasty, vindictive streak whenever anyone opposes her. She sucks for money with the best of Washington and uses her office to enforce her view rather than representing the people who elected here.

I have no use for her.

Political Waffling

2012-01-19T04:30:00.000-08:00

Spent the time today to call the local congresscritter's office (Jaime Herrera-Beutler, the name after the hyphen snuck in after she got elected) to tell her that the SOPA law was a pile of grunt.

The phone was answered by a very nice, very sincere young woman who labored long and hard to leave every bit of wiggle room possible in her answers. "CongressCritter Herrera is monitoring the bill as it moves through committee", "Congresswoman Herrera has concerns with the bill", and "we have had a lot of calls expressing concern" were the most concrete answers I was able to get out of the staffer.

But she was a nice young woman, brought to mind a passage out of Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash".

“They say that in D.C., all the museums and the monuments have been concessioned out and turned into a tourist park that now generates about 10 percent of the Government's revenue.

The Feds could run the concession themselves and probably keep more of the gross, but that's not the point. It's a philosophical thing. A back-to-basics thing. Government should govern. It's not in the entertainment industry, is it? Leave entertaining to Industry weirdos -- people who majored in tap dancing. Feds aren't like that. Feds are serious people. Poli-sci majors. Student council presidents. Debate club chairpersons. The kinds of people who have the grit to wear a dark wool suit and a tightly buttoned collar even when the temperature has greenhoused up to a hundred and ten degrees and the humidity is thick enough to stall a jumbo jet. The kinds of people who feel most at home on the dark side of a one-way mirror.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

Again Stephenson is my muse, and he writes descriptions of things that touch the quick of things.

That is why I miss our old congresscritter Brian Baird. Brian was a child psychologist before going off the deep end and running for federal office. I really think that he was moved by the idea that he was going to try and make the world better. I had the pleasure of knowing him in college down in Utah long ago and far away and he was just a damn fine guy there too.

I think in the end, he got sick of it and tossed it all away because, at heart, he was a good and decent man. The shenanigans probably just got the better of him.

I don't get the idea that CC Herrera has that same makeup. I see her fighting to the last nail to hold onto her privileges and power. It appears that it is what drives her.

So much the loss

2012-01-18T04:32:00.000-08:00

Strike

http://sopastrike.com/

Rats Thanks Busted and Earthbound

2012-01-17T17:37:00.001-08:00

Cop or Soldier? » make test

Maturity and other such restrictions

2012-01-17T05:30:00.000-08:00

Demitrius took a break from his thoughts on haggis to give an excellent little tutorial in on the state of the UK economy as soupçon. His thoughts reflected the folks over at the Automatic Earth and I think add some nice thoughts on a rather frightening article.

We here in the US have been passing into a mature economy for quite some time. The mature of an economy is somewhat akin to the maturity of a person: they both stem from the inexorable narrowing of options and the attendant learning to live within those limitations.

Here in the US, the narrowing of options came in the guise of globalization, where the industries that rebuilt the world post WWII moved away from us, closer to the consumers (we are after all only five percent of the worlds population) and away from our outsized expectations of rewards. Oh granted, having drilled and pumped our oil reserves to sell to the world might have had something to do with it, but it is a nasty little family secret that no one appears to wish bandied about in polite company.

Where the US took off into its maturity in the 1980's in much the same way that a forty-something approaches it, as a decline from a peak, the UK kind of took a different route. The Empire was well in the past, living on as a polite little commonwealth with the unspoken truth being that it really didn't mean that much. When the US started to spin thing overseas and playing with fire in the form of financial chicanery, London was like an old geezer who had just been told about Viagra. The folks in The City took no time at all in converting the meager savings and dignity of a senior to the financial equivalent of a toupee and a red corvette.

I think that both countries were more than a little tasteless in how they handled their newfound limitations. However, I think that Britain will probably have a much harder time of it that us Yanks.

They have my sympathy.

I Am Hoping

2012-01-16T08:44:00.001-08:00

NASA is not perfect, but no one ever said they were stupid

http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html

I'm hoping

This Was Seen over at ZeroHedge

2012-01-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

This appears to be Mitt Romney's list of major contributors

To me, it seems a piddling price to pay for a Head of State

Crufty

2012-01-14T07:11:00.001-08:00

It is a pretty good word from old computer geeks such as yours truly.

It is also a pretty good way to describe most peoples lives. A great deal of your operating system or current program is stuff that you have left over from the past that doesn’t really serve any purpose, it is just there because you cannot, for the life of you, figure out how to get rid of it. Another apt description of what all this cruft leaves you with is “dependency hell”.

I am thinking about doing a major re-think of my current lifestyle. My landlord’s daughter is currently knocked up and will probably be demanding my current living arrangement for her new family, and I can’t fault my landlord for kicking me out for this reason. The boys are now well into high school years, so the needs that this house filled may no longer be all that important.

I think that for the next while, I will do some source code analysis of my life to see what needs to be purged.

Accounting Quirks?

2012-01-13T04:54:00.000-08:00

I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone believes anything that comes out of Washington DC.

Consider for a moment this article.

They are telling us that we will be holding our budget deficit under a trillion.

Yet Obama is asking for, and the congress will approve a 1.2 trillion dollar debt ceiling increase that is supposed to tide us over until after the election.

How does that hang together?

The core of the matter is we are broke and getting broker. We will be trailing the rest of the world down the path of budget slashes and huge "austerities" any year now. Just has to be that way.

There is a vocal minority out there that feels that taxing the rich will solve the problems. Hell, even if we took all the rich folks money and killed them (read here proscriptions) there wouldn't be enough to pay off the debt. Though it would amuse me.

There is another vocal minority that says just kick all the freeloaders (read here, fellow citizens) off the dole and let them starve and you will pay off the debt. Naw..that dog won't hunt either.

We have been living large for too long. All of us, even the poor folk have been steps above the norm of the world for so long that we now consider it our due. It ain't

The recalibration is going to get messy, and lots of folks are going to be pretty pissed when their cherished American Dream goes up in smoke.

SOPA

2012-01-12T04:54:00.000-08:00

Just a minute this morning, I am running a bit behind.

SOPA is likely to pass, as the rich fucks think that it is in their best interests.

That being said, I think that us bloggers had better think about how we put together our posts. I usually try to stick on a pretty picture on the top of each post that I find appealing and applicable. I just troll the net and paste it up there.

Well, no more. From here on in, it is just my own lame thoughts. The SOPA is a pretty serious piece of work, it isn't there to stop online piracy, it is there to give the powers that be a convenient reason to shut down inconvenient people.

I think that links will be OK. But be careful about the fluffy stuff on your blog. It would be damn hard for them to shut you down for your thoughts. It would be quite easy to shut you down for a vanity.

Nicely Done

2012-01-10T04:55:00.000-08:00

When one of the big boys of Blogoland come out with something like this, maybe, just maybe there will begin a heightened discussion of the issue.

There are just too damn many of us. I would suggest that this is the root problem. You are starting to see it here in the good ol' USA. When you traven to China, your eyes go wide open. When you go to India the fact screams at you.

The farm lobby has been filling our eyes and ears and mouths with the "miracle" of their productivity increases, but in truth, all they have been doing is a relentless centralization of methodology and distribution of crops grown essentially by seeing how much in the way of fossil fuel inputs can be forced upon the land.

The peaking of oil, the increase in use by China and the developing countries, the exportland phenomenon and other such niceties point to a remarkably changed future. Access to food will become a serious issue. In the heavily overpopulated counties, famine will again become a familiar visitor. In the developed world, there will probably be a serious effort at restructuring the incredibly inefficient food systems that currently feed us.

I really don't see famine happening here in the US. What I do see is a breakup of the processed food industry that sucks so much of the food and energy that we need for elsewhere. I think that I will be taking a look at the energy input into that bag of Fritos that we all so dearly love.

I will probably write some more on this later. Work calls. Gotta get out the door and earn my nickels.

To be continued.......

Try this on for size

2012-01-09T16:52:00.001-08:00

Why do I do it to myself?

2012-01-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

Spent a little bit of time yesterday watching the playoffs and the politics.

What it truly sad is that the coverage for both is pretty damn similar. Hell, if you wanted to take the time, you could probably draw parallels between the NFL teams and the candidates.

Packers are Obama, sitting champions, good solid team, just waiting to be knocked off.

Patriots are Romney, unlikeable corporate scum who also look to be the most likely challenger.

