Timmerov's Blog

jesus

2012-02-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

we're getting new neighbors. the wonderful nice old lady who lived next door had a stroke. she's not coming back. her adult children collected the things they wanted to keep. which included a statue of jesus from the back yard. one of the daughters brought a female friend to help her move it. it's not particularly large. but it was more than they could handle. they asked the beautiful and talented alisa if they could borrow our wheelbarrow. sure! then she discovered what they wanted to do and called me. the brute. ruhh. jesus was just short of a meter tall. and weighed some 70 kilos. the hens were gabbling advice about how to get the job done. i just hefted jesus into the wheelbarrow. no problem. at least not until i failed to see the paving stone that stopped the wheelbarrow. but not jesus. jesus! i yelled. which was quite possibly the first time i've ever said such a thing in a non-blasphemous fashion. anywho. some more hands arrived. and we saved jesus. the irony of which still tickles my funny bone. and probably will continue to do so until i meet him. anywho. they wanted jesus in the back seat of their car. so i tossed him in. i have no idea how they planned to get him back out again. ah well. god will provide. i have teh faithzors.

detritus

2012-01-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

my subconscious brain is active at night. it leaves me ideas in my head for my conscious brain to find in the morning. the beautiful and talented alisa calls this detritus. these ideas are often kinda off the wall random. in the interest of marital bliss, i've learned to not just blurt them out first thing in the morning. and to save them for later. or not. so anywho, the other day i woke up with this gem that i haven't shared with my beloved yet. (hi sweetie!) we have in the past talked about opening a bed and breakfast when we "retire". but where? when? what kind? heh. so this morning i saw it crystal clear in my mind. the guests haad arrived. they were dressed like either the crew of firefly or passengers. i was dressed like captain reynolds and introduced my wife, saf/lis/bo. i welcomed them aboard. the b&b building was a replica of serenity. the guests had paid a premium to pretend they live in a space ship for the weekend. and to have a bit of make believe adventure. like on the show.

rutabaga press

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

so the other day we had the urge to crush a rutabaga like you do garlic. course a rutabaga is somewhat larger than a clove of garlic. so we couldn't use the garlic press. um, anyone know where we can get a rutabaga press?

3rd party

2012-01-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

there's a whole lot of people who are unhappy with both political parties. someone should start a third party that more closely represents middle america. even if it was a small party that held a small number of seats, it could have enormous political power. cause neither the right nor the left would be able to do anything without the support of the middle. and you know, damn, wouldn't that be nice? so anywho, this is a thought experiment that's rattled around in my brain before. i called it the american party. for obvious reasons. but the beautiful and talented alisa named it inadvertently the other day. we were bitching about how stupid some of the presidential candidates are. are they there solely for entertainment value? but it's not just them. there's a whole lot of stupid everywhere in congress. she said, we need smart politicians. we need a party of and for smart people. we need a smart party. yes. yes, we do.

project

2012-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

the signature event of cub scouting is the pinewood derby. the scouts make their cars and race them. it's huge fun. i'm the pinewood derby chairman. heh. i'm the only pwd chairman the pack has ever had. and this is my last race. my youngest is a webelos. and will cross over to boy scouts later this spring. in previous years, we've had two workshops. this year we have only on my garage. in previous years, we've drilled holes in the cars to be filled with bbs and other weights. too many scouts for that this year. most of the scouts or parents used a hot glue gun to attach weights to the cars. it works. but it's kinda ugly. some of them used a chisel to carve a "grave" in the bottom between the axles. this makes a much prettier car. but it's hard work. and it's easy to remove more wood than you intended. like right up to the axle grooves. which has to be repaired. so anywho. i was thinking one should be able to do this with a router. i still have a couple of uncut blocks. maybe i'll make a little jig to route this grave in all the cars. maybe just the outline. then the scouts can chisel out the wood to the appropriate depth without risk of damaging the axle slots.

perspective

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

let's put this piracy thing into perspective. the mpaa threatened to stop funding obama's re-election campaign because he folded to the will of the public who really didn't want to be the victims of sopa like legislation. the horror. anywho, the quote that got me is that avatar was illegally downloaded 21 million times. which sounds like a lot. and it is. okay. let's put that into perspective. suppose all of those 21 million pirates paid $20 to see the movie instead of stealing it. that'd be $400m. avatar is the best selling movie of all time. grossing some $2.8 billion. that's 14%. piracy in pc games is estimated at 40%. anyone else think the mpaa should sit down and shut up? but wait, there's more. pirates generally, don't have any money. that $20 to you and me is more like $300 where the pirates live. so if you somehow magically perfectly prevented piracy, every 1000 illegal downloads would lead to a single sale. 21 thousand extra sales of avatar. for $400k. which means the real honest to god losses for the motion picture industry are like 0.014%. so QUIT YOUR GORAM BELLYACHING! sheehs.

censorship

2012-01-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

how can we, in good conscience, on one hand criticize other governments for censoring the internet, and on the other hand support a bill that does exactly that? someone define hypocrisy. i'd look it up myself. but i'm writing this on blackout day.

navel

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

i kinda like the analogy between online pirates and maritime pirates. at least as far as it goes. pirates raiding ships off the coast of somalia cost us consumers money. there's no doubt about that. the response is to send warships. which also cost us money. there's no doubt about that either. i as a fiscally conscious consumer don't really care where the money goes. i only care that the "tax" above and beyond the cost of the product is minimal. sometimes it's cheaper to pay the pirates. sometimes it's the warships. sopa/pipa is like sending an armada after a couple skinnies in a skiff. the cost to the consumer is just way too high.

piracy

2012-01-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

i have a confession to make. joe and i have this little game company, delta tao. it's been around since the 90s. back then piracy was a huge issue. a lot like today. the solution then came from the technology sector - copy protection. this was basically chunks of the software that was supposed to allow legitimate copies to run but disallow stolen copies. for the most part, it was a miserable failure. it was either so laughably weak that it was easy to circumvent. which was annoying. or it was so strong that it made the product seriously irritating to use. after a few years, the technology companies realized treating their customers like criminals was self destructive. today, it's rare to find products that are copy protected that way. it's cheaper to accept piracy than to prevent it. lesson learned. we went further. and made piracy work for us instead of against us. i explain. we were small. we had no money. no budget for advertising. it doesn't matter how great spaceward ho! is, no one will buy if they never heard of it. the only currency we had was product. which found its way to the pirate boards where word spread about this great little company that makes awesome products.

penn

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

the other day i was watching an interview video with penn of penn and teller. one of the topics was people profess to believe things that are batshit crazy. oh yes! absolutely! we believe in magic underpants. people coming back from the dead. flying people. space aliens. water to wine. bread to human flesh. children popping out of guy's heads. talking snakes. it's all absolutely true. that's exactly what we believe. except they don't really. i explain. some guy kills a bunch of people. goes on trial. his defense is what? a talking snake told him to do it. cause nobody on a jury of his peer really believes in talking snakes. cause if they did, they might acquit him. hey, talking snake. miracle. for some reason, god wanted them dead. and he got to be the instrument of divine and holy retribution. hallelujah! praise jebus. thank god, god didn't tell a snake to tell a crazy dude to kill my family. course this hypothetical scenario doesn't really happen. why not? the simplest explanation is that people don't really believe the batshit crazy things they say they do. but apparently the need to be irrational about something is an extremely important part of being human. even to the point where a guy is willing to kill someone who implies they're really sane and not irrational at all.

shoot straight

2012-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

social interaction is a really complicated process. quite probably too complicated. way way way too complicated. quite simply, people don't say what they mean. there's this crazy linguistic dance that people perform all day long. probably without even realizing. hrm, kid. your room is a mess. means: clean this shit up right now. anyone want to go to the grocery store with mom? no. was i really asking? no. anyone who doesn't participate in this crap is an outcast. a social pariah. i'm kinda glad autism is getting the attention it is. cause these are people who are not genetically equipped to deal with such subtle nuance. the best possible outcome is all them helicopter moms make a big enough stink about their precious snowflakes that saying what you mean becomes socially acceptable. wouldn't that be nice.

dammit

2012-01-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

huntsman withdrew from the gop nomination race. yeah, i know. no one ever wins the nomination without winning south carolina and either iowa or new hampshire. and since romney won both of the latter, the chance of having a reasonable person running against obama went from super slim to non-existent. so my head says it's the right play. still, my heart is sad.

marks

2012-01-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

ever tell the mark he's the mark? heh. bad idea. it just pisses off the mark. they often fly into a rage of denial. and do stupid shit just to prove they're not the mark. stupid shit that smart people wouldn't every do normally. i make it a practice of not telling marks they're the mark. unless i have a personal interest. like say the player is playing my mother. cause the mark is happy as long as he doesn't know there's a giant leech on his face. shame on me for even thinking about making him unhappy. the problem is when the mark votes to stick leeches on everyone's face. then you have to inform the marks they're marks. and hope that enough of them will get the message enough that they'll change their vote. or at least, stay home. just as good would be getting the people who wouldn't ordinarily vote off their couches and into the polling stations. cause yeah. who wants to be proud of having a leech on their face?

impl

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

in the software business there's something called rtfm. read the fucking manual. in the past, these were written at the same time as the code was being written. the manual often represented how the code is *supposed* to work. which may or may not reflect how the code actually works. ie specification and implementation are usually close to but not exactly the same thing. so switching topics, i'm all for cutting taxes on job creators. that's a great plan. let's do it. well, that's the spec. the implementation of tax cuts for the "job creators" doesn't match the spec. the implementation rewards making money without regard to the number of jobs created. the code is broken. file a bug report. and fix it.

