Gonna be gone til monday

Family business calls, I am not looking forward to it, but there it is.

See you on Monday.

Cleaning

One of my big beefs about the prepper community is their almost elemental pig-headedness.  There really is no other way to define it.

To find someone in the community who is just trying to figure out how to get by in a world going through a spasm is difficult in the extreme.  Preppers have a tendency (approx. 67%) of being knuckle-dragging right wing morons.  They spout the catch-phrases of the past and imagine that somehow the world would magically improve if we would just go back to being blinded by the false ideas that led us here.  Now just to make sure that folks understand, I still like these guys, and would happily buy them a beer any old time, but their politics suck

Nayway, I really don't think highly of this group.  As a matter of fact, most of them should be rounded up under some obtuse law and shipped to Alabama.  But that won't get done, so I will have to deal with it.

But I think that this group is just as likely to shoot themselves in to foot as the "sheeple" that they so disdain.  The idea of superiority because you saw something coming is odd.  Hell, what counts is how you act when it gets here.

But the preppers are certain of their way.  They have the future mapped out and their plans laid.  They will follow these set plans, assured that their plans are blessed because they had the ability to see the storm coming.  Remember though, the storm arriving will just be the start of the process.  Most of these semi-sacred plans will fail, and you will be scrambling with the rest of the folks.

So, I think that I will keep and eye peeled for what's coming my way, keep my head low, and try to devise a system with flexibility and a big dose of compassion.

This is just for the Onery Bastard

Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay

White House Predicts Record $1.47 Trillion Deficit : NPR

I was just reading that the Prez has admitted that they are going to keep running up the tab.  You know, I good with that.  The money isn't real, and maybe they can extend things long enough for me to fort up a little better and be ready.

I am not really thinking that running up the tab will work, or for that matter, it won't make things marginally worse when the hammer falls, but it might allow me a bit of time.  In the end, that isn't a bad deal.

But there are a lot of folks out there who can't or won't look out and recognize the storm times that are moving in.  I have genuine sympathy for these folks, when things keep going the way that they will for the next couple of years, they won't do the necessary things, they will try to maintain the facade that is burying them and they will go down.  It is truly a pity.

You see folks, they were the true believers.  They were incapable of the necessary skepticism that allows one to be a decent scientist or have a world view relatively free of lies.  The government has taken care of them.  They have nice homes, decent cars, adequate educations when defined by the progressively lowering standards, and a Madison Avenue approved lifestyle that is equated with success.

What we are seeing is the American system being pulled apart for the sake of political and business elites who derive their power and perquisites from the false promises outlined above.  They have created a system similar to the ancien régime in it's power to deliver a munificent lifestyle to the upper nobility.

But this new regime is ending now.  It is thrashing around, trying to come to grips with its limits.  It will pass, and a lot of folks will remember the times for the pleasure given.

Celui qui n'a pas vécu au dix-huitième siècle avant la Révolution ne connaît pas la douceur de vivre et ne peut imaginer ce qu'il peut y avoir de bonheur dans la vie. C'est le siècle qui a forgé toutes les armes victorieuses contre cet insaisissable adversaire qu'on appelle l'ennui. L'Amour, la Poésie, la Musique, le Théâtre, la Peinture, l'Architecture, la Cour, les Salons, les Parcs et les Jardins, la Gastronomie, les Lettres, les Arts, les Sciences, tout concourait à la satisfaction des appétits physiques, intellectuels et même moraux, au raffinement de toutes les voluptés, de toutes les élégances et de tous les plaisirs. L'existence était si bien remplie qui si le dix-septième siècle a été le Grand Siècle des gloires, le dix-huitième a été celui des indigestions." Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord: Mémoires du Prince de Talleyrand: La Confession de Talleyrand, V. 1-5 Chapter: La jeunesse - Le cercle de Madame du Barry.

I think that there is something there

OK:  I am/was a pretty fair scientist.   I have excellent grounding in chemistry and physics.  I know biochemistry like the back of my hand.  A couple of patents, a couple of articles.  I gots all the chops.

Anyone who is good at this odd trade has to have a nose for which way they think that the data might lean before you start the experiment.  Well and good.  It's called a working hypothesis and it is a great tool, gets you started.

Now comes the hard part, looking at the data in a useful way.  Oh, you get some ideologues out there who will tell you that a statistical analysis of data will allow you an unbiased means of judging the data.  I have had a series of nasty run-ins with statisticians who proved without a doubt that X was the result and then go 6-8 months down the track and then find out that it wasn't so.

So, this is a piece about climatologists and their sacred cow of "global warming".  First and foremost, let me state clearly that the CO2 data, the ocean temp data, and the temp data lead me to believe that there is something there.  Not sure about the base reasons other than burning fossils fuels will add quite a bit of CO2 to the air and raise the concentration of this gas.  I will allow that right now, no complaints.  I would also posit that having 6.7 billion humans sweating, breathing, and fucking may have a certain impact on the matter.

