Shuttlecock

Welcome Home Bowe:

Sorry about the inconvenience.

Now, I know that your family and your friends will be overjoyed to have you back.  I am quite happy as well.  I hope that it won't take to long to heal and that you can come all the way back soon. 

But be aware that coming back the way that you did will be hard on you.  It won't be nearly as hard as what you have been going through for the past couple of years, but it will become irritating in the extreme.

You see, when you started to figure out that you weren't in Afghanistan to "protect freedom and the American Way of Life", you started down the path to apostate.  So you are, to lot of the couch-dwelling foreign policy hardasses, an inconvenient heretic.  Because in the mind of the couch dwelling, an American serviceman who questions the mission is anathema.

When Obama traded you for five Taliban commanders, it was a great deal.  We got you back and we got rid of five huge embarrassments.  But the war-crazies will defile your name and reputation to make it known that (a) you should be questioning their wisdom and (b) that "Top Taliban Commanders" have been let go to strike again at the good old USA.

Let's examine these premises severally.  Ask any Vietnam vet what he thought about the idea of a "domino-theory" and stopping the rise of Communism and you will probably get a snort of derision.  Because anyone who has been in the furball realizes that it is only the folks around you that matter.  The mission itself is nearly always stupid.  The morals involved are questionable.  The whole thing is just plain stupid.

This is when most folks who come the epiphany that war is a huge waste just start counting down the days and get the hell out of the military. 

But you are probably a sincere young man, and you probably spoke the truth to those around you.  That, while a correct and honorable thing to do, just made you a target.  I don't know what was going on in your mind when you wandered off the laager, but any fault of action and any guilt from thought crimes has been erased by your extended stay with the Taliban.

As for the five "commanders" well, getting rid of them this way got rid of a fraction of the ongoing problem of the injustice of Guantanamo Bay.  Big win there.  As for the febrile concerns that they will "strike at the USA", well....

These guys have been at our tender mercies for 13 years.  They have been out of the mix for that time and the Taliban has moved past them.  The idea that they will return to take over their command from folks who have been commanding a very successful insurgency during their confinement is an odd one indeed.  The current commanders will use them as propaganda tools, but after thirteen years in our clutches, I would question the idea that they will be given their old roles back.

Bowe:  your release was a good thing, and I approve of it 100%.  It is a good compromise where we win a lot more than we lose.  But make sure that you don't spend too much time listening to the shit that talking heads say as they serve their political masters.  

Comrades: a repost

This is a repost:  It originally went back in 2012, but, now that I am reading Professor Pitteky, I thought that I would re-post it.

The problems here in the US aren't the ones described by the mainstream media.  They have gone over to being propaganda outlets for their corporate masters.   

We have to start digging to figure out the problem's root cause.  I think that if folks spent some time with this difficult process, there may be a lot of correlation between what happened during the last "Gilded Era" and this one.

Things are changing.  The main body of the population is awaking.  The process will be slow, I thought once that the change would start accellerating in my lifetime, now I am not so sure.

But the change is coming.  Stay awake.

I have been pondering the nature of preppers and their habitual political leanings. To be blunt, there appears to be no apparent thought to the process, merely a knee-jerk "anti-Communist" "pro-freedom" set of leaning that really doesn't make sense in the current modern political climate.

We have entered the final stages of capitalism as envisioned by Marx and Engels. The capitalists (owners of production) are doing their level best to make sure that the workers are in thrall and kept there. I cannot think of a better way of describing the process that is occurring. Yet the preppers see everything as a commie plot to take their freedoms. Shit. The communists here in the US are so damn lame that they couldn't take their own temperature, let alone your freedoms.

Yet whenever someone stands up and say that capitalism is fucking us over, they are labelled as a godless commie and the dumb-fucks on the lunatic fringe of the prep movement go all John Birch. They would rather kill a commie who has an excellent handle on the nature of the problem than listen to him. Sure, Marx and Engels had some less than stellar ideas about how to solve the inherent contradictions of capitalism, but you sure can't begrudge them their absolutely right-on and prescient description of the depredations of capitalism.

