Living in a small town

Living in a small town means . . . you cannot use the Yellow Pages for a booster seat.

Tab Clearing

 When Will our Email Betray Us? An Email Privacy Primer in Light of the Petraeus Saga   Good crypto can't hurt, and it might help.


JEP writes: I suspect that “Mankind” will not show the crucial scene in the education of Alexander of Macedon (not yet The Great) who as a teenager was sent with one of Phillip’s marshals with a small force to deal with insurgents and raids on the frontier. On the way they encountered a stream of refugees, young people, women well raped, carrying everything they had as the fled toward the order represented by King Phillip. The old marshal pointed to the stream of misery and said “That is defeat. Avoid it.” Alexander remembered that all his life. It is a lesson every free person should learn.


What to do about dysfunctional universities that deliver no value for money spent?  Forget 'em, writes William Briggs. The idea is sound. Ignore the old system, which hasn’t any hope of being repaired, and start again. Let those who wish pile up debt, collect “womyn’s studies” “degrees”, and be taught by adjuncts at Behemoth U. But for those students who actually want to learn, we have to do something different. Nothing radical. Just return to the roots of what a classical liberal education was
meant to be.


Elon Musk: Triumph of His Will


The Other Economic Cliff: Why Business Investment Is Really Nose-Diving


NeoVictorian Computing. We software creators woke up one day to find ourselves living in the software factory. The floor is hard, from time to time it gets very cold at night, and they say the factory is going to close and move somewhere else. We are unhappy with our modern computing and alienated from our work, we experience constant, inexorable guilt.


WordPress Accepts BitCoin


Six guys fought in the American Revolution, lived long enough to have their pictures taken, their words written down.

Blue Falcon Part II

By coincidence I have a new home project: Replacing a run of pipe that feeds my new dishwasher.

See, it has a cunning weak spot that looks like it was, at one time, bent over at a sharp angle . . .

Blue Falcon

Dear Whomever Used to Live Here and Installed the Dishwasher.

You had a new dishwasher.
You had a 3/8 brass pipe running up from the basement.

The correct solution to connect the two is not not not, at the point this pipe pops out of the kitchen floor, to bend the pipe over at 90 degree angle and ram it into the inlet valve on the dishwasher.

No.  They sell actual hardware to solve this problem.

Regards,

The Current Occupant.

Fake it till you make it - adopt that pose

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.

Video: Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

We are such apes: acting like one is large and in charge fakes your brain into being large and in charge.  Like a boss.

Which is why the folk-saying 'fake it 'till you make it' exists, one supposes.   Like most folk-sayings it just works.

Acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers

Jeff Riggenbach writes . . .

Quigley's book also explains why the federal government of the United States of Europe & America in Philip K. Dick's novel The Simulacra is a one-party state — and why those who still believe at this late date that there is any significant difference between Republicans and Democrats is indulging him- or herself in childish fantasy. As Quigley put it,

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

From

When the truck don’t run, the bread don’t come, have a hard time finding petrol

There aint no heat and the powers gone out, It's kerosene lamps and candles.
The roads are blocked its all grid locked, you got a short wave handle?
Can you track the deer, can you dig the well, couldn’t quite hear your answer.
I think I see a rip in the social fabric, brother can you spare some ammo.

Corb Lund - Gettin' Down On The Mountain

Celebrities, email, IM: How Do They Do That

Listening to 'Penn's Sunday School' and he had George Takei on as a guest.

(That bit about George's family being swept up into FDR's concentration camps? Some powerful stuff. It Can Happen Here.  Again.)

George and Penn were gassing along like friends.  George has a new play.  Penn can't make it to opening night but he really wants to see it the next night.  George is delighted.   I had a thought: how do guys like this keep in touch?

Okay yes, they have people. Email. Instant Messaging. Sure.

But how do they keep the noise down?

Email. Brad Famous has an email: brad.famous@gmail.com He gets thousands of emails to it a day: fans, well-wishers, spammers, the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, d*ckheads.

And Brad has people he actually wants to email: his wife, his kids, his buddy Penn, because he can't remember the punch line to the bear joke.

