Welcome to the New Year

First, a comment from the only country in the West with a security apparatus more intrusive than ours.

From The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

We will get fooled again (come to think of it, we have)

Disappearance

For a little while lately, I have tried to become active in politics to see if I could make a difference in the political process.  This may well have been a mistake.  The meeting and reading that I digested from both of the parties were both sobering and frightening.  These people really and truly have their heads stuffed firmly up their ass.  Both Democrat and Republican are filled with folks that would feel at home in the Spanish Inquisition, torturing and killing heretics who dare stray from the fold.

Some of you might consider me a coward, but I think that now might be the time to go nondescript. As much as possible, it might be in your personal best interests to lie very low, stay very quiet, and keep your eyes and ears wide open in order to see which way the wind is blowing.  Both parties are getting aggressive and vocal.  The Tea Partiers are even dicier.

One of the things that I learned about in the army is you have a considerably lower chance of being hurt by staying camoflaged and staying quiet.  So my foray into to telling other folks how to run their lives and minds (yes Virginia, that is the nature of political parties) may well have made others notice my existence.  It may not have been my best idea. 

No one can foretell which way the mess is going, but the storm clouds tell me we sure as hell aren’t going to like it when it gets here. I don’t think that the folks are standing up now and trying to take charge are going to lead us to the promised land any more than the entrenched powers that are trying to remain that way.

It seems to me that we are getting closer to where we will have to either take sides or get the hell out of the way. The sides that are showing up really don’t thrill me too god-awful much. It seems as though a lot of the groups opposing the "guvmint" are as silly and as venal as the powers that be that they so loathe. Trading in the current pack of liars and thieves for another, currently unannointed group of louts seems like a damned silly idea.

I think that we are looking at getting caught between two big machines, and if we are not careful, we could be nothing other than grist for the mill.

Until I see who to back (and I have a very uncomfortable feeling it is the lesser of two evils), I think that I will try to disappear.   I realize that writing here is probably a violation of that principal,  but, as I stated yesterday, it makes me happy, so I will take the risk.

Less of us

In the end, that is what it is going to be. We are dancing around the hard truth right now, the 600 pound gorilla that Paul Ehrlich has been pointing at for the past 40 years. Granted, the guy was premature, and he had a tendency to come off as a serious nut-job, but he is right, there are just too many fucking humans on the planet. If we are going to be happy and healthy and have good lives, the number has to go down and nature has a whole bunch of ways of doing this for us.

The real hard part to digest is that birth rates in first world economies haven't fallen fast enough to thin the herd and the third world is starting to get a life span acceptable to, lets say 1900 USA. So they need to slow down on the number of chilluns coming down the chute instead of popping them out on an assembly line basis as is being done currently. But the religieuse see this kind of talk as anathema and scream and yell like no Mānana . Speaking about the need for, ahem, family planning is a screaming crazy issue in the US

Now, I realize that many of you will be saying now "damnit, not another of these screwball Malthusians". You know, you are probably right, you might as well sign off here. Because this is one of those issues that I call a dancing faster problem. If any of you have kids, you probably have seen the game where there is a pad on the floor in front of a computer, the computer shows steps and you dance according to the pattern on the screen. As you progress, the tempo goes faster and faster until finally, even Gregory Hines would fall exhausted by the way.

The theories of Malthus and Ehrlich are just like that game. Where these doomsayers (Yes, that is what they are) made their mistake is not understanding that the human race is unique in its ability to distort entropy by the use of massive inputs of energy. By playing the "Burn energy to make up the difference" game, we have been dodging bullets for the last fifty years. But I think that now the bullets are going to start hitting home, and when famine starts, the world kind of goes nuts in a collective manner. That is where we are sitting and might very well be the next act of the play.

Hell, who knows when the down-leg will start. We might even be looking at another 50 years. Ho hum. But it is out there, and unless someone gets really damn busy and figures out how to repeal the second law of thermodynamics, it ain't going to go away either.

Having this many of us around, we are screwing shit up. We are sucking out the oil and eating all the fish. We are pissing in every available stream and overbuilding everywhere. At the end of the day it is getting awkward for us in the west to come to grips with the earth raping needed to keep up our "lifestyle", and if the rest of the world goes down the path we in the west have taken, the party will begin very shortly thank you.

A nifty new dingus

When you read this, you will note that there is a spiffy little map that shows where you guys are in the world. Ain't that swell.

But I am saying this out loud here, remember that this is an off the shelf product that any bonehead can access on the web. What this shows is that the web itself follows you, that is it's nature and that is how the whole thing works.

You e-mails can be copied at any of the servers that route it into your mailbox. Folks can peek into your instant messages at any number of steps. And yes, the guv'mint can watch you.

For me it doesn't really matter much. My boring and pathetic life is beneath notice for just about everyone. I don't propose violent overthrow of anything, and the worst that can be said is that I have a morbid fascination for train wrecks, especially of the political and economic flavors.

But, that being said, keep in the back of your mind the idea that the web is transparent. If there is something that you do wish to keep other peoples noses out of, read up on cryptography and packet anonymizers.

For the greater bulk of you out there, there will never be a use for this thought. But on the off-chance that there may be something truly private....think before you put it out there on the net.

Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.