Bye-bye dollar assets good-bye

Eli S. posts on David Friedman's blog

There's a great spoof of Miss American Pie here.

When I teach my high school economics class about money and monetary policy (and trade, and debt, etc.) I'm going to use it.

A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How the dollar used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
I'd sell the currency of France
And, maybe, I'd be happy for awhile.
But all our spending made me shiver
With every T-bill we deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn't take one more step.
I can't remember if I cried
When I heard our politicians lied
But something touched me deep inside
The day the dollar died.
So bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye
Sold my Chevy at the levee
cause my pension ran dry.
Them good old boys were drinking sake to try
Singing this will be the day that it died
This i'll be the day that it died.
Did you write Whitehouse.gov
Or have you a Yen to fall in love
If Japan will tell you so?
Now, do you believe in oil and coal
Can China fill our import hole
And can we teach them how to grow real slow?
Well I know the country's fit and trim
Cause the jobs are in the Pacific Rim.
We all knew savers lose
Man, I dug not having to choose.
We were living off the almighty buck
We got their goods and they were stuck
But I knew we were out of luck
The day the dollar died.


Now for ten years we were sure we owned
All the stocks and bonds and mortgage loans
But that's not how it's gonna be.
When we've spent it all like kings and queens
In clothes we bought from The Philippines
The Asians pick the reserve currency.
Oh, and while the king was looking down,
Their central bankers came to town.
Our stocks and bonds were spurned
Those dollars were returned.
And while unions filled their books with Marx
The President said drill in parks
Our thermostats froze in the dark
The day the dollar died.
We were singing
Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye

Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The equity is gone from your leveraged shelter
Fannie and Freddie are falling fast.
Crash, they landed, but in a new class
Full faith and credit have long since passed
With Congress, in denial, out of gas.
Now the Wal-Mart there has cheap perfume
With imports filling every room.
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance.
The consumers tried to take the field
The central banks refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the dollar died?
We started singing


Oh, and there we were all in one place
Our credit rating in disgrace
With no time left to start again.
So come on: Al be nimble, Al be quick!
Al, cut rates by 50 ticks
cause credit is the debtor's only friend.
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No congressman in hell
Could buy what he would sell.
And as the rates climbed high into the night
To stem the U.S. asset flight
The IMF said, Yes, that's right
The day the dollar died
They were singing



I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her if we still could choose
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the Medicare store
Where we had spent our dollars years before
But the man there said those dollars wouldn't pay.
And in the streets the children screamed
The seniors cried and the workers steamed
But not a word was spoken
The commitments all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
Faber, Rogers, and Bill Gross
Were at the forex trading post
The day the dollar died.
And they were singing

.. I'd have to bill you

Dean is right. This 'Day by Day' is damn funny.

Control

We can't afford space. It's too expensive. We broke the bank just getting a handful of men to the Moon in 1969 - and now we want to send a baker's dozen at a time? Bah - spend that fortune on something worthwhile like social woes ..

As if

The question remains, however, "What should we afford?" In this regard, a historical perspective is helpful. At its peak, during the Apollo years, America spent 0.8 percent of its gross national product on its civil space program (Figure 2). This level amounted to about 4.5 percent of federal spending at the time (Figure 3) and, perhaps more importantly, about 6 percent of the discretionary portion of the federal budget (Figure 4). Today, we as a nation are spending about one-third of the Apollo peak spending as a portion of the GNP -- and the faction of the increasingly pressured total discretionary budget has declined to 2.5 percent.

0.8 of the GDP is nothing. We can afford that level of spending while holding our breath. It is not, then, about the money spent on space but politics and who controls the spending.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act considerd harmful

From IBD via

'Tis the season for predictions for the year ahead, something we've always been loath to do because, well, we don't like being wrong any more than the next guy. In the spirit of this special issue of IBD, however, we've come up with seven forecasts — let's call them "possibilities" — for 2007 based on what we see as key developments as '06 wound down. Herewith is our list, offered on the condition we're not held to it.

Major U.S. stock indexes were up solidly in 2006. The Dow's near its all-time high. Yet there's something rotten at the heart of America's markets, and that something is the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

SarBox has put a hammerlock on America's small-time capitalism like no other law before. It's keeping small, innovative companies from getting the capital they need to grow and thrive. Along with the growing number of high-profile lawsuits against companies for what turn out to be differences of accounting opinion, U.S. capital markets are hurting.

Loss of share to places such as London, Tokyo and Hong Kong extends even to IPOs. In the late '90s, U.S. capital markets attracted 48% of all global IPOs. This year, it's a pathetic 8%. In 2005, a shocking 24 of the 25 largest new issues were outside the U.S. We once owned that business.

The reason for the U.S. decline? As University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales noted in a recent study, it's due to "excessive regulation and overly burdensome litigation risk" after Sarbanes-Oxley.

By the way, this can also be seen in the surge of once-public companies now going private. As the chart shows, net equity issuance in the U.S. — a measure of how much equity is actually available on U.S. markets — has gone into an alarming decline since SarBox. The trend has accelerated as more companies go private.

It's pretty simple: Company CEOs, faced with lawsuits, a growing list of SEC requirements and the costs that go with both would rather be private and not have the headaches than list on a major exchange and be harassed daily. The SEC has eased some SarBox rules, but needs to do more to restore America's competitive edge.

Thank you Sir, may I have another?

Hey, Department of Revenue

Wisconsin's revenue agency said Friday that it sent as many as 170,000 forms to taxpayers with mailing labels mistakenly printed with their social security numbers.

Thank-you-very-much-may-I-have-another? How about sending back the refund in cash, stapled to the outside.*

*tip to Dave

New Year's Eve

What I'm doing to celebrate the New Year





If you're in the area, come on down and say 'hi'.  We've got WIFI as well.

Rainy Day

Rainy day in Rockwall, Texas, October 2002

Space Pen

NASA spent millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write in space.  The clever Russians equpped their cosmonauts with pencils.  Foolish government 'crats in action.  Clever Russians.  Proves a point about how inept the space agency is or something like that.

Except it did not happen that way.

The Fischer Pen Company invested $1 million of their own money to create the space pen.  They sold 400 of them to NASA for Apollo.  The Soviets ordered 100 the next year.

They paid $2.39 each.

Not as exciting as 'crats wasting our money but somehow a more satisfying tale.

Tin ear in the PR department

NASA wants to connect with young adults.

Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, such as actors David Duchovny ("X-Files") and Patrick Stewart ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"); forming partnerships with youth-oriented media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR; and developing brand placement in the movie industry.

I wonder if anyone actually asked Patrick Stewart if he wanted to participate ...

As I get older my unease at the time and the money that has to be spent on projects putting human beings back to the moon, and on to another planet, is so enormous,

And it would take up so many resources, which I personally feel should be directed at our own planet.

Humankind has just not simply become sufficiently evolved to now leave this planet, take itself out to space and began establishing more of us out there.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilisations out on to other planets - even though they may be utterly uninhabited.

'Cause a guy who babbles on in such a vein might not be the best spokesman for a space agency.

Via the excellent Eric Berger.

Fairness

From Castle Argghhh!

George Budabin - a memorial

George Budabin - a memorial.

My Dad has left an impression on me that will stay with me until the day that I die. He taught me what being a man was really about. He was the ultimate stand-up guy who you could trust to do anything he said he would do. He was loving, caring, and affectionate towards his children. He was a provider in every sense of the word. There were days when he would leave for work at 6:30 AM and not get home until 9:00 PM, exhausted. Still, he would eat his dinner, and spend whatever time he had left with his children and wife until he went to bed, rarely just getting time to himself.

George Budabin sounds as if he were what we should all aspire to be. Be a stand-up guy, take care of your family, do what needs to be done.

Would that we could live up to his example. Requiescat in pace.

OH THE BEEMANITY

You really need to click this for the entire story.

Bee incinerator contraption:
- 30 feet of rope
- 1 large fire pit
- 1 science project board
- miscellaneous rags and a bedsheet
- gas

via

SAGE - Your Own Math Engine

SAGE: Software for Algegbra and Geometry Experimentation

SAGE is free and open software that supports research and teaching in algebra, geometry, number theory, cryptography, and related areas. Both the SAGE development model and the technology in SAGE itself is distinguished by an extremely strong emphasis on openness, community, cooperation, and collaboration: we are building the car, not reinventing the wheel. Our overall goal is to create a viable free open source alternative to Maple, Mathematica, Magma, and MATLAB.

Nifty. A practical application? Math server, says Steve Hastings via Pournell's Chaos Manor

I suggested that they should make a bootable CD image that runs SAGE in web-server mode. You could take any spare PC, boot from the CD, and your network now would have a SAGE server. I can imagine that being very popular in schools.

I can imagine it being popular elsewhere - any company that uses Mathematica can likely use a tool like this. You can't beat the price.



Respectfully Submitted,

Brian Dunbar

The Day After Christmas

Pasty wrote me a poem.

The Day After Christmas
In honor of Brian Dunbar

Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house the floor had been cluttered, with papers, twas doused.

The stockings were scattered with disarray in our lair, the candy wrappers thrown on the floor without care.

The children were playing all the games they received, while screaming at monsters and thieves that deceive.

While I in my apron and a trashcan on lap start sweeping and cleaning all the leftover wrap.

When out in their room there arose such a scream, I thought that they must have just had a bad dream!

Away to the bedroom I flew really quick, only to find they'd lost a sword to a stick.

So back to my room to clean the dishevel and make my home safe and bring it back, to some level.

The light on the floor made the packages glitter. It's amazing how lovely sunlight makes litter.

More quickly I went to finish my task, my husband was helping, and I didn't even ask.

More rapid than tigers he swept and he cleaned. I was so happy he had intervened.

In boxes, in paper, and in went the tissue. Quick as lightening he tossed them, how quickly they flew!

He saved all the manuals and tucked them away. He knew what to save, what needed to stay.

From the corner of the living room to the edge of the hall, he worked like a hero to save me from it all.

When he met with an obstacle, he took it with glee. Nothing deterred him, not even me!

With his hands full of boxes of goodies and toys, he dispersed them to rooms and then to our boys.

He took charge like a warrior ready to fight! And throw all the gloom I began to see light.

He drew in my hand to his lips he did kiss. Not once did I feel that my life was amiss.

With courage and fortitude he never once wavered, but kept on working and showing me favor.

He then did the dishes, yes, washed them all clean. Dried them with a towel until they showed sheen.

He worked like a madman, no task was too small. He worked and he worked not complaining at all.

He drew up his brow in deep concentration, making me watch in anticipation.

The steam from the water looked like it could boil, but nothing deterred him from cleaning the soil.

He put everything in it's place, no mistake did he make. And then to the garage the trash he did take.

And when it was done, he held me so close I could feel how the wind had been cold on his nose.

I hugged him so tight, for he saved me the trouble of making the day length seem more than just double.

And into the night he knew what was to be, for there is no better man then he is to me.

But I heard him exclaim as we passionately kissed, "My love for you, dear, will never desist."

Dodging a bullet

If this described a publicly-traded company, the CEO would be facing jail time

The largest employer in the world announced on Dec. 15 that it lost about $450 billion in fiscal 2006. Its auditor found that its financial statements were unreliable and that its controls were inadequate for the 10th straight year. On top of that, the entity's total liabilities and unfunded commitments rose to about $50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.

But it's our government so they've dodged a bullet. Thank heavens they're exempt from following the same rules the rest of us do.



Via.

Carl Sagan

"In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky."

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Mighty neighborly

Hey, that is mighty neighborly of you Microsoft

Exchange 2007 includes a number of features that Microsoft says makes
the 2GB corporate mailbox not only completely viable, but desirable.

Mighty neighborly.

5,000 users x 2GB mailbox = 10,000 GB of data. Thanks Microsoft! You're making EMC (or NetApp) very happy. You're not making the IT department happy (wheee more storage arrays to mange) or the business guys who have to write a check to NetApp (or EMC) but there it is.

Pretty in Pink

From Oleg Volk


As a commenter dantheserene noted - "It's the accessories that make an outfit".

Via.

Marine Combat Artist Sgt Kristopher Battles

Sgt. Kristopher Battles is a Marine Combat Artist on active duty in Iraq. This is his blog - Sketchpad Warrior.

Bank Naiveté

Rand's post

Drop a billion dollars worth of bullion on the lunar surface. Whoever can get up there, and bring it back, gets it. There'd be no way to pull the prize money off the table with such a scheme.

Got me to thinking. Why worry about hauling it back? You've got a stack of bullion, it's assayed - set yourself up as an offshore bank.