So, I would highly recommend that y'all back off of the comrades. Hell, I think that if you listen to them without mindlessly bouncing dated and invalid screeching out of your yap, you might find that they are on the same side you are.

Again, this does not mean that I agree with communist theory at all levels. Hell, I think that even the Commies are embarrassed by how badly the term was misused in the twentieth century.

What is the Nature

Was doing my reading over at “The Automatic Earth” and I ran across this little gem.  

“If we can agree that QE has distorted prices of all assets [...]”

I have been amazed that the Federal Reserve Bank has kept the mass of duct tape, baling wire, and bubble gum together for as long as they have.  I cannot remember ever really leaving the recession that began back in ’06.  It seems to me and. I would posit, most “non-rich” folk that the recession is still with us. 

Now, I have always been interested in the nature of money.  I really don’t care about it except for two very important reasons:

•  as an abstract idea which makes people do the craziest things and;
•  as a set of 0’s and 1’s in my bank which I can transfer to other folks who will then give me what I need and/or want.

QE made things appear to tick along when you look at things the way bankers look at things.  Which is by no means the way that the great majority of folks look at things.

  

QE does seem to allow the current system to limp along.  The government can spend more than it takes in in taxes.  The banks can pay themselves big bonuses.  Rich folks can buy spiffy new homes. 

But the actual idea of QE is appears to me to be nothing more than running a printing press for a small swath of the society and hoping that some of it gets down far enough to make some difference in the general population’s life.   You could make an argument that this effect has occurred, but the argument would be tenuous at best.

Back to the quote that started the whole train of thought.

“If we can agree that QE has distorted prices of all assets [...]”

Governments running printing presses most often have a pronounced effect on the price of precious metals.  In the past, in nearly every case, a government running printing presses makes the price of precious metals go up.   But that hasn’t happened here. 

My point here is simple.  The price of gold and silver are out of whack when compared to the money that is stealth printed by the Fed. 

From the Fed

The price of gold in mid-2011 was around $1,800.  The price of silver in mid-2011 was around $45.  In Mid-2011 the Fed’s books held around 2.5 Trillion.

 

From Kitco

The price of gold in now is around $1,250.  The price of silver now is around $19.  The Fed’s books seem to be pushing 4 Trillion pretty darn hard. 

So, if everything made sense, and if there were a dependency between federal debt (printing) and the price of precious metals, the price of gold and silver should be about 30-60% above their values in mid-2011 (gold in the $2,300 to $2,900 range: silver in the $60 to $72 range). 

Now, in the words of the weasels “past performance is not an indicator of future performance”.  But when long term historical trends don’t seem to hold true anymore, one has to look around for exceptional events.  

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

So, following all the hubbub over Piketty's book, I thought that I would spend the time to read it instead of listening to people who haven't read it argue about it.

Well, I am not through yet, but it appears pretty certain that this work will piss of the Randities, NeoCons, the efficient market economists and other such priestly types.  It would appear that (Gasp...Heresy) Professor Piketty has the odd notion that the "economy" should serve the whole of the human populace, instead of the other way around.

Now, I may be wrong in this little dab of defamation, maybe later in the book,  Professor Piketty will raise the beam from my eye and show the proper worship for the economy.

Mr Piketty seems to have forgotten that the economy is our true God here in the USA.  The being that spoke with Abraham and Moses is a convenient cover story for the rubes, but the real God here in the USA is the Economy.

I will continue reading.  I hope that Professor Piketty will realize, in the course of this work, what is important in this Country

Caught between Fables

Consider the time of my youth.  We had just kicked the Jerries butts and had Ivan by the throat and we slowly and surely throttling him.  Science was kicking ass, penicillin and nuclear power, computers and television.  Janitors at the elementary school raised families with the wife staying at home to take care of the kids.  Life was grand.

But slowly, over the past fifty years, the bloom has been coming off the rose.  Truth be told, the damn thing is looking just a bit scraggly. 