Everyone who is famous or rich or in the public spot-light has the same problem: how do you talk to people to get things done?

This kind of thing - a technical and social problem all wrapped up in a meaty package - is super-fascinating to me.  Dogs have squirrels, I have thoughts like these.

I can imagine a close-held white listing service: out-of-band updates to your network, crypto. They'd shred their trash as a matter of course. It's could be a guy and his wife in Montana or Wisconsin, someplace out of the way. Like that.

I might be over-complicating things, there.

The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer

Soon the programmer has no choice but to retreat into some private interior space, closer to the machine, where things can be accomplished. The machine begins to seem friendlier than the analysts, the users, the managers. The real-world reflection of the program — who cares anymore? Guide an X-ray machine or target a missile; print a budget or a dossier; run a city subway or a disk-drive read/write arm: it all begins to blur. The system has crossed the membrane — the great filter of logic, instruction by instruction — where it has been cleansed of its linkages to actual human life.

The goal now is not whatever all the analysts first set out to do; the goal becomes the creation of the system itself. Any ethics or morals or second thoughts, any questions or muddles or exceptions, all dissolve into a junky Nike-mind: Just do it. If I just sit here and code, you think, I can make something run. When the humans come back to talk changes, I can just run the program. Show them: Here. Look at this. See? This is not just talk. This runs. Whatever you might say, whatever the consequences, all you have are words and what I have is this, this thing I’ve built, this operational system. Talk all you want, but this thing here: it works.

Ellen Ullman - Close to the Machine

It does not become less evil because it seems necessary

We are born into a political status. We have no choice about the matter. We are … born under the dominion of politicians.… We can change our political status by emigrating from the subjection under which we are born to some other which we may think more desirable, but we cannot free ourselves from subjection to government altogether. In this respect we have somewhat less freedom today than even with regard to religion. We can avoid tithes, in many states, but none of us can avoid taxes. Public opinion has progressed to the point where it recognizes that abandonment of the church is not in itself an evil however sinful it may be from the standpoint of the clergy. But it has not yet arrived at a point where it recognizes that the abandonment of the state is equally free from evil.… But while we may have to consent to a political status and to contribute to the support of the government, we do not need to over-estimate the extent to which politicians and the political state contribute to our comfort. For government is, at best, a necessary evil. It does not become less evil because it seems necessary.

Ralph Borsodi 'This Ugly Civilization'

From Libertarian Tradition podcast episode "Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007)"

WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF F***ING CRYBABIES?

The CIA is denying. The Pentagon is denying. And now the White House is denying that anyone refused to send help to our embattled CIA and State Department personnel engaged in a seven hour running firefight with more than 150 jihadists.

There is a ray of sunshine in this gloomy cloud of suck.

A company-sized team, with heavy weapons, surprise, initiative, and tons of time for proper planning (which prevents piss-poor performance) took seven hours to kill a handful of Americans, armed with, at best, small arms.

These are grown men, toting guns around their entire lives.  This is the best they could do?  That is embarrassing.

Any PFC out of SOI, who never saw a rifle before he hit MCRD, given 150 men, 12.5 machine guns, mortars, RPGs and 'artillery mounted on gun trucks' (whatever the f*ck that actually means) could flatten the place in an hour and home for a late dinner.

"Are these the Nazis, Walter?"

"No, Donny, these men are jihadists, there's nothing to be afraid of."

These are not people to be afraid of.

Via.

Tab Clearing

We don’t have to pay for freeways!
Our schools are good enough
Give us endless wars
On foreign shores
And lots of Chinese stuff

Children singing the praises of the Leader is a feature of Communism, not a Republic.  Catchy tune, however.


Financing space start-ups: Throwing money into space


CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties by drone pilots


UNRESTRAINED MUSLIM JUBILATION  I don't think these guys get the point of living in a liberal democracy.  Maybe they do.


Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting


Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech


L'Osservatore Romano.