Okay, it's way way offshore but the idea has it's merits; you're security staff can be minimal for a few years and just getting there to steal it presents major logistical problems.

The requirements for an offshore bank ... well there don't appear to be any. Your bank needs to be trustworthy, and able to prove your assets exist which we've done.

More seriously - since the government is not about to stash bullion on the moon - why not find an asteroid, assay it's metal content and use that for your assets?

What is the flaw that keeps this from being a workable idea?

We've got jobs!

From the 'We've Got Jobs' page at NetApp

• Network Appliance Inc. does not accept unsolicited resumes from third-party vendors associated with fees. If you decide to submit your resumes without the appropriate Network Appliance agreements and nondisclosure documents, you are providing resumes and candidates to Network Appliance free of charge, and we thank you for the resume submittal.

Italics mine. Haw.

Headline of the Day

Headline of the day from the Drudge Retort

Denver's bid to host the 2008 Democratic National Convention hit a snag Monday after a union leader refused to sign a no-strike pledge

As a poster in the comments noted

It is also notable that the party of organized labor is requiring organized labor to agree to not do the very thing that labor originally organized for the right to do...



Say that three times fast.

Michael Fay - USMC combat artist

Yes, the Marines have combat artists. Michael Fay is one of them, his blog is here: Fire And Ice.







"Danger Close" Oil on canvas, 20x16 by Michael Fay.

Anglican Humor

This joke says a world about Anglican sensibilities and our their ability to kick any problem the road.

The year is 2010 and two graduates of the very conservative Anglo-Catholic seminary called Nashotah House are standing in the back of the Washington National Cathedral as the church’s latest presiding bishop and her lesbian partner process down the long center aisle, carrying a statue of the Buddha aloft while surrounded by a cloud of incense.

As they watch this scene unfold, one of the priests leans over and quietly tells the other: “You know, one more thing and I’m out of here.”

Via

Cat blogging

Pasty captured our smooshy-faced cat on camera last night.

Nearly frictionless machine

Interesting

What's a Rolamite? It looks like a simple gadget made with two rollers and a steel band, but it's much more. As basic as the wheel, the lever, or the hinge, it is the only elementary machine discovered this century. Its use will be widespread --- in everything from switches, thermostats, and valves to pumps and clutches, and as almost frictionless bearings.

The paragraph above was taken from (as if you could not have guessed) Popular Science, March 1966. Nifty idea - but perhaps a few years too late to match PopSci's prose ...

... invented by a man named Donald Wilkes, who worked for Sandia Laboratories. It’s a bearing or switch with two rollers and a band around them. The idea is that by using different styles of band and different cutouts in the band, you can get this little device to do different things, to serve as an accelerometer, for example. There was a great fanfare about the Rolamite in the 1960s in both the professional engineering press and media like The New “York Times. Donald Wilkes left his job at Sandia Laboratories, raised money, started Rolamite, Inc., and hired engineers. But the Rolamite turned out to be the second best way to do everything, as one engineer said. And it came at just the time when microprocessors were beginning to do the more sophisticated work that the Rolamite was supposed to handle. At the low end it was too expensive to fabricate to the tolerances needed and still be economical. At the high end it was losing out to the lower and lower costs of solid-state control.

There were just three important exceptions, which go to show how radically unexpected technology can be. One was a postal scale you may still see in garage sales with a kind of twisted band in the front; that has Rolamite geometry in it. The second was the use of Rolamites as accelerometers in thermonuclear weapons, probably because they can’t be spooked by electronic countermeasures. The third one is the automobile air bag. Apparently just about every air bag made has a Rolamite in it, because for an accelerometer at the right tolerance, the Rolamite performs better than any alternative technology.

Air bags were probably the last thing on Wilkes’s mind—they didn’t exist at the time—yet the Rolamite has turned out to be a vital element in their design. Wilkes also told me that his experience with the RoIamite gave him ideas for other inventions with similar geometry.

Business Case

From David Farber's Interesting People mail list;

The best response I have ever heard to this kind of assertion - "no business case" - is from a stock analyst friend of mine:

a gravel pit can be a great business, and so is a grocery store. Great businesses are the result of great businesspeople, and those who are looking for a business case are probably insufficiently lazy or creative to be successful at ANY business.

Blindsight

This looks like a good beginning to a novel

I just stood there. I didn't even especially want to help him.



That didn't make sense. Even if he hadn't been my best friend, I should at least have empathized. I'd suffered less than Pag in the way of overt violence; my seizures tended to keep the other kids at a distance, scared them even as they incapacitated me. Still. I was no stranger to the taunts and insults, or the foot that appears from nowhere to trip you up en route from A to B. I knew how that felt.



Or I had, once.



But that part of me had been cut out along with the bad wiring. I was still working up the algorithms to get it back, still learning by observation. Pack animals always tear apart the weaklings in their midst. Every child knows that much instinctively. Maybe I should just let that process unfold, maybe I shouldn't try to mess with nature. Then again, Pag's parents hadn't messed with nature, and look what it got them: a son curled up in the dirt while a bunch of engineered superboys kicked in his ribs.



In the end, propaganda worked where empathy failed. Back then I didn't so much think as observe, didn't deduce so much as remember—and what I remembered was a thousand inspirational stories lauding anyone who ever stuck up for the underdog.



So I picked up a rock the size of my fist and hit two of Pag's assailants across the backs of their heads before anyone even knew I was in the game.

It's by a fellow named Peter Watts - he's released it under the creative commons license. So far .. it's pretty good. Scalzi claims "it's got all the hard SF goodness you'd want" which sentence alone will keep me reading for a chapter or two.



Amazing world we live in. Twenty years ago this book might have dropped out of sight no one would have ever heard of it. Bits are cheap and we all benefit.

Monorail!

Tulsa, Oklahoma - my home town - has problems.

After considerable study, the six determined Tulsa County fell short in three areas: the ability to attract and retain talented employees and the employers of that talent; a strong sense of community; and a sustainable tax base.

The solution? Tax breaks to encourage business and investment. Lower taxes, improving the public school system. Ha - I kid. The solution is to build this

Ain't that pretty?

Yup - they want to dam the Arkansas at 23rd street, create a lake reaching up to Sand Springs put up some buildings on a 40-acre island in the middle of the channel. All of the low-low cost of $600 million in public financing.

