How much for that doggie in the window?

The F-35 - one expensive machine.

The air force insists that it is $65 million each, while the Department
of Defense says when all costs are included; it will be more like $111
million each.

$111 million will buy
 

• 222 MRAPs. 
• 37 Stykers.
• 1.2 million cases of MREs.
• A deployed company of grunts for a year.

That better one gawd-damned good airplane.  I mean it better poop gold bricks, whistle 'Dixie' and blow up bad guys for that much cash.

Via.

A gremlin minute?

Got a cookbook at the used book store, printed in 1966: "Uncle John's Original Bread Book" [1]

For St. Patrick's Day Oatmeal Bread we have ...

Spoon mixture into large greased bread pan and bake in 350° F. oven for 70 gremlin minutes;

What in the Wide World of Sports is a gremlin minute?

[1] By John Rahn Braue, copyright 1961.

An elephant is faithful—one hundred per cent

The text of 'Horton Hatches The Egg'.

So the next time I need to read my grandson to sleep, and don't have the book handy, I won't have to rely on memory.

RIP

I've been to funerals. Some in funeral homes with the charm of a school cafeteria. Even the nice ones are just places where you can say a few words, a prayer or two and you're done. The best you can say about them is that they're better than nothing.


Dad's memorial was at the lake, at the yacht club where he'd spent so much time. Where I spent a lot of my childhood, come to that.



I can't think of a better place for a memorial than a place the deceased loved to be at, where his presence is so close


The priest said

When Bill died he left his boat tied to the rigging dock. It took six of us an hour and a truck to haul his boat out of the water. Bill could do it in five minutes, alone, with a Mercedes.

And

Every one of us here has had a moment when Bill would wander over to what we were doing, offer some advice. And his way was always right, and easy.

And

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Bill, and we commit his body to the deep.

And we did. And it was good.


Later I'm driving home. In deep night of the Iowa countryside, behind the wheel of a truck just a little bit younger than I am. V8 motor throwing noise into the night and heat into the cab. My youngest is in the middle of the bench seat, his head leaning gently against my arm, sleeping.

With my youngest dozing at my side, I felt him one more time. Then he slipped away.


Rest in Peace, Dad.

Got a good motor and she does scoot right along

This is sitting in my driveway, now.

A 1975 Chevrolet K10 Silverado.

Real 1970s technology inside: Bench seat. Wing windows. Prominent ashtray. No cup holders.

Drive this for very long I'll be taking up manly 1970s habits like smoking, disco, and terrible country music.

Little Dog - Big Bone

This is a Happy Dog

Pixie, a Toy Fox Terrier, with a rib.

In which I am turning into an old man.

Sears is advertising 'free tire pressure checks'.  For this to be worth the money that Sears is putting into the ads all over the damn radio ... there must exist a whole lot of Americans who cannot use a tire gauge.

This is ... millions of people a day climbing into cars, hurtling all over the city in it and having no idea what makes it go. Air .. tires?  Man, that's for specialists. 

I can imagine there are people like this.  But I have a hard time understanding why someone would deliberately turn Eloi.

Morlocks are ugly.  But they get stuff done.

Thrift

Looking for cheap reading material for an upcoming trip, dropped by my local Bethesda Thrift.

Found a suit.  A nice suit.  It looks like the guy had it on once, maybe twice.  Fits like a glove.

For $6.75.  Being thrifty rocks.

That's all. Go about your business, citizens.

Clearing Tabs

Citing a 17% income tax rate, Warren Buffet wants rich folks to pay more taxes. Warren Buffet is acting coy with the truth about his taxes. And what 'rich' is.


Just in time for the back to school season, David Rosenberg's 12 Bullet Points Confirming The Double Dip Is Here. Ruh-roh.


The president bought a new bus. Made in Canada. He said he wanted more jobs in America - Canada is close enough for government work.


Say it with me: One Term President. It could happen.


55 cents of every dollar spent on 'Made in China' products stays here. Didn't everyone know this?


Max Wolf Valerio: Trans Men need to man up. Which is, yes, kind of funny in it's way but also: heck yeah. If you're going to be male, be a man, not a woman with the wrong equipment.

Customer Service and etc

Awesome

The Front Range at dawn. And sunset. And high noon. I'd forgotten what it's like, having actual terrain all around. The Flatirons ... holy cow that is a lot of rock, just poking up into the air.


