Think Hard On This

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

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“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

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

Potential Energy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strike

http://sopastrike.com/