I grew up in a world that is quite different than the one that is available today.  Some folks will try to tell you that we can go back to that old world of wealth and largess, but I really think that they are selling false dreams.  It has been my opinion for thirty or so years that we are living in the days of decline.  But I have always been confident that we will find a way through the puzzle.  The world will not be the same as it is today, or was in the past, it will be a different world.  I just can't make out the details.

But out there in the good ol' USA, there is a conflict between two sadly obsolescent world-views.  Both claim to be the wave of the future.  Both are rooted in a different phony past.  Both are following nothing I could name.

The first is the "Fuck it, human extinction is here!"

The second is "Screw it, the singularity is here!"

Has no one heard of a middle ground?

You Know....

The Archdruid had this in one of his posts a while back.

The 28th Amendment:

Article I:  The Union of the States is hereby dissolved, and the several States shall be free to make other arrangements for their welfare.

Article II: All property of the former federal government in each State, at the time this amendment is ratified, shall become the property of that State.

Article III:  All property of the former federal government outside the territory of the States shall be divided by agreement among the several States.

Acta Eruditorum

The Archdruid was apparently very surprised when he discovered that he had quite a following of scientists and engineers.   He confessed to the usual ritual of dithering that all of us perform when we are surprised by events.  But he did come up with a bit of a challenge for those out there.

Here’s what I’m proposing. I’d like to ask this blog’s readers to break out their word processing programs again, but this time I’m looking for nonfiction papers with a scientific or technical slant, written for an intelligent nonprofessional audience.  Each paper should either describe a  problem that will confront the deindustrializing world in the course of the Long Descent, or propose a practical solution to some problem of this kind, or both. Successful entries will start from the assumption that the unraveling of industrial society sketched out in this blog and my books The Long Descent and The Ecotechnic Future is a reality that has to be accepted, and go from there to deal with specific challenges that will follow from the shape of that future.

So I am proposing a pursuit of an appropriate solution to the problem of transmission of ideas in a resource constrained world.

In the past, access to ideas and work done outside of one's hometown was limited.  The journals that stood at the forefront of the scientific and technical revolution that has shaped the last two hundred years has served us well.  At first, these journals were quite limited in size and scope.  The Proceedings of the Royal Academy began with a humble press run of approximately 1250 (1) and has now blossomed into an industry of thousands of journals with almost unfathomable penetration of the populace.  The best numbers that I can come up with yields a total of 23,750 journals publishing 945,900 papers.

Now, I realize that there is quite a bit of fluff in those numbers.  Different judges would rate importance of the articles and/or journals as earth-changing to astonishingly trivial, with a very heavy weighting to the latter.

The long descent will see the none-too-gradual withering away of the hundred flowers that is the current state of the journals industry.  They are as much a artifact of a energy-prolific world as the largest, most fin encrusted Cadillac monster manufactured in the 1960's.  But, in a sense, that withering will provide an essential brake to material progress, allowing us to better husband the non-renewable resources remaining.

But there will always be a need for transmission of scientific thought.  Newton developed the calculus first, but the work languished for so long that an equivalent genius named Liebnitz was able to work out the ideas independently and publish them.  The transmission of thought is as important as the thought itself.

But in a resource constrained future, what will be the nature of the transmission of scientific ideas?

__________________
Footnotes
1.)  Last week, I was brash enough to pose a question to the Royal Society concerning the size of the printing run of the earliest issues of the Philosophical Transactions.   I was expecting to be ignored, but with a courteous note that pleased me to no end I was given a response along with an excellent reference.

Johns, Adrian
Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England
British Journal for the History of Science; 33(2), no.116, June 2000, pp.159-186
(abstract here: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=52533)

Militia

It is over now and soooooo yesterdays news, but I wanted to get this off my chest.

Now, this is going to piss some of you off.  Sorry about that.  Please don't go calling me a liberal, that dog really won't hunt.

So here goes (Please note author drawing in breath);

A fat old fucker who lets his fucking cows out onto public land to graze is an asshole.  Cows are fucking stupid fucking critters that screw up everything around them.  They deserve to be killed and eaten (I am so glad I am no longer a farmboy).

When the fat old fucker doesn't pay the rent, I have no problem with the landowner shooting the said fucking cows and letting the vultures eat said cows stupid fucking carcasses.

