June 2016 Archives

A small rumble

| No Comments

From the USGS:

M2.9 - 28km S of Old Faithful Geyser, Wyoming

Only 0.2 km deep - very shallow. Something to keep an eye on...

And not the usual venue for a meeting - I would love to know what they talked about. From The Daily Caller:

Why Did Bill Clinton And Loretta Lynch Meet On Her Airplane In Phoenix This Week?
Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton for a half-hour on her government airplane at the Phoenix airport on Tuesday, an Arizona news station is reporting.

The unannounced meeting, which comes as Lynch’s Justice Department is investigating the handling of classified information on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, came to light only when Phoenix’s ABC15 TV station asked Lynch about it during a press conference.

The Obama appointee told the TV station that she and Clinton did not discuss the investigation or any other government business. Instead, she says they talked about Clinton’s grandchildren and golf.

“I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport,” she told ABC15.

“As I was leaving and he spoke to myself and my husband on the plane. Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix.”

Just great - the Attorney General for the United States lies to the American People. Pants on fire...

Remember using these?

| No Comments

I used to love roaming them - Google 0.1

20160630-card.jpg

Tip of the hat to Maggie's Farm

Environmental groups have drifted away from their original charter and are now doing severe harm under the guise of saving the planet. From USA Today:

The red hands of Greenpeace
More than 100 Nobel laureates have come together to sign a letter accusing Greenpeace of "crimes against humanity" for the environmental group's anti-scientific stand against genetically modified organisms, in particular the group's effort to stop the use of a kind of rice aimed at eradicating vitamin A deficiency, a scourge that has killed millions in the last decade and blinded tens of millions more. The victims, according to the World Health Organization, are mostly children and pregnant mothers.

While dozens of the 107 Nobel Prize-winning signers are in fields such as physics and economics with little specific relevance to the safety of GMO foods or efforts to fight deadly global health threats, 41 of the Nobel laureates hold the distinction for their work in medicine. They represent Nobel winners from virtually every year from 1989 to 2014.

In the past, Greenpeace has blithely ignored the views of scientists, such as those convened by the National Academy of Sciences, who have repeatedly found genetically-modified food perfectly safe for humans and the environment.

But this letter will be harder to ignore. The scientists essentially accuse the globally-influential environmental group of allowing "one or two million preventable deaths" in impoverished regions of the world to continue year after year based on a stubborn refusal to listen to the facts.

Greenpeace started off doing good work - their findings were based on hard science and not rhetoric. I worked for a few years at their Seattle office when I first moved from Boston in 1982. Quit them in 1986 when they were starting to get into the anti-nuclear and anti-any-kind-of-energy rhetoric. Their leadership had been taken over by cultural marxists and the scientists were jumping ship.

Their co-founder - Dr. Patrick Moore - wrote a wonderful essay earlier in June:  THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF HUMAN CO2 EMISSIONS ON THE SURVIVAL OF LIFE ON EARTH (PDF)

Greenpeace needs to be pounded down to the pavement. They need to have their funding severely cut until they get back to their roots and start doing science again.

From United Press International:

Man in go kart flees police pursuit on California highway
A go kart driver was filmed by a witness fleeing from a police vehicle on a stretch of highway in California.

The video, which was captured by a Snapchat user and uploaded to Twitter by user @Tonka_Boy_Dre, shows a man in a go kart speeding away from an unmarked police vehicle with its red and blue lights flashing.

A crowd of onlookers cheers the man on as he speeds down the highway without stopping.

It was unclear whether the man was eventually stopped by police or if he got away.

From the UK Guardian:

Theresa May launches Tory leadership bid with pledge to unite country
Theresa May has launched her bid for the Conservative leadership, pledging that “Brexit means Brexit” and that there would be no general election before 2020.

The Guardian has a nice 3:27 excerpt of her speech - some excellent points - here is the full 17:11 speech:

A solid mix of social welfare and strong nationalism. Reading from notes - not a TelePrompTer in sight.

Affinity Designer Beta version

| No Comments

Came home to find a successful download - started running the install and it popped up a dialog box saying: DirectX 10 (Shader Model 4.0) hardware not found

I clicked on continue and the software proceeded to install but when I went to run it, it gave me the same error message and shut down.

Looks like I need a better graphics card. I am building a machine just for photo and video editing so will install on that one this weekend - this machine is eight years old and a bit long in the tooth.

Well dang!

| No Comments

Was going through today thinking it was Wednesday - planning some stuff for tomorrow and then doing the store buying run the next day on Friday.

Came home and saw that the neighbor's garbage can was open and empty beside the road - Thursday is trash pickup day. Looked at the clock and discovered that I am missing one whole day. Hate it when that happens - my plans for tomorrow are going to have to be merged with the shopping run and considering that this is the weekend of the Fourth, tomorrows run will be a big one. Heading out after this to clean out the last of the stuff from the trailer - I think I will be needing it...

Our quiet sun

| No Comments

Be prepared for a cold winter - from David Archibald writing at Anthony's:

The sun is as blank as a billiard ball, solar activity dwindling to lows not seen in 200 years
The latest image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows our sun as a blank canvas. No sunspots. Solar cycle 24 activity continues to be lowest in nearly 200 years.

20160630-sun.jpg

The F10.7 flux has been in a disciplined downtrend for nigh on 18 months now. It is now only nine units above the immutable floor of activity of 64:

20160630-flux.jpg

Sunspots are a good proxy for total solar output. When we were enduring the Maunder and Dalton Minima, there were no observable sunspots. These were also times of significantly cooler than normal weather. 

The F10.7 flux (measured at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory - about 230 miles North of here at Penticton, Canada) is a direct measurement of solar output - the lower it goes, the cooler we get.

Affinity photo editing software

| No Comments

Serif is a company that makes some interesting page layout software - I use their PagePlus product regularly and like it.

A while ago, they released their photo editing (similar to Photoshop) product Affinity but it was for the MAC only. Serious bummer.

This morning, I recieved an email that the Windows Beta version of Affinity was available - it is downloading as I type (200+ Megs). I will see how it works out.

From Columbia, South Carolina station WIST:

Deputies: Man charged after opening fire, wounding several people at nightclub
Deputies with Spartanburg County said a man faces multiple attempted murder charges after opening fire outside a nightclub early Sunday morning.

The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. at Playoffz nightclub on Inman Road in Lyman.

Deputies said 32-year-old Jody Ray Thompson pulled out a gun after getting into an argument with another man and fired several rounds toward a crowd that had gathered out in front of the club.

"His rounds struck 3 victims, and almost struck a fourth victim, who in self-defense, pulled his own weapon and fired, striking Thompson in the leg," Lt. Kevin Bobo said.

Bobo said the man who shot Thompson has a valid concealed weapons permit, cooperated with investigators, and won’t be facing any charges.

This shooting seems to be one from the heat of the argument instead of the brutally planned and executed Orlando shooting ---but--- had someone in Orlando Pulse been similarly armed, the shooting would have only claimed a few victims and not over 50.

More guns = less crime - the numbers bear this out time and again.

Socialism - Venezuela's end game

| No Comments

Circling the drain. Their only source of revenue is the sale of oil. Venezuela is blessed with the worlds largest known reserve of oil and the Chavez government pissed it away by using the profits to pay for bread and circuses for 'the people' and not for infrastructure development and maintenance.

The Venezuelans got free education but no school buildings, books or qualified teachers. Free health care but no MRI machines or antibiotics or Doctors. When money got tight, the government would nationalize an industry (telecom, electricity, transportation, etc...) which lead to really bad phone service, rolling blackouts and the impossibility of shipping something from point "A" to point "B".

Here are two stories - first from The Washington Post:

Venezuelans are storming supermarkets and attacking trucks as food supplies dwindle
CARACAS, Venezuela — In the darkness the warehouse looks like any other, a metal-roofed hangar next to a clattering overpass, with homeless people sleeping nearby in the shadows.

But inside, workers quietly unload black plastic crates filled with merchandise so valuable that mobs have looted delivery vehicles, shot up the windshields of trucks and hurled a rock into one driver’s eye. Soldiers and police milling around the loading depots give this neighborhood the feel of a military garrison.

“It’s just cheese,” said Juan Urrea, a 29-year-old driver, as workers unloaded thousands of pounds of white Venezuelan queso from his delivery truck. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

The second story is going to hit them really hard - from Bloomberg:

Venezuela’s Oil Output Decline Accelerates as Drillers Go Unpaid
Venezuela’s oil output, already the lowest since 2009, is set to slide further this year as contractors scale back drilling after the cash-strapped country fell more than $1 billion behind in payments.

The Latin American nation’s oil production, which generates 95 percent of export revenue, will decline by about 11 percent to 2.1 million barrels a day by the end of the year, Barclays Plc estimates. Output is falling largely because oil-services companies aren’t being paid, according to the International Energy Agency.

And some numbers:

Schlumberger Ltd., the world’s largest oil-services company by market value, was owed $1.2 billion by PDVSA as of March 31, according to an April 27 filing. Halliburton Co. said last month the amount it was owed rose 7.4 percent in the first quarter to $756 million.

The number of rigs drilling for oil in Venezuela fell by 10 to 59 in May, the lowest level in more than a year, according to Baker Hughes Inc.

Owed $1.2 Billion dollars. If you had $1.2 billion dollars and spent $330,000 dollars each and every day, your money would last for about ten years give or take a couple days. By shorting the people producing the actual wealth, they are eating their own seed corn.

Yeah - call me skeptical but I do not ever see a way where socialism will work. It never has and these scenarios have played out throughout this worlds history. Look at the American Colonists First Thanksgiving for a sterling example.

Early electronic music synthesizers

| No Comments

One major name in early electronic music was Daphne Oram - she co-founded the seminal BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Doctor Who soundtracks and a lot of film scoring) and developed a system of creating sounds and compositions using drawings. She had designed a music synthesizer where the notes were entered on a strip of translucent film which was run through a scanner and sensors would program the synth to produce the sounds. Her vision for the full machine was thwarted by the technology of the time and it was never fully realized during her lifetime.

From The University of London - Goldsmiths:

Student builds Daphne Oram’s unfinished ‘Mini-Oramics’
A Goldsmiths, University of London researcher has built a music synthesiser and sequencer designed – but never realised - by electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram more than 40 years ago.

PhD student Tom Richards has spent the last three years poring over an unfinished project by Daphne Oram (1925 – 2003), one of the central figures in the development of British experimental electronic music.

Oram was the co-founder and first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and is credited with the invention of a new form of ‘drawn sound’ synthesis – Oramics, which was recently the subject of the ‘Oramics to Electronica’ exhibition at the Science Museum.

And the machine in question:

Dr Mick Grierson, director of Goldsmiths’ Daphne Oram Archive, and Tim Boon head of research at the Science Museum, invited Tom Richards to do a practice led PhD on the subject of Oramics. Tom decided to re-imagine and then build Mini-Oramics.

“The rules were simple. I had to imagine I was building the machine in 1973, interpreting Daphne Oram’s plans and using only the technologies that existed at that time.”

Tom is now working with six contemporary composers, giving each of them a few days to play with the Mini-Oramics machine.

One of the composers, London-based sound artist Ain Bailey has recently been working with the MiniOramics synthesiser. “It’s a fantastic instrument. I’m not a formally-trained musician, so it’s been great to work with an instrument where I can create the sounds graphically,” she said.

Very cool! Some more on Daphne Oram

Not really my style of music (more into melodic ambient) but Daphne was a major figure too often overlooked in music today. Nice touch that Tom is inviting other people to use the synthesizer - developing some new fresh voices.

Showing no respect - update

| No Comments

Two days ago, I posted about how Russian intelligence and security services have been harassing our intelligence and security services in Moscow as well as several other European cities. Here is another example from The Washington Post:

Russian FSB guard attacked U.S. diplomat outside Moscow embassy
In the early morning of June 6, a uniformed Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) guard stationed outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow attacked and beat up a U.S. diplomat who was trying to enter the compound, according to four U.S. officials who were briefed on the incident.

This previously unreported attack occurred just steps from the entrance to the U.S. Embassy complex, which is located in the Presnensky District in Moscow’s city center. After being tackled by the FSB guard, the diplomat suffered a broken shoulder, among other injuries. He was eventually able to enter the embassy and was then flown out of Russia to receive urgent medical attention, administration officials confirmed to me. He remains outside of Russia.

Thanks Barry and John and Hillary - every other nation on the planet considers our nation to be an impotent joke on the world stage. You built that! Own it because we are not going to forget it.

From Reuters:

Germany waters down climate protection plan
Germany has abandoned plans to set out a timetable to exit coal-fired power production and scrapped C02 emissions reduction goals for individual sectors, according to the latest draft of an environment ministry document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

An earlier version of the draft document that was leaked in May had suggested that Germany should phase out coal-fired power production "well before 2050" as part of a package of measures to help Berlin achieve its climate goals.

The new version, which was revised following consultation with the economy and energy ministry, has also deleted specific concrete C02 emissions savings targets for the energy, industry, transport and agriculture sectors.

Glad to see the clearer minds prevailing. The wellbeing of people depends on plentiful energy. Carbon Dioxide is the least of our worries - it is plant food.

Both Washington State Senators are airhead progressives. Patty Murray is especially egregious because she is just not that bright (here, here, here, here and here). She is easily manipulated by the schemers in the Senate - a dupe. This photo illustrates it perfectly - from The Bellingham Herald:

20160629-murray.jpg

Here she is on camera making a point but she is flanked by Chuck the Schmuck Schumer (the Senator from Goldman Sachs) and Harry Reid who lost sight in one eye after being hit by a rubber resistance band while exercising (ie: he was beaten up because some Las Vegas criminal did not get their way). From The Herald:

Why the Zika filibuster is a major setback for wounded veterans
Sen. Patty Murray felt compelled Tuesday to vote against one of her top priorities for veterans — a plan that she’s pursued for four years.

Her decision to join a Democratic filibuster that blocked the Republican Zika-funding bill also dealt a setback to her plan to pay for in-vitro fertilization services for veterans whose fertility was damaged or destroyed while in the military.

The Zika bill was full of pork - the Republicans put in their own earmarks to limit it and that is why it is being filibustered by the Democrats. From Breitbart:

Senate Democrats Block Zika Funding Because It Doesn’t Fund Planned Parenthood
Senate Democrats are blocking a $1.1 billion Republican measure that would fund efforts to fight the Zika virus because it does not contain funding for Planned Parenthood.

Through its alliance with the Democrat Party and the pro-abortion mainstream media, Planned Parenthood has promoted the notion that its biggest money-makers — abortion and birth control — are the means to combat the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which is being linked to cases of a rare birth defect called microcephaly, primarily in Brazil.

Time to clean house from top to bottom... Term Limits now!

Well crap - RIP Alvin Toffler

| No Comments

From the New York Times:

Alvin Toffler, Author of ‘Future Shock,’ Dies at 87
Alvin Toffler, the celebrated author of “Future Shock,” the first in a trilogy of best-selling books that presciently forecast how people and institutions of the late 20th century would contend with the immense strains and soaring opportunities of accelerating change, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.

His death was confirmed by his consulting firm, Toffler Associates, based in Reston, Va.

Mr. Toffler was a self-trained social science scholar and successful freelance magazine writer in the mid-1960s when he decided to spend five years studying the underlying causes of a cultural upheaval that he saw overtaking the United States and other developed countries.

The fruit of his research, “Future Shock” (1970), sold millions of copies and was translated into dozens of languages, catapulting Mr. Toffler to international fame. It is still in print.

In the book, in which he synthesized disparate facts from every corner of the globe, he concluded that the convergence of science, capital and communications was producing such swift change that it was creating an entirely new kind of society.

He was an amazing futurist - the first person to actually figure out the consequences of our technology.

From Yahoo/Agence France Presse:

Top US diplomat Kerry says Brexit may not happen
US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Britain's vote to leave the European Union might never be implemented and that London is in no hurry to go.

Speaking one day after talks with Prime Minister David Cameron, Kerry said the outgoing British leader feels "powerless" to negotiate a departure he does not want.

"This is a very complicated divorce," Kerry told the Aspen Ideas Festival, referring to Britain's negotiated exit from the EU after last week's "Brexit" referendum.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda... The guy is a moron.

Meet Stoffel the Honeybadger

| No Comments

Awww cute!

Tip of the hat to Terrierman's Daily Dose

Stoffel's backstory - he was raised by humans from infancy so cannot be released to the wild. His home is the Moholoholo Rehab Centre in South Africa.

Our EPA - its budget

| No Comments

An interesting look at what the EPA is spending its money on - from Forbes:

The EPA's 'Climate Change Liberation Army'
Why does the EPA need a $715 million police force, a $170 million PR Machine, a nearly $1 billion employment agency for seniors, and a $1.2 billion in-house law firm?

During last week’s Democratic presidential primary debate, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the most important adversary of the United States was “climate change.” The EPA is ready for the fight in ways taxpayers haven’t imagined.

Recently, our organization, American Transparency, published our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (PDF). We captured and analyzed $110 billion worth of EPA contracts (FY2000-2014), grants (FY2000-2014), salaries (FY2007-2014) and bonuses (FY2007-2014).

And some numbers:

Since 2006, the EPA Criminal Enforcement Program spent approximately $715 million fighting ‘enviro-crime.’  With 200 Special Agents, the EPA also spent millions of dollars on military-style weaponry.

For example: $2.1 million purchased guns and ammo up to 300MM – the majority of these expenditures were on weapons “up to 30MM” ($1.73 million).

Other checkbook entries included body armor, camouflage and deceptive equipment, unmanned aircraft, night vision, radar equipment, tactical sets, kits, and outfits, transport vehicles passenger and troop, and $6.6 million in joint “policing” projects with Homeland Security. EPA also purchased shotgun ammunition, Bushmaster rifles, mobile GPS units, puncture-protective gloves, amphibious assault ships, and much more.

In addition to the EPA police force, a division of nearly 200 “Public Affairs Officers” were paid salaries of $145 million since 2007. Seven out of 10 PR staffers also received performance bonuses. But even that wasn’t enough. The EPA also spent $26 million with outside PR consulting firms since 2000.