But when I see the chart above presented in the blogosphere, replete with the shrill, girlish squeals of panic and doom, I have a tendency to giggle.  Look at the damn thing.  Carefully.  The zero line is an average of a 29-year period chosen randomly in the middle.  The graph covers 119 years and compares the variation from this sampled average.  In the early part of the graph for around fifty years (pre-1930's), the global mean temp dipped down to about 0.75 degree Fahrenheit below this arbitrary baseline.   On the right side of the graph, Over the past thirty or so years, the temp has gone up to approximately 1.15 degree Fahrenheit above this imaginary average.

Guys, I have a feeling that the industrial world, powered by fossil fuels is doing a bunch of stuff (I will not say harm) to the climate.  I also think that the population of CO2-exhaling humans have a real impact on the levels.  But if that is the best data that NASA can come up with to support climate change, they will have a long, rough row to hoe before I call the matter settled.

The Epicurean Dealmaker

Y'all Have to read this

The Epicurean Dealmaker

The Strategic Ramifications of a US-Led Withdrawal from Afghanistan | Oil Price.com

The Strategic Ramifications of a US-Led Withdrawal from Afghanistan | Oil Price.com

Please Take some time to read this

Thriving in the Age of Collapse

Thriving in the Age of Collapse

I am a huge fan of Dmitry. In truth, he is one of the few people on the net that I have actually given money to. He is that good.

This is his best thought-out article.

Enjoy

BTW  Chapter Four is up

The Vapor Pressure of a Google

Consider Google for a while. For a while, I went out somewhere else, looking for greener pastures and a less intrusive medium of information. Then all the sudden one day, I got to thinking "what the hell". Google is a transient. The latest of a bunch of media darlings riding the wave of digital technology.

We know all of them, old geezers like me remember the elephants who have gone to the graveyard. Data General, Digital, Sun, Compaq, Atari. They start out like IBM as world straddling behemoths, then gradually die out as the digital ecosystem they set out to exploit morphs beyond the feeble dreams of their business plans.

Google will do the same. It is built around the lamed and dying economic models that gave us globalization and the housing boom, easy credit and high-velocity money. As the world changes to the smaller and more local systems that will be our lot, Google will join the other dead elephants in the graveyard.

Look at the Dow Dones companies in 1920, 1959, and now:

1920

American Can	Baldwin Locomotive	Texas Company
American Car & Foundry	Central Leather	U.S. Rubber
American Locomotive	Corn Products *	U.S. Steel
American Smelting	General Electric Company	Utah Copper
American Sugar	Goodrich	Western Union
American Telephone & Telegraph	Republic Iron & Steel	Westinghouse Electric
Anaconda Copper

1959

Allied Chemical	General Electric Company	Sears Roebuck & Company
Aluminum Company of America *	General Foods	Standard Oil of California
American Can	General Motors Corporation	Standard Oil (NJ)
American Telephone & Telegraph	Goodyear	Swift & Company *
American Tobacco B	International Harvester	Texaco Incorporated (formerly Texas Company)
Anaconda Copper *	International Nickel	Union Carbide
Bethlehem Steel	International Paper Company	United Aircraft
Chrysler	Johns-Manville	U.S. Steel
Du Pont	Owens-Illinois Glass *	Westinghouse Electric
Eastman Kodak Company	Procter & Gamble Company	Woolworth

Now

3M Company   Dupont  McDonald's Corporation   Alcoa Incorporated   Exxon Mobil CorporationMerck & Company, Incorporated   American Express Company   General Electric Company   Microsoft Corporation    AT&T Incorporated    Hewlett-Packard Company    Pfizer Incorporated    Bank of America Corporation    Home Depot Incorporated     Procter & Gamble Company    Boeing Corporation   Intel Corporation    Travelers Companies*    Caterpillar Incorporated   International Business Machines   United Technologies    Corporation  Chevron Corporation   Johnson &    Johnson     Verizon Communications Inc.    Cisco Systems, Inc.*    J.P. Morgan Chase & Company   Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated     Coca-Cola Company    Kraft Foods Inc.    Walt Disney Company

Guys...have fun with this as long as the idiots keep providing it for free.

It ain't gonna last

I'll keep blogging and I will remember to save backups of everything on my hard drive.......never hurts

There is nothing like

Reading what you wrote yesterday and realizing it is nothing more than a bad-tempered, poorly reasoned tantrum

Transport, trade, and other such trivialities

I have found a new blog that has been really tweaking my interest.  If you have a chance, head over to Dearthagetransport and give the guy some attaboys.  Anyway, he got me thinking about transport and such, but instead of worrying about cars and the laziness in having to drive a couple of blocks to buy a cheeseburger, I want to talk about how we are going to deal with getting useful stuff from point A to point B.