Broncos are the darlings of the christer-right wing nutbag squad that backs Ron Paul.

The press is identical in the time and style of presenting both sports.

I need a drink.

Funny Lookin' Bacon

2012-01-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

There is a store over on Fourth Plain (one of the main drags here in Vantucky) called Grocery Outlet, or as the ex refers to it, the used grocery store.

Anyway, they have a great deal on bacon...a three pound ends and pieces vacuum bag for around $5. Nice.

The gist of the matter is that the kids who come over to stay the night with my brats are always surprised when they get the aforementioned "funny looking bacon on their plates. They are a little leery at first, but then they start to see that they can have twice as much of the funny looking stuff as they get of the aesthetically pleasing bacon strips that is on tap at their house.

One of the mothers apparently intimated to her son that "she would be damned if she would shop where poor folk shopped for their poor folk food".

More for me

Just the way I am feeling lately.

2012-01-06T04:52:00.000-08:00

Just the way I am feeling lately.

I'm certain that there is something out there that I could dump bile upon, but the idea just doesn't strike me as useful. The world seems to be a a stream of consciousness thing for the moment. Describing it would be like re-writing "Finnegans Wake".

I can't seem to sort out the streams that are merging in the world. There is something happening that is the sum of the parts that are out there, but the parts are hopelessly con-fused into a whole which is both dangerous and unpredictable.

I would say to prep, but for what? The self-centered nihilism of a spoiled society denied its toys? Naw.

So I will try to teach my children well. It may come to naught, but at least they might be able to make out the shape of the world that they will live in.

Not Much to say

2012-01-05T04:35:00.001-08:00

But this is an interesting site to browse.Food for thoughthttp://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

Home Run By Rachel

2012-01-02T11:16:00.001-08:00

Trusting When You Have To

2012-01-02T05:23:00.000-08:00

So: I am noting a trend over at Russell's (N=2) where there are pictures of academics writing articles that he reviews. The trend is not been heavily researched by your humble correspondent, but I do remember a hot blonde and now a hot brunette from Ivy League colleges with come hither looks....do keep it up old man.

But, hotness aside (if such a thing can be done), the studies show that when you are threatened, or when you need them, people are more likely to trust government.

Duh....You had to do a study on this one?

Look, the idea that humans innately trust each other is one of the oddest ideas ever to surface. We are our own predators. There is no other species left to do the job. While predators might trust other members of their own pack, they definitely don't trust other packs. If the pack or an individual is threatened, the threatened individual sure as hell better trust the pack, it is the only thing left.

The reversion to this trusting behavior in a society is a anachronism to the days when oaths of fealty were the hot item. Folks are re-acquainting themselves to the fact that they are easy prey. The only way that they are going to get through is to bind themselves to a social group. You can damn well be sure that when you have to do such a thing, your big, not all that useful brain will come up with an excellent rationalization for doing so.

Piss Poor Palantir Prognostications

2012-01-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

This is my crystal ball. I can only see into the future about as far as the end of my nose. But, like the "crystal ball" in the above picture, I can see reflections of myself and what makes me nervous.

1.)
The game that is still afoot in the Middle East, something is going to be happening there soon, and it isn't going to be us leaving Afghanistan. Iran is a master at the rope-a-dope and I would say that we are pretty gassed right now. Israel is getting twitchy. We are heading into an election year where idiocy abounds. None of these conditions lends itself to a rational resolution.

2.)
I think that the idea of "to big to fail" will prove itself false. The most likely suspect is Bank of America, but there is so much grand larceny and theft going on that there are no banks in the big five that is immune to a Dodd-Frank liquidation. Which will probably end up meaning that on of the other big boys will hoover up what limited assets are available and get going on doubling down on their losing bets.

3.)
I don't think the Euro will go down this year. There is a whole bunch of stuff running and we will have to wait for the middle act to get done before we start the final act. The little dickhead Sarkozy will have to run and I see him going down. Hollande will take a while to begin the process of pissing off the Germans. I see the next big move at the extreme end of 2012.

4.)
I see another year of muddling through by hook or crook here in the good old USA. The politicians have every desire to keep things together. You don't burn down the stage where you are performing your theatre of the absurd. So we will continue spending money, we won't bother to tax people, we will go deeper into the hole, and we won't make any decisions.

I do see a remote possibility of a third party candidate a la Ross Perot.

5.)
I have no earthly clue who is going to be our next President. The Republicans are trying their level best to find the oddest person in America to be their candidate. The Democrats are always stupid.

6.)
Dow will bottom out around 8300.

7.)
Raiders will finally get 11 wins.

8.)
The financial community will become even more blatantly larcenous.

9.)
A bank holiday in the US or Europe this year?? Most likely suspect is the UK.

10.)
I think that the suppression of the #occupy movement when it tries to restart in the spring will be huge and obvious. The cops have not been sitting on their hands, they will have infiltrated and will be prepared. I would steer clear from things for a while.
_______________

Other than that folks, I got nothin'. I am not even certain about these. The world is a big-bad puzzle right now. I just don't know.

See Ya After the First

2011-12-24T07:40:00.000-08:00

It's ġéola. I am not really interested in spending any time during the next week wallowing around in the gloom, looking for nuggets of life that I find meaningful or distasteful.

I think that I will eat a little too much, spoil my children a little, talk with family and friends, go to work and hold down the fort on the slow week between the holidays.

I'll throw out some predictions for the year coming up on the First, then get back to my normal post rates of around 4 posts a week.

Wishing you and yours happiness. I and mine are certainly going to try for it.

Riddle Me This

2011-12-22T04:55:00.000-08:00

How the hell did this happen?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16292244

I can see one, but 69 of the damn things heading off to China to be reverse engineered?

This will be covered up, but there is a mighty stink under this one I would bet.

Jails

2011-12-21T04:56:00.000-08:00

Dave Cohen over at Decline of the Empire published this piece yesterday.

Now, what I think is that not that more folks are getting arrested by the police, but the system is now so self-referential and the records keeping so detailed is that every arrest is detailed in extreme.

I got thrown in a couple of jails in my wild and wooly youth. Good luck finding any record of those encounters. The folks at Muscle Shoals tossed me in theirs after the bar fight and released me the next morning (you get back to your base straightaway boy, you give us a call when you get back there and you put your First Sergeant on the phone). Or a little town in Southern Colorado, Fruita (I tossed that damn weed in the snow last night...now get outta here and don't let me see you again).

No the difference now is the cops. Where they used to be peoples friends and fathers and neighbors first and took a hand in the alternate mercies and punishments that are part and parcel of being an adult. They now are just cops, nothing else. They are an arm of the state.

I really miss the old way, where they would deal with you as an adult to a kid. Now they just arrest.

I know that the world has changed. I realize we probably can't go back. But I do miss it.

Nostalgia

2011-12-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

Get Some

2011-12-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

Get some cash aside folks.

The way that I would approach it would be to sit down and figure out how much your true basics cost. Now, be ruthless here. Your bank/landlord won't be able to kick you out for a month or so (bare minimum) and it will take a while for folks at the electric and gas company to shut you off (months if you play "the pay some money and promise" game). Same with your car, same with your credit cards.

I think that the true basics are food, and to a certain degree fuel.

Get some cash set aside to navigate a month or three of uncertainty.

The global economic system is looking pretty sour right now. Truth be, it is as bad as I have ever seen it. 2008 looks pretty easy compared to what we will be going through, if worse comes to worse.

The banks are held together with bubble gum, baling wire, and accounting tricks. Governments are in huge debt, and there appear to be ominous rumblings coming from any number of sources. For the first time, I would start thinking seriously about the possibilities of bank runs in the year coming up.

Now, I am not saying pull out all your savings and put them in your mattresses, makes for poor sleep, though in my case it wouldn't even cause a bump in my pillow, let alone a lump in my mattress. What I am saying is have some actual cash money to navigate strange times. The technical word for one of the likely scenarios is deflation. Getting hold of cash is difficult in this setting. Having a bit of cash about will make it easier to navigate the oddness that may well come our way.

I used to be a silver bug, but got out of the game. If things stay smooth for a while, I may go and buy a couple of rolls of quarters and dimes. But that is all.