Yet, the EPA’s PR spending was dwarfed by the lawyers. The EPA loves lawyers. Nearly $1.2 billion in salary flowed to more than 1,000 lawyers since 2007. In fact, more money was spent on “General Attorneys” than on chemists, general health scientists, ecologists, chemists, microbiologists, geologists, hydrologists, toxicologists, biologists, physical scientists, and health physicists combined.

Emphasis mine - this is telling. This organization is a perfect example of Pournelle's Iron Law:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisers in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

The EPA is supremely guilty of this - the cure? An 80% budget cut - knock them back down to where they should be; a group of concerned scientists looking out for our environment. Not some unelected mega-maniacal bureaucracy only caring for its own existence and unbeholden to the concerns of us citizens.

I could have told you that - our Sun

| No Comments

Bundle up - it is going to be a cold winter and this is just the start. From News Corp of Australia:

The sun has gone blank twice this month. This is what it means
YOU may not have noticed but our sun has gone as blank as a cue ball. As in, it’s lost its spots.

According to scientists, this unsettling phenomenon is a sign we are heading for a mini ice age.

Meteorologist and renowned sun-watcher Paul Dorian raised the alarm in his latest report, which has sparked a mild panic about an impending Game of Thrones-style winter not seen since the 17th century.

A bit more:

“The blank sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching and there will be an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years.

“At first, the blankness will stretch for just a few days at a time, then it’ll continue for weeks at a time, and finally it should last for months at a time when the sunspot cycle reaches its nadir. The next solar minimum phase is expected to take place around 2019 or 2020.”

And the result of a quiet sun?

Given that the sun is the main driver of all weather and climate, the sinister-sounding “blankness” to which Mr Dorian refers has some experts predicting a “Maunder Minimum” phase similar to one which began in 1645 and which is referred to as the “Little Ice Age”.

The Maunder Minimum, named after solar astronomer Edward Maunder, lasted for a brutal 70 years and was so cold the Thames froze over.

A slightly less intense ice age-like period called the Dalton Minimum — after British Meteorologist John Dalton — arrived decades later and lasted from about 1790 to 1830.

“If history is any guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a cooling impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottommost layer of Earth’s atmosphere — and where we all live,” Mr Dorian says.

Mr Dorian’s findings back research by professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University, who warned that a predicted sharp decline in solar activity between 2020 and 2050 was a sign another ice age was coming.

“I am absolutely confident in our research,” Prof Zharkova said.

I had written about Professor Zharkova's work a year ago here: About those sunspots - don't put away your long underwear yet

This is serious - I am bringing in three times my normal load of firewood for this winter. Every indication points to a long, cold and snowy one.

Wonderful news - that 'S' company

| No Comments

There is a German company involved in large-scale industrial power generation and distribution, HVAC, motor controls, etc... Its name begins with an 'S'. I have never ever had good results with their products and have heard stories that would make your skin crawl. Their medical imaging and laboratory instrumentation divisions seem to enjoy a much more reliable product line though.

Some news from the UK Guardian:

Siemens freezes new UK wind power investment following Brexit vote
Siemens is putting new wind power investment plans in the UK on hold due to uncertainty caused by last week’s Brexit vote, the Germany energy company has told the Guardian.

A £310m manufacturing hub in Hull that employs 1,000 people will not be affected by the decision, and should still begin producing blades and assembling turbines next year.

But Siemens, one of the few firms to openly back a Remain vote, will not be making new investments until the future of the UK’s relationship with Europe becomes clearer.

Emphasis mine - playing politics at the same time that a significant measure of your income comes from taxpayer Euros in the form of EU subsidies. Not cool. Still, good that English taxpayers will no longer be beholden to paying for an intermittent non-baseload source of electrical power that will kill senior citizens when they are forced to decide between paying to heat their homes or buying food. Energy costs skyrocketing - that kind of thing...

Juergen Maier, the firm’s UK CEO, said that an existing blueprint to export offshore wind turbine machinery from the Hull hub was now up in the air.

He said: “Those plans were only beginning to happen and I expect that they will stall until we can work out exactly what the [new government’s] plan is, how we can participate in EU research programmes, and until all the issues around tariffs and trade have been sorted out.”

Juergen is playing a classical guilt-trip. The mis-management of the EU and the spate of illegal 'refugees' has caused a dive in employment numbers. Juergen is holding the 1,000 or so jobs hostage - if you do not do what we want, these people will be unemployed.

Like I said, the next six months are going to be brutal but, soon enough, the people will be able to turn around to the EU and say: Screw You - we're from England!

Been listening to a lot of Ray Wylie Hubbard - a new discovery. Here is a song of his that sums up my thoughts:

Home from the hunt

| No Comments

Stopped at Costco and picked up some meat for the next month or so. Grilling some New York steak tonight as Jimmy is working up a storm at the farm and he likes to eat so we feed him.

Got a pack of two tri-tip steaks - a little bit more fat so the flavor is wonderful. I usually grill them too but I cryovac'd one of them to freeze for later and have the other under the broiler to sear each side. Planning to cryovac this one too but cook it sous vide starting tonight. Sous Vide is incredible and you can do it in a beer cooler without too much fussing. I use an old laboratory temperature-controlled water bath. Stand-alone controllers are now very cheap - here (best rated) and here (decent).

Finally, going to do some 'Q' in a few days - got a beef brisket and some pork belly. Time to fire up the smoker. I usually do ten pounds or so and then portion out and freeze the meat for future meals.

From Associated Press:

SUSPECTED IS ATTACK KILLS DOZENS AT ISTANBUL'S AIRPORT
Suspected Islamic State group extremists have hit the international terminal of Istanbul's Ataturk airport, killing dozens of people and wounding many others, Turkish officials said Tuesday.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 31 people were killed in the attack while another senior government official told The Associated Press it could climb much higher.

The senior official at first said close to 50 people had already died, but later said that the figure was expected to rise to close to 50.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol, said as many as four militants may have been involved in the attack.

Third largest airport in Europe and Eleventh in the world.

We are in Day 23 of Ramadan and the death count is well over 1,200:

20160628-ramadan.jpg

No update yet on the huge number of Christian or Buddhist atrocities.

Nigel is addressing the Brussels congress after the BREXIT vote - we need more people like him:

The groomer took a butt-load of fur off her - she is nice and cool now.

She was a lot more nervous going to this groomer even though the groomer's 'bedside manner' was fantastic - probably still remembering that dream from this morning.

Unpack the truck and start fixing dinner - steak, broccoli, corn on the cob and mashed spuds.

More spew later this evening.

Heading off to town this morning

| No Comments

Now that Grace is fully recovered from her bad dream, I am taking her in for her previously scheduled haircut. She has blown through her winter coat and since we are entering summer, I am having her shaved down to 3/8"

Lulu's nephew is coming out to work at the farm so will pick up a couple of steaks for dinner tonight.

Back in a couple of hours...

Big scare this morning

| No Comments

Grace woke us up around 4:00AM - we thought that she was having some kind of seisure. Turns out it was just a very powerful and very bad dream. She was fighting something off in deep sleep. After a few minutes, she woke up to this level and was fine and has been fine since.

Talk about a scare!

I find it strange that a lot of people really really like what Bernie or Hillary have to say - both are promising more government and by its nature, a much bigger government. Then they howl to the rafters when they actually GET a bigger government.

Case in point from The Register:

Visiting America? US border agents want your Twitter, Facebook URLs
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency wants to collect links to social network accounts of people visiting the Land of the FreeTM.

Under new proposals, each traveler filling out an I-94 travel form or applying for an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) visa will be asked for "information associated with your online presence/social media identifier."

In other words, you'll be asked to hand over your Twitter and Instagram handles, Facebook and LinkedIn URLs, and so on, so you can be watched.

"It will be an optional data field to request social media identifiers to be used for vetting purposes, as well as applicant contact information," the proposal states.

But it is just for visitors to our shores - not for our citizens. For now - just you wait. And not a peep about the illegal immigrants streaming over our Southern borders - you know, the ones with ties to ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood, the career criminals whom we are supporting with our tax dollars. How do the ISIS people coordinate? Facebook and Twitter accounts. Shouldn't we get to know their handles?

Just because you have a good business model doesn't mean that you are equally as wise when it comes to other trains of thought. To think so would be a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

From The Gateway Pundit:

Anti-Trump Open Borders Advocate Zuckerberg Buys Hawaii Property – Puts Up Wall
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lashed out at Donald Trump in April at the annual developer’s conference over his proposed border wall paid by Mexico.

And now this:

For years, Kilauea, Kauai resident Gy Hall has enjoyed the view of the ocean and the breeze along Koolau Road. Then, a few weeks ago, a crew started to build a wall which happens to belong to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“The feeling of it is really oppressive. It’s immense,” Hall said. “It’s really sad that somebody would come in, and buy a huge piece of land and the first thing they do is cut off this view that’s been available and appreciative by the community here for years.”

Hall said the wall extends along Koolau Road, near mile marker 20, and is about six-feet tall. He said its projected length and completion are unclear.

Multiple attempts by TGI to contact Shawn Smith, former Falk Partners manager, who Hall says sold some of the $200 million, 700-plus-acre property to the billionaire, were unsuccessful Friday.

Talk about being insensitive to the local culture. Coming in and stamping over everything. I do not think he is going to be very popular with the kanaka or the kama'aina. Problem is that even if he does get ostracized and sells the property, the new owner would probably leave the wall there.

A couple of field day photos

| No Comments

I was too busy to take photos but other people did - here are three of them:

201606270field01.jpg

Lulu taking dinner orders with me in the background slaving over a hot grill.

201606270field02.jpg

The Granddaughter of one of our club members - she is licensed and on the air a lot.

201606270field03.jpg

One of our beam antennae - these are directional and can be rotated to home in on a strong signal. We had two beams, one vertical, two long-wire and one Windom. It was interesting to compare sensitivities between them all. I am looking at two Windoms for my home station (one North/South and one East/West) but need to get them high in the air - 65 feet would be a good start. May just go with a beam and a mast for expediency - telphone poles are quite expensive...

Cisco (and other companies) makes the routers and switches that form the backbone of the internet. Other companies are wanting to compete in this expanding and lucrative market. Cisco is using lawyers and legislation to block them. This is not what capitalism is about. From technology newsletter CRN:

Cisco Seen As Trying To 'Slow Down Arista Anyway They Can' With Patent Lawsuits
Partners say Cisco's end game with its patent lawsuits against Arista Networks is simply to slow the fast-growing networking company and stunt any innovation efforts from competitors.

"Cisco's goal is to try to slow down Arista and competitors any way they can," said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, a Morgan Hill, Calif.-based Arista partner. "If they don't have the technology to beat them out there, they're going to try to slow them down any way possible."

Last week, the San Jose, Calif.-based network giant won three of five patent infringement suits against Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista dealing with its networking switches. The International Trade Commission recommended a ban on Arista product imports containing the infringing technology. Additionally, the ITC also ruled earlier this year that Arista infringed on several other Cisco patents pertaining to its private VLANS, system database and externally managing router configuration with a centralized database -- recommending a similar ban on Arista imports.

Yeah - if there is a clear case of patent infringement, file a suit. Do not file a suit hoping to discover something later and meanwhile cost them the additional lawyer fees hoping that they go bankrupt. There are enough consumers out there for everyone.

The people who will be suffering is We the People as we will be forced to use stale old technology and not cutting edge tech from innovative companies. Without serious competition, there is no motive to innovate and with Cisco killing its competition, we are developing just this scenario. Cisco is firmly in the red zone of the Right enemy of this graphic:

20160620-debt.jpg

Ruh-Roh

| No Comments

Meet SkyNet 0.2 - from the University of Cincinnati:

Beyond video games: New artificial intelligence beats tactical experts in combat simulation
Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by subject-matter expert and retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee — who holds extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable fighter aircraft expertise — in a high-fidelity air combat simulator.

The artificial intelligence, dubbed ALPHA, was the victor in that simulated scenario, and according to Lee, is “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I’ve seen to date.”
Details on ALPHA – a significant breakthrough in the application of what’s called genetic-fuzzy systems are published in the most-recent issue of the Journal of Defense Management, as this application is specifically designed for use with Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) in simulated air-combat missions for research purposes.

The tools used to create ALPHA as well as the ALPHA project have been developed by Psibernetix, Inc., recently founded by UC College of Engineering and Applied Science 2015 doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, now president and CEO of the firm; as well as David Carroll, programming lead, Psibernetix, Inc.; with supporting technologies and research from Gene Lee; Kelly Cohen, UC aerospace professor; Tim Arnett, UC aerospace doctoral student; and Air Force Research Laboratory sponsors.

A bit more:

Not only was Lee not able to score a kill against ALPHA after repeated attempts, he was shot out of the air every time during protracted engagements in the simulator.

And Gene Lee's qualifications:

But, now, it’s been Lee, who has trained with thousands of U.S. Air Force pilots, flown in several fighter aircraft and graduated from the U.S. Fighter Weapons School (the equivalent of earning an advanced degree in air combat tactics and strategy), as well as other pilots who have been feeling pressured by ALPHA.

Yeah but the computer is going to require yottaflops of data processing capacity:

It would normally be expected that an artificial intelligence with the learning and performance capabilities of ALPHA, applicable to incredibly complex problems, would require a super computer in order to operate.

However, ALPHA and its algorithms require no more than the computing power available in a low-budget PC in order to run in real time and quickly react and respond to uncertainty and random events or scenarios.

Welcome to the future - this is very cool! Great play on words too - the company that was formed to commercialize this algorithm is called Psibernetix. The company who developed the SkyNet technology was called Cyberdyne Systems.

Great idea from Google

| No Comments

Meet Project Bloks:

Clever idea to teach kids programming - nice interface and design. Only question is what is the core language used - too simple and the jump from it to a 'real' language would be too hard for most. Too complex and it would initially put people off. This is a Goldilocks problem...

More at the link at the top of this post.

England jumped ship - took their marbles and went home. Now, the remaining EUnuchs want to double-down and morph into one big happy nation state. Like that is ever going to work.

From the London Daily Express:

European SUPERSTATE to be unveiled: EU nations 'to be morphed into one' post-Brexit
The foreign ministers of France and Germany are due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum”.

Under the radical proposals EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels.

Controversially member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders, including the procedure for admitting and relocating refugees.

The plot has sparked fury and panic in Poland - a traditional ally of Britain in the fight against federalism - after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info.

Much more at the site. I wonder how this is going to sit with the citizens - ya' know, the people who actually live there and do not spend their days in some office in Brussels. I do not think it will sit very well. Things are going to get really interesting really fast if the EU tries to ram this through. Die Viertes Reich anyone?

Keyboard player extraordinaire for P-Funk and Talking Heads.

I had heard of his passing from an electronic music mailing list but did not realize that he lived about 15 miles away from here - from The Bellingham Herald:

Bernie Worrell, masterful P-Funk keyboardist, dies in Everson
Bernie Worrell, the ingenious “Wizard of Woo” whose amazing array of keyboard sounds and textures helped define the Parliament-Funkadelic musical empire and influenced performers of funk, rock, hip-hop and other genres, has died.

Worrell, who announced early this year that he had stage-four lung cancer, died Friday at age 72. He died at his home in Everson, according to his wife, Judie Worrell.

A bit more:

Worrell was among the first musicians to use a Moog synthesizer, and his mastery brought comparisons to Jimi Hendrix’s innovations on guitar. Anything seemed possible when he was on keyboards, conjuring squiggles, squirts, stutters and hiccups on Parliament’s “Flash Light” that sounded like funk as if conceived by Martians. On Funkadelic’s “Atmosphere,” his chatty organ prelude, like a mash-up of Bach and “The Munsters,” set up some of Clinton’s more unprintable lyrics.

He was an original - will be missed.

Showing no respect

| No Comments

Putin is kicking sand in Barry's eyes - from The Washington Post:

Russia is harassing U.S. diplomats all over Europe
Russian intelligence and security services have been waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against U.S. diplomats, embassy staff and their families in Moscow and several other European capitals that has rattled ambassadors and prompted Secretary of State John F. Kerry to ask Vladimir Putin to put a stop to it.

Emphasis mine - yeah, go running home and tell mommy. That is guaranteed to make the bullying stop. Oh. Wait.

At a recent meeting of U.S. ambassadors from Russia and Europe in Washington, U.S. ambassadors to several European countries complained that Russian intelligence officials were constantly perpetrating acts of harassment against their diplomatic staff that ranged from the weird to the downright scary. Some of the intimidation has been routine: following diplomats or their family members, showing up at their social events uninvited or paying reporters to write negative stories about them.

But many of the recent acts of intimidation by Russian security services have crossed the line into apparent criminality. In a series of secret memos sent back to Washington, described to me by several current and former U.S. officials who have written or read them, diplomats reported that Russian intruders had broken into their homes late at night, only to rearrange the furniture or turn on all the lights and televisions, and then leave. One diplomat reported that an intruder had defecated on his living room carpet.

In Moscow, where the harassment is most pervasive, diplomats reported slashed tires and regular harassment by traffic police. Former ambassador Michael McFaul was hounded by government-paid protesters, and intelligence personnel followed his children to school. The harassment is not new; in the first term of the Obama administration, Russian intelligence personnel broke into the house of the U.S. defense attache in Moscow and killed his dog, according to multiple former officials who read the intelligence reports.

This image sums things up exactly:

20151003-barry-vlad.jpg

Nobody takes Obama or his administration seriously. It will be a lot of fun to compare and contrast now and when Trump is sworn in to the Office of President.

Heading into town today. Our coffee vendor loaned me a really nice $800 coffee maker for the weekend event. Returning it this morning.

Couple other things to take care of and then back home for a couple of days. Relax and sleep in - feeling very stiff for some strange reason - the new griddle only weighs about 200 pounds and I had to get it into the trailer...