Oh - and they want to use the dam to sell energy from the dam (and wind and solar). This in a place where dams, yes, do generate electricity but their main purpose is flood control. Cause you don't get much energy from a river that doesn't flow so much as mosey.

Don't let the picture fool you - the Arkansas is mud-brown, sluggish and chock full of (treated) waste-water from upstream. Not the kind of thing you'll want to sit next to enjoying the twilight .. smacking mosquitos and shooing away mayflies.



A future taxpayer, stunned at what his $600 million has bought. I'm not sure what this fellow is standing on because he appears to be hovering a few thousand feet in the air over West Tulsa.

Via

Man about town

Samuel Pepys - now in blog format. Via.

Unitek Update

I updated my Unitek (of Fremont, California) entry with a more polite - but less detailed - summary.

Blogger.
LiveJournal.

Wow - I'm self referencing. I hear that is the 'hip' thing for bloggers to do.

Thanks a bunch

Massive 'duh' moment today. I needed to concatenate lines of text in log file - the better to sort out when an IP accessed one of my systems.



Paste of course. Duh.



Oh ... why? Because I have an application that is nice enough to log access by IP address and date/time. Knowing that of course we need to know how many and when by subnet.



Which would be EASY but the each connection is written to the log in three lines.



*I made a connection at this date - time* message

*application specific information I don't care about in this context*

*IP Address / application assigned client ID*



' There were times when he felt like saying the gods, Thanks a bunch. '

Dated content

Dated content, not five minutes after it was delivered to my reader.

No matter how well versed you are in tech jargon, the second paragraph of Paul Venezia’s “Deep Dive into VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure” will send you scurrying to Wikipedia for clarification. The sentence in question: “[We subjected] the software ... to one of our real-world, ‘Fergenschmeir’ test scenarios.”



Yep, Fergenschmeir. And Wikipedia won’t help.

That last sentence is now incorrect.

Real Daleks don't climb stairs; they level the building

Looks like Honda is taking a page from the Dalek* engineering handbook.

HI! I'M ASIMO AND YEAGGGHHHHHHH....

Which is fine by me. We can all gather on the second floor and taunt them from above as we make our plans to recapture the surface.

Until they discover the handicap accessible ramp. As they tear apart our fleshy bodies you'll hear rising across our great nation: "Curse you ADA!"

Via

Darien

Keats, courtesy local pol Steve Erbach

634. On first looking into Chapman's Homer

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken; 10
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Religious Nuts

Quoting a quote of the day

The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?

P. J. O'Rourke

'Cause O'Rourke is The Man.

Sitting at mom's house, eating pizza.

Analogy can be a pretty good tool.

I have to admit I've never had a lot of patience with the solve-our-problems-here-on-earth argument. To me that's like being a slacker who sits around all day at his mom's place watching Oprah, checking DIGG 20 times a day and generally contributing nothing. Should he get off his ass, go look for work and try to make something of his life? Or should he solve his problems at home first? Well, if the kid started making himself useful, started paying rent, maybe even moved out, he wouldn't have quite as many problems at home, would he?

I guess that sounds pretty simplistic, but it's a pretty simple situation that we find ourselves in. We can't stay at mom's forever waiting for the next killer asteroid or supervolcano or man-made catastrophe to wipe us out. We won't solve our problems sitting around here talking about how we should really get around to solving our problems someday. Here's a chance to do something solid and practical, something that has a proven track record for generating wealth and creating vast numbers of jobs for skilled workers. What need is there for nuance?

Call of Duty

Sometimes .. you'd think these guys are the best we have

With their seven-month rotation about to end, and 11 members of their battalion dead and 83 wounded, the Marines decided there was only one way to honor their dead brothers and that was to make sure the baby was saved.

E-mails from Fallujah shot all around the United States, detailing the risks that Walsh and the Marines had taken, the effort expended, and the blood spilled. Suddenly, the red tape loosened, and in early October Mariam was flown to Boston. The surgery was successful, and she is doing well.

These men are the finest expression of what we, as a people, are.

Jack In The Box

I'm in California, eating lunch at a Jack in the Box (which franchise I've not laid eyes on since leaving Texas) and .. they have wifi.

Life can be sweet.

Wry comment on the Iraq Study Group report

Not mine of course - it's just not in me to be this pithy.

Happy infamy day, by the way.

Month by Month

Post the first line of your first post for every month of 2006, excluding birthday greeting posts and image/video posts.

January - '60 Minutes' - The New Space Race, Sunday, January 1, 2006.
February - Liftport sure is doing a lot of research, considering we're, you know, a PowerPoint company.
March - Too bad Frank already a) leaped on the idea and b) got Hugh MacLeod to say "go ahead and use it. no worries".
April - From TJIC
May - Via Paul Kedrosky
June - I'm watching this show on Discovery: The Rise of Man

July -This is really good. New Star Trek 'Old Show' episodes, and quite well done.
August - I'm not sure where Harell is going with this.
September - New Spaceship, Same Old Rocks
October -  I do get the oddest mail. But I'm not posting it on advice from my better-half. "Be kind" she said.id
November - From a Jane Galt poster
December - Dean's right

Not bad for a crapblog.

via

Things I had known but forgotten

Moby-Dick was probably inspired by real events.

There were two factual occurrences that almost certainly inspired Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucketwhaling ship Essex, which foundered in 1820 after it was attacked by an 80-ton sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,700 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events as the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex..

Unitek - an unhappy customer

Thinking of getting training from 'Unitek It Training' of Fremont, California?

I excised a long screen that was, perhaps, a bit unfair. In it's place, then, this.

Hardware Provider X has outsourced it's training - formerly in-house - to a vendor, Unitek. Expectations were set regarding a very high standard of instruction. The vendor did not live up to those standards due to entirely avoidable problems.

These problems included a nice but new to instructing instructor - he knew the subject from an operational point-of-view but was new to teaching which can make a difference. The lab servers failed when we tried to use them resulting in down time while IT was hunted down to restart the box. And so on.

Oh and the infamous missing trash-can. We had .. a cardboard box for waste. What's the big deal with that? It's the little things that count; for $3750.00 per student you'd think they could send someone down to Office Depot for a trash-can. It's an attention to detail item - if they can't pay attention to the small easy-to-fix stuff what does that say about the big picture?

Please note this is not passive aggressive mawpging - a more detailed gripe was sent to my boss, which he shared with the vendor who shared with Unitek who - in the person of a very nice project manager - drew me aside to ask me what was the problem.