sopa/pipa just say no

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

responsibility

2012-01-17T08:00:00.001-08:00

with great power comes great responsibility. so sayeth uncle ben to spiderman before he was spiderman. with privilege comes responsibility. can't have the privilege of driving a car unless you take the responsibility of following the laws of the road. so sayeth timmer to his sons before they're 16. heh. living in this country is a **huge** blessing. and with it comes responsibility. there are always going to be rich people. and this is a good thing. people should be rewarded with great wealth for their hard work, innate talent, and/or pure dumb luck. the ability to get rich, or at least richer, is what gets people to put in more hours than the minimum they need to survive. so what's the catch? what's the responsibility? it's to examine how people are getting rich. if it's indeed one of the aforementioned methods, more power (and wealth) to em. but. if people are making money and giving nothing in return, well then. that should set off your spidey sense. so don your super suit. spin your webs. and leave the bad guys trussed in sticky goo.

theft

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

a pickpocket takes your wallet from your pocket and gives you nothing in return. well, nothing of tangible value anyway. clearly, this behavior is bad. and it's illegal. same thing with a con artist who swindles away your cash leaving you with nothing. clearly bad guys. so how come speculators aren't in this category? they're called wall street investors. but really. what do they actually do? they borrow your money. gamble with it. and maybe sometimes beat the other speculators. but on average, they can't. it's literally impossible. it's like paying the con artists to run cons on everyone else. in the end it's a wash. except the con artist gets paid. the speculator gets paid. which takes money from the pool. if you got rid of the pickpocket/con/speculator, there'd be more money for the non-pickpockets/non-cons/non-speculators. ie you and me. do people just not realize that the money to pay the investment managers comes from us? ie directly from the gains of our investments. it's like a tax. paid to royalty, who unlike elected politicians, has no obligation whatsoever to spend it for the benefit of anyone but themselves.

purpose

2012-01-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

what is the purpose of government? heh. right now i bet a bunch of you are thinking golly, that's gonna take me a long time to answer. but really it shouldn't. the sole purpose of government is to maximize the gdp of the country. or more precisely, the gdp per capita. that's it. that's all it needs to do. how the people (the capita) decide to divide up that wealth is their business. not the government's. but but but, how's that work? i explain. invading armies are really bad for the gdp. so the government needs to maintain a military. crime is bad for the gdp. poverty, drug abuse, pollution, accidents, and more. all bad. these are things the government should regulate. currency, infrastructure, education, health care, research. these are all things that help the gdp. but aren't going to naturally fall out of a free market. government intervention is appropriate. unlike say gay marriage, abortion, religion, bridalplasty. these have no measurable effect on the gdp. and ergo, the government should stay the hell away from these topics. it's really that simple. or should be. would be if i was the man. timmer for president.

ped!

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

anyone ever notice that ipad upside down is ped! no? hrm. i'm sure it means something. or should. so when you see someone using an ipad, point your finger at them, put on your crazy face, and yell PED! i once had a whole train car full of commuters doing it. kinda unnerving. but fun.

ipad

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

onlive gave all the employees an ipad last year for christmas bonus. it was way cool. ipad1-3g even. the one that comes with real gps. it makes a really nice thing to take geocaching. course the current addiction is dungeon raid. anywho. mine died. heh. i call it mine. mostly the boys use it. i took it to the genius bar. twice. the first time it overheated and shut down while the guy was trying to do the low level restore. the second time i didn't use it and kept it cool. it completed the restore before completely rolling over playing dead. the genius guy couldn't even run the diagnostics. and it wouldn't even try to boot unless it was plugged in. so he declared it a dead battery. which made me eligible for the out of warranty battery replacement program. so, for $99 plus tax title and licensing, i got a new ipad. just like the old ipad. except it works. even though it's shiny and new, the warranty is still expired. ah well. beats the $319 plus tax price the first guy quoted. and beats the $629 upgrade to an ipad2 price. so yeah. my "free" ipad only cost $107.25. was it worth it? google what we did with it. and you tell me.

boogs

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

i found three bugs in one of our products today that have been there for many years with no one ever noticing. neat huh? how could that possibly happen? glad you asked. i'll tell you. the first bug is someone used %s in a printf instead of %ls. a wchar* is a lot like char* except there's a zero after every char. which terminates the char* after the first char. heh. so instead of printing 'timmerov' it printed 't'. big bad boog there, eh? heh. the second boog isn't that the !message shouldn't have not been !printed in the !first !place. heh. yeah. if statements should be as clear as possible. sometimes it takes a while for my old brain to grind through tortured inverse logic. you really don't want to use ! on a function that returns an error code. bad idea. so anywho, the third bug was that the log message was being logged before the log message logging system was set up. so the log message wasn't actually being logged. just like it shouldn't have been. so everything's good right?

new neighbors

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

we're getting new neighbors. the house next door has been vacant for several months. not sure why it took the family so long to do something with it. maybe they decided to sell it in tax year 2012 instead of 2011. dunno. and sell it they did. they listed it for $100k below market value. it generated a whole lot of interest. it was like a frikkin new year's day parade. heck, we thought about making an offer. it seemed like they just took bids and accepted the highest. which is kinda weird. i think i would have encouraged a bidding war. but i guess they wanted to sell. the first buyer withdrew. so they took another round of bids. and they've closed in two weeks. crazy. i haven't met the new family. but apparently their oldest is the same age as our youngest. and they have a younger about the age of another kid in the neighborhood. private school types. so they should be able to keep up with our kids. heh. that's good. maybe we can finally get the falling down fences replaced.

rubik's cube

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

so i got (another) rubik's cube for christmas. i played with it for a while. but it's been sitting around in my newest favorite pattern for a while now. not sure how long it's going to stay that way. if you're curious, every piece is in the right place. but every piece is oriented incorrectly. no idea how long this will be my newest favorite pattern. my oldest rubik's cube is from when i was a kid. it's unusably loose. i cut two corners off of every sticker to make arrows. so in addition to solving the edges and corners, you also have to get the center pieces oriented correctly. unlike the corners and the edges, the center pieces are independent of each other. ie it's possible to rotate one center piece a quarter turn. i have one other rubik's cube of note. i re-assembled it inside a jar. makes for a kinda nice conversation piece. guys who build ships in a bottle are pompous dorks. but solving a rubik's cube in a jar is cool. definitely, cool.

bubble up

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

gee. this sounds familiar. it's all about how reagan screwed you. they say trickle down is really trickle up. though it seems more like a flood than a trickle. colbert called it tinkle down. cause they're pissing on you. i prefer bubble up. money floats to the top. please oh please let the bush tax cuts expire. and let us go back to sound financial practices. where we cut taxes on the midddle. and raise taxes on the top. and cut handouts to everybody. and yeah, that pretty much means we need to get rid of every congress critter who pledged to not raise taxes under any circumstances. huntsman sounds good. i'm sure there must be other like minded conservative candidates. they need your votes. hell, america needs these votes. or we're doomed.

star ship

2012-01-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

so i started building a star ship today. i call it a star ship cause it travels between stars. as opposed to a space ship. which merely travels in space. local space. like within 200km of home kind of space ship. and of course, by building i mean designing. and by designing i mean do some envelope calculations on what it would take. star ship one is the size of an airplane. the destination is a habitable planet 8 light years away. i have a rocket engine that's 100% efficient at turning mass into thrust. i call it the over-thruster. in honor or buckaroo bonzai. i figure the citizens of earth will be so juiced about the prospect of colonizing another planet that they'll happily give me all the energy earth produces for 5 years. this is enough to accelerate star ship one to 10% of light speed. which gets me to pandora in 80 years. give or take. which i'd have to call plausible. which is a pleasant surprise. cause everybody-knows style wisdom says travelling to another planet around a different sun is impossible. and it's not impossible. it's just really really expensive. i need to be rich. so very very very rich.

kfp2

2012-01-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

so we were watching kung fu panda 2 the other night. thanks netflix! the favorite scene of the beautiful and talented alisa is when po and the fab 5 are hiding in the dragon costume. and they run around town "eating" the wolves. never would have guessed my beloved would be so tickled by a poop joke. but whatever. my favorite part happened at the dinner table the night after the movie. my son did that foot thing. then he tried to roll a pea on the back of his hands. what are you doing?!?! he lacks inner peas.

solar oven

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

i think solar ovens are pretty cool. i want one. i made a pizza box version a while ago. it didn't work worth a shit. so i've been looking at parabolic mirrors. they'd have to be kinda big to collect enough solar flux to be as hot as the burner on a stove. like 1-2 square meters. making a parabolic mirror seems kinda hard. one could make a mold out of clay. or foam. and then what? maybe melt some acrylic mirror onto it. sigh. making one parabolic mirror is beyond me. give up? never! i'll make two parabolic mirrors. obvious, right? it's pretty easy to bend a mirror in one direction. just string it like a bow. voila! the big mirror focuses the light down onto the small mirror. which focuses the light left/right onto the pot. now we're cooking with solar fire. heh. sorta. my "mirror" is shiny furnace tape on pressboard. it's mostly reflective but not very mirror like. we'll see if it is actually reflective enough to cook with. if not i'll have to put $200 worth of mirror acrylic plexiglass on my birthday/christmas wish list.

rubber fail

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

so i was washing dishes last night. i disassembled the blender. and noticed the rubber seal ring was a half ring. hrm. i looked around for the other half. nowhere in sight. so i took the half ring to the beautiful and talented alisa. where's the other half? probably in the bread crumbs. so i got out the jar of bread crumbs and slowly poured them into a bowl. nothing. for the longest time. then one tiny piece. then bigger pieces near the bottom. okay. so the bread crumbs went in the trash. so everything's good. mostly. they also went on the swedish meatballs. uh oh. heh. i'm gonna pretend we didn't feed the family rubber bits in their dinner. cause the rubber bits were all at the bottom of the jar. and we would have used the top of the jar for the meatballs. right? definitely. please don't tell the boys otherwise. thank you.

ha!