I hold by my premise that a full pantry is the best savings. I wouldn't recommend going full-LDS just yet, but being able to get through a month or so with only minimal grocery shopping will allow a lot of flexibility in your life

Same as the rest of us

2011-12-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

There have been a couple of posts that really got me going the past couple of days. First one is this one that lays out the issues from the perspective of the bottom end of the socio-economic spectrum. There is an abbreviated version over at Financial Armageddon that I prefer, as sometime Zerohedge drives tack with a sledgehammer.

The other one is a touch more insidious. Jesse has always been a favorite of mine. Jesse speaks for the moneyed interests who have a feeling of responsibility and duty. I have always felt that Noblesse Oblige is a emotion only felt by the noble. I respect him highly. But Jesse is now in a bit of a snit because it looks as though people who have stored their gold and silver bars in the vaults of vipers now may lose some of their money. The horror.

For the most part, there were very few grandmother's retirement nest eggs in the list of investors at MF Global. I am certain that they kept a few on retainer so that they could appear to be serving a pubic interest, but the truth of the matter is that this was a fund set up by a predator (read here Corzine) who wanted to parlay his financial (ex-Goldman-Sachs) and political (ex US Senator, ex-New Jersey Governor) influence into an even more insufferably huge wealth pile.

The people who raced to throw money at Mr. Corzine were the financial equivalent of jackals to Mr. Corzine's wolf. When the wolf took their money, they were/are aghast at the idea that someone would use them so luridly. Jesse of course finds the idea reprehensible (which it is) but come on, in the immortal words of Sister Anna Rita (Eighth grade English) if you run with a bad crowd, you most certainly will eventually end up in trouble.

Look, the system here in the land of the free (etc., etc, etc) has been financially and morally bankrupt for a while. Jesse has been one of the best chroniclers. I think that here in blogoland, we should not concern ourselves so much with the huge losses obtained by the wealthy (leaving them still wealthy, but less satisfyingly so), but instead, chronicling and working to help the truly needy who are so starkly chronicled by Mssrs. Durden and Panzer

Friday Fare

2011-12-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Man, I can't resist. I talked with Locutius today. Kirk and Spock on the front burner

A bit of a rant here...so sorry

2011-12-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

I fucking HATE people who bring the little annoyance dogs in a bag everywhere with them.

You puling, insecure pieces of shit who need a toy dog to substitute for your stupid fucking binky and security blanket? For fucks sake, grow the fuck up. The fucking stupid animals that you make so goddamn dependent and worthless are nothing but poorly bred rats.

Fuck you, you don't get to take them into a hospital because you like them and you are so pathetically insecure that you need a fucking worthless piece of shit animal to make your sorry ass feel better.

If you try to tell me that the thing is a fucking service dog, you can kiss my big fat rosy red ass.

Fuck You. Go out and suck a tailpipe and put the worthless piece of shit animal to sleep while you are at it.

Assholes

Read this now and please get all of your friends to read it as well

2011-12-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3629

This phrase just blew me away

We are living, he observed, in the age of the assholocracy.

Prognostications

2011-12-14T04:52:00.000-08:00

Since it is that time of the year....I am putting out my last year's look into the crystal ball for review and ridicule.

Oh wait...I chickened out last year.

I will try to be less cowardly this year.

The year before I did pretty well. except for the stock market, which is being held together by....Hell I don't know, it still doesn't make a lick of sense.

If everyone who reads this would be so kind as to send in your big prediction for next year, I would appreciate and note it during my predictions. Low-lying fruit will be mocked as cowardly, alien space babies running for President under the Republican banner would be more along the lines I am thinking of this year.

Home Feelin' Poorly

2011-12-13T11:58:00.000-08:00

I took a page from my co-worker's playbooks and spent the day at home because I didn't feel well.

Now, I can't really say that I was sick, but I sure as hell felt like crap. I am normally a furnace, hell, I wear t-shirts in the winter rain here without complaint. But yesterday I felt crappy and cold the entire day. It looks to me as though the old immune system has been waging war on my behalf. It also appears that it has a worthy opponent.

So today is drinking herbal teas and urinating. I am also slugging down vitamins and resting.

Ferdinand Braudel is the read for the day. Hell, it has been the read for years now on quiet days. I cannot think of a better exposition on how we got to where we are. I am asking you all to go out and take the rest of the winter to absorb the book. Get an idea of where we came from and how we go here. I cannot think of a better way to prep.

Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries, 3 vols. (1979) English translation by Siân Reynolds

* The Structures of Everyday Life (vol.1)

* The Wheels of Commerce (vol. 2)

* The Perspective of the World (vol. 3)

Just for giggles, please don't buy it online. Go to a by-god bookstore and let them relieve you of your money. Sure, it will cost more, but you will be doing the right thing

Bourgoisie

2011-12-13T08:43:00.000-08:00

A country was once accused of being a "Nation of Shopkeepers" by a bad man. This sobriquet was not well thought of at the time, but, like most unwanted nicknames and descriptions, it rang pretty true. But what causes my gorge to rise even more is that we are now a nation of poseurs and consumers. A nation of shopkeepers at least had some value, we cannot even claim that.

Russell has been somewhat somewhat fascinated recently about my admission that I am a "person of mass". He seems to have misconstrued my being miffed at Cuntsler (sic) for his ongoing denigration of anyone who likes their vittles a bit too much. He mistakes my distaste for Mr. Kunstler's ongoing tirades describing his revulsion for the less-than-svelte who inhabit his perfect world for the self-flagellation for being a big ol' corn-fed boy.

But Russell did make me think, and for that, I am truly grateful. His links to Chuck Robb's articles about dentistry made me think even more. Seeing my documented distate for cosmetic orthodontia

Our consumer driven economy, with Madison Avenues flickering images of perfect people laughing merrily in perfect settings are now part and parcel of our national self image. When you read Mr. Robb's description of the prerequistites for the "Global Middle-Class", it reads to me as a lengthy infomercial for the American Dental Association. I do agree heartily with his recommendations about taking care of one's teeth yourself, but the description of teeth the size and color of white porcelain saucers rang quite true.

For some reason, as a country and a culture, we are so shallow as to believe that what a person looks like is somehow indicative of their worth as a person. Actually, it is a two-headed monster, with the other head being the idea that wealth is a indicator of a persons value. I have recently been indoctrinated into the cult of the Kardasians with a hysterical laugh-filled primer by Rita, the clerk at Safeway's on Main Street. No wonder these bimbos are so popular, they are rich, shallow, and beautiful. Everything that the bulk of America strives to be.

I am now coming to the conclusion that the things that Mssrs. Kunstler and Robb speak of are our biggest problems. Where the Brits may well have been a nation of shopkeepers, we are a nation of shallowness, with our needs and desires defined by people who wish to sell us shit and enslave us with debt\, with success being defined by appearances.

I doubt if our descendants will think too highly of us when they review our actions and our morals. But, I think that they will be too busy trying to put back to right the extraordinary mess we are leaving to obsess too much over our shallowness

Preppin'

2011-12-11T08:06:00.001-08:00

There is every reason right now to be paranoid.

Doesn't mean that one has to be stupid about it. Stoneleigh and Illargi have made a concrete suggestion that may be useful. I think that I will be taking some of this wisdom home.

The real problems is that the world is way out of our control (by our, I mean us unwashed masses). It also appears that control is slipping from the fingers of those we elected/hired to mind the store while we ran our lives. Limey-boy Cameron is having a sissy-boy-slap fest with the little loser from France. Merkel is trying on her Ilsa Koch outfits, and the idea of democracy in Italy and Greece has been vetoed by their corporate masters.

Our democracy is kinda becoming a surreal joke. Obama is trying to cast himself as Roosevelt the Elder, having been an abysmal failure as Roosevelt the Younger. The Republicans front runner is Newt fucking Gingrich, and Ron Paul is still "unelectable" as he goes about telling the truth.

So right now, I am going to concern myself with things like coats for boys and presents for little kids. I am going to be kinder to the folks with food stamps cards who can't add, and I am going to keep waking up every morning and going to work.

Time to get some popcorn and watch some football. I'll finish reading last weeks news today.

Life goes on.

Sorry That I Haven't Written Anything

2011-12-09T04:34:00.001-08:00

Nothing is really all that interesting to me right now.

I'll try again next week.

John

Senatus consultum ultimum

2011-12-05T17:46:00.000-08:00

Europe is a mess. It will be interesting to see just how much pull the moral and intellectual descendants of Baron Von Rothschild will have on the end game. Bankers have not always won out. Just ask the folks who loaned to the Valois and Bourbon.