One result was that Friday morning the trashcan box was gone - in it's place not one but three trashcans.


The key is - would I go back? Yes and no. Yes, I will be going back to them for training - they are the vendor's preferred or sole source for education. I need schooling on the vendor's hardware, I see them.

But, no. If it was a choice between the competition and Unitek .. I'd go with the other guy. It's a once burned forever shy kinda deal.

In the line of fire

Smith [the company commander] did not have to order his Marines straight into the direction of the fire; it was a collective impulse - a phenomenon I would see again and again over the coming days. The idea that Marines are trained to break down doors, to seize beachheads and other territory, was an abstraction until I was there to experience it. Running into fire rather than seeking cover from it goes counter to every human survival instinct - trust me ... In one flash, as we charged across [the street] amid whistling incoming shots, I realized that they were not like me; they were Marines.

In the Line of Fire by Robert D. Kaplan



In memory of those who
Lived the good life
Fought the good fight
And made the ultimate sacrifice

May we never forget

via

Bizarro World TJIC

In a parallel world, TJIC works a blue-collar job in a factory and blogs anonymously ...

The Dumb C*** That Drives an Hour and Half Each Way to work told me he was listening to public radio on the way in the other morning. Polar bears, they've discovered, dead ones at, are filled with fire retardant. Implying that there was some sort of conncection.

F***ing communist.

So the Dumb C***'s all worried about cancer meanwhile he drives home mornings an hour and half after a twelve hour night shift. That, and he listens to public radio.

Link via Frank who is not responsible for my flight of fancy.

Laser Blam

This looks pretty cool

It's the game that combines lasers with classic strategy. Players alternate turns moving Egyptian-themed pieces having two, one or no mirrored surfaces. All four types of pieces (pharaoh, obelisk, pyramid and djed column) can either move one square forward, back, left, right, or diagonal, or can stay in the same square and rotate by a quarter twist. Each turn ends by firing one of the lasers built into the board. The laser beam bounces from mirror to mirror; if the beam strikes a non-mirrored surface on any piece, it is immediately removed from play. The ultimate goal is to illuminate your opponent's pharaoh, while shielding yours from harm!

They might have have lost me here, however

Yes, the game employs two class II lasers which are lower in power than most laser pointers on the market, which are usually class III. This means that although you still get the neat effect of firing a laser to bombard your opponent's pieces, you will not get the wow effect of seeing it melt or blow holes through the playing field.

I wanted more blam.

None of your business

Via Russ Nelson, an article about unschooling - where you not only check your kid out of public school but you don't have any structured instruction

The United States Department of Education last did a survey on home schooling in 2003. That study did not ask about unschooling. But it found that the number of children who were educated at home had soared, increasing by 29 percent, to 1.1 million, from 1999 to 2003.

Experts assume that the upward trend has continued, and some worry that the general public is unaware of the movement’s laissez-faire approach to learning.

The horror - the public doesn't know! Someone, inform The Public!

“As school choice expands and home-schooling in general grows, this is one of those models that I think the larger public sphere needs to be aware of because the folks who are engaging in these radical forms of school are doing so legally,” said Professor Huerta of Columbia. “If the public and policy makers don’t feel that this is a form of schooling that is producing productive citizens, then people should vote to make changes accordingly.”

Because 'The People' are much better at deciding how to run my life than I am.

How about this, Professor Huerta - as long as my kids don't grow up to become sociopaths - how we choose to educate them is none of your business.

Nus Eht No Gniklaw

Dean's right

If this were 1971 they'd all be considered geniuses. Well yes, but they still are. They did it all just by running a camera backwards. Bravo!!

Using Smashmouth for the track was a nice touch.

Nus Eht No Gniklaw - thanks You Tube!

Taking 'business casual' too far

I am not a prude, nor a libertine. I'm just a guy. I do like my comfort. But really - I think Dov Charney has taken the idea of 'Corporate Casual' just a bit far

Dear Mother of God, man. Put on a shirt. Please. Oh and while you're getting dressed ...

Charney was described as engaging in oral sex with a female employee and masturbating in front of the reporter. Charney doesn't deny taking part in any of the activities described in the article. He says he befriended the writer over the course of the two months it took her to research the piece. "I've never done anything sexual that wasn't consensual," Charney says. The reporter, Claudine Ko, confirmed his take on events to BusinessWeek.

stop boffing your employees. Not very enlightened, you know, all that exploitive objectifying stuff.

via

Things I Did Not Know This Morning

Things I did not know this morning.

The Darién scheme was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama.

The first expedition of five ships (Saint Andrew, Caledonia, Unicorn, Dolphin, and Endeavour) set sail from Leith on July 14, 1698, with around 1,200 people on board. Their orders were to proceed to the Bay of Darien, and make the Isle called the Golden Island ... some few leagues to the leeward of the mouth of the great River of Darien ... and there make a settlement on the mainland. After calling at Madeira and the West Indies, the fleet made landfall off the coast of Darien on November 2. The settlers christened their new home "New Caledonia".

Via.

Atlantis to orbit

Awesome.



Too large, too complicated, a spaceship designed by committee .. but my what a flying machine!

Reinventing the wheel

Hey look at this - the government had managed to reinvent Civil Defense.

CERT is about readiness, people helping people, rescuer safety, and doing the greatest good for the greatest number. CERT is a positive and realistic approach to emergency and disaster situations where citizens will be initially on their own and their actions can make a difference. Through training, citizens can manage utilities and put out small fires; treat the three killers by opening airways, controlling bleeding, and treating for shock; provide basic medical aid; search for and rescue victims safely; and organize themselves and spontaneous volunteers to be effective.

Sounds a lot like stuff I learned in Boy Scouts but whatever.

Sarbanes-Oxley - good and good for you!

Via Kedrosky - seems that Sarbanes-Oxley as an upside for at least one organization

PRN, largely an American business, has been growing strongly because of increased financial-disclosure requirements imposed on companies. This has prompted analysts to increase their valuations of PRN significantly over the past year.

Dark clouds, silver lining.

Monkeys

Things you do not want to hear from a child's bedroom early in the morning;

(chanting) "No more mon-keys jump-ing on the bed!"

WUMP

"ow-www."

Chesire Crossing # 2 is out

From the mailbag

At long last, Cheshire Crossing #2 is available for your reading pleasure. The total production time was just over 6 months.