2012-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

told you so. a while ago i wrote about rent seekers. i had never heard the term before. but i predicted that we would be hearing it a lot more in the press. so guess what. i just read a pro-coal article that called the renewables crowd rent seekers. which isn't quite right. a true rent seeker would be someone who says, i own the wind. and if you want to set up a windmill, you have to pay me royalties. or: i own the sun. so pay me for your solar panels. so yeah, i agree with many of the things in the article. most green technology sucks. we should definitely turn our garbage into biofuel. but not corn. that's idiotic. we should build windmills in those rare places where they're economical. and we should improve our electric grid. and we should develop flexible technologies that consume power when it's available. but man, i'll be really sad if we have to go back to coal.

jok

2012-01-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

a long time ago a buddy of mine told a joke. i didn't get it then. it didn't make any sense. though he seemed to think it was fucking hilarious. so apparently i've filed that one away in the back of my brain to chew on from time to time. still didn't make any sense. recently i heard the same joke. but this time the joke teller actually delivered the punchline. so 20+ years ago said buddy posed the question, if you woke up in a tent in the middle of nowhere with a sore butt hole and lube on your dick, would you tell anyone? no. bwuhahahahahahahh! that's the funniest thing he ever heard. yes, bwuhahahahahah! that's even funnier. get it? yeah, don't feel bad. he never delivered the punchline. sheehs. so here it is. for what it's worth. would you tell? no. wanna go camping? wee. hopefully now i can repurpose those brain cells for something more useful.

can/may

2012-01-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

so i'm kinda pendantic about can and may. like the little leaguers ask, coach! can i go to the bathroom. and i look at them hopping from foot to foot. and i say, if you *can* find a buddy, you *may* go to the bathroom. usually one can tell from context when may is meant when can is said. and vice versa. and it's usually not the difference between life and death. usually. but not always. like say, you're a teenage girl. with cancer. and the doctor says, you can't get pregnant. cause she'll have to either terminate the pregnancy or terminate the treatments. which were pretty much her only hope for survival. so anywho. she told her boyfriend. cool! you can't get pregnant. so guess what. she got pregnant. and now the boyfriend's an unwed teen dad. so yeah. speak english with precision.

check it twice

2012-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

okay so i was inspired by yesterday's post. i'm gonna be so rich. this is what i'm gonna do. i'm gonna start a website where you can make a list of stuff you want for christmas. you add stuff to your list. you add people who can see your list. here's the really cool part: they can make notes on your list *that you can't see*! so the mother-in-laws don't all get you that really cool smiling clown sweater. or people can pitch in to get you that high end camera you want for your photography class. or a telescope. or a first car. or school books. or man, the list of possibilities goes on and on. i'm gonna be so rich.

scroogonomics

2011-12-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

this scrooge says giving gifts at christmas time is stupid. heh. his research says 20% of the money spent is wasted. he didn't even take into account the time wasted shopping for useless overpriced gifts. his suggestion was gift cards. but they have problems too. like 10% are never redeemed. and they can only be used at certain stores. in person. and may have other restrictions. hrm. why not debit cards or actual honest to goodness cash? or bitcoins! hahahahah. i'm a funny guy. course what's the point of you and me exchanging envelopes full of money? heh. how about holiday cheer? and seeing relatives you don't get to see very often. so anywho, i don't see the christmas tradition going away any time soon.

gambling tax

2011-12-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

here's another wack-job anti-capitalist who thinks we need to change the tax system. except this wackadoodle started vanguard group which is pretty much the largest fund managing company in the world. he calls speculation on wallstreet gambling. which sounds kinda familiar. and says profits from such gambling should be taxed at regular income rates. the trick is to distinguish between that and real capital investment in new corporations. which would still be taxed at the super low long term capital gains tax rate. gee, that sounds familiar too. generations of con artist scammer types have erased the distinction between earned income and unearned income. income is all the same right? except when it's your income from busting your hump and my income from sitting on my ass. in which case your income is taxed at more than twice my rate. totally makes sense. and totally fair too. /sarcasm.

ʇsɐoʇ

2011-12-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

so the other day i was wondering... if a piece of toast falls off the table in australia, does it land buttered side up?

elderly autists

2011-12-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

someone did a bit of research a bit ago. published recently. they went looking to see how many older americans are undiagnosed as autistic. they found many. enough to be in line with current autism rates. which is kinda cool. it means we're not in the middle of an autism epidemic. autistic people have been around for a long time. it just wasn't widely called autism even one generation ago. autistic people got diagnoses of depression, schizophrenia, mental retardation, etc. many eventually figured things out on their own. many didn't. i'd like to see this study repeated on a larger scale. cause it would be nice to know the natural autism rate. before we go running around saying xyz causes autism. when there may or may not be a difference in the autism rates before and after xyz.

"nice"

2011-12-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

i'm real tired of people being nice. or "nice". i'm very happy that people are trying to be nice. i'm sad that they're failing so consistently and miserably. you being nice means i benefit in some way. and i appreciate it. no matter how small the benefit is. in fact, i appreciate it a lot more the smaller the benefit. but jeesum crow. you stop being nice the moment you cost me anything. like making me wait an extra few seconds at an intersection so you can be "nice" and let me go first when you have the right of way. you stop being nice when you discover i've made my selections and am heading to the cashier and ask me if i want a slip so you can get credit for the sale which you didn't help with. yeah. merry christmas. ho ho ho. maybe this is why i don't like christmas. people should practice being nice all year. so they can not fail so hard during the holidays.

seconds

2011-12-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

mac os comes with a clock in the menu bar. windows comes with a clock in the task bar. the mac clock can be configured to show seconds. the windows clock can't. stupid dumbass thing. stoic joker to the rescue. i don't know what a stoic joker is. only that it makes a nice clock for the task bar. and gives it away for free. here's the link. enjoy.

c v dc

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

so coke changed their cans. the regular coke cans are pretty much identical to the diet coke cans. which makes them easily mistakable for each other. which is bad news. if say, corn syrup triggers migraines. or say, you're diabetic. which was my co-worker's complaint. fortunately, a single can of liquid sugar won't send him into a coma. still though. you gotta wonder. what the fuck were they thinking?

sugar plums

2011-12-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

it's the night before christmas and i thought i'd share the visions dancing in my head. yesterday i mentioned i'm lusting to get an electric car. in fact, i'm lusting to get a tesla s. hey, why not? okay. let's see if it makes sense. hrm. my current car cost some $23k new. it's 6 years old and is worth $11k. according to kelly blue book's annoying web pages. so basically $2k/yr in depreciation. plus $70/mo for gas is $840/yr. let's call it a nice even $3k/yr for my current car. the tesla s is $50k new. in 6 years it'll be worth $26k. depreciation is $4k/yr and electricity from solar panels is $20/mo is $120/yr is nothing. so a tesla s as in sugar plum would cost me an additional $1000 per year. hrm. what the heck. it's christmas. i can hear the patter of tiny hoofs on my roof. away from the solar panels. to all a good night.

ecar

2011-12-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

has anyone noticed that electric car abbreviated ecar is race backwards? anywho, a buddy of mine just got a nissan leaf. and loves it! heh. i think most people would like their electric car if they had one. especially two car families that drive often. i want to get one too. let's run some numbers to see if it makes sense. i drive about 500 miles a month. this costs $70 or so. my margin rate for electricity is in the $.33/kwh range. an electric car will cost about 20 kwh per 100 km. gawds. that's an awful unit. notice that it's upside down from the normal miles per gallon. ie smaller is better. you want your car to use fewer kilowatt-hours to do its job. course i'd argue kwh/100km is right side up and mpg is upside down. but whatever. that's a different post. anywho, 500 miles is 800 kms is 8 total recharges is 160 kwh is $53 ballpark. so an electric car would save me $17/mo is $200/yr. wee. now, if electricity was $.13/kwh, the car would cost $20/mo. and save me $30/mo is $360/yr. still not a lot. but hey. that's an extra nice christmas present for everyone.

ebills

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

i'm always amazed to hear about how much electricity other people use. and what their electric bill is. let's start with us. we use less than 17 kwh per day. our bill is less than $60 per month. family of four, mostly incandescent or halogen lights, 40" tv, replay tv, dvd player, old fashioned nintendo, onlive, electric oven, 1000 watt computer and monitor that's on a lot, hot tub, wireless phones, refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, assorted kitchen appliances. gas heater, gas cars, gas dryer. no air conditioning, no pool. most everything is on hard power switches. but it's not like we're really trying to keep electricity usage down. okay. so buddy of mine just got solar panels. lots of them. to bring his bill *down* to $50 per month. sheehs. another buddy of mine uses 3x as much juice. but pays 3x lower rate. so his bill is the same as mine. i'm really kinda baffled. i work from home most days. so what are americans using this electricity for? do they even know? is electricity just so free that people don't even think about how much they're using? heh. when utilities raise rates people bitch instead of cut back. weird. i guess bitching is easy than flipping a switch.

darwin

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

so b and i were returning from piano recital. and we passed this bus. he honked his horn. and i see a lady striding in front of the bus into the street. headphones on. looking at her phone. she didn't react to the honk. sheehs. if we'd have been 2 seconds later, i'd have been cleaning ick off my car. there was no way we could see her. she was behind a bus. and before you ask, we were doing less than the speed limit. i got a ticket on that road some 20 years ago. to this day i still never speed one little iota on that stretch of road. sheehs, people. i don't care if you don't give a shit about yourself. but man. have some consideration for the people who have to live with the fact that they've killed you.