The amount of money in play is mind numbing. It really isn't fathomable by anyone. It is a pile big enough that if it lights will burn down the house. I can't imagine that our banks would survive. Not that the idea bothers me much now, but I also have a good idea that with the banks going down hard, my life would not be made easier in the process. Matter of fact, my life might well be pushed over into the "damn difficult" column.

I have structured a life where I think that I will be able to whether the storm. Belts will have to be tightened further should the SHTF, but hell, there is a lot of slack in the belt. I can get along with a lot less and really have a pretty damn good life.

Being Careful

2011-12-04T07:57:00.001-08:00

If you are reading this on an old beat up computer, running a decrepit operating system, you are probably OK by me. Linux would be fine by me, even an older Mac running system 9 would make me pleased, and if, for some odd reason, you are running BeOS or BSD, I am truly honored.

What is starting to scare me is the Apple iTunes store and the knock-offs that are coming down the pipe. I have around a grand spent over the tears on the Apple store buying music that I liked. But with the advent of the iPhone and the new spiffy iPad there there is a disquieting trend. The corporations that have been fighting for dominance have now all taken the path of the walled garden.

I would strongly recommend that you read this article over at the Harvard Law School.

Look, I gotta agree with the guy. What we need is some angry nerds. But nerds have always been such a small segment of the population that even if they got angry, I doubt that it would account for much.

What we need instead is a bit of fear. Look folks, the big boys like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft and creating these walled gardens for the same reason that folks set up feed lots. They aren't there for the benefit of the occupants.

Taking longer

2011-12-03T06:59:00.001-08:00

I am spending this morning on the other blog. I started the project in shameless imitation of John Michael Greer's "Stars Reach", but ran into a case of serious writer's block. I am now trying to catch up on the writing and reacquaint myself with the characters.

The only current thing that I really have to comment on is the following. A hat tip to the folks over at ZeroHedge. I only changed the formatting to make it easier to understand.

Here are the four most important data points and charts from today's job report:

the civilian labor force declined from 154,198,000 to 153,883,000, a 315K decline despite the civilian non-institutional population increased (as expected) from 240,269,000 to 240,441,000: always the easiest way to push down the unemployment rate. Percentage wise this was a drop from 64.2% to 64.0%: the lowest since back in 1983.
Naturally, this would mean that the people not part of the labor force rose, and indeed they did by 487,000 to a record 86,558,000 from 86,071,000.
This also means that more people are looking for a job: and indeed, the number of "Persons who want a job now" rose by 192K to a record 6.595 million.
And lastly, confirming the behind the scenes disaster of the US jobless picture, the average duration of unemployment rose to a new record 40.9 weeks from 39.4 weeks previously. And that is your "improving" jobless picture in a nutshell.

I can't tell you how many times I listened to this

2011-12-02T04:30:00.000-08:00

On My head phones (Koss, of course) with the amp and the speaker in my locker. The extension cord running over to my bunk.

Bitter cold outdoors in either Hohenfels or Grafenwohr.

Kept me alive

2011-12-01T04:31:00.000-08:00

Written off-line using Gedit on Monday the 28th.

I always get up earlier than strictly necessary in order to pour a couple of cups of coffee down my gullet and to get all my shit into one dufflebag before I head out to work for the day. Lately that time seems to be used in reading headlines on my favorite bitching sites on the web and getting my nose out of joint because of the antics that the world is going through.

Today I woke up and there was (gasp) no Internet connection from my router. Coffee still flowed down my throat (I forgot to set up the coffeemaker last evening and I had to settle for some pretty skanky instant coffee instead). The world appears to be the same walking out the door. My life on a day to day sense does not appear to be negatively impacted by the loss of bits flowing through the router.

So now it is Tuesday the 29th. This time the coffee was made and the Internet was on. No real big difference in the day to day activities. But I decided that it would be mentally healthier for me to drop off the web and get to work writing.

The end lesson of the past couple of days is that the web and the news media that you get through trolling through the internet doing what some folks euphemistically refer to as "research" is really the same distraction that the mainstream media offers us. Just a different flavor. Plopping your big nasty butt next to a laptop and surfing is just as mind numbing as the CBS evening news.

I get too caught up in the "big picture". It is just such a sexy beast. But in truth, you have to keep the desire to keep checking on it to a minimum. I think that I have to get a grip on it again. Back to once a week reads and keeping the internet "research" to a minimum.

Back to writing the novel

Myths

2011-11-30T04:30:00.000-08:00

First there is this read.

The myth of renewable energy | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

You see, if you want the truth, you have to go first to folks who can actually count past three and don't have a skin in the game. These are getting more difficult to find by the day. The Bulletin is still on my "fairly truthful list" with only a reasonable modicum of self-serving and propaganda.

The data supporting the use of renewables was always there for anyone to see. The big problem has always been that renewables were not efficient, nor sufficiently energy-dense, nor gave sufficient EROEI to make them anything but a placebo for those in anxious denial of their toy being taken away.

Look, electric cars won't cut it, corn-powered cars won't cut it, algae diesel cars won't cut it.

The only thing that folks don't want to see is that their cars will be going away. Thirty years from now there will not be a quarter of the cars on the road that we have now. Just ain't gonna happen anyway else.

This will put us back at the point where we we fifty years ago. I went out and dug up data from the FedGuv, and in 1950, there was one car for every 3.5 people. This seems about right to me. Now there is a car for every 1.24 persons. Sounds bloody absurd to me. So, what I figure is that over the next thirty of so years, we will drop to around one car for every four persons. Lets figure the population will be around 350 million at that time, so we will drop to around 80 million cars. This way we will lose around 160 million cars off the road.

The cars that remain will be efiicient, except for the ones which tote the rich folk around. There have never been that many rich folk. 1% is about right, and the fuel use average will probably go up to 70/80 mpg range. When you factor in the loss in numbers and the gains in efficiency, we will probably use in the range of 3 million barrels a day for transportation vs the current 14 million barrels a day.

Because in the end, energy will make us throw away our toys.

Extinction and Other Such Balderdash

2011-11-28T04:30:00.000-08:00

So, Survival Acres is a great read. But sometimes folks get a bit revved up and go saying things that are just plain silly. I was over at Trout Clan Campfire and read this and then went to survival acres and read this.

Guys, there will be a lot less of us soon (soon being in a hundred or so years) but extinction? Really?

The way that we are living has to stop, there has to be a bunch of us gone, but that doesn't translate into extinction. That is just classic overshoot and reset. Granted, there will be worse case-scenarios where we lose 90% off the population, but that will just bring us back to levels seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Earth abides, and man will abide with it. This idea of extinction is unworthy of thought really. There is always a small chance of it, asteroids occur. But I think the same frame of mind that makes one lean toward believing in a vengeful God is the same frame of mind that makes one long for extinction.

It is a desire to smite "evil". It is the fucking Calvinist horseshit that infected this country early and hard is what plays here. It is the same shit that made people burn witches to save them and allowed slavery to occur because the slaves were predestined to damnation anyway. It is the same shit that makes folks long for extinction of your family of man.

It is a desire to have everything erased so that "good" can take hold. Sorry folks, that dog just won't hunt. What is seen as good and evil is just personal taste for the most part. Zero-sum games like resources and riches are transient things that move around according to subtle variations in rules and circumstances.

The big trouble here in blogoland is that we are a bunch of folks raised at the pinnacle of an empire. We have come to believed that our self-indulgent, fatuous, and excessive lifestyle is the only means of survival available. It is not, it is just all that we have ever known. It is also wildly divergent from the lifestyle of 90% of the current world population, let alone the 99.5% of all humans who ever lived.

What will happen is that populations will recede. Probably won't be all that sudden. Lifespans will shorten, famines will reappear, women will stop having too many babies, men will stay unmarried. Oh, there will be some fast slides as wars and such play their hand. But there will always be someone surviving.

I think that the key is to make it be you and yours, not them and theirs.

Strategist, Strategy, Tactician, Tactics

2011-11-26T07:37:00.000-08:00

Here in America, we are at the beginning of a dialogue. The dialogue consists of opposing sides in the millenniums-old argument concerning the structure of a political economy.

The political economy is the sea that we swim in on a day to day basis. It doesn't have any particular nobility in and of itself. It is not a sentient being. It appears to be just be the expression of the sum of the methods used by individuals to further themselves in a country.