You can find it at:
http://www.cheshirecrossing.net/

Weird mix of childhood classics, in graphical format.  Yes that's Wendy, Dorothy and Alice.

What kind of reader are you?

My wife said this is spot-on

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Literate Good Citizen You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you're not nerdy about it. You've read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two.
Dedicated Reader
Book Snob
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Via.

Now that is amusing

I posted a link to Darnell Clayton's 'Ten Reasons For Not Building A Space Elevator' here here and here.

Someone replied to my LJ entry

Check out the real thing
(Anonymous)
2006-11-25 08:04 am UTC
http://www.liftport.com/ is all about really building one.

Excellent.

Respectfully Submitted
Brian Dunbar

digging a hole to china

Kelly Tsai sent around her November poem.

digging a hole to china
by kelly zen-yie tsai

1.
we are at war
with ourselves

700 missiles
point
sharp noses
across the taiwan
strait

my mother
runs delicate
fingers
over plum candy,
sesame bars, dates
mashed with
walnuts

at the sweet shop
in shanghai

for the first
time in 60 years

these her
tongue
remembers

before revolution
before exile

as she stuffs
a plastic bag
to its brim

for the 17 hour
flight back
home

to chicago

2.
the engraver
at the great wall
didn't even turn
all the way around

before he muttered,
"oh, hua qiao."

and continued to hammer

my father's name
my mother's name
my name

the day's date

into the piece of
granite before him

what kind of
people are we

to think that we
can build anything
big enough to keep
our culture intact

that we can
be impervious to
change

that we can shut
the world out?

3.
carol and i
are useless

american-born
hackney-tongued

we listen
to my father explain
why each of these
places are so important

so many poets
so many temples
so many gods

i can read only
the waving of
the lotus fields

the old women
dressed in black
reaching their
arms towards
the sun

the children walking
two by two gripped
in each other's hands
with superhero
backpacks on

4.
tiananmen square
is empty of ghosts
empty of blood

just stretches of
gray stone buildings
and packs of postcards
sold for a dollar

soldiers tread lightly
past me in green polyester pants
striped with yellow

their shoulders
marked in red

their faces
younger
than mine

we are not
so different

i realize

i press a kiss
to my crossed
fingers

untwist them
and let the kiss
ride on air

we survive
every history

in prayer
in prayer

Perry Bible Fellowship

As Horvath said - comics much too twisted to comment on.

Strategic Decision Game

The Marine Corps Gazette has a feature called Tactical Decision Game. A scenario is outlined for a unit commander, you're given incomplete information, a mission to accomplish and a few minutes to issue an order. The idea isn't to come up with a school solution, but to come up with a descision and how you'e implement your orders and why. Then discuss.

Like this.

Situation
You are a first lieutenant commanding a light tank section attached to 1st Platoon, Company C, 2d Combat Engineer Battalion. Your engineer company had been operating in support of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. Your section consists of two M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, one with a mine plough and the other with a blade. 8th Marine Regiment is taking part in large-scale military operations against the national forces of Urmac.

At 0130 last night your unit crossed the line of departure and made its way through a series of lanes cut through antitank berms and minefields. Toward 0430 you encountered a small blocking force that your company brushed aside, allowing you to pass Phase Line Dakota by daylight as planned. Your entire regiment is in search of the main body of the Praetorian Guard Division, one of the enemy’s elite armored divisions. The Praetorian Guard Division is equipped with T62 and T72 tanks and associated Soviet-style light armored vehicles (LAVs). This division operates using the principles of the former Warsaw Pact doctrine.

The terrain you are operating in is mixed desert with areas of hard-packed surfaces, offering excellent mobility, rough and broken terrain, and soft sand. The whole area is interspersed with the odd palm grove and isolated mud brick outbuildings. The one main road is paved and two lanes wide, but just.

It is beginning to get warm outside, and you have the hatches open. You are standing up in your hatchway searching the area to your right front through binoculars when you sight a plume of dust about 400 to 500 meters to your north. The dust cloud is heading away from you at an oblique angle to the northeast. You make out an OT–64—an eight-wheeled LAV. Judging by the several radio antennas, it is in a command configuration (OT–63R–2M).

Over the net you order, “Loader, high explosive, antitank. Gunner, target LAV, right, rough bearing 90 degrees, acquire, and fire. Driver, turn right 90 degrees and stop.”

You hear and feel your crew respond to your orders. Next, you switch communications links to talk to your number two. “Loco 4, Loco 3. Enemy LAV headed northeast about 500 meters from us. Keep an overwatch on the area to your immediate front. Out.”

Your turret begins to traverse right, and you drop down and close the hatch. Suddenly, the command net crackles, “Loco 3, this is Red Top 5 (call sign from an unmanned aerial system operations center). I have four T72s headed your way, approximately 1,000 meters to the east on Route Yankee. They are all crew exposed and traveling at 15 to 20 kilometers per hour. I don’t think they are aware of your presence. Over.”

You acknowledge the report. Looking through your commander’s sights you can see that the OT–64 is nearly acquired. The gunner is only moments away from squeezing off the main gun, an order you have already cleared him for. What now lieutenant?

Clearly you have options but it's not clear what the best one is.

This reminded me of that, but on a strategic level.

The Air Force Learjet had been airborne for two minutes when a cell phone buzzed, and the Secret Service captain answered it and handed it off to the Vice President Elect. "It's Mr. Cheney, sir," he said.

"Gavin?" Dick Cheney asked. "Yes, sir," Newsom replied, subdued, for the events of the last hour had sobered up his elated mood considerably.

"Okay, Gavin. I don't know what you know, so I'll tell you what I can. There have been approximately 20 nuclear strikes on government and financial targets in the US, about an hour ago. No real damage estimate yet, except that it's awful. A hundred times 9/11, maybe a thousand times. I happened to be at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and have moved into Cheyenne Mountain to set up a temporary HQ, until we get things sorted out. As you know Cheyenne was vacated by NORAD a few years ago, so we have plenty of space. You will be flown here, nonstop."

"I know you haven't a lot of national and international experience." Cheney had thought of saying that Newsom had none, but Newsom would be too painfully aware of that. He didn't need reminding. "The President is missing and presumed dead. So is Mrs. Clinton. So you may become the next president, in about six weeks. I don't know. he Constitution says the Vice President succeeds a president who is dead or disabled, but it doesn't say what happens if the President Elect dies before being inaugurated. I suppose the Court will have to answer that, if we can cobble one together by then. In the meantime, I will assume you will be inaugurated. You'll have a steep learning curve, a real steep curve. All presidents do, under the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances."