UPDATE BELOW

England's exit from the European Union has some interesting side effects - it seems that the Henny Pennys promoting Anthropogenic Climate Change are also of the mental mind-set that views big centralized government as a good thing and independent sovereign nations as a bad thing. In a real world, this would be classified as DSM-IV 301.95 (More here)

From the Toronto (Canada) Sun: Brexit victory boosts climate skeptics

Canada's Financial Post: Peter Foster: Brexit is Britain’s Rosa Parks Moment

The Global Warming Policy Forum: BREXIT: PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT WILL HAVE TO BE REWRITTEN

and EurActiv: Brexit calls EU climate action into question as top MEP quits

UPDATE: Seems that the anti-BREXIT / pro-One World Government people are staying as classy as always.
From the London Daily Mail:

John Oliver calls Boris Johnson a 'shaved orangutan' and David Cameron a 'pig-f***er' in nine-minute anti-Brexit rant on US TV
John Oliver came out swinging in the latest episode of his HBO satirical news-comedy show Last Week Tonight, as the expat Brit tackled the Brexit vote.

Oliver's avowedly pro-EU stance is at odds with his home country, which unexpectedly voted to leave the European Union on Thursday.

'Let us begin straight away with The United Kingdom,' Oliver at the top of the show, 'a place whose very name, after this week's events, is beginning to sound a bit sarcastic.'

For the next ten minutes he relentlessly pummeled the pro-Leave lobby - whom he characterized as oafs and liars - and also ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron, whom he called a 'pig-f***er'.

OKAY - this from a guy who decided to emigrate from England to the United States?

Our nuanced treaty with Iran

| No Comments

An interesting conjecture - from Doug Ross:

If Mr. Obama secretly planned to give Iran nuclear weapons, exactly what would he be doing differently?
The Obama administration is encouraging companies to do business with Iran in order to make last year’s nuclear deal irreversible, The Wall Street Journal reported (Google link) Thursday.

Administration officials told the Journal that they were encouraging businesses to make agreements with Iran in order to make it harder for future administrations to unravel the deal, since that would then threaten American jobs. The push for opening up Iran to American business has been led by Secretary of State John Kerry, which has put him at odds with the Treasury Department, which enforces sanctions on Iran.

“We’re not going to stand in the way of permissible business activity with Iran,” a senior administration official told the Journal. “As long as Iran is meeting the terms of the deal, then we’re going to uphold our end of the bargain, and that is going to result in some additional business activity with Iran.”

Much more at the article - Iran is known to be a state supporter of terrorism. They fund Hamas which frequently launches morter and missile attacks into Israel. They are in bed with ISIS. Tell me again why this is a good idea?

Ticketmaster = evil

| No Comments

They were forced to give away some free ticket vouchers as part of a class-action lawsuit. Now, people find that those vouchers are not worth very much.

From Washington, D.C. station WTOP:

Ticketmaster hits a bad note with music fans
Last week, music fans were excited to redeem free ticket vouchers that were part of a class-action lawsuit settled by Ticketmaster. Now, many are outraged to find out that the vouchers are only good for a limited list of concerts.

More:

Over 750 shows that concertgoers could have used the vouchers for have sold out, and a lot of those performances did not include some of the summer’s hottest acts. Instead of being eligible to see Beyonce’s tour for free, the vouchers can be used for many tribute bands or cover bands.

Even with the B-list acts, music fans in 24 states can’t see concerts because there are no shows in their states that allow the free ticket vouchers.

“Over $10 million worth of ticket vouchers have been redeemed and the eligible events have been closed,” said a statement from Ticketmaster.

Adhering to the letter and not the spirit of the law. That is evil in my book...

In Lodi, California - Former General Mills Plant - 2,000 metal working and machine shop lots

Prices seem to be really reasonable - pennies on the dollar.

Only issue is the 18% buyers premium plus an 8% hammer tax - ouch! Buy something for $1,000 and wind up paying $1,260 for the pleasure. Most places charge 10% and keep it at that - the auction last weekend was 8%. 26% is fscking egregious...

Going to vege in front of the TV for an hour or so and then back to surfing.

Lulu has Anthony Bourdain on so will watch a couple episodes of that.

More later - maybe.

Brexit in the news

| No Comments

I love it - big fan of the English system although I can 'do' Metric, I prefer not to. From England's The Sun:

Shop starts selling meat in pounds and ounces after Britain voted to leave the EU
A BUTCHER is selling meat in pounds and ounces for customers fed up of the metric system – after Britain voted to leave the European Union.

Gratton’s Butchers is giving customers the choice to buy meaty goods in either imperial or metric quantities following yesterday’s historic referendum result.

A law enforced by the EU in 1995 meant that all measuring devices used in trade or retail should display measurements in metric quantities.

But Darren Gratton said that a lot of his customers who voted Brexit wanted their meat sold in the older imperial method of pounds and ounces.

I love it! England is going to soar much to the chagrin of the other European nations. Global Government is not a good thing.

Specifically, the voting for a second referendum for England's exit from the EU - from Breitbart:

3M+ ‘Remain’ Petition Uses ‘Script’ To ‘Fake’ Signatures: 25,000 From North Korea, 2,800 From Uninhabitable Antarctic
Questions are being raised as to the true number of UK citizens signing a petition to urge another European Union membership referendum as evidence emerged that activists are encouraging foreign signatories. Some critics claim that a “bot” or “script” is being used to automatically generate names and signatories.

As of early Sunday afternoon, over 3.1 million signatures had been registered on the petition named: “EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum” which calls for the “Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.”

But an analysis of the data on the petition shows that at least 6 per cent of the signatories, or nearly 200,000 are from foreign countries. While foreign-based UK nationals are allowed to sign UK petitions, some believe that many of these are fraudulent given that Remain activists are handing out post codes online in order to elicit more signatures from abroad.

Some numbers:

As of Sunday afternoon, around 41,118 signatories have come from Vatican City, 11,717 from the United States, and curiously, 24,855 from North Korea.

At least 19,000 signatures have come from France, and 2,735 from British Antarctic Territory, which has a population of just 250 people.

And this:

Turnout in the 2015 General Election was 36,185 in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency. Yet over 40,000 are claimed to have signed the Remain petition from that constituency in the past few days. That would mean that more than every single person that voted in 2015 has signed the petition, including all voters from the UK Independence Party and the Conservative Party, the former of which is overwhelmingly Eurosceptic, and the latter of which is split in half over the issue.

The numbers are patently false so the referendum needs to be nullified. You want to play politics? Don't cheat.

Great news from Iceland. After the ousting of premier Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and several other senior Icelandic politicians, elections were held and a fresh face was voted in. From Yahoo News/Agence France Presse:

Political novice wins Iceland presidency with 39 percent
History professor Gudni Johannesson won Iceland's presidential election after riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, final results showed Sunday, although the vote was eclipsed by the country's eagerly-anticipated Euro football match.

The political newcomer, who won with 39.1 percent of votes, was trailed by businesswoman Halla Tomasdottir, also without party affiliation, who took 29.4 percent, according to results announced on public television channel RUV.

Johannesson only decided to run for the presidency after the so-called Panama Papers leak in April which detailed offshore accounts and implicated several senior Icelandic politicians, including the prime minister who was forced to resign.

Throughout the campaign, Johannesson emphasised his non-partisan vision of the presidency, and vowed to restore faith in the political system after years of public anger toward politicians over scandals and financial woes.

The victory was especially sweet for the history professor and political commentator, who has never held public office and has no party affiliation, as he celebrated his 48th birthday Sunday.

And the EU?

Like most of Iceland's voters, Johannesson is opposed to EU membership.

In a final debate on Friday, he said Brexit changes "much for the better for us Icelanders," suggesting the European Economic Area agreement that non-EU members Norway and Iceland have with the EU could play a more important role with Britain on board.

Yes - Norway and Iceland are two very prosperous nations. No sense to have them dragged down to the least common denominator by nations like Greece. Having a common currency is not a good thing if one or more members spends themselves into poverty.

The people are revolting? Spend more money on social programs? Don't have it? Print more? This train of thought gets really stupid really fast.

The useless are gathering together

| No Comments

The useless twits are flocking to Brussels to try to figure out what happened. From Yahoo News/Agence France Presse:

Europe to push for quickie British divorce as Kerry flies in
European leaders embark this week on a frantic drive to push Britain into a quick divorce, with top US diplomat John Kerry rushing to join discussions as the "Brexit" crisis goes global.

Germany's powerful Chancellor Angela Merkel will host the leaders of France, Italy and the European Union in Berlin on Monday amid fears Britain's vote to leave will create a domino effect in eurosceptic member states.

And a bit more

With a dismayed Washington fearing key ally Britain's decision to leave the EU will harm Western unity, Kerry flies in to Brussels and London on Monday.

"An EU united and strong is our preference for a partner to be able to work on the important issues that face us today," Kerry said after talks in Rome with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

"Brexit and the changes that are now being thought through have to be thought through in the context of the interests and values that bind us together with the EU."

It is actually a very clear decision by the people of England. They no longer wat to be ruled by people who do not have their interests at heart. They especially do not want to give up their sovreignity in favor of some autocratic world government AKA Agenda 21. We the People resonates just as strong over there is it does over here - hence the ascendency of Donald Trump.

These pencil-necked pin-dicks have no clue what they are talking about - they live in their own little echo chamber and are insulated from the hustle and bustle of the real world. These are not our leaders - in fact, they are not that smart. They just surround themselves with stupider people than they are. Makes them feel good. The sooner they can be shuffled off to their mansions, the better.

Back home again

| No Comments

Unpacked most of the truck and trailer - brought over the remaining food to the store. My front-of-house manager also works for our local food bank and she was more than happy to receive the surplus protein and carbs. Stopped by a yard sale and picked up two nice pieces of cast iron - a flat round griddle for warming tortillas and making crepes and a round pan with pie-shaped depressions for cornbread. That and an industrial stapler for $15 - schweeeet!!!

Surf for a little bit and then take a 2-hour nap. We both stuffed ourselves at breakfast so dinner is not on the table tonight.

Tired today

| No Comments

Did not sleep that well last night and feeling pretty tired. Got a water board meeting tonight at 6:00 but think I am going to play hookey. Catch up on some needed sleep...

Democrats behaving badly

| No Comments

From the Phoenix, AZ New Times:

Arizona Lawmaker Cecilia Velasquez Indicted for Food-Stamp Fraud
A state grand jury has indicted Arizona Democratic lawmaker Cecilia "Ceci" Velasquez for allegedly ripping off the federal food-stamp program.

Unsealed on Wednesday but signed on May 23, the indictment charges Velasquez, 42, with one felony count each of fraudulent schemes and practices, unlawful use of food stamps, and theft. The total loss to the state, which distributes federal funds it receives for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was $1,726.

The charges:

The charges revolve around Velasquez allegedly providing false information on her SNAP eligibility paperwork, on which she claimed to have two dependents living with her who really weren't, the source said. The investigation showed Velasquez wasn't living at her declared residence in Litchfield Park but rather in another Phoenix suburb further south, the town of Laveen.

If true, the revelation could mean trouble for Velasquez even if she's not convicted of a felony, because Velasquez must live in her district, and Laveen is miles from District 29.

Heh - rules for thee and not for me. I don't have to follow these laws - I am a Democrat.

Back home again

| No Comments

Breakfast went really well - I tried a trick with the scrambled eggs and it worked wonderfully. You add a half-cup of milk to a bowl, add a tablespoon of potato (or corn) starch, whisk and then add the eggs, whisk again and put on a hot griddle. The starch forces the proteins in the egg to bind with water - something that would otherwise require fifteen minutes of cooking over very low heat.

If you cook scrambled eggs on a hot griddle, you will get lumpy runny eggs - this way? Perfection - smooth custardy ambrosia.

Back out and do it again

| No Comments

Heading out in a few minutes - this time it's breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon and hash-browns.

And that is it for the night

| No Comments

Off to bed and an early rise.

From The Washington Post:

Ex-Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee, gun control champion, heading to prison for weapons trafficking
On the surface, the story of Leland Yee looks like a precipitous fall from grace.

The 67-year-old had risen steadily in the ranks of Bay Area politics since the late 80s, when he was elected to the San Francisco School Board. He then went on to sit on the city’s Board of Supervisors and in the state Assembly. The latter role saw him become the first Asian American speaker pro tem in 2004, making him the second-highest ranking Democrat in the California assembly at the time.

From 2006 onwards, Yee served as a state senator and was plotting a secretary of state campaign when his political visions were curtailed by a federal indictment in March 2014.

The arrest swept Yee and his associate Keith Jackson, 51, up in charges alongside some of the city’s most notorious characters, notable among them Chinatown gangster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

His crimes?

While holding public office, Yee had accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for political favors. And on the side, he and two associates had been involved in a weapons trafficking plot.

These acts were discovered by undercover federal agents investigating organized crime in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Jackson, a former school board president who helped Yee facilitate the bribes, received a nine-year sentence.

“It must be that the public has trust in the integrity of the institution, and Mr. Yee, you abused that trust,” Breyer said, according to the Times. He called Yee’s actions “vile” and the arms dealings particularly “hypocritical” given the politician’s history of gun control advocacy.

Five years in the slammer - should have been more. A lot more at the site - he was arrested for shoplifting in 1992 and was known to be corrupt from his first days in politics.

Building the Keystone XL pipeline meant that Canadian Oil producers would have had  a ready pathway to sales of their product - pipe it to refineries in the states and then to the Gulf Coast to ship.

Barry vetoed this with the petulant use of his pen and phone - now this decision is coming home to roost. From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

TransCanada formally seeks NAFTA damages in Keystone XL rejection
TransCanada Corp. is formally requesting arbitration over U.S. President Barack Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, seeking $15 billion US in damages, the company said in legal papers dated Friday.

TransCanada submitted a notice for an arbitration claim in January and had then tried to negotiate with the U.S. government to "reach an amicable settlement," the company said in files posted on the pipeline's website.

Heh - NAFTA works both ways Barry - we are as much beholden to follow it as our neighbors to the North and South. It is not something that we can pick and choose to agree to.

Goodbye George

Don't let the door hit 'ya where the good Lord split 'ya - from Breitbart:

George Will Leaves GOP, Tells Republicans to Make Sure Donald Trump Loses
George Will, television pundit and columnist at The Washington Post, said he has left the Republican Party, and he spelled out the pro-Hillary Clinton strategy he thinks will allow the establishment Republicans to regain control of the party after this presidential election.

“This is not my party,” Will said at a fancy luncheon at the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C., where he took the party line in the nation’s capital and said that Trump would be worse than Clinton.

“Make sure he loses. Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House” in 2020, Will said, referring to what Republicans should do about Trump.

Elites like George Will are confounded by Trump's ascendancy and they fail to realize that they themselves are the cause of his rise. People like George Will are so out of touch with the general population - their world view is totally out of alignment with the wishes of We the People.

Goodbye George. Write when you find work.

A solution to the refugee problem

| No Comments

Should have thought of this years ago - from Facebook:

20160625-pripyat.jpg

It is interesting - the animal life is doing very well there. A point in favor for hormesis.

Feel it in my bones

| No Comments

I need to work out more - feeling stiff and sore from packing and moving the cooking stuff.

Back home again

| No Comments

Chugging an ice cold beer and then taking a nice hot shower. Busy day but a good one - fed about 50 people and it was well received.

More in a bit.

And I am out the door

| No Comments

No spew today until much later - field day.

Public awareness about firearms is growing. People are learning and this group has members from all political spectra. Even Bill Maher - from Breitbart:

Maher: A Lot of Liberals Talk About Gun Control, But ‘Don’t Know Sh*t’ About Guns,’ Gun Control Pushes ‘A Little Bit Elitist’ and ‘Racist’
HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher criticized liberals “who don’t know sh*t about guns” for speaking about gun control and criticized recent gun control pushes as “a little bit elitist and a little bit racist,” on Friday.

Maher said, “[D]oes it really matter if we are banning certain guns? Because, I see that the liberals, they talk about guns — now, I’m not a gun expert, but I see a lot of people talking about guns who don’t know sh*t about guns. I know a little about — it’s like when the pope talks about vaginas, you know. And that’s when the conservatives stop listening. Like, I know a lot of them think that AR-15. ‘AR’ stands for ‘assault rifle.’ It doesn’t. and it’s not an assault rifle. It’s not an automatic weapon. Those are illegal. There are a lot of weapons they’re not even talking about banning that basically do the same thing as an AR-15, because you have to squeeze each round.”

Congratulations Bill - my only nit is that fully automatic weapons are fully legal to own in the USA - they must have been manufactured on or before 1968 and this scarcity puts the buy-in price around $30K on up.

Great news from the court system

| No Comments

Yesterday, I heard that the Supreme Court struck down Obama's immigration plans. Now this - from the New York Times:

Obama Fracking Rule Is Struck Down by Court
A federal judge on Tuesday night struck down an Obama administration regulation on the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas on public lands, a blow to President Obama’s muscular stand on the extraction of fossil fuels on government lands.

A bit more:

Judge Scott W. Skavdahl of Federal District Court in Wyoming ruled that the Interior Department lacked the authority from Congress to issue the regulation, and also noted that fracking was already subject to other regulations under state and federal law.

The decision comes amid a heated political debate over fracking, which involves the injection of water, gravel and chemicals underground to extract oil and gas. The technology has produced an oil and gas boom in the United States, but environmentalists say fracking can contaminate groundwater and lead to the leaking of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The blocked rule would not have affected most fracking operations in the United States, since it would have applied only to fracking on federal lands. The vast majority of fracking in the United States — almost 90 percent — is done on state and private land and is governed by state and local regulations. The rule was unlikely to have stopped most new fracking on public lands, although oil and gas companies complained that it could have slowed operations by creating burdensome paperwork.

This is a very good ruling. Most of the people who do not like fracking are unaware of the history or the scale. Fracking is not a new technology - it has been done sucessfully since 1862. The reason it was not widespread at that time is that there were other wells that produced without the added expense. Now that the low hanging fruit has been harvested, we are revisiting this technology. As for scale, most groundwater happens in the first two hundred feet. Most oil and gas wells are more than 5,000 feet deep - the idea that you are going to routinley contaminate drinking water is absurd. Yes, there are cases where methane does contaminate drinking water and these instances have been trumpeted to the media as examples of fracking contamination but they are just natural seeps and have nothing to do with the extraction happening nearby.