java sucks

2011-12-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

well not all of java. just the auto update feature on windows 7. or rather, the fail to auto update feature. heh. but only on windows 7 when you do the right thing and not run as administrator. i've taken to treating the auto-updater as an obnoxious notification that an update is available. but don't try to auto install it. just go here. and manually download and install the latest java. which is a good idea. cause java kinda sucks. and by that i mean it's got periodic security issues. which are admittedly rare. but when one is exploited and you lose control of your machine. that really sucks. really i'm just posting this so the solution is found when i google for it. heh. hello future me. past you was a really funny guy.

tax data

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

i'm going to open the taxes are too high or too low can of worms one more time. apparently i like the smell of these particular worms. anywho, here is a paper by a couple of libtard professors at berkeley. they're analyzing who pays what. one of my pet peeves is that the percentile brackets are too small. the irs publishes data in quintiles. ie the 80% are lumped in with the 0.01%. which makes a lot of sense. cause everyone knows the guys who make $80k have the same lifestyle as the guys who make $80m. anywho, pikkety-saez use a more timmer rant friendly breakdown. there are the bottom 4 quintiles. the top quintile is broken into the top 0.01%, the top 0.1%, the top 0.5%, the top 1%, the top 5%, the top 10%, and the next 10%. each bin as i've listed them excludes the bins above them. this makes a whole lot of sense because the income graph is pretty hockey stick shaped. another of my pet peeves is only including income tax. sheehs. the web is full of idiots ranting about income tax being fair or unfair. income tax is some 42% of the government's revenue stream. pikkety-saez use total federal taxes. including social security and medicare. they even assigned corporate and other taxes to individuals based on ownership. clever. timmer approves of this. they also did something novel. the interesting numbers are on page 6, the right most columns. they calculated each bin's share of the income pie before and after total taxes. damn clever. the bottom groups see their share of the income pie grow by 20%. the top groups see theirs shrink by 20%. the crossover point is around 92%. in other words, 88% are paying less than their fair share. 4% are paying just about exactly their fair share. and 8% are paying more. which actually, looks pretty darn good. so maybe the conservicans are right. the rich are paying their fair share. heh. maybe. there are a couple of caveats here. the first is a nit. the pie is adjusted gross income. so it's after deductions. if you add this in, it makes things look slightly better for the rich. there's also no adjustment for living expenses. if this phd thesis were submitted to me, i'd have them calculate shares of disposable income before and after total taxes. this makes things look more than slightly worse for the rich. but not much. another caveat is this data is from 2004. ie before the economic implosions. this hit the bottom incomes way harder than it hit the top. so again another shift against the rich. a 20% swing sounds like a lot. but is truly? the guy who makes $8k gets a hefty lift to $10k. but he's still living in poverty. and the guy who makes $10m gets knocked down to $8m. who the fuck cares? he's still rich beyond most folks ability to dream. so no, 20% really isn't as big as it seems. but still, these are all small potatoes. the big problem is the tax loopholes. which corporations and wealthy individuals use to hide their income. and/or lobby for tax breaks. and/or subsidies. some estimates put lost federal revenue at $1 trillion. yeah that's trillion with a t. enough to balance the fucking budget without raising tax rates. gee, wouldn't that be nice? so yeah, the conservicans are half right. that tax brackets look pretty okay. as long as you don't look to closely at the income that isn't counted. ie the cheating. for lack of a better word. but in my book, half right is entirely wrong. a rocket that gets half way to the moon is a complete and total failure. so hrm. i'm thinking we should talk less about tax rates and more about closing loopholes and ending subsidies that benefit the few who don't need it at the expense of the many who don't need that shit either.

le 1%

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

link. nicely put. i couldn't do it better myself. even though i tried. repeatedly.

tv politics

2011-12-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

it's not real surprising that your political bent influences which tv shows you watch. apparently i'm apolitical cause i don't watch much tv. link. there are two pages. our most watched show is mythbusters, a conservative favorite. also watch dirty jobs, which liberals hate. i also watched a bit of dexter. which conservatives hate. the remaining show titles i recognize but don't watch are more less evenly divided between liberal and conservative. but far and away the largest category is the shows i have no idea what they are. also more less evenly divided between liberal and conservative. my tv watching is a bit right of center. which agrees with the way i see my political position. even if others disagree.

blaspieme

2011-12-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

so the other day i woke up with a silly blasphemous piece of detritus in my head. what really happened to jesus' body? so the followers of christ show up at the empty grave. scratch their heads. and ask two nearby guys what happened to the body? at first they were like what body? cause they were nearly busted. and they had to come up with a story. and come up with it quick. uh... he got up. he rose from the dead?!? uh, yeah. he rose from the dead. where'd he go? uh... he flew away. straight up and out of sight. he ascended into heaven?!?! uh, yeah. he ascended into heaven. then the followers ran off singing praises to and about the lord. meanwhile the two guys turn back to their stew. this is delicious. what is it? shepherd's pie.

cog

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

i often wake up with random ideas in my head. the beautiful and talented alisa calls it detritus. obviously, she's not very fond of the phenomenon. i've learned to keep it to myself. anywho, this morning i woke up with possibly *the* most offensive ideas i've ever had. and that's saying something. if i've ever had a more disgusting idea i don't know what it might have been. no, really. i mean it. you should stop reading right now.

idiot. okay, i warned you. so at work i'm kicking around the idea of creating a demo game to really show off what the onlive service can do. but what? no clue. so that thought was floating around in my head along with yesterday's post. they mated and produced this horror. it's a game called children of gaza. it's a free download with high production values. it's based on documented real life events. you play an idf soldier. you get missions just like any other first person shooter. go kill bad guys. in this case the bad guys are palestinian children. you get extra points for head shots. and for knocking out eyes by shooting them at close range with tear gas canisters. and for using rubber coated steel bullets that maim instead of kill. bonus multipliers if you can get bodies to land on top of each other. you shoot one of a crowd. most others will run. some will freeze in terror. easy pickings. some will soil themselves. some that fled will come back to try to help their wounded friends. after the mission you have to file a report by checking boxes. at 0900 three () children () enemy combatants were encountered. they were () playing () armed. they were () fed () dispatched at no cost to the idf. if you file a truthful report you get thrown in jail, tried and convicted. you're given the option to apply for a pardon. which you get if you promise to never file another report like that again. when you get tired of that you can do the side mission of bulldozing ramshackle houses. extra points if there are people inside. more if they're children. high scores for each level are uploaded and posted for the world to see. along with the approximate location of the player's ip address. there'd be a world map showing local high scores. and a hall of fame for people with the psychopathology to actually play to finish. and a web site listing the "missions" that didn't make it into the game. there'd be yearly updates with the latest events. anywho. it was just a thought. i don't think i have the intestinal fortitude to make such a game. and how would i get anyone to test it? probably would have to skin the kids so they look like zombies or aliens. or get different testers to qa missions individually. i'm gonna be so rich. but not from this. this lessens us all. and uh *this* is not the game.

ivp

2011-12-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

a while ago a i did a cute history of viet nam. i thought it might be fun to do a cute history of israel and the palestine. i was wrong. i couldn't do it. i just couldn't. there's really nothing funny at all about what's going on there. now, i'm sure that 90% of israelis are wonderful human beings. as are 90% of palestinians. like exchange students would get along just fine. however, the remainder are just absolutely horrible. google it yourself if you don't believe me. try: palestinian children head shot. many people want to frame this as a good versus evil thing. but jesus, where's the good? as near as i can tell, it's evil verses evil. and we seem to be blind to the crimes committed by our choice of the "good" guys. it'd be like you came home from work to find me squatting in your house. and the cops won't do anything about it. so you move next door. and throw rocks in impotent rage. and i shoot at you with real bullets. you hide in a shed. so i knock it down. you shoot at me. i hold your brother hostage. and it's all somehow okay because long ago and far away someone killed a bunch of my friends and family. they'd have killed me too if i hadn't fled to this "empty" house.

eclipse

2011-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

usually lunar eclipses are in the middle of the night. when righteous folks are sound asleep. the last one was early in the morning. and by last one i mean literally the last total lunar eclipse for 3 years. anywho, it was only about half an hour before we normally get up. the skies have been nice and clear recently. so it seemed reasonable we'd be able to see it. in theory, we could see the setting fully eclipsed moon and the rising sun at the same time. in practice, we live in suburbia surrounded by houses and trees and streetlights. didn't even get close to seeing both. still, it was kinda pretty. oddly, it feels warmer before dawn than after it. this is actually a real effect. when the sun comes up it heats the dew. which evaporates. which cools the air. wait. adding heat from the sun lowers the temperature? really? heh. yep. not crazy. temperature is the average kinetic energy of a large number of molecules. there's really quite a wide distribution of temperatures. some molecules are very slow and very cold. others are quite fast and hot. so anywho, the average temperature of the air and dew are the same. until the sun comes up. and heats the dew. the hottest water molecules leap off the grass and into the air. undergoing a phase transition. which takes energy. so they end up being on the cold side. science is my bitch. and sometimes makes me shiver.