What now Vice President Elect Newsom?

I don't know how plausible the scenario outlined in linked document is. I think the bits about the domestic scene are overplayed a bit. I know that on 9/10 using civilian airliners as imrovised cruise missiles was the stuff of implausible fiction.

Via. See the link for Joe's comments.

Perspective

via.

Sleep

Sleep divorced from nature

Modafinil is just the first of a wave of new lifestyle drugs that promise to do for sleep what the contraceptive pill did for sex - unshackle it from nature. Since time immemorial, humans have structured their lives around sleep. In the near future, we will, for the first time, be able to significantly structure the way we sleep to suit our lifestyles.

"The more we understand about the body's 24-hour clock the more we will be able to override it," says Russell Foster, a circadian biologist at Imperial College London. "In 10 to 20 years we'll be able to pharmacologically turn sleep off. Mimicking sleep will take longer, but I can see it happening." Foster envisages a world where it's possible, or even routine, for people to be active for 22 hours a day and sleep for two.

Sign me up. Okay, I'll let the early adopters run with it for a few years but sounds okey-dokey to me.

via

C-List

I am SO C-List.



Not that I have pretensions of greatness for this humble crap blog or anything.

Rate your blog at Kineda. Via Amber Rhea who is B-list. Maybe she'll let me sit with her in at the lunch table where the cool kids hang out.

IE 7

When my dad, retired old-school computer guy, writes

IE 7 really does suck.

You know there is something to it.  Specifically that he tried, hard, to make it work, gave up and installed Firefox.  Plus he said the word 'sucked', an indication that it really does, in fact, suck.

Penn Jillette

Penn Jillette - the larger, louder half of Penn and Teller - has a podcast.

Who doesn't? But Penn is funny.

What is your signature weapon?

Hunh.  Figures - I actually carried a shotgun in the Marines far more often than an M-16.

Shotgun You preferred a weapon with 69% power over speed and 67% range over melee.

You use a Shotgun. While not the fastest gun in the west, a shotgun's raw power and ease of use make it an extremely potent weapon. Some shotguns can also be loaded with many different types of ammunition, providing a versatility many guns don't have. Choosing your shots, you fell your opponents immediately and without pause.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 89% on power You scored higher than 75% on range

Link: The What's Your Signature Weapon Test written by inurashii on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

via.

There is no hatred like self-hatred

Charles discovers - and one suspects approves of - wooly-headed philosphy

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.”

The animals need only apply the knowledge and their species can outlive their sun.

Darnell Clayton's Ten Reasons For Not Building A Space Elevator

Darnell Clayton's Ten Reasons For Not Building A Space Elevator. Read the post for all of them. My favorites;

8) It's a dumb idea: The space elevator has only existed in science fiction novels. Since when has anything from a science fiction novel become reality?
...
5) It would ruin Star Trek: The writers never envisioned a space elevator in their television series. Building one would ruin the story line, enraging fans across the scifi community.
...
4) We need Space Powers: If too many nations have access to space, people might get the notion that we are all created equal, leading to chaos.

Jurisdiction as property

Excellent paper from Nick Szabo on private jurisdiction in English history. From the introduction.

The Anglo-Norman legal idea of jurisdiction as property and peer-to-peer government clashed with ideas derived from the Roman Empire, via the text of Justinian's legal code and its elaboration in European universities, of sovereignty and totalitarian rule via a master-servant or delegation hierarchy. By the 20th century the Roman idea of hierarchical jurisdiction had largely won, especially in political science where government is often defined on neo-Roman terms as "sovereign" and "a monopoly of force." Our experience with totalitarianism of the 19th and 20th centuries, inspired and enabled by the Roman-derived procedural law and accompanying political structure (and including Napoleon, the Csars, the Kaisers, Communist despots, the Fascists, and the National Socialists), as well as the rise of vast and often oppressive bureaucracies in the "democratic" countries, should cause us to reconsider our commitment to government via master-servant (in modern terms, employer-employee) hierarchy, which is much bettter suited to military organization than to legal organization.

There is something to be said for keeping the power of the State as loose and light as possible.

You know this guy

Kevyn, seemingly stranded on a primitive planet, was lighting a fire and has managed to start a really large forest fire.

Tell me you don't know guys like this.

Despair

I don't watch much T.V. - I probably should watch Deadwood more often than I do. This is classic rough philosophy.

Merrick: The physical damage is repairable but the psychic wound may be permanent

Swearengen: You ever been beaten, Merrick?

Merrick: Once, when i thought i had the smallpox, Doc Cochran slapped me in the face ....

SMACK

Merrick: Stop it, Al.

Swearengen: Are you dead?

Merrick: Well I'm in pain but no, I'm obviously not dead.

Swearengen: Well obviously you didn't fuckin' die when the Doc slapped ya.

Merrick: No.

Swearengen: So, including last night that's three fuckin' damage incidents that didn't kill
ya. Pain or damage don't end the world or despair or fuckin' beatiings. The
world ends when you're dead. Until then you've got more punishment in store.
Stand it like a man .. and give some back.

Pancakes and Deadwood

Pancakes  .. Deadwood.

warning - adult content.

Makes my brain smile.

Via.

You will see what you wish to see

This week's New Yorker cover via The Stranger's Brendan Kiley



It's not enough to just drive into town and topple the Jello Sheriff - you need a plan.

Predictable comments from The Stranger readership

Doesn't it imply that Democrats are bringing down an evil dictatorship that came to power with the backing of the Reagan Administration? Spot on.

and

I thought it implied that the tax money would stop flowing to the top and come down to earth (the middle class).

With Honors

The things you find by serendipity.

Simon Wilder: You asked the question, sir, now let me answer it. The beauty of the Constitution is that it can always be changed. The beauty of the Constitution is that it makes no set law other than faith in the wisdom of ordinary people to govern themselves.

Proffesor Pitkannan: Faith in the wisdom of the people is exactly what makes the Constitution incomplete and crude.