We need to stop Barry's plan:

How to be happy

| No Comments

Six rules - from Tastefully Offensive:

20160624-dog.jpg

Got most everything ready though - going to be busy tomorrow. They want me to bring my PA system so that means announcing and bringing some tunes. Doing photography of the event and working the radios from time to time. I am bringing my portable base station and will demo that to anyone interested in Ham Radio as a hobby.

Oh yes, I will also be cooking and serving about 50 dinners and breakfasts.

Like I said, busy. My time at the event starts around 1:00 or so so plenty of time tomorrow to do a last minute scramble.

Time to have a glass or two of wine and surf the internet for a couple hours.

From Bloomberg:

World’s 400 Richest People Lose $127 Billion on Brexit
The world’s 400 richest people lost $127.4 billion Friday as global equity markets reeled from the news that British voters elected to leave the European Union. The billionaires lost 3.2 percent of their total net worth, bringing the combined sum to $3.9 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The biggest decline belonged to Europe’s richest person, Amancio Ortega, who lost more than $6 billion, while nine others dropped more than $1 billion, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the wealthiest person in the U.K.

I am reminded of this wonderful diagram from the folks at Neuter the Debt:

20160620-debt.jpg

We need to keep things in perspective...

Back home again - packing

| No Comments

No spew for a while. I am home and getting ready for tomorrows dinner.

Congratulations to England for voting to separate from the EU - this is a monumental decision and when England soars as she will, it will serve as a beacon to all the other nations enrolled in this socialist exercise.

"Europe is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic Utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a program whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt."
-Margaret Thatcher

Bellingham or bust

| No Comments

Heading into town today for the perishable food for the field day tomorrow. Feeding fifty people.

Here is the page for the event: WECG Field Day Event

Should be a lot of fun and the weather is starting to turn around.

Voters in the UK have chosen sovereignty over slavery - they have chosen to leave the Europen Union.

It will be a rocky six months but they will emerge stronger and better off.

Welcome home friends!

What people do up here - logging

| No Comments

Logging is just another kind of farming except it takes 40 years for your next harvest. Here is a fun newsreel about logging in Oregon back in the 1950's:

As for riding the flume, I am reminded of that wonderful National Film Board of Canada animation of The Log Driver's Waltz

Song: The Log Driver's Waltz by Wade Hemsworth, performed by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. National Film Board of Canada. Animation by John Weldon.

Changing demographics

| No Comments

Interesting numbers - from McClatchy News:

Minority babies outnumber whites among US infants
White babies are now outnumbered by minority babies, according to new population estimates from the Census Bureau.

In 2015, racial and ethnic minorities made up 50.2 percent of babies under a year old. That year, there were 1,995,102 minority babies born, just slightly more than the 1,982,936 white babies born.

The 2015 data was released Thursday, as was updated data for previous years. These new figures show that in 2013, minority babies also outnumbered non-Hispanic white babies by about 1,000 births. In 2014, white babies were outnumbered by about 16,000.

If I remember correctly, Blacks are in the majority of minorities at around 13% with Hispanics and others coming in at a lower percentage. For the total combined output to top the output of caucasian people is quite the demographic shift for our nation.

Great bit of news from PJ Media:

You'll Never Guess What 'Bigoted' Fried Chicken Democrats Ordered for Their Sit-In
On Wednesday morning, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives (normally a very grown-up organization) held a temper tantrum about gun control. Their brave "civil-rights-style" "sit-in" lasted until Thursday evening, when it became clear that their childish tactics were ineffective. But perhaps more interesting is where these champions of liberal progressivism turned to sustain them during their fight against the injustice of American gun ownership.

Those Democrats turned to Chick-fil-A, the very same fast food restaurant that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio urged New Yorkers to boycott last month. De Blasio called the restaurant "anti-gay" in part because President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Dan Cathy made comments critical of gay marriage in 2012, and gave money to conservative organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

TMZ has the video:

One of the commenters asked if they had watermelon for dessert. Priceless... These are the people we are supposed to look up to - we put them in office to serve us, not play temper tantrums if they do not get their way.

And by the way, this is of interest - from Heat Street:

26 of the Democrats Who Participated in the Gun Control Sit-In Own Guns
Congressional Democrats ended their 25-hour sit-in on the House floor this afternoon, failing to force a vote on two pieces of gun legislation. The controversial sit-in included 26 Democratic lawmakers who themselves own guns, Heat Street learned after examining 2013 USA Today data on congressional firearms ownership. The participants also included 12 more Democrats in Congress who either didn’t respond to USA Today’s gun survey or declined to say whether or not they possessed a firearm.

Fscking hypocrites - every one of them.

RIP Dr. Ralph Stanley - from his Grandson Nathan Stanley's facebook page:

"My heart is broken into pieces. My papaw, my dad, and the greatest man in the world, Dr. Ralph Stanley has went home to be with Jesus just a few minutes ago. He went peacefully in his sleep due to a long, horrible battle with Skin Cancer. I feel so lost and so alone right now. He was my world, and he was my everything. He was always there for me no matter what. I just cannot get a grip on this. My Papaw was loved by millions of fans from all around the world, and he loved all of you. If he was singing snd on sage, he was happy. That's why I did so much to make it possible for him to travel in the last two years. Because he wanted to. Please keep me and my family in your prayers. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to face in my life. The only thing that gives me peace, is knowing he is in paradise and I'll see my best friend again. I love you papaw with all of my heart. As long as I live and breathe, your legacy will never die. You will forever be in my heart."

He was amazing - great musician and wonderful person.
Here is a wonderful hour-long documentary: The Life & Times of Ralph Stanley

Say hi to Spot

| No Comments

Brought to us by the folks at Boston Dynamics:

65 pounds with optional arm, runs for 90 minutes per charge.

Artist Point open

| No Comments

Opened this afternoon but still about 18-20 feet of snow up there. Great photo from Andy Sahlfeld:

20160623-artist.jpg

Just an excerpt from this article at the San Jose Mercury News:

California's skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents

And the money quote:

During the 12 months ending June 30, the number of people leaving California for another state exceeded by 61,100 the number who moved here from elsewhere in the U.S., according to state Finance Department statistics. The so-called "net outward migration" was the largest since 2011, when 63,300 more people fled California than entered.

An interesting metric is looking at U-Haul rental prices from San Francisco to Dallas Texas. It is about $2K from SF to Dallas but only $1K from Dallas to SF - they don'y have enough trucks in SF so they charge market price...

Back home again

| No Comments

Got all but two of the errands run but heading into town again tomorrow to pick up the perishables (frozen food, hot and ham buns, etc...).

Woke up a bit early today by design - want to swing my sleep schedule around to summer time - get up earlier in the morning so as to catch the light.

Had a burger at Five Guys - they are now serving milk shakes which was my only real gripe about them.

Raining down buckets - it was nice this afternoon but wet tonight. I thought about getting a pint or two but parked, got out of the truck, turned around and came home. Too much stuff to do to prep for the field day.

Egg on face - Trump's lies

| No Comments

A number of people were calling Donald Trump a liar because of a line in yesterday's speech. I quoted a bit from an article in Slate yesterday but there were two paragraphs that I did not quote:

The point is not that this is true; as political analyst David Gergen said on CNN, the speech was slanderous. But the lies in the speech, many taken from Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash, were not obviously self-refuting. At one point, Trump said, citing Schweizer, “Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.” This has been debunked many times over, including by FactCheck.org.

To explain why it’s not true, though, you have to go into details about Clinton’s role on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which approved the sale of a Canadian-based energy company with American mining stakes to Russia’s nuclear energy agency.

Turns out, David Gergen was trying to blow smoke up our collective asses. From Breitbart:

CNN’s Clinton Cash ‘Fact-Check’ Ends in Embarrassment for Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel
CNN Money’s “fact-checkers” Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel ended up with egg on their faces on Wednesday after they rated as “false” a well-established and proven Clinton Cash fact involving Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. approving the transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium to the Russian government, as nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Under the guise of “fact-checking” Donald Trump’s Wednesday speech, Alesci and Frankel purported to verify whether “Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

Much more at the site with links to the hard data to back up the facts.

From the Associated Press:

OBAMA IMMIGRATION PLAN BLOCKED BY 4-4 TIE AT SUPREME COURT
The Supreme Court deadlocked Thursday on President Barack Obama's immigration plan that sought to shield millions living in the U.S. illegally from deportation, effectively killing the plan for the rest of his presidency.

The outcome underscores that the direction of U.S. immigration policy will be determined in large part by this fall's presidential election, a campaign in which immigration already has played an outsized role.

People who would have benefited from Obama's plan face no imminent threat of deportation because Congress has provided money to deal with only a small percentage of people who live in the country illegally, and the president retains ample discretion to decide whom to deport. But Obama's effort to expand that protection to many others is effectively stymied.

The issue is not legitimate immigration. The issue is that we are letting anyone come in - we have no idea who these peole are and some of them have already proven themselves to be terrorists and murderers.

Heading off to town today

| No Comments

Buying the non-frozen stuff for this weekend's field day. Raining now and showers forecast through Friday but the actual days - Saturday and Sunday - look nice and clear.

Back in a couple hours...

Up to bed

| No Comments

Tired - didn't get to the end of the internet but came pretty close.

More tomorrow...

Trump gets serious

| No Comments

Donald Trump delivered an excellent speech this morning - nailing Crooked Hillary to the wall.
From Slate (note - Slate has a pronounced liberal bias - it must have physically pained the author to write this):

Trump’s Speech About Hillary Was Terrifyingly Effective
Donald Trump’s Wednesday morning speech about Hillary Clinton’s record is probably the most unnervingly effective one he has ever given. In a momentary display of discipline, he read from a teleprompter with virtually no ad-libbing, avoiding digs at Bill Clinton’s infidelity or conspiracy theories about Vince Foster’s suicide. Standing in a low-ceilinged conference room bedecked with square chandeliers in the Trump SoHo, a lawsuit-plagued hotel and condo development, Trump spoke for 40 minutes without saying anything overtly sexist. Instead, he aimed straight at Clinton’s most-serious weaknesses, describing her as a venal tool of the establishment. “Hillary Clinton gave China millions of our best jobs and effectively let China completely rebuild itself,” he said. “In return, Hillary Clinton got rich!” He added, “She gets rich making you poor,” and called her possibly “the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”

He was having fun these last couple of months - now, it is time to get serious and he is doing just that. What Slate chose not to mention is that Trump also laid out what he would do in the first 100 days of his presidency. He has some good advisers working for him - Trump's goals are achievable and have substance.

Jeff Dunham pranks Walter

| No Comments

Submitted for your enjoyment:

Rebuilding the Coco Palms Resort

| No Comments

Very cool - Hyatt is rebuilding one of Kauai's iconic hotels. From Honolulu station KHON:

Blessing marks rebirth of Kauai’s Coco Palms Resort
It’s a day many thought would never come.

A blessing Thursday marked the rebirth of Coco Palms Resort on Kauai.

The resort, located on Kuhio Highway in Wailua, has been closed since Hurricane Iniki in 1992.

Three years ago, two men from Oahu formed Coco Palms Hui to bring the resort back to life.

During the blessing, they were surrounded by dozens of people, including Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.

“This is a special day, my grandma, my aunties, a lot of people who worked here and brought life to this place,” Carvalho said.

The developers are vowing to bring its legendary past into its new life.

“We want to learn from all of that, and we want to be able to translate that to modern times for future generations, that same sense of ohana,” said Tyler Greene of Coco Palms Hui.

This is from about eight months ago but it is news to me. They are planning on reopening sometime in 2017. The main structures are to be gutted and new insides built, the small cabins are not up to code for flooding so they are going to be demolished and rebuilt. The fish ponds and coconut grove are on the National Register so they are staying where they are. The Coco Palms has a huge history predating the Resort - it was the ancestral home of Kauaʻi's aliʻi since the 13th century, the area encompassing the Coco Palms Resort was the home of Kauaʻi's last reigning queen, Queen Deborah Kapule, in the mid-19th century.

From Washington State Department of Transportation twitter account:

20160622-wsdot.jpg

This is great news. A few years ago, they were unable to get it open and business at the store was down by a good 15% - it hurt us. Major tourist draw.

Light shows

| No Comments

Great interview of Bill Ham - one of the absolute pioneers in the 1960's psychedelic light shows that accompanied rock performances. From Collectors Weekly:

Lightman Fantastic: This Artist Drenched '60s Music Lovers in a Psychedelic Dream
When kindly old grandparents beckon their fresh-faced grandchildren into their rock-poster-lined man caves and she sheds, to vape sweet kush and wax nostalgic about the San Francisco music scene of the 1960s, their rambling recollections are often accompanied by the sounds of “Cheap Thrills” or “Aoxomoxoa”—cranked to 11.

Getting high with grandma and grandpa while listening to Big Brother and the Holding Company or the Grateful Dead is actually a fairly good way for curious Millennials to learn about this watershed era of the late 20th century, but loud music and recreational drugs were only part of the story. Just as important, if not more so, were the light shows that accompanied and responded to the sounds. Indeed, for the seriously stoned, the pulsating colors produced by light-show outfits with names like Heavy Water, Little Princess 109, and North American Ibis Alchemical Company were often the main event.

If you never saw one, a San Francisco light show was an immersive ocular experience for audiences and musicians alike. Amid these real-time paintings built from layer upon layer of ephemeral light, performers pushed their instruments to the breaking point, while audiences danced until they dropped. Without the light shows, San Francisco’s fabled music halls, where everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton held court, would have resembled just so many more run-down auditoriums and crumbling former ice rinks. In fact, that’s basically what the Fillmore and Winterland, two of the city’s most famous music venues, were. When illuminated by a light show, though, these decrepit dives were magically transformed into glorious temples of psychedelic iniquity.

Wonderful rambling reminiscence - the author had several days to interview Ham.

I was in high-school in Pittsburgh, PA during that time, spending my weekends at The Rising Tide coffeehouse in the basement of Calvary Church. I was building the sound system from old movie theater parts - several theaters had been condemned and were being demolished. Nabbed a bunch of speakers and amps. The whole idea of a light show intrigued me a lot so a friend and I started playing around with overhead projectors. Was able to get some acetate theater lighting gels (intense color filters) as well as the clock glasses and we had a lot of fun. As I started getting into it, my Dad stepped in - he taught Physics at the University of Pittsburgh and I was able to borrow a lot of optical demonstration pieces over the weekend - stroboscopes, prisms, very large projectors, etc...

This brings back a lot of wonderful memories...

Here is a 31 second sample:

Heading out to Crave'n for a pint or two of cider. Back in an hour or so.

Need to take the trash out too.

The Baltic Dry index

I have long been a fan of the Baltic Dry index when looking at the worlds economic health. It is the cost to ship bulk goods from one place to another. The better the economy, the more goods get shipped so it serves as a good proxy. Some of my posts: here, here, here and here.

Now this from The New Yorker:

THE SURPRISING RELEVANCE OF THE BALTIC DRY INDEX
On January 11th of this year, online financial circles lit up with dire news. “Commerce between Europe and North America has literally come to a halt,” one blogger wrote. “For the first time in known history, not one cargo ship is in-transit in the North Atlantic between Europe and North America. . . . It is a horrific economic sign; proof that commerce is literally stopped.” Although the Web site that first broadcast this information is prone to hysteria—there are, in fact, many cargo ships on the world’s oceans, in plain sight—more pessimistic market experts, such as Zero Hedge and the Dollar Vigilante, eagerly quoted it for their millions of readers. The story fit neatly into a narrative: the global economy, despite outward signs that it has clawed its way back from recession, is a small step away from an enormous crash.

But if sober-minded, mainstream economists were tempted to dismiss this ostensible trade calamity outright, they found that they couldn’t. The index that inspired these warnings, known as the Baltic Dry Index, was until recently viewed as a credible, if obscure, source—one that has accurately signalled prior systemic failures, and one that economists of all stripes have routinely consulted as a trusted proxy for trade activity. Based in London, this gauge reflects the rates that freight carriers charge to haul basic, solid raw materials, such as iron ore, coal, cement, and grain. As a daily composite of the tonnage fees on popular seagoing routes, the B.D.I. essentially mirrors supply and demand at the most elementary level. A decrease usually means that shipping prices and commodities sales are dropping (the latter because shippers are competing over fewer consignments). Shipping is a direct indicator of whether people want goods, and softness in shipping prices is therefore a sign of weakness in manufacturing and construction.

In January, when the B.D.I. surfaced as a heated topic in certain geeky economic corners of the Internet, it had fallen to a record low of 429, an eighty-per-cent decline from December, 2013, and far below its record high, in May, 2008, of 11,793. It continued to plunge for another month, hitting a nadir of 291 on February 12th. The index has rebounded a little since then, but not enough to dampen some concerns raised by its descent. While the catastrophic scenarios offered by the pessimists aren’t quite plausible, the B.D.I.’s dramatic plunge does appear to have indicated a genuinely alarming economic trend about the strength of global trade, with implications for jobs and corporate profits, that many economists had overlooked. Which raises the question: Why did economists color their judgment by discounting the B.D.I. in the first place?

A well-written article - lots more at the site.

Fun times in Olympia

| No Comments

First the shooting and half-pound of meth and now this - from The Olympian:

4 arrested for allegedly using sports gear shop as a drug front
Four Olympia men were arrested Friday after they allegedly used Score, a used sporting goods shop, as a front to sell and use drugs.

Evan Pederson, 35, Justin Burnam, 35, Arael Field-Borodin, 21, and Damon Wiffen, 23, were booked into the Thurston County jail and appeared Monday before Thurston County Superior Court Judge Erik Price, who found probable cause for drug charges.

The arrest:

About 3 a.m. Friday, two officers noticed a man smoking a cigarette outside of Score, on the 1400 block of State Avenue Northeast. Because of the early hour, the officers stopped by to check why lights were on inside the store.

Through the window, an officer saw three men inside who appeared to be using narcotics and more narcotics and paraphernalia on a desk near them. The officer watched one of the men place something in foil, place a lighter under it, and inhale the smoke through a pipe.

Two of the men left the store and were immediately detained. One of them leaned into the doorway and tried to warn the other men that there were police officers outside.

They displayed the usual level of intellegence:

The officer spotted the business’s owner, Pederson. Pederson purchased the business a few weeks ago.