trouble box

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

cats and boxes are funny things. maru is a fat japanese internet cat who has to get in every box there is. we don't have a cat carrier. so we use boxes. the mighty huntress was sweet little cat. you'd pick her up and take her to the box. and she's say, i don't fit. she didn't fight or anything. but you'd try to put her in the box and all four paws would land squarely on the edges of the box. you'd try to turn her and twist her and trick her into the box. but every time she'd just casually point out, see? katz don't fit in box. trouble on the other hand, is perfectly compliant when it comes to being put in the box. under absolutely no circumstances is trouble going to *stay* in any box. it doesn't matter how tightly you seal up the box. or how sturdy it is, trouble will come launching out of the smallest gap. like a saturn 5. or superman. cat. one day, trouble needed to see the vet for some shots. we finally gave up trying to keep him in the box. so we just threw the box and the cat in the trunk. slammed it shut and off we went. you can keep trouble in a box if you hold all parts of the box shut. which is just long enough to walk from the car to the vets. and someone opens the door for you. it's usually pretty easy to find such a someone. don't even need to ring the doorbell. the cat bouncing around inside the box like a flubber volleyball is making sufficient racket to attract a fair bit of attention. so anywho. set the box down on the counter. trouble leaps out. sees the dog. freezes for a moment. back in the box! quick quick. out of the way! desperate cat's gotta get in the box. the nice safe warm dog free box. stupid cat. i guess the next time we need to take him to the vet we'll invite the neighbor's dog over for a short visit.

plagiarism

2011-12-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

i stole this from fark. a principal was in the news recently. a 2nd grader called a teacher cute. and the principal called the cops. to file sexual harassment charges. wtf? the principal is now an ex-principal. 40 years of service with a spotless record. and one little mistake. surely that should count for something, right? ha! zero tolerance sure is one nasty bitch, eh?

fire

2011-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

okay. suppose you're a boy scout out in the middle of the woods with nothing but your wits. and your flashlight. can you start a fire? heh. yeah okay. man v wild aside. i was looking at parabolic mirrors for a solar oven. and one website pointed out that it does the opposite of what a flashlight does. and light bulb. i realized i already had a parabolic mirror i could play with. so i grabbed some matches and some dry tinder and some newspaper and headed to the backyard. i disassembled the flashlight and stuck a match in the hole where the light bulb used to be. i originally thought that the plastic lens cover would generate higher temperatures. something about keeping the heat inside. and not letting the wind take it away. but no. nothing happened until i removed the plastic cover. then fwoosh! the match head lit. and the parabolic mirror was all covered in schmootz. apparently the plastic absorbs significant amounts of non-visible electromagnetic energy. at least enough to make the difference between smoke and fire. unfortunately, the match was the only thing that would actually light. we could char everything to ash. but it never actually caught. maybe if our boy scout had a really big flashlight he could have a fire too. otherwise, he's gonna be rubbing sticks.

solar power

2011-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

so in australia they're having problems with too much rooftop solar power. gee, there's a shock. consider your heart. it pumps the blood. the arteries near your heart are big. as the blood moves away from the heart, the arteries split into smaller and smaller arteries. until the blood gets to its destination in the capillaries. then the blood goes back in your veins. which merge to make ever larger veins until some really big veins are plugged into your heart. well. not exactly. but it suits my purposes. the power station is like your heart. it pumps electrons into wires. big wires near the station. the wires split into smaller and smaller wires. until the wires get to your house. now suppose you put solar panels on your roof. that's kinda like putting a tiny little heart in your fingertip. the idea is to reduce the amount of work your heart has to do. the little heart pumps the blood for the fingertip. and your hand if it's got the extra power. wait. so the blood would flow upstream? well yeah the analogy breaks down here. but let's go with it just a bit more. electricity is like pressure. so we're imagining your cells run on blood pressure instead of the chemicals in the blood. the problem is, the tiny little veins and arteries aren't designed to handle the extra pressure when the fingertip hearts are running. you get too much pressure. so the hearts have to shut down. that's the problem they're seeing in australia. the rooftop solar panels are generating more power than is safe to put into the wires. there's not enough local load. so the panels have to shut themselves down to keep from creating an overvoltage situation. which is kinda sub optimal. it's even worse. there's no coordination from the central power station. they kinda go offline whenever they want. and sometimes they get synced up. like fireflies at night. so the voltage goes too high. the panels trip. and voltage goes too low. so they all click back on again. and round we go. one solution would be to upgrade the wires. but that would be expensive. another solution would be to allow only what the user is likely to consume. another proposal would be to put "your" solar panels on a big farm somewhere. a farm that's connected to big wires. connected to smaller wires. connected to smaller wires. connected to the little wires connected to your house.

spacecraft

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

pioneers 10 and 11 are not where they're supposed to be. or more precisely, they're exactly where they're supposed to be. they're just not where we think they're supposed to be. well, we kinda lost contact with them. so we really have no idea where they are now. exactly. but we have pretty good data on where they were. and they didn't go where we thought they should have gone. they slowed down a little faster than expected. maybe they were just homesick. and didn't want to leave home. ;-> okay. the most reasonable proposal is the heat from its power source was asymmetrically radiated away. which provided a very tiny force pointed mostly towards the sun. the pioneers are rotationally stabilized. that means their ass end is pointed directly at us and they're spinning around and around and around. so it doesn't really matter which direction the radiation asymmetry points. over one rotation it'll be averaged to point either directly towards or directly away from the sun. heh. hey! seems like we should take advantage of this effect to give our spacecraft a little extra push. instead of creating drag. heh. hrm. someone should patent this idea. oh yeah. i'm gonna be so rich.

spanking 2

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

got more to say about spanking. my way of parenting is best. obviously. on the other hand some parents are horrible. and their life (and mine) would be improved if spanking their kid were allowed. case in point. we were at the airport. and there's this fat little girl throwing a screaming tantrum. and it went on and on and on. and the parents were doing token things to get her to calm down. and more than one person at the gate was thinking, swat the brat. she was way too old for this kind if misbehavior. finally she calmed down. and 2 minutes later, she gets a cookie. fuck. she only threw the temper tantrum to get the cookie. she didn't know any better. it's how her stupid parents trained her. i blame them for the over the top unpleasantness in an already unpleasant activity. sheehs. these parents are too stupid to realize they're rewarding bad behavior. and really, you gotta admit, in this case, the spanking technique would be superior. the kid certainly isn't well served by this false association. neither are its teachers. nor neighbors. nor society. nor fellow travelers.

spanking

2011-12-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

i see that spanking is in the news again. or rather, anti-spanking. and yes. i totally agree that the right way to raise a kid is first and foremost by being a good example. and secondly by rewarding good behavior and punishing bad non-corporally. ideally by simply withholding reward. one assumes this is how god raised jesus. but to say that a swat on the backside is always bad is pretty myopic. kids are stupid. they spend a lot of time in la la land, not connected to reality. and reality doesn't read the parenting magazines. it doesn't fear legal repercussions caused by a well meaning busy body neighbor. reality will smack your kid up side the head with a bus if it feels like it. sometimes you need compliance from your kid immediately. you don't have time to wait for them to get it. even if you have the patience. imo the swat can't be the primary method. and you still have to do it the right way after whatever emergency passes. ie you have to invest the patience and the time to talk to the kid about why they got a swat. and how things could have gone much better with different behavior. blah blah blah.

lame

2011-12-05T08:00:00.001-08:00

heh. a month ago i was a month ahead on posts. today i'm throwing down whatever.

depression 2

2011-12-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

following up on yesterday's post, we can make a few predictions for the future. let me dust off my crystal ball. okay, ready. assuming peak oil is now, the stock market will crash sometime around 2020. and that will be the start of the next great depression. my kids will be 20 years old and looking for their first real jobs. great. assume we're going to switch to solar power. and we need a terawatt up and running before the depression ends. assuming the solar power industry continues to grow faster than any industry in the history of the world, it will still take 40 years to catch up to the current level of oil production. so we're looking at the end of the next great depression sometime around 2050. my kids will be my age. good grief. it's slightly better, because we can use coal until solar comes online. it's slightly worse, because solar isn't as good as oil. at least not as a transportation fuel. which means everyone will need to stay home and play video games. heh. i'm gonna be so rich.

peak coal

2011-12-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

a hundred years ago the world ran on coal. peak coal in the united states was around 1920. 10 years later, the stock market crashed. as did the economy. the great depression lasted for 10 years. some people say fdr rescued us with the new deal. fooey. it was oil. oil production during the great depression doubled. the depression didn't end until we were using more oil and natural gas than coal. so think about that for a moment. after peak coal, the economy crashed and didn't recover until we switched to a new source of energy. so here we are at peak oil. the economy is going to crash and not recover until we switch to a new source of energy. so what the hell are we waiting for? we need to build solar farms and nuclear plants as fast as we can. starting right now. we *really* want to be the first country to recover from the next great depression.

taxes

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

common knowledge holds that california is a high tax state. and it is. and it isn't. the *average* tax rate is the second highest in the nation. the *median* tax rate is the ninth *lowest*. strange but true. i recently had this discussion with my mother. she currently lives in pennsylvania. there they have a 3% flat income tax with no deductions and 10%(!) property taxes and 6% sales tax. mom's monthly outgo looks like this: $1000 property taxes, $800 mortgage, $300 utilities, $250 car, $150 meds, $150 food, $100 gas = $2850. her monthly ingo from social security and her minimum wage part time job is $1100. she has no savings. so she's going into debt by $1750 every month. but she can't afford to move to california where her children and grandchildren live because the taxes are too damn high! okay. let's take a look at that one. california has progressive income taxes. she'd be in the 0% bracket. property taxes are 1-2% on house values inflated by 2-3x. and 7.25% sales tax. wee. seems like a big win on property and income tax fronts. a person with no disposable income doesn't buy things subject to sales tax. so that one's irrelevant. sigh.

without hot air

2011-12-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

this is a delightful read by a nice british chap. suppose the uk wanted to go green. what would it take? heh. the spoiler is, a lot. a whole lot. he cracks a few jokes. but for the most part there's lots of arithmetic. which will make it seem pretty dry to most yanks. to be fair the guy does work for the ipcc. to be fairer the guy wrote this online book thing before going to work for the ipcc. the whole 300 wonderful pages are a thought experiment. several actually. so it appeals to me greatly. the numbers lead us to a some inevitable conclusions. which are going to be rather unpopular. even for the greens. perhaps especially for the greens. at one point the author quips about getting the anti-nuclear crowd to get the anti-wind crowd to shut up. or maybe it was the other way around. the good news is, if for some reason the oil faucet was turned off, we could adapt and not just survive but thrive. life will be quite different of course. and it'll be a lot of work to change over. but it's on a par with some of the herculean tasks we've already accomplished. like the moon shot. which was way cool. course the level of pressure will go from a friendly, race the ruskies, to more and more people will be cold and hungry until you succeed.