Boulder. Great city. It's .. Madison. But more liberal, which I did not think you could do. Without the state capitol. And with more bike trails. A more interesting downtown [1]. And it's pedestrian friendly. Possibly to excess: you really should not take for granted that cars will just stop. Eventually some tourist is going to come along, wondering what that blinky yellow light means.

I've never seen illegal drugs offered for sale so openly. If they only had firearms so readily available it would be a little slice o' Libertarian Heaven.


BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse in Boulder. Great service. Awesome food. Try the deep-dish pizza.


IBM Business Continuity and Resiliency Service. You don't want to use their services. But if a meteor is going to hit your data center, you will be hard-pressed to find a better place to hang out and get things up and running again.


Enterprise Rent-A-Car, DIA. Offering a drink of water to customers is a nice touch. The altitude and dry air catches up to a guy just about the time you've reached the rental car building. The staff is very good. If they were any bouncier they'd be flying through the air.


Delta. You guys rock.


Meh

The restaurant that will not be named at DIA. 30 minutes for eggs? Funny how, when asked, they were ready just-like-that. Also: no refill on the water. I get that you're busy, but the waitress, while busy hustling back and forth, could have trotted around with a carafe? Maybe .. left one on the table?


TSA. Long lines while complete strangers trample one's civil rights and ... Can we talk?

The thing where you have a team of agents - like four of them - hang out in the boarding lounge and you quarter the area, with two dudes at 12 and two at 3? What are you waiting for? We've been pre-screened and scanned and wanded and shoved around like feedlot cattle. You're there because ... why? I get the 'don't want to catch the good-guys in the crossfire' thing when you're at 12 and 3: but you're not armed with anything more lethal than a badge and a radio.

It's weird to be an American, in an inoffensive place like the airport, watched like you're a potential thug, let me tell you.


[1] Imagine what Madison would be like if the best real estate wasn't occupied by a big ol' marble mausoleum and pest magnet.

To My Little Sister Whom I Love

This is how you change a flat tire.

• Activate the emergency brake.
• Activate the flashers.
• Open the trunk.
• Lift up the plywood floor.
• Read the directions printed on the underside.

Love,

Your Brother.

Fifty Years After The End of the World

The Pioneer kept coming. It was caught by an inshore current that carried it briefly to the side. Then the keel hit the bottom, and the ship drove hard onto the flooded beach, carried by its weight, slowing under full forward power until the rudder no longer functioned and the hull veered out of control and slid to a halt not a hundred yards from where we stood. Anchors the size of cars rattled down the sides and splashed into the shallows. The engine stopped, the lights switched off in succession from bow to stern, and abruptly the Pioneer lay dark and still.

The Shipbreakers - William Langewiesche

Pictures, here.

What those pictures put me in mind is fifty years after the end of the world: the last of the old world's machines are stripped to make crossbows, bolts, armor.

Who Gets the Flute?

An Open Question [1] [2] for the 2012 candidates for President.

This letter has been sent - or will be sent - to most of the candidates for the presidency in the Democratic and Republican parties in 2012. Some won't get it - their web site utterly lacks 'contact me' email or a web form.

I have no pretension that I'll get anything but a form letter back. If that.

It would be instructive if they would answer the question. But that will have to wait until a person with more umph asks the question at a debate, or a member of the press with some brass ones pitches it to them. Or, possibly, if a lucky member of the public finds themselves face-to-face with the candidate.

Or maybe you could re-blog, pass it along, send it to the candidates, put a bug in the ear of a reporter.



Sir / Ma'am,

I am asking this question of the announced candidates for President.

The answer will be very instructive, will tell the voters a great deal about your philosophy, how you will perform in office.

I will publish the results on my blog, Space For Commerce, and a mil-blog that I contribute to, The Daily Brief.



Amartya Sen wrote in 'The Idea of Justice' this thought experiment;

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because she made it.


Sen argues that who gets the flute depends on your concept of justice.

Bob will have the support of the economic egalitarian.

The libertarian would opt for Carla.

The utilitarian will argue for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can play the instrument.


Who gets the flute?


R/s

Brian Dunbar
Neenah, Wisconsin



[1] On review I see the summary owes a great deal to - if not an outright theft from - Eric Falkenstein at Falkenblog.

Sorry about that.

[2] Tip o' the hat to SouthBend7 for sparking the idea.