Now, as soon as I said those two words in the same sentence, some of you will turn off the ear switch and navigate away from this page. The phrase has distinctly Marxist tones in this day and age. When you mutter the words represented by the fell runes "political economy", you are a member of the liberal elite, mouthing parlor-pinkisms into the vulnerable ears of the Hoi Polloi.

But we are now in the thrall of a government of corporations. Our erstwhile democracy has been usurped by a cabal of corporate chieftains whose sole motive is the maximization of their own wealth and the power and prestige of their corporations. That is our government. The republic that is our ideal is a sad thing, being somewhat akin to the heavy facepaint on a whore.

Here in the US, we have a system which appears to center on large institutions which service the upper quartile or so of the country. The benefits of the current system are collected by the top from the bottom of the pyramid. There is a limited flow in and out of the protected top tier, but this is kept at a minimum, probably to provide a simulacrum of opportunity.

So really, what we have is a political economy that is predicated on farming the lower classes to enrich the rentier class. The rich have purchased the corporations and lawmakers to create a seamless front that is currently impregnable. But the more that the upper class strip-mine from the rest of us, the more delicate and vunerable the edifice will become. It really doesn't take that much effort to squint your eyes and imagine the Ancien Regime and the Jacobins coming to your town soon.

The recent Occupy movement claims to represent the 99%. I really think that the percentage really is more in the 60-75% range. The remaining middle class realizes that their access to a pretty good lifestyle depends on staying in the good graces of the corporate masters. They also are the folks who have the education and contacts to perhaps make the move into the corporate-master career field.

What is probably going to happen is that the Occupy movement will go to ground for a while. If they have a lick of sense and any organizational skills whatsoever, they will work heavily on recruitment, training, and strategy. Get through the winter and start again in the spring.

Things are going to continue getting dicey. Keep your head low and stay out of the cross-fire is my only advice.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T07:47:00.001-08:00

Thanks everyone for reading this stuff.

Thanks for comment and keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Thanks to my regular reads for the ideas.

Thanks to Fox News for showing me the wrong way.

Thanks to my kids for keeping me sane.

Thanks to my little world for keeping me alive and kicking.

Police

2011-11-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

First: Here is the article

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFB27Cxw9P5tjIij1_UNsryussWg?docId=b72ae00653b24152a26ca5892b08c2a4

Now; I am stunned at this part:

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Kelly said.

Curling in a ball to protect yourself constitutes a reason to beat the shit out of a person? Pulling your arm away?

The police are getting out of control in some areas. Keep an eye on your own public servants to insure that they don't join this madness.

Bob Schieffer is a dick

2011-11-21T14:03:00.001-08:00

OK, I have given more money to Ron Paul than I have ever given any candidate. There: Financial Disclosure

I am not one of the Ron Paul Rabids (RPR, trademark pending). I think that he would be, at best, a mediocre president, but everybody else who is running would be flat out terrible. Ergo, he is the best of breed in this sorry pack.

The MSM hates him, because he gives lie to the bullshit that they have been purveying for the last ten years.

Bob Schieffer tried desperately to catch Congressman Paul (note that he never addresses him as such) wrongfooted and failed miserably.

He is a dick

Oh yeah

2011-11-20T19:11:00.001-08:00

The Semantics of Equity, (or, a rambling post full of non sequiturs)

2011-11-20T04:21:00.000-08:00

Because we have managed to make it all confused. The nature of that confusion cuts to the core of our country's schizophrenia.

n. pl. eq·ui·ties

1. The state, quality, or ideal of being just, impartial, and fair.
2. Something that is just, impartial, and fair.
3. Law

Justice applied in circumstances covered by law yet influenced by principles of ethics and fairness.
A system of jurisprudence supplementing and serving to modify the rigor of common law.
An equitable right or claim.
Equity of redemption.

4. The residual value of a business or property beyond any mortgage thereon and liability therein.
5.

The market value of securities less any debt incurred.
Common stock and preferred stock.

6. Funds provided to a business by the sale of stock.

________________________________________

You see, the same word that we use to define justice is the same word that we use to define the acquisition of wealth and status.

What one part, by far the larger part of our country wishes is the emphasis on definitions one and two. (BTW, we will call these folks the "current losers") The have this odd idea thatthe system should be just, impartial, and fair. Our fellow losers own just a very small part of the country and there appears to be a concerted effort to relieve us of the remainder which lies in our hands.

To the country's current owners, this is a very bad dream. The corporations and the wealthy have made a holy mission out of the extraction of wealth from the aforementioned "losers" and their whole hearted opposition to any idea of fairness in the tax code or the playing field brings them out in a cold sweat.

I really think the thing shifted into high gear with the good old standby, "the ownership economy". This was a seismic shift in thought back there in the late 90's and early "oughts". What you owned was your value. Oh granted, there have always been those who felt that only those who owned something was deserving of the vote, but now we are getting back to it.

So the whole purpose of this hastily-wrought piece of fluff is a reminder that maybe, just maybe, we are primarily doomed as a Republic because we can't seem to differentiate between concept of fairness and the imperatives of "mine".

Apparently this guy is the current republican frontrunner

2011-11-19T06:01:00.001-08:00

It is going to be a monumentally bad election

First there is this.

The guy is a sleazebag in every way. No wonder the right is so enamored with him.

From Wikipedia

Ethics sanctions
Gingrich is the only Speaker of the House to have been disciplined for ethics violations.^[63]
During his term as Speaker, eighty-four ethics charges were filed against him; eighty-three of them were dropped.^[64] The remaining charge concerned a 20-hour college course called "Renewing American Civilization" that Gingrich had taught through a tax-deductible foundation, Kennesaw State College Foundation. Allegations of tax improprieties led to two counts "of failure to seek legal advice" and one count of "providing the committee with information which he knew or should have known was inaccurate" concerning the use of a tax exempt college course for political purposes. To avoid a full hearing, Gingrich and the House Ethics Subcommittee negotiated a sanctions agreement. Democrats accused Gingrich of violating the agreement, but it was forwarded to the House for approval.^[65]^[66] On January 21, 1997, the House voted 395 to 28 to reprimand Gingrich, including a $300,000 "cost assessment" to recoup money spent on the investigation.^[67]^[68]
The full committee panel did not agree whether tax law had been violated.^[69] In 1999, the IRS cleared the organizations connected with the courses.^[70]

And the capper:

Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying, "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."^[128]^[129]

Far be it from me a to claim a perfect life. But this guy is big time fucked up.

Over to John Stewart for his take

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Indecision 2012 - No Really, They Can't Decide

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

This Just In

2011-11-16T04:37:00.001-08:00

Ministry of Truth states emphatically that US is not a police state

Nittany

2011-11-14T17:56:00.001-08:00

Man: I am so disgusted by the Penn State mess that I could vomit.

I really have no love of college football. I played at Utah for 3.2 years and left without a tear. The game is corrupt and self serving beyond belief, but I never, ever thought that it could be taken this far.

If I were the trustees of that college, I would close the program for good. If a school takes a fucking game so seriously that pedophiles are protected to save the reputation of the program, that school and program cannot be saved.

I really hope my kid goes to a small school

Oil is Back At $100

2011-11-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Forget all the nonsense that you are hearing about saving this or bailing out that.

45 minutes long.

Worth every second of your time

Gnawing at the bit

2011-11-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

OK: This one here will require a touch of thought.

Common Dreams, which is my absolute favorite hippie-dippie newsource (and this is by no means a pejorative term, merely descriptive) have come out with the following article.

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/09-5

Now, they are dissing the scientist as "never worked on nuclear weapons". I will give them that one. But for Gods sake, lets look at what he does for a living.

Nanodiamonds.

What that means is that this guy has probably more working knowledge in the application of conventional explosives than just about anyone. He could probably design an implosion squeeze system for a nuclear weapon in his sleep.

What I think is that Iran is trying desperately to gain access to a nuclear deterrent. Hell, with our record of invading countries and Israel's record of sabre-rattling and attacks, they would be fools not to do so.

But I really can't see how this would effect us. The genie is out of the bottle. I am more worried about the Russian arsenal and the interface between India and Pakistan than some vaporware "bomb" that the Persians are trying to develop.

So, what we are seeing here is an attempt to discredit a source for political purposes. But the political issues that we must deal with are not well served by this kind of specious attacks.

Back Writing on a Day off

2011-11-11T07:56:00.001-08:00

Just haven't been into it this week. The whole damn thing is going apeshit in slow motion and the games that the bankos and the politicos play are getting stale. I am tire of commenting on the same.