"significant"

2011-11-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

i like to bash the media as much as the next guy. but i kinda gotta heap a small amount of praise on them this time. even if it was an accident. the headline of interest is: petronas reports 'significant' oil discovery. note the use of the quotes. which mean that the word doesn't mean what it usually means. and often means the opposite. petronas reported the discovery of 227 million barrels of oil equivalent in a field somewhere. is that significant? at current usage it'll get us through a weekend. so no. is it 'significant', meaning not significant? sure. it's better than nothing. we are currently consuming oil some 4x faster than we are discovering it. that's what i would have to call "sustainable".

lib'ral

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

i don't think this word means what you think it means. let's find out. do you believe in the rule of law, as embodied in say, the constitution? do you believe in fair and free elections? do you support competitive elections between more than one political party? do you support human rights, like say life and liberty? do you believe in capitalism over socialism or communism? do you support freedom of religion? do you oppose a state sanctioned religion? do you oppose the divine right of kings and theocrats? do you oppose social classes, like nobles and serfs? yes? heh. congratulations, you're a liberal. i suspect that most americans would pass this test. the only real question is: are you a left leaning liberal or a right leaning liberal? i think there are a fair number of theocrats in the country who think god should be in charge. as long as it's their god. and not someone else's made up god. like flying spaghetti monster or jehovah. there's also a large number of people who think they'd be very happy with a single party system. as long as it's their party. fortunately, they're pretty evenly divided between the two parties. one wonders how many votes charles manson would get if he was the candidate of one of the parties. pretty sure it wouldn't be zero. yeah sure he's a homicidal maniac, but at least he's not a republocrat! heh. there's also the anti-government pro-business who are pro-capitalism among a small number of monopolies. and anti-capitalism against any new competition. they're pro-socioeconomic-stratification, anti-upward-mobility. think koch brothers. i think they'd be named oligarchs. they should be shunned by both democrats and republicans. should be. can't be though. cause they're rich. and they either fund you or your opponent. so pucker up mr candidate.

anti-owner

2011-11-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

my car is equipped with an anti-owner feature. stupid fucking thing. to it's credit though, it's called an anti-theft feature. and maybe it worked. my stereo wasn't stolen from my car. nope. the headlight and back up light went out nearly simultaneously. going to pep boys for a replacement for just one is a waste of time in the procrastinator's handbook. but for two lights, yeah, we can do that task. but only if there's something more important we should be doing. like birthday shopping for my kid. anywho. replacing the backup light was painless. the beautiful and talented alisa showed me how. replacing the headlight was somewhat more painful. since it was the driver's side. i had to remove the battery to get to the headlight. the passenger side's light is easily accessible. so i practiced replacing that light. the cable snapped in with a sturdy click. when i started to remove the headlight on the driver's side, the cable didn't seem to be connected securely. so on a hunch, i snapped the cable back on. reconnected the battery. and sure enough. i didn't need the new headlights at all. it was just a loose cable. i could have saved myself a few dollars at pep boys. but not a trip. see? procrastination pays. oh well. now i have spare headlights for when i need them. or more likely, when the next owner needs them. anywho. everything's good right? nope. the clock is flashing. can't reset it. need to enter an anti-theft security code. which is in the owner's manual. wtf? like i know where that is. well, i mean i'm pretty sure it's on the closet shelves of my office. somewhere. buried under a mountain of scrap paper to be reused before being recycled, binders to be reused, science magazines to be re-read, baseball scorebooks, love notes, computer game boxes, battle mats, markers, and assorted accumulated junk. sigh. so now all of a sudden, in order to avoid doing something more important, i have to clean my office. which is actually kinda okay when the boys are off camping and playing. cause i get help from alisa. the kind of help that devolves into wrestling tickling and kissing. which left me in no state to figure out how to actually enter the secret code from the owner's manual into the stereo. the internet was no help. fortunately alisa was up to the task. hrm. i guess her kisses are more effective than mine. i'll have to work on it.

walking

2011-11-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

no this isn't a tolkien bash. i don't do those jokes any more. in the interest of marital bliss. anywho, have you ever noticed that some people walk on their toes and some people walk heel first? i first noticed this phenomenon at work. my office is on the second floor. and sometimes boom boom boom. the floor literally shakes. other times, my hot chick radar sense goes off. and i look over and down. and she's walking toe first. heels kinda force one to walk that way. i have further noticed that the heel first people tend to be gravitationally superior to the toe first walkers. who am i kidding. they're fatties. so anywho, by the theory of causal correlation inversion, you should be able to lose weight simply by disciplining yourself to walk toe first instead of heel first. i don't think i could get men to wear high heels. hrm. i'm going to start selling shoe inserts with a pneumatic trigger in the front and spikes in the back. if you slam your heel first you get a painful stab. but if you press the trigger in the front by walking toes first it retracts the spikes. heh. it's positive feedback (the sciencey definition) of negative feedback (the non-sciency definition). cool. i'm gonna be so rich.

comics

2011-11-26T08:00:00.001-08:00

is it just me? or has anyone noticed that frazz's cycling buddy looks an awful lot like calvin's dad?

sex

2011-11-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

i read an article about research that suggests women who have sex 4 times a week look 10 years younger. hrm. presumably this only applies to older women. otherwise college coeds would look like they're 11. and i don't remember that being the case. unless of course women don't start their higher education until they're 30. anywho. the article didn't mention if women who have sex 8 times a week look 20 years younger. and they only stated the correlation without implying causation. course either way is kinda cool. whaddaya mean headache? fountain of youth baby!

shiners

2011-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

i've stated previously that human brains are really good at intuiting numbers when all numbers involved are of a human scale. and they're really bad with really big and really small numbers. here's an example. pound for pound, which generates more power: a human being or the sun? give it a little thought before you go on. ready? okay. a typical human is somewhat less than 100 kg. and produces somewhat less than 100 watts. so about 1 watt per kilogram. a nice round number. the sun on the other hand, is really big and really bright. both numbers are really big. and by my assertion your brain is going to be really bad at predicting the output of the maths involving them. the sun produces some 10^26 watts. it's really goram bright. the sun has 10^30 kg of mostly hydrogen. the sun produces about 1 watt per 10 metric tons. which pound for pound, is 10000x less than a human being. i took a quick informal survey with this question. the results were split down the middle. half guessed sun. half guess human. however, the interesting thing is everyone who guessed human did so for sociological reasons. ie they know me. and i wouldn't be asking this question if it didn't have a crazy answer. therefore the real answer must not be the obvious answer. we've done the maths and, as unbelievable as it sounds, people really do outshine the sun.

nukes

2011-11-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

it's interesting to look at the list of countries that are building nuclear power plants some time in the future. china is pretty obvious. but others aren't. like iran, saudia arabia, united arab emirates, russia, etc. these are some of the top oil producing countries. wtf would they want nuclear power? well, possibly for weapons. but more likely, cause we're at peak oil. and they'll need energy to feed their economy and lifestyle that was built on cheap oil.

butt bong

2011-11-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

apparently kids in states where drinking alcohol is prohibited are being creative to find loopholes. you're only not allowed to *drink* it. getting it into your body in other ways is a-okay. like say by inserting a vodka soaked tampon into your rectum. gah. presumably an otherwise fresh tampon. still though. it's ick factor high. it's also dangerous. the alcohol is absorbed into the body much more efficiently. alcohol poisoning is a real risk. i think, if i lived in a place where my kids felt the need to experiment with drugs in this unsafe and disgusting of a fashion, i think i'd just prefer to let them down a few cold ones. jesus will forgive them. cause he is that kind of guy.

starve the beast

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

there's a political strategy called starve the beast. it works like this. cut taxes, revenues plummet, and the government will then be forced to cut spending. the beast is the government. good plan. on paper. the problem is, in reality, spending doesn't get cut. we just borrow more. which tanks the economy. which reduces revenues even more. which causes stimulus spending. which is paid for by borrowing more. and round the drain we go. so how do we stop the vicious cycle? i don't know. i don't think we can. at least not until the beast actually gets hungry. the occupy protests are the first hunger pangs. it will be a while until enough people get hungry enough to muster enough political willpower to throw the yoke of taxation off the crushed middle class and on to people who have money and can afford it. i'm thinking 2028 or so.

rush

2011-11-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

rush limbaugh is a pig. buy-a-lick oink oink. how could anyone possibly think he's right? hrm. maybe they don't. think that is. maybe you win my vote by expressing an emotion i feel. the meaning of what you say doesn't matter. as long as you provide an outlet for my inner beast. it kinda makes sense. i guess. sorta explains the palin phenomenon. when i play video games, my character is a hot chick. cause i'd rather stare at a hot chick's backside than an ugly dude's. or a handsome buff dude's. yeah, okay. so when i watch politics, i'd rather see a pretty face than some old guy. makes some sort of sick sense, right? also explains why reagan was so popular. he was very good at saying what people wanted to hear in a way they wanted to hear it. should a millionaire pay less taxes than a bus driver? no! of course not. those were reagan's words. obama's trying to deliver the same message. yet reagan was re-elected 525 to 13. obama's re-election looks like a toss up. unless obama somehow suddenly finds america's voice.