Officers said Pederson told them that people regularly came by the store to purchase and consume narcotics. He also told them he used heroin daily, the officers reported.

The stupid - it burns! Was probably planning to run a money laundering operation for his drug profits.

A shooting in WA State

| No Comments

Heard this morning that there was a shooting at a trailer park in Lacey, a small town near the State Capitol of Olympia. Three fatalities and one wounded. The story just got a bit more complex. From The Olympian:

3 dead, 1 injured in shooting near Lacey
Thurston County sheriff’s detectives are investigating an early morning shooting near Lacey that left three people dead and one injured.

Chief Deputy Dave Pearsall identified the victims as a 31-year-old Olympia woman, a 28-year-old Olympia man and a 36-year-old Elma man. He said it is unclear how they knew each other or what their relationship is.

“We don’t know the motive or have a suspect at this time,” Pearsall told reporters about 1 p.m. They also have not found the weapon used.

A 30-year-old man who was taken to Providence St. Peter Hospital is a “possible suspect” — but detectives won’t know how the man was involved until he is interviewed, Pearsall said.

And the clincher:

Deputies found a half pound of methamphetamine and two rifles inside the camping trailer.

One hell of a party. From tweaker.org - weights and measures we find that one ounce of meth has a street price of $1,200 - half pound would check in at $9,600. That's enough for a shooting.

Cognitive dissonance in the news

| No Comments

A two-fer from The Seattle Times:

First - the elites tell us what we need to do:

Regional council warns 5 King County towns they’re growing too fast

Second - rules for thee but not for me:

Downtown Seattle’s building frenzy: 65 projects now in construction

Cognitive dissonance? From Wikipedia:

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

Very glad that I bailed out of Seattle when I did. Just getting too crowded.

Back home again

| No Comments

Stopped off at the site where we will be doing the field day - needed to coordinate with some of the people there. Also stopped at the store.

Fix a bit of dinner (left-over beef stew) and then surf. Woke up early this morning so feeling a bit tired but planning to stay up and reset my sleep schedule.

Time to head home

| No Comments

Power down the laptop in a few minutes and head back home.

Hillary's emails - a two-fer

| No Comments

First - from Associated Press:

EMAILS: KEY SECURITY FEATURES DISABLED ON CLINTON'S SERVER
Newly released emails show State Department staffers wrestled in December 2010 over a serious technical problem with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's home email server. They temporarily disabled security features, which left the server more vulnerable to hackers. Weeks later, hackers attacked the server so seriously it was shut down.

The emails were released under court order Wednesday to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. The group has sued the State Department over access to public records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's service as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013.

Un-frickin'-real.

Second - from FOX News:

Clinton IT specialist invokes 5th more than 125 times in deposition
Hillary Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano invoked the Fifth more than 125 times during a 90-minute, closed-door deposition Wednesday with the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, a source with the group told Fox News.

The official said Pagliano was working off an index card and read the same crafted statement each time.

“It was a sad day for government transparency,” the Judicial Watch official said, adding they asked all their questions and Pagliano invoked the Fifth Amendment right not to answer them.

Pagliano was a central figure in the set-up and management of Clinton’s personal server she used exclusively for government business while secretary of state. The State Department inspector general found Clinton violated government rules with that arrangement.

A bit more:

He was deposed as part of Judicial Watch's lawsuit seeking Clinton emails and other records. A federal judge granted discovery, in turn allowing the depositions, which is highly unusual in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The judge cited "reasonable suspicion" Clinton and her aides were trying to avoid federal records law. 

Granting discovery is really big. More:

A federal court agreed to keep sealed Pagliano’s immunity deal struck with the Justice Department in December, citing the sensitivity of the FBI probe and calling it a “criminal” matter.  

Sealing the records is really big too - Hillary must be in deeper kim-chee than we think. Does not surprise me though.

Just as a heads-up - pleading the 5th 125 times in a 90 minute deposition means that Bryan invoked it every 43.2 seconds. He must have been repeating it like a mantra. I would love to know what the questions were...

Safeway blogging

| No Comments

Done with Thunderbunny - she is in great shape.

Stopping for lunch at the Safeway deli - I will buy a rustic baguette and have the deli department make a sandwich from it. Since I am buying the loaf, they only charge me the $2.00 extra meat fee instead of the $5.95 price for the full sandwich.

Only problem is that I like it with extra pickes and they were good enough to load me up. Took a bite and they were sweet pickles and not dill. Good but not what I was expecting.

Back to the farm after this - sunny today with rain suposed to be moving in so get some gardeining in while I can...

The worlds oldest Twinkie

| No Comments

It turns 40 this year - from Oddity Central:

World’s Oldest Twinkie Turns 40, Still Refuses to Decompose
In 1976, Roger Bennatti, a chemistry teacher at George Stevens Academy, in Maine, unwrapped a fresh Twinkie and placed it atop a classroom chalkboard so he and his students could see how long it took for it to decompose. 40 years later, that question remains unanswered, because mould simply refuses to grow on the world’s oldest Twinkie.

The official shelf-life of a Twinkie – as stated by the company making them nowadays – is only 25 days, but as the famous Twinkie of George Stevens Academy clearly shows, it’s really a lot longer than that. It has been sitting in a glass case for four decades now, and even though it might not be safe to eat, it is looking fantastic for its age. Its shape hasn’t change a bit, and if mould hasn’t grown on it so far, chances are it never will.

Libby Rosemeier, George Stevens Academy’s dean of students, was a student in Roger Bennatti’s class on the day this decades old experiment began. “We were studying the chemistry of food. We went next door to the store, bought Twinkies and we gave them to Mr. Bennatti and [asked him], ‘How many chemicals do you think are in something like this?’” Rosemeier recalls. “He said, ‘Let’s find out and see how long it lasts.’ He opened the Twinkie package, ate one, and put the other one on top of the [chalkboard].” The popular treat remained in his classroom for the next 28 years, until the chemistry teacher retired. From then on, the world’s oldest Twinkie became Rosemeier’s responsibility, and she had her father make a glass case to store it in.

Heh - great story! There is a reason why I do not eat Twinkies or other snack 'food' like this.

Burning Man branches out

| No Comments

From The Sacramento Bee:

Burning Man group buys Nevada oasis for year-round activities
For a quarter century, Burning Man was a temporary experience. People went to the festival of “radical self-expression” in the Nevada desert and came back talking about their magical weeks.

Earlier this month, the organization that oversees Burning Man took a major step toward becoming a year-round experience by purchasing 3,800 acres in the Black Rock Desert.

The land, known as Fly Ranch, is a desert oasis with a dozen spring-fed pools and a man-made geyser that spews near-boiling water. It sits 21 miles north of Gerlach, Nev., and a few miles from the vast stretch of playa that’s been Burning Man’s home since 1991.

Officials with the nonprofit Burning Man Project said about a dozen unidentified individuals funded the $6.5 million purchase.

This is not a new site for Burning Man

Organizers said they have no plans to move the 70,000-person event to Fly Ranch. It isn’t “suitable for the size and scope” of the current event, which is held in a dry lake bed where thousands camp for the week.

Their website is here: Burning Man

From the Terence Corcoran writing at Canada's Financial Post:

Junk Science Week: Science is on the verge of a nervous breakdown
Welcome to FP Comment’s 18th annual Junk Science Week, dedicated to exposing the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who manipulate science data to achieve their objectives. Our standard definition over the years has been this: junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda.

Much of our content over the past 18 years has focused less on science itself and more on the NGOs, politicians and others who have found it convenient to use and abuse science as a springboard to political action. It is easy, perhaps too easy, to follow the empty-headed foibles of a media culture that mindlessly recycles reports that bacon may cause heart disease or that cell phones cause cancer. Less easy is dealing with the much bigger problem: the break down of science itself. In The Guardian last week, Jerome Ravetz, considered one of the world’s leading philosophers of science, reviewed what he and many others describe as “the crisis in science.” Ravetz, who has been warning of the emerging internal conflicts in science for decades, sees the crisis is spreading to the general public. “Given the public awareness that science can be low-quality or corrupted, that whole fields can be misdirected for decades (see nutrition, on cholesterol and sugar), and that some basic fields must progress in the absence of any prospect of empirical testing (string theory), the naïve realism of previous generations becomes quite Medieval in its irrelevance to present realities.”

And the topics they will be covering this weeek:

We explore just some of the examples in this year’s Junk Science Week, including the GDP factory myth, sugar scares, the social cost of carbon, the last pesticide Roundup, killer lipstick, and our annual Rubber Duckies awards.

Be sure to read the comments too - some real trolls and some enlightened people.

Dealer blogging

| No Comments

Sitting in the car dealer lounge waiting for Thunderbunny to be serviced. Great people - been in business since 1908 so they must be doing something right...

Off to town today - truck service

| No Comments

Getting the oil and filters changed - checking a few things too. Back home early to work on some stuff - going to be a busy weekend!

A really good question - Trump

| No Comments

From The Washington Post:

Why isn’t the assassination attempt on Donald Trump bigger news?
The No. 1 trending question related to Donald Trump on Google right now is "Who tried to shoot Trump?" Which means a lot of people don't know the answer. Which is probably because the assassination attempt on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee hasn't been covered as a major news story.

The answer, authorities say, is Michael Steven Sandford, a 20-year-old British citizen who was in the United States illegally after overstaying his visa. Sandford allegedly tried to pull a gun from the holster of a police officer at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Saturday. He was arrested and later told the Secret Service that he had driven to the event from California and had been planning to kill the candidate for a year, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada.

News outlets have certainly reported on the incident, but it hasn't gotten anything resembling wall-to-wall coverage. Cable news shows devoted little time to Sandford Tuesday morning and afternoon. Trump's dismal fundraising report from May and his recent firing of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski received far more attention. Trump called in to the Trump-friendly "Fox & Friends" morning show and wasn't even asked about the attempt on his life.

Very good question - on my drive into town today I saw a couple Trump signs that had been defaced. One of the disadvantages of living in a university town - there is a lot of wonderful culture here but there are also a lot of poo-flinging monkeys too. These people cannot articulate a coherent thought so their only recourse is to tear down anything that doesn't fit their narrative.

Be careful what you ask for

| No Comments

Change can be a trickster:

20160621-change.jpg

Truck nice and clean

| No Comments

And running a second wash on the vest just to clean everything out. Didn't get that much on the vest - just a dribble but still. It's the principle of the thing. Don't want to be walking in the rain sometime and catch a faint whiff of eau de toilette.

Costco just started carrying a nice little insulated lunchbox with pockets for freezer packs ($10) - that is what bore the brunt of Grace's gastric distress but fortunately, it is waterproof inside and out and some quick work with a garden hose cleaned it right up. Planning to use it tomorrow when the truck is in for service.

I posted about this site when it first popped up on June 15th - here and here and my thought was this: 

Fun reading but, like I said, it will be taken down soon so go here and get it while you still can. Honestly surprised that it is still online.

Well, it is not only still up, the hacker has added more materials. From the website:

DOSSIER ON HILLARY CLINTON FROM DNC
This’s time to keep my word and here’re the docs I promised you.

It’s not a report in one file, it’s a big folder of docs devoted to Hillary Clinton that I found on the DNC server.

The DNC collected all info about the attacks on Hillary Clinton and prepared the ways of her defense, memos, etc., including the most sensitive issues like email hacks.

And it is not just at Guccifer 2.0's website, they have used dropbox accounts at five other anonymous file servers.

Downloading and will look through them in the next day or two. Fun reading!

The Orlando gay-shooting-monkey

| No Comments

A two-fer from Breitbart:

FirstAttorney General Lynch: Pulse Jihadi’s True Motive ‘May Never Be Known’

That poor woman is totally out of her depth. A walking, talking example of Hanlon's razor:

Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice

SecondOrlando Terrorist Supported Hillary Clinton to Stop Donald Trump

Of course. Every earmark of a progressive deeply entrenched in multiculturalism and P.C.

Just wonderful - we lose two nukes

| No Comments

Just when we need to be building them, the fscking enviros have lobbied to shut down two of them. From Bloomberg:

Losing a Nuclear Weapon Against Climate Change
Some environmentalists are thrilled at Tuesday’s announcement of the planned closing of California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. They might want to reconsider: Fighting climate change requires more nuclear power, not less.

The losers in this plan, which is pending regulatory approval, are all those who will suffer the consequences of climate change. That Diablo Canyon’s two reactors could be allowed to shut down is alarming evidence that too little effort is being made to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The climate-friendly electricity that the Diablo Canyon plant generates, which amounts to about 9 percent of California’s power, would be lost.

Yes, a deal reached among the plant’s operator, labor unions and a few environmental groups stipulates that greater energy efficiency and more renewable power -- solar, wind and the like -- will pick up the slack. But to the extent that these strategies are used to replace clean nuclear power, they make zero progress toward lowering carbon emissions. Diablo Canyon prevents the emission of 6.8 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Good work brainiacs. You really think things through don't you.

Best laid plans

| No Comments

Was planning to work at home but hit a couple of roadblocks so drove in to Bellingham. Had dinner there and just getting back (stopped for the usual two pints of cider at my local).

Got a couple things to take care of - the least of which is that Grace had a wonderful case of diarrhea in the truck. No more treats for her for a few days. Spending the next 30 minutes or so cleaning out the seat - the good news is that she didn't hit any of the cameras or books or important stuff. The seats are leather and my vest is in the washing machine at this very moment.

Read the internet after I am done cleaning. Got an early night tonight as I take the truck in for its routine maintenance tomorrow morning so looking at an early start.

Gathering the stuff for this weekend.

More later...

No... Just NO!

| No Comments

Taking things a little bit too far too soon - from Yahoo/Reuters:

Europe's robots to become 'electronic persons' under draft plan
Europe's growing army of robot workers could be classed as "electronic persons" and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution.

Robots are being deployed in ever-greater numbers in factories and also taking on tasks such as personal care or surgery, raising fears over unemployment, wealth inequality and alienation.

I could see this if they pass the Turing test 100% every time but we are still a good ten years away from that (outside of laboratory curiosities) for installed systems and probably another ten years for autonomous robot systems. And what happens of a specific part breaks and the manufacturer no longer makes it? Will that manufacturer now be charged with negligent manslaughter?

Paying social security?  Just like a European - always thinking of the taxes they can levy.

Strawberry Moon

| 1 Comment

A two-fer - Summer Solstice (longest day of the year) and a full moon. This one is the Strawberry Moon (list of moon names here). Next opportunity to shoot this? June 21, 2062

Here is a preliminary shot of tonights moon rising over a mountain ridge - Mt. Baker is peeking out in the background:

20160620-moon.jpg

This is just a single exposure out of many - I was shooting High Dynamic Range so these need to be developed. I will post the finished product in a day or two (as well as the overdue photos from the ham radio trip to Seaside Oregon from the beginning of this month).

Our new National Anthem

| No Comments

Monty Python - 1989

Dog water

| No Comments

Person that did this illustration knows dogs very well:

20160620-dogwater.jpg

Another Kuntzman post

| No Comments

Over at The People's Cube: What is it like to fire a Daisy BB gun?

As with Larry's post, this carries a multiple drink alert.

Be sure to read the comments - funny stuff!

They need to connect with their feeeeelings after all. Great story from Neil Steinberg writing at the Chicago Sun-Times:

STEINBERG: Would-be terrorists can buy guns, but a reporter? No.
There’s something soothing about buying a gun.

Driving to Maxon Shooter’s Supplies in Des Plaines on Wednesday to purchase my first assault rifle, I admit, I was nervous. I’d never owned a gun before. And with the horror of Sunday’s Orlando massacre still echoing, even the pleasant summer day — the lush green trees, fluffy white clouds, blue sky — took on a grim aspect, the sweetness of fragile life flashing by as I headed into the Valley of Death.

Earlier, in my editor’s office, I had ticked off the reasons for me not to buy a gun: this was a journalistic stunt; done repeatedly; supporting an industry I despise. But as I tell people, I just work here, I don’t own the place. And my qualms melted as I dug into the issue.

OK - Neil is doing some virtue signaling and establishing his liberal bona fides.
To set the scene - from Psalm 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Back to the article:

“I’m interested in one of the ARs,” I said, trying to project an air of manly ease. “What’s the difference between the cheap ones and the expensive ones?”

“Not much,” said Rob, a clerk with a winged death’s head with a dagger tattooed on his right forearm. “Mostly it’s manufacturing tolerances, different sights and stuff.”

Neil does some moralizing, recounts a personal story, quotes some very-well-debunked statistics and continues with this:

When it came time to make the purchase, Rob, the clerk with the tattoos, handed me over to Mike, who gave his name shaking my hand, I gave mine. “The writer?” he said. If I wanted to lie as part of my job, I’d have gone into public relations. “Yes,” I said, explaining that I plan to buy the gun, shoot at their range, then give it to the police. He suggested I sell it back to them instead and I heartily agreed. Economical. If they would let me photograph myself with it there, the gun need never leave the store.

Sounds like a deal - again, Neil quotes another statistic that is just plain wrong and the story continues to its ending:

Shot:
At 5:13 Sarah from Maxon called. They were canceling my sale and refunding my money. No gun for you. I called back. Why? “I don’t have to tell you,” she said. I knew that, but was curious. I wasn’t rejected by the government? No. So what is it? “I’m not at liberty,” she said.

Chaser:
A few hours later, Maxon sent the newspaper a lengthy statement, the key part being: “it was uncovered that Mr. Steinberg has an admitted history of alcohol abuse, and a charge for domestic battery involving his wife.”

What a maroon. This makes Gersh Kuntzman look like a sober lifetime member of the National Riflemen Association.

It will be fun to see the repercussions from this story - Kuntzman already had a doozy from Larry Correia.

Well that didn't last long

| No Comments

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the FBI would be releasing edited transcripts of the 911 calls made by the Orlando nightclub shooter to the police during his rampage.

Enough people raised a big stink - from FOX News:

FBI, DOJ release new, full transcript of Orlando shooter's 911 call
Under pressure from Republican leaders, the Justice Department on Monday afternoon reversed itself and released a full, uncensored transcript of the Orlando terrorist's 911 call on the night of the massacre, calling the morning’s furor over omissions in the document “an unnecessary distraction.”