The landowner, if it is a government, should, following shooting the cows, then go to court and place a lien against the fat fucking deadbeat's ranch, take it from him, and let said deadbeat swing loose in downtown Vegas.

Everyone tried to make this deadbeat asshole into a shining beacon for liberty.  That shows the level of intellect that is far too common in the wacko fringe. 

If you want to start a revolt against a supposedly tyrannical government, you had better find a better crystal to coalesce around.  Because if this stupid asshole is your "Tipping Point", then the solution you propose is far, far worse than the problem. 

Fuck him and the stupid nutcases trying to use him.

Again Proving that I am an Anachronism

So, over at Jesse's Cafe Americain (which, by the way, I read every day religiously, Jesse is one of the "Good Guys" in my book).

I do appreciate his news sidebar.  His stories are well selected and thoughtful.  I have no doubt that Mr. Cutten and I would probably have disagreements, but he is one of the people out there that would make me go home afterwards and stay up all night wondering if I were in the wrong.  His inclusion of reading material in his sidebar probably offers a well-rounded view of his personal beliefs.

Anyway one of the stories made me giggle and roll my eyes.  The piece in question is a little piece of histrionics from the Independent, a British Newspaper in the grand tradition of British newpapers. It is well written, intellectually biased, thoroughly British and much more enjoyable than the predigested pablum offered up by the "Press" here in the good old USA.

UK under fire for recruiting an 'army of children'.  Well then.  Reading the article let me know that a sixteen year old boy is a child.

Well, here is the source of the problem.  Our societies, (England and Rome, USA as Byzantium, same society odd incestuous relationship), are of the aging and worrying variety, heavily populated by geezers such as your humble correspondent.  This aging population, not wanting to relinquish its death-grip on the levers of power, wealth, and privilege and especially, is attempting to move forward the age of what constitutes an "Adult.

Sixteen is a fine age for a young man to go into an organized military organization.  The military of the first world (Which I believe the US anf the UK are a part of)  is a trade, nothing more, nothing less.  By calling these young men children and comparing their inclusion in an honorable trade to the workings of North Korea and Iran (Darn that axis of evil anyway) is nonsense.

Whether the old women (of both sexes) like it or not.  Sixteen year old humans are Men and Women.  Not boys and girls.  Trying to demean them for selecting a career that is not to your liking belittles both them and especially you, clinging to an offspring when it is time for them to go is the one sure sign of your own fear of age.  

Reading the whole thing

I was quite amused when the US Government took time away from the pursuit of running the country to indict five Chinese programmers, working for the Chinese military for trying (and sometime succeeding) to break into military and commercial computer systems here in the good of God-fearing USA.

Sometimes you realize that we live in irony-rich times.

So, I am over at the Testosterone Pit, reading about the woes of the world and I stumble across this little gem.  My oh my.  So I dig down deeper. I head over the the article at Die Zeit and dig down even more, curiouser and curiouser.

So I am thinking that there is a reason that Bill Gates thinks Eddie Snowden is a little shit.  Because Microsoft is most likely the NSA's bitch when it gets down to it.  Bill Gates is as certified a member of the establishment as one can find.  The US government runs on Windows and Microsoft.  Billy-Boy will use what he needs to keep his power and prestige, and that only comes with a US government stamp of approval.  The NSA probably has the road map for every backdoor that Microsoft left in Windows and another map of things that the programmers at Microsoft haven't even realized was there.

Me typing this screed out on a Win8 computer is no big deal.  Who gives one-rats-ass what a fat old man thinks.  But if I were in change of any government that wasn't in the US Government's hip pocket (Yeah England, I'm talking to you), I would damn well start rolling out Linux as fast as I could pull it off.

Trains and Stations.

There has been quite a bit of ink and digits strewn about lately concerning the "Collapse" of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet ⁽¹⁾

OK then. I agree that the glaciers in question are going away. The data is convincing. But we really need to sit down and talk about the desperate need for attention that is displayed in the media and in the sciences. The word "collapse" is what I want to talk about and the two differing schools of thought that the bandying about of this word shows in glaring relief.

