Timmerov's Blog: April 2004

Timmerov's Blog

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

farm subsidies

violent extremism has the most success recruiting unhappy people. people are unhappy for too many reasons to list in a blog. if these unhappy people get enough food to eat they will breed and make more unhappy people. many get their food from the u.s. we grow so much food because one, our land is incredibly fertile. two, we apply technology. and three, otherwise unprofitable crops are subsidized. paid for by the government. using my tax dollars. so tell me again why i'm paying taxes to kill americans.

¶ 8:29 PM

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

dumb birds

there's a large smudge on the window in garrett's room. that's not all that surprising given that our house is infested with small children. except that this smudge is on the outside of the window 6 feet above the ground. looking closer you can clearly make out impact marks from head, body feathers, and wingtips. dumb bird. it's really kinda pretty.

¶ 4:51 PM

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

fairy god mother

the life of a fairy god mother is a difficult one. case in point. my friend chris is a wonderful chap from england. he's like number 1726 in line for the throne. his fairy god mother plucked this beautiful phd md movie star from heaven and dropped her on a bicycle right in front of him. bless him but he didn't notice. i can just see her sigh and wave her magic wand to create some road construction with, of all things, a portable mini traffic light. red of course. i guess even fairy god mothers have to improvise sometimes. but the two soulmates are on their honeymoon in new zealand now. so everything worked out okay. whew!

¶ 7:28 AM

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

u.s. v reynolds

this supreme court case establishes that the executive branch of the government (including the military) may unilaterally and absolutely decide what information is so vital to national security that not even a supreme court justice may see it. the framers of the constitution would be appalled. there's no check or balance. the potential for abuse here is extreme. it far outweighs the government's need to keep secrets. this very case proves the point. the government withheld a b-29 accident report because they didn't want to own up to negligence. if this is how the government is going to use the priviledge then how can we ever trust it? invoking priviledge is equivalent to saying i'm lying.

¶ 7:41 AM

Saturday, April 17, 2004

god's calculator 2

suppose god's calculator doesn't have infinite precision. i illustrate. what's 1.01 times 1.01? 1.0201 of course. 1.02 if you round off to two decimal places. always? what about that extra 0.0001? what if one time in a hundred the answer came out to be 1.03? would that be better? okay, so multiple 1.01 times 1.01 and add the product together 100 times. with infinite precision the answer is 102.01. but if you round off then the answer is 102.00. a noticable difference. ah but if god rounds off my way then he gets the answer 102.01. most of the time. which is better. god's calculator has the interesting property that a*b=a*b is not necessarily true. unless you also redefine equality.

¶ 10:07 AM

Friday, April 16, 2004

god's calculator

when you consider the sheer number of mathematical computations that need to be performed just to move a single particle from point a to point b it just boggles the mind. when you further consider the enormous number of particles in a grain of sand, and the number of grains in the whole universe, you get this mental image of god as a serious egghead with a really bitchin' calculator.

¶ 4:48 PM

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

gas prices

recently someone sent me one of those chain letters about gas prices are way too artificially high and the oil companies are screwing us and we should boycott the major franchises and how things were so much better in 1970 when gas was $0.29 a gallon. well, adjust for inflation and that $0.29 becomes $1.40 in 2004 dollars. add the extra $0.40 per gallon taxes that we pay now that we weren't paying in 1970. suddenly, today's $2.09 doesn't look quite so bad any more. since 1970 the world population has doubled. the supply of and the demand for oil have tripled. the price of a barrel of oil has been pretty steady at $20 (2004 dollars) for oh about a hundred years. supply has plateaued. if demand keeps growing at 4% per year... the price of gas has no place to go but up. the silver lining is that we will be forced to conserve. nothing like a smack in the pocketbook to make people do the right thing.

¶ 2:30 PM

Sunday, April 11, 2004

easter

bennett invited a few of his friends over for a little easter party. mom went a bit crazy in the kitchen. we had fresh squeezed orange juice, cinnamon rolls, carrot cake shaped and decorated like a rabbit, ham, breads, cheeses, strawberries, melons, and more. in addition to the traditional egg hunt, the kids also played pin the tail on the bunny and had an easter egg and spoon race. it were perty fun.

¶ 10:13 AM

Saturday, April 10, 2004

taxes

alisa's retired and she still makes more money than i do. in fact, my salary won't even cover her tax liability. ah well. poor me eh?

¶ 10:18 AM

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

car

garrett painted my car. actually looks pretty cool. we had a little talk about how good a job he did. and how he's never ever ever supposed to go near my car with a paintbrush ever again. (insert jpg url here.) the boys were drawing with chalk on the driveway and painting with water. and mixing the two. then suddenly it was dinner time. garrett wasn't quite done painting i guess. so on the way through the garage the red car got some baby blue racing stripes from bumper to bumper.

¶ 8:51 PM

Sunday, April 04, 2004

peanut allergies

people are pretty stupid sometimes. number one, you can't send your kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich for lunch because he might share it with another kid that might have an undiscovered fatal allergic reaction. number two, there are two proteins in peanuts that account for most of the allergic reactions. it's pretty easy to genetically modify peanuts so they don't kill people. but some idiots are so afraid of anything to do with this technique that it can't be done. number three, botanists have found one variety of peanuts that is missing one of the troublesome proteins. they are searching the other remaining 14,000 or so known peanut varieties for one missing the other protein. when they do we're going to end up with a peanut that doesn't kill people. exactly the same as what we could have been eating years ago through genetics. until they succeed, 1 or 2 people are going to die every week from accidental peanut exposure. that's gonna be one hell of a class action lawsuit. be sure to name the anti-gm dorks.

¶ 4:44 PM