Our system now is built on the extravagant use of fossil fuels.  There are some smart modalities.  River traffic on the Mississippi and the Columbia can move bulk freight for an astonishingly low price.

But instead, we now load things on long haul diesel trucks and spend absurd amounts of money on transportation of bulk products.  Air shipments are remarkably stupid.  An open admission that you are too lazy and stupid to plan.  We have gutted warehouses for the fallacy of just-in-time manufacturing, allowing global wage arbitrage and cheap oil to let MBA's fire support people and outsource the warehousing to China and India.

All this shit has to stop.  The cheap transport that allowed the MBA scum to chop jobs and lard their own pantry will bring this to a screeching halt.    You see, just in time delivery has always been a joke.  Oh, the "managers" with their MBA will use the idea as a means of telling stockholders to give them raises, but what it really means is that you rely on everyone else to do your job for you and then try to take an outsized portion of the total reward.

Long supply lines are unstable.  Making your primary subcomponents in other countries is unstable.  Relying on cheap transport is unstable.  Not having adequate inventory when the other three conditions are unmet is unstable.

If we wish to move forward, we must address long distance freight transport in a meaningful and sustainable way.  We must also address the necessary warehousing and inventory of items in a world where transportation becomes expensive and constrained.

And we probably won't be able to do it under the self-serving and arrogant fools that currently man the corporate and business boardrooms across America.

House Church

You know, maybe we are going after this all wrong.

Been doing some odd reading of late.  I have given up on serious shit for a bit, I think that things are serious enough in real life to forego throwing my energy at tilting at windmills.  Instead, I think that I will try to figure out how to actually start changing things at a micro level.

A long time ago, I read a book by (Warning, if you click the link about the book, it will take you to Amazon, if you buy the book from them, I will get some coin...No surprises) Robert Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".  Great book, I would even go so far as to argue that it is his best.  

The book talks about the formation of the "free luna" movement as well as the technical details for fomenting such a movement. 

I am especially intrigued by the idea of five-person cells.  So here is my idea, why don't we start putting together the cells that are described in the book.  We aren't going to do this to overthrow the government, what we are going to do is to create a culture where we can live free regardless of what set of jackasses is shouting at each other on the different ends of the mall.

Pick four other people and get them interested in prepping and living free.  Among the group, create and divvy up duties and inputs.  Then when you get things working among that group, each of the five of you will go out and recruit four different folks.  It is critical that there is no overlap.  If a person is in one cell, he has to create a new cell with four brand new people with no association with other cells.

OK, now here is the hard part.  Stop there.  You have to let things go at that point.  You tell everyone that they can do the same recruiting cycle, but they have to stop at the 4x4 group (one primary group and one secondary group) and just work with those.  I think that is more than enough.

But here is the kicker.  Now you get to create a separate cell out here in the digital world.  Folks that you don't physically know, but that you have had long conversations with.  Discuss what you do that works and makes sense.  Commiserate about the idiosyncracies of you little groups.  Bitch your limit and stay in touch.

If we are going to start the process of ignoring the idiots and carving out a life without their input and direction, we will have to create a means of helping each other.

Any revisions, ideas, clarifications, and shout-downs are happily accepted

Sharecropping and other such outmoded realities

Rather than sitting down and trying to write a complete article every day, I think that a better approach would be to write down what I am thinking as an idea and then expand on it the next day or as the muse otherwise takes me.

Todays idea seed is the idea of gardening as a means of adding to a revenue stream.  I kinda doubt that you are going to go out and make a million here.  What the gardening will do is allow you to get outside and work and maybe get enough back from sales of part of the crop to defray the costs of growing the crop.  You eat what is left.  The savings on food and such will be sufficient to make it worth your while.

First, one has to look at the way we approach our time and efforts.  Put in a nutshell, we are entirely too liberal when we put a dollar figure on the value of our time.

“Man, my time is worth more than that!” is a phrase that is entirely too often spoken and even more often thought.  It is as though when we get home from our normal day jobs at the tertiary of quaternary earning a wage from someone else, we expect any action that we do to bring in a comparable amount of dollar bills or the action is useless.

I would argue that you will have to get away from that type of thinking if you are going to get by.   Consider the task of gardening.  I really can think of little that it does that is a detriment.  It gets you outside, breathing air and into the world.  It provides food, it gets you into the rhythm of nature.  You can take the proceeds of your spare time and keep your earnings in your pocket.  If done correctly, you can even make a piddlin’ amount by selling the proceeds of your endeavor.

More than anything though, gardening is a means to start getting some space between you and the system that you live in.  The corporations are in charge, and they have every intention of your giving them the money and effort that keeps them in power.