The local environment is saner and constrained. Much easier to get a handle on. Money is getting tighter week by week. Getting by is getting more of a tightrope act. Such is life. Things will probably get worse before they get any better, better learn to deal. Mostly life lately has been the formulation of strategies to make do with less.

You see, that is going to be the fate for a while. It will be a fate shared by a majority of the folks you and I know. The rules will be quite simple. Make do with less, perhaps a lot less.

I am kind of irritated at the prospect. Being a crabby old man who has watched the game being played for a long time, I can turn my 20-20 hindsight to the rear and see where the mistakes were. I missed a lot of the opportunities to make my nest plusher at this point. But in truth, the things that I might have had that others call their own are the things that are in play right now.

Sorry Folks

2011-11-08T04:47:00.001-08:00

I am just kinda tapped out, nothing here...stay calm...move along.

Saturday's Important Stuff

2011-11-06T04:30:00.000-08:00

Guy Fawkes Porter

Guy Fawkes Porter

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines

12-B Porter, Robust Porter

Min OG:	1.048	Max OG:	1.065
Min IBU:	25	Max IBU:	60
Min Clr:	22	Max Clr:	42	Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics

Batch Size (Gal):	5.00	Wort Size (Gal):	5.00
Total Grain (Lbs):	12.00
Anticipated OG:	1.064	Plato:	15.58
Anticipated SRM:	25.5
Anticipated IBU:	43.3
Brewhouse Efficiency:	75	%
Wort Boil Time:	60	Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts

Evaporation Rate:	15.00	Percent Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size:	5.88	Gal
Pre-Boil Gravity:	1.054	SG	13.35 Plato

Formulas Used

Brewhouse Efficiency and Predicted Gravity based on Method #1, Potential Used.
Final Gravity Calculation Based on Points.
Hard Value of Sucrose applied. Value for recipe: 46.2100 ppppg
% Yield Type used in Gravity Prediction: Fine Grind Dry Basis.

Color Formula Used: Morey
Hop IBU Formula Used: Rager

Additional Utilization Used For Plug Hops: 2 %
Additional Utilization Used For Pellet Hops: 10 %

Grain/Extract/Sugar

%	Amount	Name	Origin	Potential	SRM
12.5	1.50 lbs.	Crystal 80L		1.033	80
4.2	0.50 lbs.	Chocolate Malt	America	1.029	350
83.3	10.00 lbs.	Pale Malt(2-row)	America	1.036	2

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.

Hops

Amount	Name	Form	Alpha	IBU	Boil Time
0.50 oz.	Willamette	Pellet	14.70	33.9	60 min
0.50 oz.	Cascade	Pellet	5.75	6.8	30 min
0.50 oz.	Cascade	Pellet	5.75	2.7	10 min

Extras

Amount	Name	Type	Time
0.25 Oz	Irish Moss	Fining	15 Min.(boil)

Yeast

Mine Own Yeast...Fermentis and Nottingham mixed and passaged a couple of times

Water Profile

Profile:
Profile known for:
Calcium(Ca):	0.0 ppm
Magnesium(Mg):	0.0 ppm
Sodium(Na):	0.0 ppm
Sulfate(SO4):	0.0 ppm
Chloride(Cl):	0.0 ppm
biCarbonate(HCO3):	0.0 ppm
pH:	0.00

Mash Schedule

Mash Type:	Single Step
Grain Lbs:	12.00
Water Qts:	24.00	Before Additional Infusions
Water Gal:	6.00	Before Additional Infusions
Qts Water Per Lbs Grain:	2.00	Before Additional Infusions

Rest	Temp	Time
Saccharification Rest:	148	120 Min
Mash-out Rest:	0	0 Min
Sparge:	0	0 Min

Total Mash Volume Gal: 6.96 - Dough-In Infusion Only
All temperature measurements are degrees Fahrenheit.

Saturday Night Fare

2011-11-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Cuz I really miss the 80's & 90's

Can't think of much too saay

2011-11-04T04:49:00.000-07:00

Mostly, it is getting stale. I am sick of the ongoing and hyperventilating crises and the end of the western world as diligently documented by the doomers and others.

I am not so intellectually puerile as to start listening to mainstream media.

I am completely aware of the government and differing political parties takes on the issue and feel that they are all fantastically full of shit.

I think that this weekend, I will do laundry, clean house, brew beer and play World of Warcraft and pay no attention to the nonsense surrounding me.

See Y'll Monday, nothing this weekend unless something tickles my funny bone.

Don't take it too seriously

2011-11-02T04:41:00.000-07:00

The occupation movement is serving its purpose. It is a starter, not a finisher.

OK, I'm fat, so what?

2011-11-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Again Kunstler pisses me off.

When I go out in America, I see fat people and skinny people both. When I was in Germany during the last six months of my time in the Army, I got to meet a bunch of fat folks there too. When I went up to Sweden, there were fat people there as well.

Kunstler is a prick sometimes. He is a prophet of peak oil doom whose carbon footprint involves so much jet travel that he could personally power a small town for a year. He decries the shallowness of American suburbia, then goes out and wades in the shallows of personal appearance.

But he is the same as everyone else in America. Content in their own righteousness and ability to see the motes in other's eyes. Like all of us, he is a hypocrite.

But I have a question to ask him. Who maintains the greater sins against his fellow man. A man who uses the equivalent of fifteen or twenty years of my children's inheritance jetting about the world preaching sustainable energy use, or a underemployed, poorly educated serf with a fondness for Whoppers.

Pumpkin Pie

2011-10-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

The eldest has been press-ganged into providing the baking labor for Thanksgiving this year. He is a dab hand with cooking and usually things turn out pretty well. He does have a tendency of leaving a frightful mess in his wake, but that is a function of being a novice as well as a teenage boy.

He has been practicing on the willing subjects of the younger and myself. Pumpkin pie was made on Saturday evening. Most of the work was done with a happy heart, but he was a touch crestfallen when he was informed that the pie would be eaten on Sunday with dinner, not as a Saturday late night snack as was his intent.

Pie Crust (Pâte Brisée)

>2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
6 to 8 Tbsp ice water
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the cold butter into the flour with a pastry with a fork or pastry blender if you have one available , pour the water into the flour a bit at a time, until it is just sticking together into a ball.

Wrap up the dough ball in plastic wrap and let it sit for at least an hour in the fridge.

Roll out the dough and plop into a pie pan. Press down along the bottom and all sides. Fit a piece of aluminum foil to cover the inside of the shell completely. Fill the shell up to the edges with dried lentils (about 2 pounds) and place it in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the foil and lentils (save these for later use) and bake for another 10 minutes or until the crust is dried out and beginning to color.

Gabe's Pie Filling

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
2 cups canned pumpkin, mashed
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg plus 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 cup half-and-half
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon fresh ground ginger

For the filling, in a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese with a hand mixer. Add the pumpkin and beat until combined. Add the sugar and salt, and beat until combined. Add the eggs mixed with the yolks, half-and-half, and melted butter, and beat until combined. Finally, add the vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger, if using, and beat until incorporated.

Pour the filling into the warm prepared pie crust and bake for 65, or until the center is set. Place the pie on a wire rack and cool to room temperature.

Flat Taxes

2011-10-27T04:48:00.000-07:00

I am all for them, but not the way that you think.

First of all, I am for flat taxes in the following manner:

Stop thinking about income tax, it is a stupid way of thinking about it.
Everyone in the country is taxed, no exceptions. A newborn with a trust fund is fair game. Grandma's nest egg is fair game.
Corporations are taxed, no exceptions and at the same flat tax rate on their both their revenues and capital. No deductions. And this will include anything made by a foreign subsidiary of a corporation who offshored American jobs to save money on US taxes.
All individual wealth is taxed, no exceptions. This includes savings, capital gains, real estate values, dividends, bond incomes, every nickel earned, retirement savings. Everything of value is in play
No exceptions. No oil depletion allowance, no home interest deduction, nothing.
A complete freeze of capital flight. Fuck you and send you to prison if you try to run away to another with our country's wealth. You are keeping it for now, it isn't yours to take and go elsewhere. On the converse anyone who brings wealth in keeps it here.

I think that it wouldn't change a damn thing for the bulk of the folks. Most people don't really own that much and live paycheck to paycheck so the flat tax of around 5 % won't effect them. The middle class will pay about the same. The rich will get royally screwed and will actually start paying the piper for their lawyer-infested underpayment for the past.