An earlier version of the transcript had deleted the word “Islamic State” and the name of ISIS leader “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Omar Mateen made the 50-second 911 call in which he claimed responsibility for the terror attack and pledged allegiance to Islamic State's leader at 2:35 a.m. The call came just over a half hour into the June 12 slaughter at gay nightclub Pulse.

“I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of the Islamic State,” Mateen says on the new transcript.

Why was that so hard? Some a**hole's name and the fact that the terrorist was supportive of an islamic state. Contradicts the Obama narrative but what else about the real world is new... I almost feel sorry for Ms. Lynch - the directive had to have come from Valerie Jarrett. It has her fingerprints on it.

Eat the Rich - the correct way

| No Comments

Two years old but spot on - from Neuter the Debt:

20160620-debt.jpg

From Breitbart:

Six Diseases Return To US as Migration Advocates Celebrate ‘World Refugee Day’
Six diseases that were recently near eradication are making a comeback in the United States, as the taxpayer funded refugee resettlement industry launches a propaganda blitz about the so-called World Refugee Day this Monday.

The returning diseases are;

1. Tuberculosis
2. Measles
3. Whooping Cough
4. Mumps
5. Scarlet Fever
6. Bubonic Plague

The near eradication of these diseases in the United States during the twentieth century was a remarkable accomplishment of American civilization. Until recently, most Americans believed these diseases were gone from our shores for good.

But a politicized public health system, and a rise in the subsidized migration into the United States, however, have combined to reverse a century of progress.

Just wonderful - much more at the article including links to the data.

One example - Active TB - has grown 1.7% in the US after 23 years of steady decline. Some of the refugee populations have as many as 35% (Vermont) carrying a latent version which can become active (and therefore communicable) at any point in the future.

Our population is in the best of hands.

Back home again

| No Comments

Got a bunch of Chinese food instead of eating in town.

Decompress for a little bit, dinner, a couple episodes of Bones and then read the internet.

Off to town today

| No Comments

Running a couple errands and placing orders for this weekend's field day.

Probably get something to eat in town so spew will resume later this evening.

Carbon Dioxide - the gas of life

Here is the summary from a paper by Dr. Patrick Moore:

This study looks at the positive environmental effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a topic which has been well established in the scientific literature but which is far too often ignored in the current discussions about climate change policy. All life is carbon based and the primary source of this carbon is the CO2 in the global atmosphere. As recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at 180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth.

This is only 30 ppm above a level that would result in the death of plants due to CO2 starvation. It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments. The combustion of fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants, including food crops and trees. Human emissions of CO2 have restored a balance to the global carbon cycle, thereby ensuring the long-term continuation of life on Earth.

Here is the paper in full: THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF HUMAN CO2 EMISSIONS ON THE SURVIVAL OF LIFE ON EARTH (PDF)

Here is Dr. Moore's comment on those who think CO2 is a bad thing:

A powerful convergence of interests among key elites supports and drives the climate catastrophe narrative. Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; scientists and science institutions raise billions in public grants, create whole new institutions, and engage in a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; businesses want to look green and receive huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as large wind farms and solar arrays. Even the Pope of the Catholic Church has weighed in with a religious angle. Lost in all these machinations is the indisputable fact that the most important thing about CO2 is that it is essential for all life on Earth and that before humans began to burn fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was heading in a very dangerous direction for a very long time. Surely, the most “dangerous” change in climate in the short term would be to one that would not support sufficient food production to feed our own population.

Looks like he is throwing down the gauntlet. Good! These elites have zero connection with reality and live their lives in their own self-serving bubble. For them, it is all about money and power and concentrating thereof. Time for them to wake up and smell the cappuccino.

Long hot summer

| No Comments

Looks like it will be an interesting summer for California. I guess that alt.energy is not baseload capacity after all. From Reuters:

California power grid prepares for heatwave, possible natgas shortage
California will have its first test of plans to keep the lights on this summer following the shutdown of the key Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility as temperatures in the Los Angeles area are forecast to hit triple digits this week.

With record-setting heat and air conditioning demand expected in Southern California, the state's power grid operator issued a so-called "flex alert," urging consumers to conserve energy to help prevent rotating power outages - which could occur regardless.

Electricity demand is expected to rise during the unseasonable heatwave on Monday and Tuesday, with forecast system-wide use expected to top 45,000 megawatts, said the California Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages electricity flow through the state. That compares with a peak demand of 47,358 MW last year and the all-time high of 50,270 MW set in July 2006.

That could put stress on the power grid, particularly with the shut-in of Aliso Canyon, following a massive leak at the underground storage facility in October. The facility, in the San Fernando Valley, is the second largest storage field in the western United States, according to federal data, and therefore crucial for power generation.

I had written about the Aliso Canyon leak before here and here - basically, it was the eco-disaster you did not hear about. Baseload capacity is how much electricity can you generate 24/7 - not when the sun is shining, not when the wind is blowing, not when the tides are running, 24/7. None of the alternative energy projects have been able to do this so far. Nuclear would be my choice.

It has been a bumper year for coyotes. There are a couple families within a half-mile of the farm - tonight with slightly cloudy skies and a full moon, they are yipping up a storm. There is one mom and two kits that have been assuming the run of the farm - none of the other critters give them a second look anymore.

Things would be different if I had some tasty hens strolling around - I think I will keep buying my neighbor's eggs from my store this time around.

Earlier today, it came to my attention that United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch is not going to be releasing the full transcripts of the phone calls during the terrorist attack in Orlando. She was going to censor them.

My thought was that it was about optics and showing that Obama was wrong in his assessment of domestic threats from ISIS and other muslim shitlords. Glenn Reynolds agrees with this but adds a second and chilling possibility:

The obvious conclusion is they’re doing this because they don’t want people to understand what happened and why. There are a few reasons for this that I can imagine:

1. It would call attention to Obama’s miserable failures in the mideast and in counterterror at home, and make an even more obvious hash of Obama’s gun-control distraction tale; and/or

2. He said something specific about being motivated by Obama’s drone attacks on his “brothers” in his “home country” of Afghanistan, which would not only make Obama look bad but would also undermine his immigration storyline.

Emphasis mine - that second possibility will be very interesting if it comes to light. Obama colluding with muslims and terrorists? His Dad was muslim. He went to islamic schools as a child.

Donald Trump in 2000

| No Comments

The Advocate reprinted an interview they did with Trump back in 2000 - a few answers:

Why should gays and lesbians be interested in you as a presidential candidate?
I grew up in New York City, a town with different races, religions, and peoples. It breeds tolerance. In all truth, I don’t care whether or not a person is gay. I judge people based on their capability, honesty, and merit. Being in the entertainment business — that is, owning casinos and … several large beauty pageants — I’ve worked with many gay people. I have met some tough, talented, capable, terrific people. Their lifestyle is of no interest to me.

Would we see gay people in a Trump administration?
I would want the best and brightest. Sexual orientation would be meaningless. I’m looking for brains and experience. If the best person for the job happens to be gay, I would certainly appoint them. One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don't go into government. I’d want to change that.

What would you do to combat antigay prejudice?
I like the idea of amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. It would be simple. It would be straightforward. We don’t need to rewrite the laws currently on the books, although I do think we need to address hate-crimes legislation. But amending the Civil Rights Act would grant the same protection to gay people that we give to other Americans — it’s only fair. I actually suggested this first, and now I see [Democratic presidential candidate] Bill Bradley has jumped on the bandwagon and is claiming the idea as his own.

The guy is consistent. He has the same beliefs today - sixteen years later. People like Obama, John Kerry, Crooked Hillary - they flip-flop whenever it fits the narrative of the day. Trump - we know where he stands - he is as steady as the tradewinds. This is a good thing.

Yummy - cherries are getting ripe

| No Comments

Picked a couple pints from our trees - Bing and Ranier. Still a bit early but they are delicious.

Heading into town tomorrow and a cherry pitter is on my shopping list.

Playing in the dirt a little bit - Lulu planted some hanging baskets for the house. I am starting to gather utensils for next weekend's Amateur Radio field day. I will be catering dinner and breakfast.

Left-over beef stew for dinner tonight. Better the next day so curious how it turns out.

Soilcam

| No Comments

Brilliant idea - take an old flatbed scanner, waterproof it and bury it in the dirt. Run a scan every ten minutes or so and merge them into a time-lapse. Here is one video:

Here is the Instructables site: Build a Rhizotron! (SoilCam)
Here is Josh's blog: SoilCam

Spin spin spin spin - UPDATE

| No Comments

UPDATE at the bottom and it's a doozey

It would not be prudent for National Public Radio to counter President Obama's narrative. From NPR:

Investigators Say Orlando Shooter Showed Few Warning Signs Of Radicalization
As investigators probe the background of Omar Mateen, whose attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando left 49 people dead, they say he bore few warning signs of radicalization.

Mateen had allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call during the attack, as The Two-Way has reported. But as further details emerge about the shooter, investigators say Mateen's profile is more like that of a "typical mass shooter" than an individual radicalized by ISIS, as NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports.

This cannot be an example of Islamic Terrorism - no not at all. That would counter the narrative of The Religion of Peace:

20160619-ramadan.jpg

I find it disgusting that my tax dollars are spent on this ideological crap. Sesame Street and programs like that are great but stay away from political proselytizing please. Maybe they need to have their budget cut by 40% - just to get their attention...

UPDATE - from Real Clear Politics:

Lynch: "Partial Transcript" Of Orlando 911 Calls Will Have References To Islamic Terrorism Removed
In an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, Attorney General Loretta Lynch says that on Monday, the FBI will release edited transcripts of the 911 calls made by the Orlando nightclub shooter to the police during his rampage.

"What we're not going to do is further proclaim this man's pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda," Lynch said. "We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State]."

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is an abject liar - our government does not want to admit that a member of Barry's JV team was able to stage a successful terrorist attack in the continental United States. That would blow up the prevailing narrative with some unfortunate truth.

Trump is going to have a field day with this...

Old cell phone? Put it to good use

| No Comments

With these people: Cellphone Bank

At the top of the web page is a button that says Get a Label - this is a PDF file that opens on your computer and is a free shipping label that you attach to the box with your phone(s). Drop it off at your post office.

When they receive your phones, they will refurbish them and give them to people who need to be able to call 911 - domestic violence, elderly, etc... Even if you do not have an account for the cell phone, it can still call 911.

When I bid on the GPS unit in yesterdays auction, it was in a box with six cell phones and one CB Radio. The cell phones will be on their way to Cellphone Bank tomorrow - good people.

Yummy bacon

| No Comments

Swiped this from The Silicon Graybeard:

20160619-bacon.jpg

Just wonderful - from Retraction Watch:

More than $100M worth of research may be tainted by govt lab misconduct
Misconduct by a chemist at a Colorado lab run by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has potentially affected 24 research and assessment projects, supported by $108 million in federal funding, government officials have disclosed.

According to a June 15 statement from the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the USGS, the operator of a mass spectrometer in the Inorganic Section of the Energy Resources Program’s (ERP) Energy Geochemistry Laboratory in Lakewood has been accused of scientific misconduct and manipulating data. The unit is responsible for conducting coal and water quality assessments in projects both in the United States and abroad.

A bit more - the full report is here: SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY INCIDENT AT USGS ENERGY GEOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY (PDF)

This is the second incident of misconduct to affect the laboratory. Although the current report focuses on this incident, it provides some detail about the first:

In 2014, OIG evaluated ERP’s quality control process, issuing the final report (No. CR-EV-GSV-0003-2014) in May 2015. We found that ERP’s system of quality assurance/quality control was insufficient to detect quality-related issues 4 in its science center laboratories. The report detailed two instances in which mass spectrometer operators in the Energy Geochemistry Laboratory’s Inorganic Section had violated established laboratory practices without detection for many years. The initial incident involved scientific misconduct that began in 1996 and continued undiscovered until 2008. The second incident began in 2008 and continued undiscovered until late 2014 … Following discovery of the second incident, ERP management issued a stop work order for the laboratory and began an internal investigation.

An inquiry found that the lab had:

a “chronic pattern of scientific misconduct” and that “data produced by the Inorganic Section were intentionally manipulated by the line-chemist in charge.” The identified issues predominantly affected coal and water quality research and related assessments.

More specifically:

USGS accused the chemist of data manipulation by intentionally changing the results produced by the mass spectrometer. The chemist also failed to preserve the data. Further, the Bureau accused the chemist of failing to operate the mass spectrometer according to established practices, which constituted scientific misconduct. …given the widespread use of USGS data and publications by its many customers, scientific misconduct at the Inorganic Section has serious implications for energy and environmental decisions driven by information developed at the laboratory.

Emphasis mine - the data was manipulated to favor an outcome. Much more at the site. The data that was manipulated dealt with pollution from coal, mercury and uranium - all the environmental hot-buttons. Needless to say, that lab was closed. I hope they raise it to the ground, burn the remains and salt the earth. Pour encourager les autres...

About Mateen's psych evaluation nine years ago? From the Miami Herald:

‘Clerical error’ on Orlando killer’s psychological eval named wrong doctor
Nine years ago, the state of Florida received documentation from a security firm vouching for the mental health of Omar Mateen, who launched a bloody attack this week on Orlando nightclub patrons.

But the psychologist whose name appears on the document in state records said Friday that she never evaluated a man who now ranks as the worst mass killer in American history. In fact, she wasn’t even living in Florida when the evaluation was supposedly completed.

The revelation Friday became another source of scrutiny for the G4S security firm, which was known as Wackenhut at the time. The psychological evaluation done for the company, which is required under state law, cleared Mateen to carry a firearm as a private security guard.

“What I do know is that in September 2007, I was not living or working in Florida, I was not performing any work for Wackenhut, and I did not administer any type of examination to Omar Mateen,” Dr. Carol Nudelman, who now lives in Colorado, said in a statement released through her attorneys to the Miami Herald and other papers who had published her name.

The company on Friday called the discrepancy a “clerical error” and said that Mateen was indeed evaluated, but by a different psychologist.

Just a minor clerical error - I'm sure we will find out what really happened (meanwhile, papers are being shredded and lawyers are being put on retainer).

I wonder how many pizzas are being delivered to the Miami G4S offices tonight? Let the lawsuits begin...

From Fox News/Associated Press:

Court in Egypt sentences 2 Al-Jazeera employees to death, former President Mohammed Morsi to 40 years in prison
An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced six people, including two Al-Jazeera employees, to death for allegedly passing documents related to national security to Qatar and the Doha-based TV network during the rule of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi, the case's top defendant, and two of his aides were also sentenced to 25 years in prison. Morsi and his secretary, Amin el-Sirafy, received an additional 15-year sentence for a lesser crime. El-Sirafy's daughter, Karima, was also sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013 and has already been sentenced to death in another case. That death sentence and another two -- life and 20 years in prison -- are under appeal.

Talk about a sea-change - they are not only jailing Morsi and his close associates, they are executing the media. A bit more:

The two Al-Jazeera employees -- identified by the judge as news producer Alaa Omar Mohammed and news editor Ibrahim Mohammed Hilal -- were sentenced in absentia along with Asmaa al-Khateib, who worked for Rasd, a media network widely suspected of links to Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.

If this sounds a bit familiar to you, here is Alan West writing about events in 2009. At that time, West was a member of the House Armed Services Committee. From Alan's website, April 22nd, 2015 (here he is talking about an earlier conviction for Morsi, not this most recent one):

Egypt’s Morsi gets life: Here’s what the liberal media WILL NOT say about it
Back in 2009, President Barack Obama gave a monumental speech in Cairo where he sought to create a bridge to establish better relations with the Islamic world.

There were two problems with that speech — it was overly conciliatory towards the Islamic world and Obama requested members of the infamous Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), to be seated front and center. Not too long afterwards, the “Arab Spring” burst forth and the uprising spread to Egypt. President Obama interjected himself into the Egyptian political landscape and demanded that President Hosni Mubarak step down. The problem with that demand and the so-called push for “democratic” elections is that it would only benefit one group in Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood.

I remember being on the House Armed Services Committee and receiving a briefing from a Pentagon official who was responsible for Middle East policy — focused on Egypt. He confided in the committee that the Muslim Brotherhood had given its word that it would not run candidates in the upcoming elections. When it came time for me to ask a question, I asked if he believed the MB. I also asked if he had read the MB charter and if anything had changed about that defining document. My point was that the MB was not to be trusted and furthermore, it was still the granddaddy of Islamic terrorist groups — as well as the group responsible for the assassination of peace and reform -minded Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

The Muslim Brotherhood has this as its motto:

Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

You could not meet a nicer bunch of people. Yeah. Very glad to see Egypt emerging from her seven years in purgatory and that they are not afraid to deliver justice to those people who had put them there.

Dinner was excellent

| No Comments

Getting closer to nailing the beef stew recipe. Switched from using generic 'stew meat' over to using a large tri-tip cut - about $3 more for the entire dish (one gallon batch size) and it is all the same cut of beast so it cooks consistently. I had been deep-frying the meat before putting it into the pressure cooker but now, I broiled it for about four minutes each side, let it rest for ten minutes and then cut it into cubes.

I use V8 Hot juice for the base, two cans of Costco diced 'maters and a spoon of Better than Bouillon beef base and then pressure cook for fifteen minutes. Add the onion and root vegetables and pressure cook for another six minutes.

Stew nerd-vana. Watched two episodes of Bones and then off to the internet.

Great implementation:

SWEET!!! - update

| No Comments

The GPS works great and it is still on the market for around $250. Considering that I spent $100 for the whole load, I just made my money back and more...

Doing my happy dance and there is a very good reason why that will never show up on YouTube.

Venezuela - a parting look

| No Comments

From Joel D. Hirst. Lufthansa has its last flight from Venezuela.

The Last Flight
This is what the end looks like. A flag draped over a departing airplane, the last flight – the last bridge. A sign of honor and gratitude from the departing – those never to return – grateful for so many years of connections. Of weekends spent in the lavish hotels. Of trips to the beach, smelling the salt seas; the mountains, the plains, the great savanna with its traditions steeped in the history of an indomitable people. I knew the old Venezuela – the one that Lufthansa remembered, flew to – served. The one of beer, and beach, and the beauty of great open places that knew no masters; that were safe and comfortable for so many – rich and poor alike. Old places – predating the commies (damn their resentment, those who only destroy, who think only in envy, greed and violence). Who deny the comforting equalizer of trade – because they would not compete; because they cannot compete.