I cannot really emphasize enough my feeling that global warming is real and, at this point, unstoppable. Hence the ham-handed reference in the title. But, the use of hyperbole in titles and language of scientific discussion shows that the scientists are being drawn into the politics of industrial society and are actually getting rather histrionic in the process. I think that they see themselves as Cassandra, always being truthful in their prophecy, but with no one listening. They are right about that. But there is nothing that they can do but change their own behavior and try not to meet with the same fate as the original Cassandra.

What really got me started down this line is a recent article in the NY times by Paul Krugman. Now, I just want everyone to know that my feelings re: Professor Krugman: He is definitely a mixed bag. I think he has a better grasp of politics than he has on that dark variant of cephalonomancy that goes by the name of "Economics". (As an aside my favorite line in the article is "The sheet's slide into the ocean, and the resulting sharp rise in sea levels, will probably happen slowly." Really Paul? A sharp slow rise?)

But Professor Krugman has the mindset of the bulk of our population down cold. Half of the population votes for the blockheads that Krugman describes in his article because-they-think-just-like-that. The remaining half consists of a 50-50 mix of techo-narcissists who tune into TED lectures and imagine that we are halfway to the singularity and the remaining poor confused sods just like your esteemed correspondent.

So, you may ask, what is the point of my rambling thus far?

Simply put, I kind of wish people would get over the idea that we can stop the train. The world will be massively different centuries from now. The population will be much smaller. The energy flows will be at the levels of the early nineteenth century. Our descendant's world will more closely resemble the Medieval than the Modern. This being said, the energy of the non-climate challenged really needs to get going on the creation of a society and a world system that will be able to live within the constraints we have oh-so-willingly imposed on ourselves rather than trying to out-shriek the boneheads who are doing the intellectual equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting "I-can't-hear-you".

So, simply put, present your data, cut out the drama, and stop shrieking collapse when the timeframe involved is tens of generations.

The world is changing, not dying.

 

 

Just a quick thought

Here in the US, we tend to think of ourselves as the New Rome.

Hmm...I would go partway there.

Up until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when Constantine XI Palaiologos was killed defending the City from Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, the people inside that city considered themselves Romans and the heirs of the Empire of Augustus.

They didn't see themselves as Byzantines.

I am beginning to think that Washington has the same relationship with London.  The two cities seem to be following the same trajectory, with London looking at the fate of Rome with a new eye.

Washington seems to be going the Byzantine route.

Just sayin'.

Doesn't mean I like it

Over at the Burning Platform

Spent some time this morning in the comments section of "The Burning Platform".

Wrote this:

Over all, can’t fault you a moment for your logic.

But more and more, I am torn between two realities.

The point of view you champion is valid and has meaning. But when spend time with the greater bulk of people, your begin to realize that they are not at all equipped to “contribute” to society or to create something of value.

But they are still people. They have all the dreams and desires as the folks who are equipped to provide those things. Some of them are pretty decent folk.

So where do you go? How do you provide the structure for a society that is, by definition, populated with 50% of the inhabitants having a IQ 100 and a healthy dose of ambition.

The folks that write the drivel that so offended you and caused this written blast are from you are apologists for a system which benefits them. One should never forget that for a moment.

But the question remains.

What does one do with people who do not have, and probably will not be able to obtain, the tools and skills to contribute to a complex and technological society?

In the current cultural mindsets, the liberals trot out a failed educational system and posit that maybe, if we just throw more money at the problem, we can equip the Capite Censi with the tools neccesary to allow them to rise from their squalor and together we can create the City on the Hill.

Well, in the words of Robert Heinlein

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”

It appears that the Conservative mindset is more nuanced. It appears to involve going to church every week, praise Jesus at every turn, and the Holy Ghost will fill you and you will only then be allowed to create and contribute.

Seeing as Jesus had some rather unkind words to say about the rich and the accumulation of wealth, I have a feeling this won’t work either.

I don’t have the answer. But there are some folks out there who, while being worthless from an economic viewpoint, are some damn nice people.

What do we do with them?