But you have to couple this with a balanced budget amendment. The money that you take in is all you get.

I think that the real problem is that folks think of taxes as a moral issue. They are not. Government provides services at a cost. Those services can be debated endlessly, but they still exist. I don't think that a privatized army is a good thing, think here Wallenstein. Government inspection of the food supply is essential, think here Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". The FDA is corrupt on the pharmaceutical side, but it does a better job of policing than allowing the pharmaceuticals to police themselves. And we have all had a great big dose of what happens when you deregulate banks.

All of these basic services cost money. If you add what I feel are the worthy extras and you have a budget 2/3's of the current.

But this is a pipe dream. The rich want their money and the poor want it as well. The rest of us are just tools. It ain't gonna happen. It is just what I want.

Or: Herman Cain is a Douchebag

2011-10-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

9-9-9 or 9-0-9 or My left nut.

Click to get a better view

Thank you for the graph

Solo pago quando ricevo

2011-10-24T05:30:00.000-07:00

Now, lets take a look at a quote from Federalist sixty-three (James Madison):

Thus far I have considered the circumstances which point out the necessity of a well-constructed Senate only as they relate to the representatives of the people. To a people as little blinded by prejudice or corrupted by flattery as those whom I address, I shall not scruple to add, that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.

It may be suggested, that a people spread over an extensive region cannot, like the crowded inhabitants of a small district, be subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures. I am far from denying that this is a distinction of peculiar importance. I have, on the contrary, endeavored in a former paper to show, that it is one of the principal recommendations of a confederated republic. At the same time, this advantage ought not to be considered as superseding the use of auxiliary precautions. It may even be remarked, that the same extended situation, which will exempt the people of America from some of the dangers incident to lesser republics, will expose them to the inconveniency of remaining for a longer time under the influence of those misrepresentations which the combined industry of interested men may succeed in distributing among them.

When I read this, I wonder what President Madison would have thought of the current Senate?

The dogmatic and partisan nature of the current political class is so wide of this founders mark that he could probably only hold his head in shame. It is a political circus, with re-election money averages of 8.5 million for the incumbent.

I fail to see how the vision of Madison can be transposed onto this greedy monstrosity. Elections in America no longer have any of the dignitas required of so important an event.

Senators were originally appointed by the state legislatures. The system appeared to work just dandy for the first fifty or sixty years of the republic. Then the civil war and our first major national conflict started having unfilled seats and folks started whining about how they couldn't directly elect the senate. Oregon (of course) started us down the path for direct elections.

As part of the process of making the "improvements" the folks trying to fix things noted that:

Intimidation and bribery marked some of the states' selection of senators. Nine bribery cases were brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906. In addition, forty-five deadlocks occurred in twenty states between 1891 and 1905, resulting in numerous delays in seating senators. In 1899, problems in electing a senator in Delaware were so acute that the state legislature did not send a senator to Washington for four years.

I wonder what the do-goodniks who "improved" the system would think of the current open whoredom of the election process.

Spend some time on this one

2011-10-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/10/22/opinion/20111023_DATAPOINTS.html?ref=opinion

This is one of the most complicated graphics that I have ever seen, but I think that it gives me a better idea of what is going on over in Euroland than anything that I have read so far.

What shocks me is how many, big, and fat are the arrows going out of the USA.

I might even stir myself from my Sunday sloth and go buy a copy of the Times.

Local Affairs

2011-10-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

A lot of you won't really care about this post. It is concerns a local matter here in lowly Vancouver and the State of Washington and doesn't tend really address the big issues that are normally addressed in these pages. But perhaps not, read on, gentle reader, and I think that you may find a story that you will be experiencing yourself soon enough.

Proposition 1183 is a move to sell off the state liquor stores and license the sales of alcohol to private businesses. Pro's and Con's are out in force. The person's opposing the move trot out the obligatory M.A.D.D. mother to explain what a bad thing drunks are. The persons promoting the move are trotting out cops and firemen (In uniform of course, the firemen are exceptionally fetching) explaining how, with the new taxes and laws they will be able to do their job better.

From the best that I can see, all of these issues are just window dressing. The primary funders and drivers of the bill appear to be Costco and the grocery store industry to sell the booze once the state is kicked out of the business. Costco alone has contributed a whopping 22.5 million dollars to fund the initiative They have been nothing but smart about it. They hire big name marketing firms to do the con job. They have engineered the bill so that only stores bigger than 10,000 square feet get the nod, effectively making this a "corporate only" game.

You see, they are playing all the cards that big money has to play. They define a market niche where there are profits to be made. They advertise the hell out of it, with all of the false flags and disingenuousness so prevalent in our society, and use their new found "rights of free speech for corporations" to tilt the playing field. But in a sense, I find their very predictability soothing. Nothing unexpected. Repulsive perhaps, but nothing out of the norm.

The opposing side is playing its usual cards. A bereaved mother believing that limiting the sale of booze will stop people from being killed in alcohol related accidents. The liquor manufacturers fighting a rear guard action to allow them to keep selling overpriced booze to a pliable and compliant bureaucracy. Again, repulsive perhaps, but nothing out of the norm.

I guess there are two arenas where I find the reactions to be much more unsavory. The whores in the firefighting industry who are pissed that another public employees gets paid a wage when it should be going to him, and the morons who decry any government activity whatsoever.

First the cops and firemen. These are the guys that are the most likely to be servicing the not -to-unlikely outcome of freeing up the sales of booze. They say that cost saving from removing the state liquor stores would make sure they get paid. I see nothing in the proposal that would ensure that would occur. From what I can see, the money goes to state and local government with no ear marks. It just goes into the hole. Same as now.

What the bill does do is state that getting rid of the liquor stores will add 200 million to the states coffers. and add 200 million to local governments over the next six years. Gravy to the government is what we are talking about. That tax money will come in from firing 1,400 employees. That won't add up to 200 million a year. It would also close 324 stores. Hmm. Nothing close to 200 million there.

So the extra money coming in would primarily be from increased liquor sales primarily benefiting the folks who paid for it. Fred Meyer and Costco.

So, when I hear the "all government is bad" morons, the clueless stooges, working cops and firemen wax poetic about this piece of corporate gravy, it really makes me sick. It is a bribe to the state and local politicians to turn their heads while the corporations sell opium to the coolies.

To me, it is better the devil you know.

An afterthought
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-drinking-costs-idUSTRE79G6UX20111018

At the risk of

2011-10-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

You know, there are times that I am certain I am not paranoid enough.

I get /. sent to me in my mail every day, and these two gems came up today.

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/15725035/officials-claim-tennessee-becomes-first-state-to-deploy-vipr-statewide

http://www.klfy.com/story/15717759/second-hand-dealer-law

The panjandrums are setting the stage for clamping down to keep their perqs. Keep your eyes open and stay careful.

Gee, I Wonder?

2011-10-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

If this graph has anything to do with our current economic problems.

Butlerian Jihad

2011-10-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

"The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."

Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

To start, I would highly recommend reading the entire article by Chris Skrebowski over at the ODAC. Then make the jump with me as to why the lesser developed countries get such a huge economic boost from relatively small amounts of oil. The law of diminishing returns is at play here.

Why is China’s tolerance higher? Because the value of oil is higher there. For example it is fairly clear that the economic benefit of the first car in a family is much greater than that of the third. Similarly the productivity gain from the first truck in a commercial fleet is greater than that of the twentieth. This observation suggests that rapidly industrialising economies such as China and India have a higher marginal productivity from an incremental barrel of oil than in more developed economies.
This in turn poses a terrifying question: Would this higher price tolerance mean developing economies could keep developed economies in growthless stagnation by paying oil prices that were just above those that bring developed economies to an economic halt?

This really cuts to the nut of the problem that the industrialized world faces. It points at a problem that Mayberry and I have been discussing. When you think about the way that energy is used in this country, you might say that, along with peak oil, we are looking at peak return on investment. The amount of power that we use is inappropriate to the economic realities. Hence the inordinate use of power.

We have powered everything. We put a motor or engine on everything because we are too damn lazy to do the minimal amount of work required to simple household tasks. Pound a nail? Fuck that, but a compressor and a nail gun, groovy. Screw a screw? Piss on that noise, buy an electric drill. Mop the floor? Buy a floor cleaner.