Wonderful writing - go and read the whole lamentation. It is worth a couple minutes of your time. This is socialism in its end-game writ plain for us to observe and learn. So sad that so few of us do.

Whose to blame?

| No Comments

From A. F. Branco:

20160618-blame.jpg

Another bit of Clinton history

Ran into this article from February 25, 1999 at Salon Magazine:

Dumping scandal: The export of bad blood
A group of Canadian hemophiliacs who say they contracted hepatitis C and HIV from contaminated blood plasma originating in Arkansas and Louisiana prisons during the 1980s journeyed to Washington Wednesday to demand a criminal investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the scandal. Department officials did not immediately respond. The Canadians are asking why certain American prison systems, including one in Grady, Ark., during then-Gov. Bill Clinton’s tenure, continued to export plasma long after the sale of such products had ceased inside the U.S. itself.

Much more at the site. The prisoners sold their whole blood for $7/unit and Arkansas state sold it to Canada for $50/unit. No testing. Because of the no testing, they were not allowed to sell the blood in the USA.

From Larry O'Connor writing at Hot Air:

Shaffer: 15% of refugees are ISIS
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer was a member of the military intelligence operations in the early days of the war in Afghanistan and chronicled his early efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda following the terror attacks of 9/11 in his book, Operation Dark Heart. He is a frequent guest on cable news and has an enormous wealth of sources in the US intelligence community.

Friday morning, he joined me and co-host Brian Wilson on our morning radio program on WMAL in Washington DC to comment on CIA Director John Brennan’s remarkable testimony Thursday on Capitol Hill detailing how ISIS is targeting the refugee and open borders to infiltrate our country.

“It’s gotten so bad they can’t cover it up anymore,” Shaffer said of Brennan’s testimony which reinforces the opinions of many critics of Obama’s failed policies in the Middle East. “I think some of these guys recognize that tying their future to the White House and the complete – I’ll just say it – lies that come out of the White House is going to be detrimental to their political future,” Shaffer added.

“Brennan is finally telling the truth,” he added.

Shaffer than quotes from Brennan's testimony:

“I got the percentage from one of my sources. We’re talking about, right now, in the refugee stream, between 15-17% of individuals coming through the refugee stream are ISIS. Add to that the layer of the fact that we can’t really stream these folks.”

More at the site - the people in Washington are so wrapped up in themselves that they do not see what they are actually doing.

SWEET!!!

| No Comments

Auction was really good - nicely set up, clearly marked, no shilling and the bidders were either professionals or really cheap or both. Amateurs tend to bid on emotion - they can run the bidding to well over list price for new equipment. The people today were nice and reserved. Saw a bunch of people that I knew.

Picked up a spittoon (reproduction but well made), four plumbers/tinners torches (photo below from the web but you get the general idea), a nice GPS,police scanner and a couple of cell phones, plus a bunch of crap. You bid on various 'lots' so the auctioneer will bundle crap in with good stuff and you have to take everything in that lot.

Now to get some beef stew on the stove for dinner...

20160618-torch.jpg

Off to the auction

| No Comments

Get there around 11:00 - see what they have. Auction starts at noon so unless the crowd is professional and unless there is some item I just gotta have in the later lot numbers, I will be home shortly after.

More when I get back home. Making beef stew tonight for dinner so need a couple hours for that anyway...

Possible auction tomorrow

| No Comments

After several years of not really doing anything with it, the people at Mt. Baker Auto are auctioning off everything tomorrow. Preview at 10:00, Auction at Noon.

See how these people are - I am spoiled by James G. Murphy all these years - been attending their auctions since the 1981 sale of the Space Needle kitchen (scroll down to the end of the story) in advance of their remodel..

Quote of the month

| No Comments

Everyone who thinks it's a good idea to take away guns and rifles from law-abiding Americans, please raise your hand.
Now lower it 45 degrees.

From Paul Dammit! over at Hawsepiper

A quiet discussion

| No Comments

Swiped from Bayou Renaissance Man:

20160617-guns.jpg

Finally - some great news

| No Comments

From The Washington Post:

It’s the first new U.S. nuclear reactor in decades. And climate change has made that a very big deal.
In an immaculate control room at the Watts Bar nuclear plant, green bars flash on a large screen, signaling something that has not happened in the United States in two decades.

As control rods lift from the water in the core, and neutrons go about the business of splitting uranium atoms, life comes to a new nuclear reactor — the first in the country since its sister reactor here was licensed in 1996.

By summer’s end, authorities expect the new reactor at this complex along the Chickamauga Reservoir, a dammed section of the Tennessee River extending northward from Chattanooga, to steadily generate enough electricity to power 650,000 homes. Although the opening of a new nuclear facility used to draw protesters and angry rhetoric, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar reactor has been mostly welcomed by local residents — and even some advocates concerned about climate change.

“It’s a big step forward for clean energy, and we really have to be pushing that as hard as we can for the sake of the climate – all sources of clean energy, which includes nuclear,” said MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel.

Finally - now if they can just get Thorium Reactors into production and start dotting the countryside with these instead of the hideously expensive wind turbines and solar panels, we will be off to a good start.

Run in circles, scream and shout

| No Comments

In other words - life as normal. From the London Daily Express:

DOOMSDAY COMING? Full moon before summer solstice 'could spark madness and mass shootings'
Timothy Halloran, who runs the Rasa Lila Healing YouTube astrology channel, filmed a chilling video in woods in Savannah, Georgia, on Thursday warning that the events around the Pagan-celebrated solstice may not be a calm and spiritual as people imagine.

He spoke of fears of an "increased energy" bringing about "madness, hallucinations and delusions of grandeur" among the population.

Sounds like just another day in the political arena. A bit more:

"Yet the light is piercing, and it is hot, and it can be unbearable at times, particularly for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere during the Summer Solstice, when the Sun scorches down and we have our longest day of the year.

"Coinciding with this celestial event (a day before) we have a Full Moon at the final degree of Sagittarius square to Chiron.

"He said at the time Mercury would activate a 'mutable grand cross between Saturn, Jupiter and a stationed retrograde Neptune'.

He said: "To Say that this is a stable time to be awake and aware would be a lie.

What the Chinese say about interesting times - but on steroids. Keep your powder dry.

The Olympic Games

| No Comments

A nice idea but it sure is a great way to crater the local economy. From Yahoo News/Associated Press:

Brazil's Rio state declares financial disaster before Games
The acting governor of Rio de Janeiro state has declared a state of financial disaster so he has more leeway to manage the state's scarce resources less than two months Brazil hosts the Olympic Games.

Francisco Dornelles announced the decision on Friday. It will allow Rio's state government to change its budgetary priorities without disrespecting Brazil's fiscal laws.

The move will let Dornelles adopt exceptional measures to pay costs related to the Games as the state grapples with the country's economic recession.

Just another corrupt nation - I would really love to visit there but not until they clean up first. And it is not just the Games:

Rio's state government is in such dire straits that two of its hospitals were taken over by the Rio de Janeiro city government to allow doctors to keep receiving their paychecks. Some police stations are so underfunded that they have asked neighbors to donate basic items like toilet paper. Public workers and retirees have suffered months-long delays in receiving their money.

Tragic. The plutocrats are living high on the hog while the citizens are scrambling for the basic necessities. Not the way to run a Nation.

Back from town

| No Comments

Brought back a Costco roti chicken and Lulu put on a pot of rice - eating Hawaiian tonight.

Time to get dinner ready - more spew in a bit...

No other game in town. From DSL Reports:

Time Warner Cable Suspends Broadband Upgrades After Merger
Time Warner Cable has confirmed that the company has suspended its "Maxx" broadband and TV upgrades while the dust settles from Charter's $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Time Warner Cable's Maxx upgrades not only deliver faster top speeds up to 300 Mbps, but a notably overhauled improvement to the company's set top box interface. But Time Warner Cable has been telling company support techs and engineers that the upgrades were actually put on hold as of May 26.

In other words - we own the competition, we own the market and now we take your money. To quote the great Lily Tomlin in her Ernestine character: 

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

Gorgeous day today

| No Comments

Puttered around the house, heading out for coffee and in to town to pick up a few things for the weekend.

Weather is 66°F and sunny - not what was forecast (chance showers) and then there is this Special Weather Statement that showed up in this mornings forecast:

20160617-snow.jpg

What about all of that Global Warming that is going on?

From Dilbert:

20160616-dilbert.jpg

Much more here, here and here.

God Save the Queen

| No Comments

England's Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 90th birthday a few days ago. Her costume for the event - coat and hat - were both a very bright green. The same color as is used on television for a Chroma Key or green screen. Needless to say, people have been having a field day with this.

Two from PetaPixel:

20160616-queen01.jpg

And Bored Panda has a bunch of animated GIFs as well as the original outfit:

20160616-queen02.jpg

That is Lime Green...

More on the Chroma Key process here: HOW DOES GREEN SCREEN WORK? and much more at Google

Ask Kuntzman

| No Comments

A few days ago, New York Daily News reporter Gersh Kuntzman published this article. It was so over the top and full of mis-information that he parodied himself.

What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud

Best-selling author Larry Correia created this representative info-graphic and took the Kuntzman story and ran with it:

ASK KUNTZMAN!
After the wildly successful feature where ace reporter Gersh Kuntzman gave us the straight scoop on what it is like to shoot the terrifying AR-15 “Black Mamba Star Killer Base” rifle, we here at the New York Daily News are happy to present our new feature ASK KUNTZMAN!

Join us as Gersh Kuntzman gives valuable life advice. Send us your questions, from lifestyle choices to product reviews, and together we may peer deep into his earth mother like wisdom. From his lilac scented crying pillow to you, rejoice as Gersh Kuntzman let’s you know what’s really going on in the world.

20160616-kuntzman.jpg

Go and read the rest - caution: multiple drink alert - Larry is at the top of his form...

Anthony has a great series of aerial images of prominent warmer scientists' houses:

Study: ‘Climate scientists are more credible when they practice what they preach’ – but my aerial surveys show many don’t
From the “arch denier Watts leads the way” department (see my photos below) I thought it would be interesting to see how many climate scientists actually have solar power on their home, so I did an aerial survey to find out. The results don’t speak well for them. Don’t worry, I did not disclose anyone’s address – Anthony

  • Michael Mann - author of the hockey stick temperature graph - no solar panels
  • Kevin E. Trenberth of NCAR in Boulder (of Climategate fame) - no solar panels although his neighbor does. Nice house too - someone in the Trenberth family has $$$
  • Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Tucson, also of Climategate fame - nope
  • Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Center in Asheville, NC - no panels

Many more and finally:

  • Dr. James Hansen, the “father of global warming” - yes panels but only on his barn and guess what? From Powerline Blog:

The really shocking thing for me was how many times he contradicted himself and made admissions against interest. If he was under oath and subject to cross examination at a trial, Power Line’s own John Hinderaker would carve him up. Example: He said that all energy subsidies must stop and be replaced by a $100 per ton carbon fee. He then later admitted that the solar panels on his barn were subsidized by the federal government. So it was simply a bizarre contradiction on his part.

Again, our tax dollars at work. And of course, Anthony published photos of his own house - fully solar complete with his daily driver which is electric.

Boomerang Tags

| No Comments

Looking for a tag for your pet? Boomerang is the way to go - deeply engraved and color filled on Stainless steel. Their top of the line slide-on tag (guaranteed for the life of the pet) is $10.99 with free shipping in the USA.

The laser engraved aluminum tags you get at the pet stores are useless - the engraving wears off after a year or two for an active dog.

Our government is spending more of our tax dollars on them than they are on us. From The Washington Free Beacon:

Feds Spend $564,231 on Farmers’ Markets for Refugees
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending over $500,000 to start farmers markets for refugees on food stamps.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) enrolls 10,000 refugees in the United States every year onto the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. The group received the funding to provide “culturally-appropriate” corner stores and food markets.

“The IRC will expand and deepen the impact of its successful Fresh Fund incentive program over the next four years in seven refugee-rich neighborhoods across Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Baltimore, and Charlottesville,” according to the grant, part of a $16.8 million effort announced by the agency last week to get food stamp enrollees to eat more vegetables.

The agency said refugees and immigrants in the United States are simultaneously at risk for “under-nutrition and obesity, and are highly dependent on SNAP to meet nutritional needs.”

The funding will create one co-op farmers market, seven “farm stands,” and 10 corner stores for refugees in Utah, Arizona, Maryland, and Virginia.

The stores and markets will use a “culturally-appropriate products list” of 40 fruits and vegetables in an attempt to get newly arrived refugees to eat healthy food.

More at the site - the spending is huge. From this article also at the Washington Examiner:

Feds spend nearly $20,000 to settle every refugee
Federal taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $20,000 just to settle each refugee and asylum seeker, who are then immediately eligible for cash welfare, food stamps, housing and medical aid, according to a new report on the "refugee industry."

The report provided federal budget figures showing that the government spends $19,884 on each refugee the U.S. takes in.

95% of these people will never assimilate - we will have to pay for their custodial care for generations when we should be focusing on our own poor, mentally or physically ill and indigent.

Jim Mckenzie

| No Comments

Gun violence in England

| No Comments

Tragic news - from the UK Mirror:

Jo Cox dead: Latest updates after Labour MP dies after being shot and stabbed outside Birstall library
The 41-year-old mother of two has been killed in the attack in Birstall, West Yorkshire, police have confirmed

Labour MP Jo Cox has been shot and killed in an attack in West Yorkshire today.

The 41-year-old mother of two was shot three times and stabbed just before 1pm in Birstall in her Batley & Spen constituency.

The thing to remember is that owning a handgun in England is 100% illegal. Rifles for sporting purposes yes, handguns no. Good to see nationally-regulated gun control working out so well for them.

Good news - gun sales

Sales are reaching a different demographic - from Denver, Colorado station KDVR:

Gun sales surge among gays, lesbians after Orlando shooting
Gun sales are surging in the wake of Sunday’s deadly mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. The tragedy is generating new debate over gun control reform and the right to bear arms.

Gun shops typically see a spike in customers after mass shootings. But this time, many are seeing shoppers they’ve never really seen before: More gays and lesbians.

More:

However, what’s different this time around is the clientele. Mike Smith, a firearms instructor in Colorado Springs, is one of many closely tracking the sudden surge in gays and lesbians buying weapons.

“I think right now because of what happened, people are looking for answers,” he said. “You walk into a gun shop and you expect to see people, frankly, who look like me. I think we forget we’re a country of all people, not just people who fit that predetermined mold.”

The Pink Pistols is a national gun club for gays and lesbians. It saw its membership soar from about 1,500 members on Saturday to 3,500 on Monday.

A 230% growth in one day? Good news - it is not a matter of buying a gun, you need to get initial training and then keep practicing and getting refresher training. Glad to see these happy new customers following through on this.

Some really interesting reading

| No Comments

Had dinner - hamburgers again and this time, I mixed a half-stick of butter in with the meat and dried onions, garlic powder, black pepper, etc... Talk about yummy - this will be a standard component for future grilling. Two episodes of Bones.

I have been going through the contents of the website I linked below - a couple of position papers - nothing too much there but the killer stuff is in the spreadsheets. All of her donors names plus telephone numbers (direct lines, personal phones, their assistant's phones, etc...) as well as email addresses. Some of the email addresses were at non-commercial private URLs - opportunity to hack those systems... A couple of people were noted to have given more than they legally could - shades of Dinesh D’Souza problems (be sure to watch the trailer - looks like a good film).

Fun reading but, like I said, it will be taken down soon so go here and get it while you still can. Honestly surprised that it is still online.

Some interesting reading

| No Comments

Download it now before it gets taken away.

Go here and start scrolling and downloading.

The site opens with the following:

Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups.

I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy.

Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers. But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers.

And closes with this:

The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon.

Fun times - I have all the files downloaded and will be looking through them.

Godwin's LawAs an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches One

Television personality Stephen Colbert just crossed that line. From The Hill:

Colbert mocks Trump’s Orlando response with swastika
Late-night TV host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday used a swastika to criticize Donald Trump’s reaction to the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Colbert used a blackboard to create a circle of words and phrases including “Muslim,” “bad thing,” “not smart,” “radical Islam,” “something going on,” “Obama” and “Trump."

“First of all, before I figure this out, I’ve got to think like Trump,” Colbert said, tossing a bottle of pills over his shoulder. "I’m not going to take my pills. Whoo! I see patterns where none exist."

And:

The comedian connected lines on the blackboard until they formed a swastika, before erasing it and starting over.

His second diagram led to him conclude: "I hope Trump explains it soon, because until he does, that kind of looks like he’s an a--hole.”

Taking a cheap shot at a tragic incident. What a putz.

Always probing

| No Comments

The Religion of Peace has declared war on the West and we are not taking this seriously. From Judicial Watch:

“Islamic Refugee” With Gas Pipeline Plans Arrested in New Mexico Border County
Police in a U.S. town bordering Mexico have apprehended an undocumented, Middle Eastern woman in possession of the region’s gas pipeline plans, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. Authorities describe the woman as an “Islamic refugee” pulled over during a traffic stop by a deputy sheriff in Luna County, New Mexico which shares a 54-mile border with Mexico. County authorities alerted the U.S. Border Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) has been deployed to the area to investigate, sources with firsthand knowledge of the probe confirm.

A pound or two of explosive and that would be a major catastrophe - both environmental and economic.

Our new ROBOT overlords

| No Comments

From Russia Today:

Robot escapes testing grounds, disturbs traffic in Russia
A robot escaped from a testing area in Perm, a city not far from the Urals, and made it on to a busy junction, baffling passersby, but also disturbing traffic.

“The robot was learning automatic movement algorithms on the testing ground, these functions will feature in the latest version of the Promobot.” The co-founder of the robot’s maker, Oleg Kivokurtsev, told ura.ru news agency.