Simon Wilder: Crude? No, sir. Our "founding parents" were pompous, white, middle-aged farmers, but they were also great men. Because they knew one thing that all great men should know: that they didn't know everything. Sure, they'd make mistakes, but they made sure to leave a way to correct them. The president is not an "elected king," no matter how many bombs he can drop. Because the "crude" Constitution doesn't trust him. He's just a bum, okay Mr. Pitkannan? He's just a bum.

Joe Pesci is Simon Wilder.

Liftport web site is down

Liftport's web content was shifted last week to a colocated server. Just in time for a huge rain and wind storm to tear across town and kill the data center.

While it looks like the wind is going to be the top story with the storm, it's also bringing heavy rains once again. This system has once again tapped into some warmer, tropical air, meaning not only will we have to deal with a lot of rain -- as much as 1-3 inches in the lowlands and 2-5 inches in the mountains within 12-18 hours -- but high snow levels up around 6,000 feet. That will allow the rain to just runoff into the rivers instead of sticking to the hillsides as snow.

We're talking real wrath of God type stuff..

When man makes plans, God says 'hah'.

Update - 22:18 - Web back up , DB server is still inop so no blog or other goodies

Wharton - punked

Wharton Biz School was punked

At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West.

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves.

At least they realized it, if perhaps after the fact.

A panelist for the Wharton Africa Business Forum misrepresented himself as being affiliated with the World Trade Organization (WTO). Based on that misrepresentation, the individual was invited to speak at the Forum, which was held on November 11, 2006 in Philadelphia. As soon as the conference organizers realized the misrepresentation perpetrated by this individual, the other panelists were immediately informed. Neither the conference organizers nor The Wharton School had or has any association with the individual nor do they endorse the individual's views.

Via

Computers, Nanotech, and Fusion: The Fate of Post-Human Society

Travis came up with a winner of a book title.

Heh. I just re-read my own subject line above, and it called to mind the title (and subtitle) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

It’s just calling out for extropian parody.

Computers, Nanotech, and Fusion: The Fate of Post-Human Society ?

No matter whether you see envision the next century or two as a time of expansion beyond our limited solar system, or you’re a horrible writer, and see it as a depressing slog through cinders, garbage, and glowing rabbits, the title is ambiguous enough to work.

A Glenn Reynoldsian 'Heh' to TJIC.

Kitty

Everyone say 'awww' for djmischiff's kitty

Party

What's going on at Rammro? A party.

I think this means that I'm live blogging. To my credit I waited until almost everyone had gone - we're down to the some close friends and cool jazz on the stereo.

With any good luck I'll be able to make the rest of Rammro's website look muck better in the next week or two.

November 10

Marine Corps Order No. 47 (Series 1921)

On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of the Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name "Marine". In memory of them, it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world's history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation's foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and in the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term "Marine" has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as "Soldiers of the Sea" since the founding of the Corps.

JOHN A. LEJEUNE,
Commandant, United States Marine Corps
1 November 1921

Zero

Interesting post: The Importance Of Zero In Destroying The Scarcity Myth Of Economics

When Jim Harper of the Cato Institute kindly invited me to be on a panel discussion about copyrights at Cato in their Washington DC office, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what I was going to talk about. I had been spending a lot of time trying to understand why there was such a split among folks who prided themselves on having a "free market" or libertarian view of the world -- but who seemed to completely disagree on the economics of content. It bothered me that people who started with the same fundamental toolbox ("the free market is good") would end up at such widely divergent views. On the one side were folks like the Progress & Freedom Foundation, who felt that strong intellectual property laws (including things like stronger protections of DRM) were necessary to build an economy around content. On the other, were folks like myself, Tim Lee and David Levine, who saw that these intellectual property laws were basically government granted monopolies that could hold back economic progress.

Vote

I voted after work. The poll workers were quick and efficient, the ballot was on paper and there wasn't a line. Breezed in, chatted briefly with a neighbor (our kids play together) marked the ballot and home for dinner. Sushi and leftover pasta if your'e curious.

How remarkable that a change in power (or not) can take place without gunfire, riot or arson. I suspect we're so used to it just working we take it for granted. We should not.

May God forever guard and guide these United States of America.

Not News: Recruiters lie

I'm not sure this is news - recruiters lie to get men to the colors?

Nov. 3, 2006 — An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.

Shocked, shocked I am.  I know I heard this one in 1985 . . .

"It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It's an entry-level discharge so it won't affect anything on your record. It'll just be like it never happened."

Even as a gullible seventeen year-old I didn't think it was that easy.

Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans

The Truck Got Stuck

the chev got stuck and the ford got stuck
got the chev unstuck when the dodge showed up
but the dodge got stuck in the tractor rut
which eventually pulled out the ford

more rain than we'd seen for a thousand years
caused financial joys and biblical fears
it caused some smiles, it caused some tears
but more to the point of our story
for the first time in the collective memory that old brown prairie
that had been so dry for so long was very muddy, boggy, sticky

well we'd pull one truck out get another stuck in
motors would roar, tires would spin
we'd sink right down, down to the diff
we'd all take turns and then do it again
till no one could move then call one more friend
come on out here, we need ya, bring your truck.

It's got a banjo .. hard to go wrong with a banjo. But even so this is a fun song with a catchy chorus - it's what country music is supposed to be. I'd never heard of the Corb Lund Band until this song played on Boot Liquor Radio ...

Roughest Neck Around

It's 35 below or its 98 above
And he's workin' thru it all, cuz baby this is what he loves
Drives a hundred-fifty miles make sure his kids are doin' fine
And he sees 'em when he can but he's married to his iron

You'd better hire him on, he's the roughest neck around
He got the power in his hands to pull the dragons from the ground
Yeah.

Ya. I'm not normally enthralled with 'working man' songs - you get the feeling all the guy has done is play in bars for a few years and, ya, it's work but it's not exactly grubbing around in a blizzard driving a Cat (pot, meet kettle). Anyway I don't get that vibe with these guys. Either the real deal or they're good at faking it - I'll bet on the former.

Videos here, for what it's worth.

Sugar

Sugar must not be that important at my house. To get to the sugar canister this morning for the ceremonial Sunday breakfast cup of coffee I had to remove from the top

1 large bottle of Tobasco
2 cookie molds
1 pepper grinder
1 cheese grater

By contrast the adjacent canister of tea was free of clutter. Make of this what you will.

Frustration

Sxkitten has a new cat who appears to be frustrated ....

We like crunchy rodents; we don’t like squirty water bottles.

What to do, what to do?