food drive

2011-11-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

there's a donation bin at my kid's school. it's a big 55 gallon drum thing. this is all cool and all. except... there's a picture of a fat lady. with the caption, nothing else matters when you're hungry. wtf? she's not just fat she's obese. like her neck is bigger around than her head. sheehs. sorry. i'm somewhat less motivated to give food to fatties. i'm much more motivated to give food to skinny people. marketing fail.

brains

2011-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

a recent study autopsied the brains of children with and without autism. they found that autistic kids had a lot more neurons in certain parts of the brain. oddly enough, the parts believed to handle social skills. autistic brains are of normal-ish weight. so apparently the neurons are smaller than normal. fewer connections maybe. and perhaps this makes them less efficient at their task. though i'm totally speculating on them bits. the really interesting thing here is, neurons are only produced en mass in the second trimester of pregnancy. some two years *before* a kid gets its first vaccine. in other words, jenny mccarthy is a stupid bitch who should sit down and shut the fuck up. the research is solid but thin. cause most people who've just lost a beloved child aren't thinking about what good can come from a horrible tragedy. unless maybe they've heard of this research.

bird-days

2011-11-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

so my son was born late at night on november 21. the earliest thanksgiving can fall is november 22nd. so his birthday will never fall on thanksgiving. he'll never have a bird day. ha ha. actually, he will. he's already had one. unfortunately, we missed it. he'll have up to three more this century. what the heck am i talking about? heh. i explain. there are 365.241 days in a year. so every non-leap year your birthday time moves forward by about six hours. ie a quarter of a day. every leap year it moves backwards by 18 hours. ie three quarters of a day. so it's entirely possible for your birthday to change dates. his does. so he'll be able to celebrate a few bird days in his long life. and if i eat my vegetables and avoid the anti-vaxxers, i might get to celebrate a few with him.

proil

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

someone compared humanity's endowment of oil to the exorbitant salaries we pay to a professional athlete. the smart athlete invests and saves for the long haul. others live large as if every year will be bigger and better paychecks. they usually end up living most of their lives broke. so what are we doing with our oil windfall? are we living like the grasshopper or the ant of aesop's fables fame? heh. let me paraphrase george r r martin. winter is coming.

rentier

2011-11-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

some hundred years ago, the players in a free market were divided into three groups: laborers, capitalists, and rentiers. you've probably never heard of rentiers. cause contemporary economic thinking divides the players into laborers and capitalists. it's pretty obvious what the laborers are. they're the ones who knead the dough, chop the veggies, assemble the pizza, bake it, box it, and deliver it. capitalist has more than one meaning. in common usage it means you believe the free market is superior to socialism or communism. fair enough. in this context though, it means the investor. the people who put assets at risk. the money to pay wages and buy ingredients comes from their bank account. but it's not just cash. capitalists provide anything that is consumed or used up. like oil, soil, cash, cows, etc. they also pay the rent for the buildings and the land. to the rentiers. the mystery group. the rentiers provide the things that are not consumed. like land, buildings, water rights, copyrights, patents, etc. unlike the capitalist, the rentier still has the rented thing after renting it. okay, so after the pizza is made and sold, the profits are divided among the three groups. and everyone's happy, right? heh. one of the things that pissed ye olde commoners off so much that they were willing to hazard a three month voyage on a teeny tiny ship across a vast vast ocean, was that the nobility had a monopoly on the rentier position. they collected taxes and dues and fees way out of proportion to the value they added to the product. like say, not killing you for living on their land. one of the reasons the american economy has historically been so strong is we've been actively persecuting the rentier class. historically. we let down our guard during the oil boom of the 20th century. slowly and steadily. no one really cared cause everyone was getting rich. the rentiers have been masquerading as capitalists and now have a virtual lock on banks, governments, wall street, and many (not all) corporations. case in point, an economist won a nobel prize for showing that hedge fund managers are no better at picking winner stocks than a chimpanzee. it's a game of chance, not skill. they might as well roll dice. yet the lucky ones who win the lottery walk off with billion dollar cash prizes. that's billion with a b. annually. i expect to see the term rentier in the news more often. cause we've hit the oil ceiling. the economy isn't growing any more. we're not getting richer any more. and the commoners have noticed that the royalty is. occupy wall street is the first expression of this unhappiness. even if people don't really understand the underlying economic principles. they know they're busting their humps and not getting ahead. and the rich kids make more money while sleeping than the working stiff kids will make in a year. wall street is filled with psychopaths. they're not stupid. so they'll hand out just enough candy to quiet this rebellion. which i think will be status quo for the whole next generation. sucks to be them.

two charts

2011-11-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

global warming stopped this decade. right? it not just stopped but reversed recently. right? heh. sorta. this is a repeat from 1973-81, 1981-88, 1988-95, 1995-2000, 1998-2004, 2003-2009. gee, with all that cooling going on, how could anyone even think the world could possibly be warming? heh. here are two charts that show how this works. ignore the snarky comments. someone called it going down the up escalator. which is kinda clever. i wish i'd have thought of it. each cooling period is a flat-ish step on the stairs. each cooling step is warmer than last. this stairway does not lead to heaven.

e-flight

2011-11-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

so a while ago i was extolling how great oil is. and i asserted you can run must things on electricity that currently run on oil. except airplanes. heh. at the time it was inconceivable to fly on battery power alone. well. harumph. i'd like to revisit that position. apparently batteries have been on a bit of an exponential tear when it comes to power density. here's a guy flying a frikken battery powered helicopter. granted it wasn't a very long flight. but man. science fiction, science fact. want.

peak production

2011-11-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

this is an interesting graph. the full discussion of peak oil by an astrophysicist(!) is here. the graph shows the price of oil and the rate at which oil is produced. over time the line kinda wanders around the graph. when the price is low, say below $40/bbl, there's a somewhat linear relationship with production. which is what you'd expect from basic economic supply and demand theory. ie demand (and price) goes up, we produce more to satisfy that demand. but a funny thing happens when production gets to around 85 million barrels per day. in economics speak, the price become inelastic. ie prices range from $50/bbl to $150/bbl and production barely budges. okay, so what does that mean? simply put, the world cannot produce more than about 85 million barrels of oil per day. the oil just isn't there. supply is not infinite. and we've hit the ceiling. we can't just stick another straw in the earth and suck harder. drill baby drill, is a losing policy. because it just plain won't work.

it's a trap

2011-11-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

it's an energy trap. the basic idea is people are going to be willingly (heh, were) blind to peak oil until it starts to affect the economy. which is now. then they're going to do something to replace the declining oil production. and that something is whatever gets results quickest. in this case that means whatever has the lowest startup cost. cause our economy is already pinched from the declining oil. we can't afford to build expensive nuclear power plants or windmills or solar panels. they all have large up front costs. which will pinch our economy even further. which is the exact opposite of what we want. as evidenced by how we vote for the politician who offers us the quickest fixes. anywho, that's the basic idea. so we're doomed, right? not necessarily. our economy makes a lot more than just necessities. it makes a whole lot of luxuries. like yachts, private jets, sports teams. in theory, we could measure a man's manhood by the size of his wind/solar farm. instead of by the size of his yacht. so maybe not doomed, exactly.

time machine

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

if one had a time machine, one could go back in time to before the vietnam war. and find out what would have happened if we had overcome our fear of communism and honored fair and free elections. even if it almost certainly meant the commies would win. probably a lot of people would have died in the aftermath. but a lot of people died anyway. given the latter lot is in the millions, one can reasonably guess the former lot would be somewhat smaller. and vietnam would be peaceful and prosperous decades sooner. but we lacked the courage to face down our fear of communism. which was a lot worse than the communism itself. and we don't have a time machine. so jeff miller, allison krause, william schroeder, and sandra sheuerer will stay dead.

vietnam

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

i've never been to vietnam. nor am i much of a history buff. other than what i glean from the intertubes. so here's the recent history of vietnam. the lib'ral version. the french were like, colony! the vietnamese were like, get the fuck out. the japanese were like, pew pew pew! the vietnamese and the french and the americans and the chinese were like, get the fuck out. pew pew pew! the japanese got the fuck out. the vietnamese returned to the french, get the fuck out. the french were all, le le le. can't hear you. the vietnamese were like, pew pew pew! the french were like, le help! the americans were like, truce? vote? everybody started counting. the commies were like, yes! the americans were like, we'd rather go to war than let you win a fair and free election. the commies were like, pew pew pew. the us was like pew pew pew. johnson was like, draft. college students were like, hell no we won't go. kent state was like pew pew pew. ford was like, okay we'll get the fuck out. the commies were tired of their 1:10 kill ratio. so they were all like, pew pew pew at the non-commies until it was 10:1. so in a nutshell, many people died to make vietnam the peaceful and prosperous capitalism based communist state it is today.

achievements++

2011-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

achievements are all the rage in video games these days. where these days goes back to 2005. anywho my favorite spinoff are the panties that say acheivement locked. heh. so anywho, one day at work we were talking about an achievement based c++ compiler. you cannot use the ? operator until you unlock that achievement. not sure what achievements would be based on. total number of unique compiled lines. low compile errors per line. etc. but you'd have to unlock multiple inheritance. and virtual destructors. multi-threading would be way down the list. but well above thunking vtables.