All of these things suck power. All of these things increase the rate that you are able to get the job done (I won't say efficiency, that is still in question, but they certainly do make tasks fit well within our legendary fifteen -minute attention span. When you go to other less-developed countries, they use the older hand powered systems. Now, all of the first part of this article is a set up, the next is an apparent non-sequitur, but look hard and the ghost of Ned Ludd still appears and makes it clear and connected

Now, we have been bleeding jobs for years now. I would guesstimate (which is every bit as accurate as BLS statistics) that around twelve to fourteen percent of our neighbors and friends don't have a job or have a job worth having. That is because our beneficent leaders, the corporations, have replaced us with robots. They don't appear to be stopping this trend any time soon. Every thing has a motor attached to it for the express purpose of getting rid of a human body so that a mid-level manager can move up the line for eliminating one of his employees.

The issue that we need to be dealing with is the distribution of wealth and the need for humans to have a job. Mechanization and robots are there solely to increase production and decrease human costs. Both of these functions are questionably appropriate in the current and future economic milieu.

We have had a systematic concentration of power in the hands of the large corporations at the expense of first, the lower class, and now the middle class. This trend is accelerated by the political class, but remember above all, that it is the machines, wielded by the corporate managers, who drive the trend.

Toms

2011-10-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

I put the picture I am talking about down at the bottom, because it really is a footnote.

There have been a whole bunch of people out there who have been doing the little hand-printed "rebuttals" to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) or 99% movement. I spent some time thinking about what they wrote, and the more I think about them, the more that I think that they are wrong.

Look, no one is looking down on you because you busted your ass to get through a system that is stacked against you. Hell, most of us are amazed and proud. What you went through is noteworthy and to be commended. I can't praise you enough for your not having a iPhone and living within your means in cheap apartments is cherishing a time-honored trend, students have always lived in cheap apartments (mine was a basement with a pipe running through the living room that cost $135.00/month).

But my question is, why the hell did you have to do it? What the folks in the movements are speaking of is a society where the maldistribution of wealth is rampant. It is this maldistribution of wealth that needs to be addressed on a societal level. The colleges have become profit centers with college cost vastly outrunning inflation.

The student loan game is nothing less than corporate loan sharking. Not meaning to be overly effusive in my praise, but you are a level headed kid, a lot of your fellow students really are dumb-ass teenagers who think nothing of signing a non-dismissable note which cannot be gotten rid of for the rest of their lives. I am a cynical old man, but this is nothing less that preying on the stupid. That should be banned.

What the occupy movement should be about is returning a balance to the conduct of our government. We are over-rewarding the haves at the expenses of the have-nots. We are allowing the field to be narrowed to those few who, like you are level headed and willing to kill themselves slowly, and the rich who can afford to buy the paper ticket of success for their spoiled children.

Seems Long Ago

2011-10-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

Here at Home

2011-10-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

Had an occupy event down home in Vancouver yesterday. Pretty interesting.

Mostly, I was happy to see folks getting out and starting to talk. Yeah, yeah, there was no "clear message" and the speeches were uninspired, but that really isn't the point. Folks were out talking, taking in a nice day, and trying to figure out what the hell it was that was happening to them.

We are at the trying on stage for slogans right now. 99% appears to be the leader, and folks use it quite a bit. There is a hodge-podge of folks trotting out their nominees for the root of the problem

I am getting some hope. There are pitfalls to avoid. The democrat-whores are trying to co-opt the movement the way that the republican-whores co-opted the tea-baggers. The movement has to start coalescing and getting the non-Che Guevara folks with a lick of sense out in front.

But, I would guess between 500 and 1,000 folks came out today in a sleepy little bedroom community to express discontent. You really have to be a little hopeful.

Saturday Listening

2011-10-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

Jonathon Coulton has always appealed to us nerdy WOW types.

Less

2011-10-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

I always tell folks to head over to Mayberry's place for a good rant and some thinking material.

He recently wrote a bit about his forever hypothetical perfect boat (Craig, don't get your tits in an uproar, this is a common failing of all boat -loving types, we all love you anyway). He spoke of a nice little boat and the desire for a little thirty horsepower engine to run it.

Now when you think about it, he is on the right track. But I guess that, being the forever hypothetical perfect world guy that I am, I would approach the problem from a different angle. In this light I will spend some time using him as an example while you, gentle readers, can use the idea should you wish to apply it to other pursuits.

Here's the deal, Mayberry is ratcheting down from a absurdly high level of motor power found on most boats here in America. Maybe it would behoove him to look at this website to get an idea of how little engine is needed to make a huge difference. He is doing the right thing in thinking small. I think that mast and sails and very small engines are the way to approach things.

I took this picture over in Thailand back in 2005. I was driving around the countryside in Phetchabun province and I had stopped over at one of the little stores to stretch my legs and drink a couple of Singha before I went back to the hotel. The place where I stopped was the middle of farm country. The harvest was going on and they were hauling stuff everywhere. I stayed way too long drinking beers and watching the "water buffalos" hauling stray and sugar cane up and down the road. It is a good memory.

But the "water buffalos" hauled a lot of stuff. The little five and ten horsepower engines were more than capable of hauling damn big loads. I would guess that they got yield pretty damn similar to those here in the west for a tenth the energy inputs. These Thai farmers weren't air conditioned, and there were more of them on the job, but the yields were astonishing.

I don't think that I think that if you want to get by in the not so distant future, you had better start looking hard at the energy inputs going into your ventures. The way we have been doing are so overpowered and so ingrained, it will take a radical re-evaluation of our energy use requirements, as well as our desires.

Hat Trick Jesse

2011-10-12T18:00:00.001-07:00

What is the meaning of #occupy?

Jon Stewart

2011-10-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

I realize that I put up a lot of stuff from Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. But, the guy is a talented performer coupled with great writers and he make me laugh frequently. I will keep posting clips and I will keep laughing at/with him.

But what is starting to worry me is the way that a lot of folks seem to be getting the bulk of their news from his show. Granted, the guy can keep you up on the fact that the world's leaders are the same flavor of dumb-ass as the folks who elected them, but is that enough information for people to make a decision about things that are going on around them?

Granted, the mass market media that tries to pass itself off as a news source sure as hell isn't sufficient to the task. The blogs and alt-media are just as limited, usually being tied to a singular focus and not especially interested in actually looking at both sides of an issue.

So what you have is the creation of a set of news sources that allow one to get a flavor of what is really happening behind the self-interest tinged squealing of the different sources that I have outlined above. When I was stationed over in Europe during the last six months of my enlistment, I got into the habit every night of listening to the BBC World Service, Armed Forces Network, and Radio Moscow. If I slept on the raw data, then thought a little bit about it, I usually managed to figure out what was happening.

I would recommend something similar. I now tend to read the Economist, Naked Capitalism, and Foreign Policy. I also let Jim over at Some Assembly Required troll for my outrage fix de jour.

The world is a complicated place. Looking for one news source to make it simpler will not give you the "truth" will only let you become myopic. Stop trying to simplify things to make it fit some model that you think that can understand.

Styles

2011-10-10T04:30:00.000-07:00

Apple Computer has had a strange hold on me.

It has been years now since I routinely used one of their products, the last of my Apples are now dying a slow death. Obviously, I am not going to replace them with the current batch of overpriced eye candy that is the lifeblood of Apple

I'm kinda wondering how this will play out. I watched Apple barf up a lung and almost go under before. Steve Jobs brought them into play, and later saved them from certain death before. I am not certain that a flim-flam man of his astonishing ability to create style is available to make something from nothing again.

It was BSD with a pretty picture. It thrived by cheapening and atomizing an already commodity product (American Music) and enhancing the self absorption of its users. The astounding construction of an eighty billion dollar war chest and concomitant awarding to its CEO eight billion dollars was done on the twin pillars of Chinese slave labor and American fatuousness.

But they were always gorgeous things. Sleek. Sexy. Cool. I owned them for that reason alone. The image that they allowed me was one that I craved. But at the end of the day, they never really did the job that well. The image did not fulfill the real world needs, just the imaginary and self referential desires that I held.

They were always just outside of fully-functional, substituting cool for that final, ugly little bit of something that allowed them to become yours. My four year old Compaq running Ubuntu is capable of anything I need to do. Android is looking preferable to the iPhone and iPod. Amazon Fire is staring at iPad. All of these options are open to everyone, without stepping into the Victorian High Tea that Apple worked so hard to create.

Apple was always about creating something that you wanted to be seen with. What you did with it was secondary that driving purpose