I found the wheat

Falkenblog

I was reading The Idea of Justice by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, now in paperback, and he starts out with the following example.

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because she made it.

Sen argues that who gets the flute depends on your philosophy of justice. Bob, the poorest, will have the support of the economic egalitarian. The libertarian would opt for Carla. The utilitarian will argue for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can actually play the instrument. Sen states there are no institutional arrangements that can help us resolve this dispute in a universally accepted just manner.

I liked the thought experiment better when it was called 'The Little Red Hen'

“I found the wheat, I planted it, I weeded it, and when it was time to harvest it, I did that too. I took it to the mill to be ground into flour and at last, I baked it into bread.

“Now,” said the little red hen, “I’m going to eat it with my family.” And she did.


Nothing more universal and just than telling the cow, pig and cat to go f*** themselves and eating that bread with your family.


Via.

In Which My Economic Illiteracy Is On Display

If the United States can't keep it's economic affairs in order then perhaps we don't deserve to have a AAA credit rating.

Also

A solution for the problem

So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1
trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and
write checks on the proceeds.

I like it: if the government can wish money into existence then why can't it wish up more money, in really interesting denominations?

Time Passes

In a bag of tools at Dad's cabin was a hatchet. Looked at the sheath - BSA stamped on it. A thirty-year old hatchet, purchased for camping with the Boy Scouts when I was in middle-school. I never felt any particular attachment to it, but .. it went home with me.

The blade is still sharp. Gonna take care of that sucker. Perhaps my boys will find it in a bag of tools when I pass on.



My grandparents lived near here, for a while. Farming alfalfa [1] then selling / servicing irrigation equipment. Yvonne or Michelle took a picture of it - better than this one but from the same vantage point - blown up to poster size - and it hung on the wall at Dad's cabin. Now it's on the wall of my cube at work. The description of how a tuff ring forms caught my eye ...

... created when basalt magma rose to the surface and encountered the wet muds of a lake bottom. Powered by a jet of steam, molten basalt was blown into the air, creating a fountain of hot lava particles and frothy ash. The pieces and blobs of hot lava and ash rained down around the vent and formed a saucer-shaped ring of lapilli tuff and volcanic ash sitting like an island in the lake waters.

Kaboom. Nothing you'd want to stand around and watch.

That corner of the country is like that: a constant reminder of violent events in the not-so-very distant past [2].

Geologic calamity in slow motion.

[1] It does not make any kind of sense to pipe water to the desert for plants that one will turn into cow food. But there it is.

[2] And the not-so distant past. It was quite a deal, watching ash cover Vancouver inches deep.

Auden

Money cannot buy
The fuel of Love:
But is excellent kindling.

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word intellectual suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.


-- W. H. Auden, "Collected Shorter Poems"

Who would hire any of these guys to do a job? They don't know anything.

"A guy increases the debt by 40%, GDP growth is on the way down, food stamps are up 40% and to accomplish this we spent four trillion dollars!"

He sounds upset. I cannot imagine why.

A distinction without a difference

...keep it up, GOP, and you'll have me voting libertarian next year.

"But!" You say. "If you vote for a libertarian, Obama will win again!"

WHAT'S THE FUCKIN' DIFFERENCE?

The difference between Mr. Fungus and myself is that he's still got faith in the Republican Party and mine kind of flew out the window a while ago.

Going to vote for Gary Johnson.

If he doesn't get the nod I'm going to vote for whatever nut the Libertarian party cranks out.

Michaelis, what are tanks for?

"Michaelis, what are tanks for?"

"To kill, sir."

"Take your tanks to Suwon," Ridgeway said.

"Fine, sir," Michaelis answered.  "It's easy to get them there.  Getting them back is going to be more difficult because they (the Chinese) always cut the road behind you."

"Who said anything about coming back?" Ridgeway answered.  "If you can stay up there twenty-four hours, I'll send the division up.  If the division can stay up there twenty-four hours, I'll send the corps up."  That, thought Michaelis, was as the start of a brand-new phase of the war, the beginning of the turnaround.

From 'The Coldest Winter' by David Halberstam.


'To kill, sir.'  Korea was a disaster for everyone involved.[1]  The clarity of purpose and will shown by Michaelis and Ridgeway must have been a ray of sunshine to everyone involved.


[1] Except the Chinese government.