10 commandments

2011-11-07T08:00:00.001-08:00

no this is not a binary joke. but it should be. heh. anywho. penn of penn and teller posted a set of atheist ten commandments. they're remarkably similar to the biblical ten commandments. which really shouldn't surprise anyone. but probably does surprise someones who think morals are imposed by an invisible sky father and are not simply an innate part of being human beings.

hps

2011-11-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

so i have a new assignment at work. it's a lot like the old assignments. just with a new game. i can't tell you which game, of course. the job is to measure the latency of a representative scene and figure out the optimal settings. there are a *lot* of possible settings. so i end up watching the same clip over and over and over. wee. my computer at work doesn't have speakers. which is good. cause the scene for a previous assignment had some ally warn me over and over and over, there's more o' the fuckers ropin' in. yeah, shut up. dude, i can't hear you. la la la. unfortunately, the new game has subtitles on. so now the dude, well, i guess technically it's a different dude. but sheehs. they all look alike. so it might as well be the same dude. anywho, the dude says, holy piss shit! which is quite an image. even if you don't have to hear it. not sure what holy piss shit is exactly. other than maybe papal diarrhea. hrm. probably should have stopped writing this blog quite some time ago. ah well. too late now.

study

2011-11-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

there are rumors of a "scientific" report flying around the internet. it claims that hammering people with facts make them less likely to change their mind. i of course, don't believe a word of it. it can't possibly be true. no one is so stupid as to hold to their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. whoever published this report must be incompetent. or is just doing it for the grant money. well, i hope they enjoy their 15 minutes of fame. heh. okay seriously. i'm sure there's a way to use this new information. people change their own minds if they do the research. cause fact checking allegedly improves their sense of self. whereas being flat out told they're wrong is an attack on their self. and that means war.

plaws

2011-11-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

so this year's halloween was an obscure internet meme. well, a variation. pumpkin laughing alone with salad. look dude. if you don't get it. i won't be able to explain it to you.

dictator for life

2011-11-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

if i was dictator for life, there would be a very simple tax system. there would also be very little in the form of explicit government run social safety net. the little safety net there is would be in the form of regulations. okay, you doctors and hospitals and medical clinics, the following things are free: annual wellness visits, stitches, vaccinations, anti-biotics, casts, etc. you figure out amongst yourselves how to pay for it. so anywho, back to taxes. there'd be a baseline tax credit for every individual, say $5000. so if you didn't make any money cause you were broken or studying, the government would hand you a check. presumably this would be big enough to keep you from starving to death. but not so big that your life would be anything other than pretty darn sucky. that would pretty much replace the social welfare programs in our current budget. ie about half the government's outgo. the other half would be military, debt, education, and research. on the other side of the ledger, personal and corporate income would be taxed at a flat rate. with no deductions. and no special privilege for how that income was generated. what rate exactly? no idea. i'd ask the cbo to estimate a rate that would balance the budget. let's take a guess. the bottom majority pays about half of the total taxes at a total federal tax rate of about 30%. and the top minority pays the other half of the total taxes at a buffet rate of about 17%. which if i can do maths works out to 22%. a tax cut for most. a tax hike for those who can afford it. and a balanced budget. imagine that. timmer for president.

id

2011-11-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

begin derivative work. that's a nice way of saying i blatantly stole this idea from xkcd. okay so, you need to show one form of id to buy a gun. but you need to show two forms of id to pay for it by check. and you need five (5!) forms of id to send your kid to school.

ftl 3

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

so i downloaded and read the paper on superluminal neutrinos. and i did some back of the envelope calculations on some of the numbers. the "error" is one part in 10^5. so if this is some sort of simple special relativity mistake, that'd be the approximate time dilation due to crossing reference frames. that'd be a speed of 0.3% of c. or 1000 km/s. the fastest thing in the system is the gps satellites. and they travel at 3 km/s. which isn't even close to being able to reconcile theory and measurement. okay, suppose it's a simple general relativity mistake. heh. if there is such a thing. the time dilation would be due to gravitational potential. again the gps satellites have the largest differential. which at best, gets you to one part in 10^6. so... the "error" is not likely to be something relativistic in nature. heh. i'd be willing to believe that 100 of the best physicists in the world made a relativity error. but not a stack of a dozen or so.

invisibility

2011-10-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

so they're doing some road work in front of our house. specifically, they're replacing some of the sewer lines under the road. so they've made big holes in the street. kinda like giant gophers. with power tools. yih. so anywho, they placed portable road construction signs at the ends of the construction zone. which is cool. except at night. one of the signs is fine. it's retroreflective just like normal permanent streets signs. the other one isn't. yeah sure during the day it's fluorescent orange. but at night it's black. and invisible. and in the middle of the lane. first time driving at night i nearly ran into it. now i look for it. last night i had two 10 year olds in my car. okay, let me know when you see the hazard sign. and what does it say? i see it! road work ahead. it wasn't until we were practically on top of it that they realized it says road construction ahead. hrm. kinda dumb i think. well, it could be worse. it could be marking one of the holes in the road.

gains

2011-10-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

so bachmann expressed outrage that we're withdrawing from iraq with nothing to show for it. long pause. well, duh. i mean seriously. big fucking DUH! anyone with 10% of a brain who thought about that whole iraq adventure for an attosecond would be pretty sure that was the inevitable outcome. it's embarrassing that someone with significant political clout took ten years to figure that one out. long slow exhale. no use. still angry. okay. so what the fuck did you expect to get? seriously. what? the oil? did you really think we would get to keep any of the oil? we already had it! jeesum. we were buying the stuff for cheap. really cheap. using force of arms to seize something we were already stealing is pretty fucking dumb. okay if not oil, what? land? were we going to carve iraq up into 10 new states? they're predominantly religiously conservative there. 10 new red states would give the republicans the senate. or we could leave it one big state. call it east texas. if not land or oil, what? were we supposed to bring home 30 million slaves? aw shoot. let's go for broke. take the oil, the land, and the slaves. timmer for best leader.

fairness

2011-10-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

should life death and taxes be fair? maybe. it depends on what you mean by fair. if you mean, everyone gets equal shares, then pah. forget it. life death and taxes should definitely not be fair. life is a game. someone's gonna finish on top. and someone's gonna finish on the bottom. and there's going to be a few winners and a whole lot of losers. that's fair. oh wait. that definition of fair is different from what we were using moments ago. people who want a fair wealth distribution don't mean they want everyone to have the same balance in their bank account. that'd be stupid. they don't mean they want everyone to pay the same tax rate. they mean, they want everyone to play by the same rules. so if my banker gets a bailout to keep him from losing his bank, then i should get a bailout to keep me from losing my house. that's fair. if i walk into 7-11 with a shotgun, i should go to jail. if my broker lies cheats steals and loses a fortune of other people's money, he should go to jail. not sure if the occupiers have figured it out yet. but this is the source of the rage. it's not that wealth is distributed unevenly. it's *supposed* to be distributed unevenly. it's that opportunity isn't distributed evenly. and it should be.

pie

2011-10-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

the beautiful and talented alisa makes these wonderful mini apple pies. last year she made 4 pies. one for each of us. we were all very happy. this year she made 10 pies. i got 4 and everyone else got 2. that's fair. right? heh. no? what do you mean, 'not fair'? you got twice as much pie. it's totally fair. besides, you wouldn't have gotten twice as much pie if i hadn't gotten 3x as much pie. sheehs. eat your pie and be grateful. sheehs. so in completely unrelated news... in 1980, you made $45k inflation adjusted dollars. in 2010, you made $50k. that's +10%. that's awesome! you must feel so rich! how did i do? i did good too. i went from $300k to $1m. a 3x gain. sweet huh? wait. what? what do you mean, 'not fair'? you got 10% more pie. it's totally fair. besides, you wouldn't have gotten 10% more pie if i hadn't gotten 3x as much pie. sheehs. eat your pie and be grateful. sheehs.

anonono

2011-10-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

so anonymous is going after child porn sites. hrm. seems fishy. okay, so how's this for a conspiracy theory? a bunch of anonymous script kiddies got pinched. in exchange for a slap on the wrist, they have to perform some community service. nudge nudge wink wink. the cops are kinda bound by law. but the vigilantes aren't. everybody wins.

bad ideas

2011-10-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

according to newt gingrich, the occupy wallstreet protests are a natural result of a bad education system teaching dumb ideas. huh. what dumb ideas are that exactly? the idea that you should get a fair wage for a fair day's labor? hrm. okay. he's right. our education system should teach smart ideas. like lie cheat and steal your way to the top. there are no consequences. cast aside those christian values. like taking care of your neighbor. he's a mortgage dodging bankruptcy filing lazy good for nothing who can't hold a job anyways. it's all about you. and how quickly you can acquire your mountain of gold. cause as soon as you do, the 99% will do anything to get the the tiniest fraction of it. yep. those are the ideas our education system should be teaching. cause that's today's reality. that whole american dream thing, it's just a dream. go back to sleep.

admissibility

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

so the other day, b asked why evidence would ever be inadmissible. i mean, he conceded the point that evidence that could have been tampered with or fabricated or otherwise spoiled should be excluded. but say there is no search warrant. currently, if the cops find kiddie porn on your computer from an illegal search, it's as if it doesn't exist. which is just weird. to b. cause it does exist. you can't just uncreate something with the wave of a pen. his position is the cops broke the law with their illegal search. and should be held accountable. but the evidence should still be able to be used against you. not sure how you'd punish the cops. put them in jail? hrm. fine them? make cops liable for the harm done from their illegal search of your illegal (but profitable!) porn business? hrm. it'd be a very different world. in this one, it seems some people like to make things illegal that other people like to do. and they counter by saying, fine then. but it's illegal for you to catch me doing the thing that shouldn't be illegal. seems like if we permitted but penalized illegal searches, the balance of power would shift to the state. for a while. at least until the criminals who run the country legalize their activities.