How To : Hide The Menu Bar Or Dock In OS X


The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent

Election 2012

I may have something more intelligent and mature to write about this later.  I may not: I've got lots more better things to do with my life.  So;

To My Dear Friends Who Are Democrats,

If you vote for Obama again you are voting for more of everything you profess to dislike, throwing away your birthright of liberty for shiny pennies.

To My Dear Friends Who Are Republicans,

If you vote for Romney you are voting for more of everything you profess to dislike, throwing away your birthright of liberty for shiny pennies.


Respectfully Submitted,

Me.

Which do you prefer, assured disaster or a sporting chance?

You may say, “But Fred, how can you be so bloody arrogant as to think you can run the country?” To which I reply, “We know that the incumbents cannot. I may be able to. In any event, I couldn’t be worse: I have not that talent. Which do you prefer, assured disaster or a sporting chance?”

Fred Throws Sombrero in Ring: The Only Thing We Have to be A-Fred of is Fred Hisself

BAYONET!

There was something on the news tonight about 'horses and bayonets'.  Something-something presidential something debate.

Apropos, I have just recalled that I did use my bayonet in the field, all the time. I used it to open up MRE boxes. And slit the tops of MRE meals.

And when they served us so-called breakfast in field kitchens? Bayonets are super-useful for opening up mini-cereal boxes.

The value of a configuration engine done right

I love my job.  Love, love, love, it.

We've been talking about the value of a configuration engine replacing our rickety install process for years.  Years.  Hasn't been worth the short-term pain.

Looked at another way, have not been able to carve the time out to make it happen.

Looked at yet another way 'If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over'?

So this go-around we have a perfect storm of a project.  I've managed to build in time to set up the infrastructure to setup the servers.  An actual project plan that says 'build the configuration engine first, then build the servers using that'.  It's important that this be done right, for a lot of tedious reaons.

It helps to be the guy who wrote the project plan.

Here is the deal: spend figuring out how to build a Puppet module to manage something on a server.  An application.  A service.  User, file ... if it's something you can touch on a host there is a way to make Puppet do it.  The more complicated the module, the more time it takes.

Edit crontab?  Took about an hour.  X Windows?  Two hours.  X is complicated.

The genius comes because forever after managing that resource on a server is a matter only of putting the host's name in the right file.

Want XWindows on a host?  Edit the right file, save.  Want it gone?  REMOVE the entry from that file, wait an hour.

If one is feeling impetuous one can shell to the host and manually force the issue.

It's even making Linux look loveable.

Love.  My.  Job.

Utilize existing UAV assets and personnel to increase the greater good

I made a petition.  And I think I liked it.

Go.  Sign.

Before they take that sucker down.

Complete text below in case of deletion

Charge the United States Air Force or such agencies of the Defense Department as you see fit to

Utilize existing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assets and personal to

Find the 30,244 [1] dipsticks who signed the petition to 'outlaw offending prophets of major religions' and

Bitch-slap them into next Sunday.

[1] As of 2012-10-16 9:30 p.m. central

OS X is a supeior shell for running Linux

So I've got this Thinkpad, fred, running Slackware 14, but the keyboard is way over there, and it's not plugged into my monitors, getting those three monitors to work with the USB adapter and linux is going to be a pain and anyway it utterly lacks iTerm2, which is the cat's pajamas of terminal emulation.

Ah ...

$ xhost +fred
$ ssh -X brian@fred
# tmux
# firefox &
# emacs &

How 'bout that: X11 applications running on my Mac all nice and handy.

Theory: OS X is a superior platform for running 'linux' applications.

I am so lucky that I'm in a profession where I get to spend part of my workday dinking around with stuff like this.

Tab Clearing - Obama Has A Kill List edition

The White Rose.

Bitcoin, or How to Hammer in Nails with a Microscope.

I Don't Want to Shoot Anyone (YouTube)

The Triumph of the Trivial aka Obama has a kill list

GM now hiring -- 10,000 information technology workers

Government Dependency Will End in Chaos by Ron Paul

Imagine that—my wife was right. Republicans don’t *actually* want to stop abortion.

Oh That Wacky Free Press

"The American people would rightly not tolerate this kind of concentration of power in government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny and closeted fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned by government?"

Spiro Agnew