“Our engineer drove onto the testing ground and forgot to close the gates. So the robot escaped and went on his little adventure.” Kivokurtsev explained.

They grow up so fast...

Heh - here's how you do it

| No Comments

From Politico:

Trump demands Clinton Foundation return $25 million from Saudis
Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Hillary Clinton return $25 million the Clinton Foundation reportedly received from Saudi Arabia.

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted to Facebook. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

And in another statement:

“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a separate post. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

And Crooked Hillary's response to this:

Clinton acknowledged last week that some donations may have "slipped through the cracks" on "one or two instances" but insisted that the nonprofit had "overwhelming disclosure."

The Clinton Foundation didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

In other words - BUSTED!

Two days ago, The Washington Post ran a story 'quoting' Donald Trump with the following headline: Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting

Trump responded by revoking their press privileges at Trump events. Trump's people then issued the following statement:

TRUMP CAMPAIGN STATEMENT REGARDING THE WASHINGTON POST
The Washington Post unfortunately covers Mr. Trump very inaccurately. Today's headline, "Donald Trump Suggest President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting" is a perfect example. We no longer feel compelled to work with a publication which has put its need for "clicks" above journalistic integrity.

They have no journalistic integrity and write falsely about Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump does not mind a bad story, but it has to be honest. The fact is, The Washington Post is being used by the owners of Amazon as their political lobbyist so that they don't have to pay taxes and don't get sued for monopolistic tendencies that have led to the destruction of department stores and the retail industry.

Well, today The Washington Post replied with the following:

The right response to Donald Trump? A media blackout.
Donald Trump’s ban of Post journalists has left other news outlets with a stark choice: your ratings or your responsibility as journalists in a free society?

Trump’s announcement that he is barring Post journalists from his events follows similar bans he put on reporters from Politico, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Gawker, Foreign Policy, Fusion, Univision, Mother Jones, the New Hampshire Union Leader, the Des Moines Register and the Daily Beast. Trump goons have been known to kick out undesirable reporters at Trump events.

For those journalists and media executives who still don’t share the view of Post Executive Editor Martin Baron that Trump’s action “is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press,” it won’t be long before Trump comes for you, too.

Heh - they were caught in a bald-faced lie - a complete fabrication of an event and when called on it, they go running for mommy saying that Donnie hit them first. Every media outlet has a bias of some sort but regardless of their narrative, they are duty-bound to report the truth and The Washington Post failed on this.

This campaign is starting to get really interesting...

Took care of a bunch of stuff here and now heading out for coffee and to check the store.

More in a while...

Played a very small role but it was a lot of fun.

Now, the emails are flying back and forth analyzing what went right and what went wrong. There is a big meeting coming up - should be interesting.

Worked really well but there were a couple of problems which need to be addressed.

Keeping mum on things now - I am not a policy maker, I am a cog in the machine. Cogs have two eyes, two ears and one mouth - need to be used in that order...

Sigh...

| No Comments

From ABC News:

The Latest: Police: Wal-Mart Incident Not Tied to Terrorism
The Latest on police responding to Amarillo, Texas, Wal-Mart amid reports that an armed person was at the store (all times local):

5:40 p.m.

Amarillo police say the armed man who took two people hostage inside a local Wal-Mart was a store employee who had a work-related dispute with the manager and that there was no reason to believe the incident had any ties to terrorism.

OK - no terrorism here, just a workplace disagreement. Those militant Buddhists are getting to be a royal pain. Now what was the guy's name again?

Police Sgt. Brent Barbee says the suspect, 54-year-old Mohammad Moghaddam, took his manager and another person hostage over a dispute related to a promotion.

Nothing to see here folks - just keep moving. The goblin was shot dead - saves the Amarillo taxpayers a bunch of money.

Orlando Pulse - it was a Gun-free zone

A simple chart from the Crime Prevention Research Center:

20160614-gunfree.png

The link above has the data to back this up.

Chick-fil-A does the right thing

| No Comments

They are normally closed on Sunday - this Orlando store made an exception. From Orlando, FL station WFTV:

Orlando Chick-fil-A store supports blood donors with food on Sunday
Workers at a Chick-fil-A location in Orlando parted with tradition Sunday by preparing food for people waiting in line to donate blood in response to the weekend shooting that left 49 dead and 53 wounded in the Florida city, according to media reports.

A handful of workers passed out sandwiches and iced tea as thousands of donors answered the call to give blood in the wake of the shooting at Pulse, a popular gay nightclub. Officials have called the shooting a terrorist attack.

Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A is famously closed on Sundays, a day founder Truett Cathy believed should be spent with family.

The outpouring from the Orlando Chick-fil-A workers also is notable because the chain has had a strained relationship with the gay community after CEO Dan Cathy made comments opposing gay marriage.

A post to the store’s Facebook page said, “A few of our awesome team decided to go to work on a Sunday and make some food for people waiting in line to donate blood. We love our city and love the people in our community.”

Christian charity at work.

I wish they had a branch in Bellingham - closest one is in Lynnwood, about 80 miles away.

The Wrecking Crew

| No Comments

Great video about the session musicians who backed most of the music from the 1960's and 1970's.

Guitarists Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, Carol Kaye and Leland Sklar on bass, and keyboard players Larry Knechtel, Don Randi and Leon Rusell, among others.

Larry Knechtel built the house that I live in. I live on thirty of the acres of the large farm he used to own. Met him a couple times during the sale process. He does not speak in this film - he is sitting behind the wood front of a Hammond B-3; a large man with graying hair. Amazing musician and a really really nice guy.

Tip of the hat to Terrierman's Daily Dose for the link.

Russia has them and is thinking about releasing them. From Breitbart:

Sources: Russian Government Intercepted and Will Release Hillary’s Emails
Sources are reporting that the Russian government is prepared to release private emails that it obtained from Hillary Clinton’s email server, proving Clinton allowed classified information to end up in the hands of foreign adversaries.

Intelligence sources are bracing for the Russian release of Clinton’s intercepted emails, according to a report in the trade publication Oilprice.com:

Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.

These sources echo similar reports that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has numerous Clinton emails, which it obtained by monitoring the hacker Guccifer, who broke into Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal’s email account.

And also this from the UK Guardian:

WikiLeaks to publish more Hillary Clinton emails - Julian Assange
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said his organisation is preparing to publish more emails Hillary Clinton sent and received while US secretary of state.

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is under FBI investigation to determine whether she broke federal law by using her private email in sending classified information. A new WikiLeaks release of Clinton emails is likely to fan a controversy that has bedevilled her campaign and provide further ammunition for Donald Trump, her Republican presidential rival, who has used the issue to attack her.

Assange’s comments came in an interview on ITV’s Peston on Sunday. “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton … We have emails pending publication, that is correct,” Assange said.He did not specify when or how many emails would be published.

The fact that she is not in jail right now gives testement to the fact that Washington is corrupt as hell. Time to clean out both houses and start over.

Here is the WikiLeaks main page and here is the Hillary Email page

Great news - telemarketing

| No Comments

I am plagued by telemarketing calls. They never identify themselves before the actual sale so I can not complain.

This should dampen their ardor a bit - from Salt Lake City, Utah station KSL:

Unprecedented telemarketing violation case could lead to trillion dollar fine
Three Utah companies await a judge’s decision on how much they’ll have to pay for violating telemarketing laws — and the dollar amount is raising eyebrows.

The case involves three companies: Feature Films for Families, Corporations for Character and Family Films of Utah. It's the first time complaints about the “Do Not Call” registry have gone all the way to a jury trial.

The case started in 2011 and wrapped up with an eight-day trial. The jury gave the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) exactly what they wanted by finding those companies engaged in deceptive and unlawful telemarketing, including making more than 117 million illegal calls to consumers.

The jury verdict covered six different violations, including that the companies’ telemarketers made misleading statements while selling DVDs and also failure to transmit the name of the company to caller IDs.

If the regular fine for all the calls is applied, the damages could reach more than a trillion dollars.

The FTC is not expecting to collect the full trillion - they want to grind this business model into the ground. Make their rubble bounce.

What really gets me is that why would I ever do business with someone who spams me? They know that I am on the Do Not Call list - what makes them think that I would listen to their sales offer. Lulu finds it amusing as I can work up a good stream of cuss words in the ten seconds it takes for the operator to realize that I am not signing on to the deal.

Mt. Baker this morning

| No Comments

From Andy Sahlfeld's Facebook page:

20160614-baker.jpg

Cliff Mass has more: Winter in June

Australian solution - guns

| No Comments

Someone was commenting about how we in the USA should implement a gun buyback and draconian laws for new gun purchase such as Australia did after their Port Aurthur massacre in 1996. It does look good on paper but this is the same thinking that lead to the Volstead Act in 1919. All this did was to drive the sales of alcoholic beverages into the hands of the criminals.

Same thing in Australia - from Australia's The New Daily:

Spike in handgun crimes reveals nation’s secret problem
Australians may be more at risk from gun crime than ever before with the country’s underground market for firearms ballooning in the past decade.

Previously unseen police statistics show that the number of pistol-related offences doubled in Victoria and rose by 300 per cent in New South Wales. At least two other states also saw a massive jump in firearms-related offences during the same period.

An investigation by The New Daily unearthed previously unpublished data for firearms offences collected from police and crime statistics agencies in four states – Victoria, NSW, South Australia and Tasmania.

The statistics detail the types of firearms offences police have pursued in the courts in the past decade and show some concerning findings, including a massive 83 per cent increase in firearms offences in NSW between 2005/06 and 2014/15, and an even bigger jump in Victoria over the same period.

Taken together, the data suggests that despite our tough anti-gun laws, thousands of weapons are either being stolen or entering the country illegally.

The article then follows up with hard numbers. These numbers do not support the current anti-gun narratives floating around out there but these are the facts and they are damning to the narrative. All Australia has done is to drive the trafficking of guns out of the hands of legitimate dealers and into the hands of the criminal element. The illegal sales of guns are funding the criminals and allowing them to grow and expand into different areas of society.

That is it for the night

| No Comments

Signing off until tomorrow - working at the farm. Which projects will be determined by the weather.

Quote of the week - on prepping

| No Comments

From a good article at All Outdoor:

In a collapse, food is scarce and people are hungry. Nobody is going to trade you a box of .357 or a Gold Eagle for a chicken, because unlike the latter two things chickens are edible, and the edible stuff takes priority.

Some sage advice - read the rest at the link. A can of tuna fish or garbanzo beans will have great value. A fresh roll of toilet paper? You can set your price...

There is a tendency for people to act as though a collapse will never happen to them. They are scared by the prospect and of their inability to cope so they compartmentalize the idea in their brain right next to unicorns, time travel and alt.energy. The problem is that it this not a matter of IF, it is a matter of WHEN

A very good definition of the word disaster was given by the retired director of our local CERT program.

A disaster is when an event outstrips your ability to cope.

Take stock of your surroundings and ask yourself. Do I have three weeks of food and water? What if the power goes out for more than a few days - will I have heat? Do I have a radio to get news reports? How about sanitation? Cooking? Games and books to keep people occupied? An honest answer to questions like this will save the lives of you and your family.

That is going to leave a mark

| No Comments

Glen Reynolds (the puppyblender himself) to Crooked Hillary:

20160613-crooked.jpg

Behind the scenes - restaurants

| No Comments

Great little exposé:

Donald weighs in - just wonderful

| No Comments

Speaking of The Washington Post - this just in from Breitbart:

Donald Trump Revokes Washington Post’s 2016 Campaign Press Privileges
Donald Trump today revoked “the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post” following a Washington Post headline and an ongoing battle with the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos.

Trump wrote in an online post, “I am no fan of President Obama, but to show you how dishonest the phony Washington Post is, they wrote, “Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting” as their headline. Sad!”

He next announced that he is revoking press privileges at Trump events for the Post, “Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post.”

Trump's people later issued the following statement:

TRUMP CAMPAIGN STATEMENT REGARDING THE WASHINGTON POST
The Washington Post unfortunately covers Mr. Trump very inaccurately. Today's headline, "Donald Trump Suggest President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting" is a perfect example. We no longer feel compelled to work with a publication which has put its need for "clicks" above journalistic integrity.

They have no journalistic integrity and write falsely about Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump does not mind a bad story, but it has to be honest. The fact is, The Washington Post is being used by the owners of Amazon as their political lobbyist so that they don't have to pay taxes and don't get sued for monopolistic tendencies that have led to the destruction of department stores and the retail industry.

I do hope that Jeff reads this and considers his position in the grand scheme of things - it would be a shame for Amazon to wind up on the wrong side of the fence following this election. His corporate culture is based on customer service - so should government and when We The People feel we are getting the short end of the stick, we make changes.

And now the anti-gun fallout begins

| No Comments

From The Washington Post:

The gun used in the Orlando shooting is becoming mass shooters’ weapon of choice
Last night in Orlando, a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed at least 50 people and wounded 53 others in a crowded nightclub.

Six months ago, in San Bernardino, Calif., a man and woman armed with assault-style rifles killed 14 people and wounded 20 others at a holiday party.

The author cites a couple other cases and continues:

One common denominator behind these and other high-casualty mass shootings in recent years is the use of assault style rifles, capable of firing many rounds of ammunition in a relatively short period of time, with high accuracy. And their use in these types of shooting is becoming more common: There have been eight high-profile public mass shootings since July of last year, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine. Assault-style rifles were used in seven of those.

In the past 10 years, assault-style rifles have been used in 14 public mass shootings. Half of those shootings have occurred since last June.

There is no such thing as an assault rifle. Sure, to the untrained eye, they look 'scary' and are painted black and have lots of attachments but they are a very logical outgrowth of your great-grandparent's musket. The same progress in engineering and metallurgy that drives the incredible improvement in computers also drives the improvement in many other areas - one is guns. The AR-15 platform is a work of genius - Eugene Stoner is a engineer/craftsman on the level of John Moses Browning and Mikhail Kalashnikov.

The author then posts two pieces of garbage:

"America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," American-born al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn said in a video. "You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?"

Gadahn was incorrect on one point — fully automatic weapons, which shoot continuously when you hold down the trigger, have been banned since 1986. But he was correct on other the other points: Most states don't require background checks for firearms purchased via private sales at gun shows. Most states don't require showing ID to purchase a firearm from a private seller.

Mr. Gadahn is dead wrong - there are files on the internet that show you how to do full automatic conversions of some guns but if you are caught with one of these conversions, you would be in jail so fast your head would spin. Anyone caught selling these at a gun show would simply disappear. This is an out and out piece of propaganda by the enemy (al-Qaeda has many times publicly declared war on Western civilization) and it designed to spur our own governments to take away our legally owned firearms.

The second paragraph is dead wrong too - the initial legislative push to prohibit the manufacture of new machine guns for civilian purchase started in 1934 with the passing of the National Firearms Act and continued to its current state with the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Please note that it is not in any way illegal for a civilian to own a machine gun as long as it was manufactured prior to 1968. Needless to say, the scarcity of available guns make them worth quite a bit so you are looking at spending about $30K on up to buy one. Many large gun ranges have machine guns that you can rent (here, here, here and here for an example - Google pulls up many more links).

Jeff Bezos owns Amazon. He also owns The Washington Post. He needs to make sure that his employees get their facts straight before publication. Articles like this show so much bias that they are shameful.

Back home again

| No Comments

Big pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove, heating water for noodles. Watch a couple more episodes of Bones and then off to read the internet...

Heading into town this afternoon - parts for the new antenna (for a stationary mount) as well as a trip to the bank and some other stuff.

Spaghetti for dinner tonight - spew will resume in the evening.

From the New York Post:

Obama: ‘We’ are to blame, not Islamic terrorism, for massacre
Omar Mateen called the cops to pledge his fealty to ISIS as he was carrying out his mass murder in Orlando early Sunday. Twelve hours later, the president of the United States declared that “we have no definitive assessment on the motivation” of Omar Mateen but that “we know he was a person filled with hate.”

A bit more:

Here again, and horribly, we have an unmistakable indication that Obama finds it astonishingly easy to divorce himself from a reality he doesn’t like — the reality of the Islamist terror war against the United States and how it is moving to our shores in the form of lone-wolf attacks.

He called it “terror,” which it is. But using the word “terror” without a limiting and defining adjective is like a doctor calling a disease “cancer” without making note of the affected area of the body — because if he doesn’t know where the cancer is and what form it takes, he cannot attack it effectively and seek to extirpate it.

So determined is the president to avoid the subject of Islamist, ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed terrorism that he concluded his remarks with an astonishing insistence that “we need the strength and courage to change” our attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Spot on - we need someone who will call this for what it is - Islamic war on the west. They are trying to establish another Caliphate - didn't work so well for them on their first attempt. We need to make their rubble bounce on this, their second attempt.

Boats and alcohol

| No Comments

A bad mix while underway - from Norway comes this cute video:

Hat tip to gCaptain for the link. Now at anchor after a long day sailing, a thermos full of cold bloody mary's is a very nice way to start dinner...

There is another video from the same group featured here: How to dock like a boss

Gun regulation and personal carry

| No Comments

The murders in Orlando are going to give our elites an opportunity to push for legislation to restrict personal gun ownership. To see what this would accomplish, you only have to look at the city of Chicago which enjoys some of the most draconian gun laws in this nation - 1,651 shooting victims since January 1st of this year alone and there is a marked increase in these numbers over 2015..

I was reading Knuckledraggin My Life Away and they were talking about the stupidity of "Gun Free Zones" - offered this example:

Yeah, I know it’s illegal to carry a gun where alcohol is served. Guns in clubs are dangerous – last night proved that.

Our granddaughter’s school had a game day last month. They all competed in relays and games and barrel rolls, an all day event and all the parents and grandparents came to watch. Now this was on school grounds and I saw more men with pistols at that one place than I have altogether since I’ve been here. I’m not talking about guns printing against shirts, I was seeing revolver butts poking out of overall back pockets and bottoms of holsters hanging down below their shirts, that kind of shit. Those kids couldn’t have been any safer.

Me and Lisa and the grandkids went to the drive-in last weekend in Franklin and I started laughing as I was watching the pre-show crowd in the lot. Lisa asked what was so funny and I said “I was just imagining that headlines tomorrow – ‘Islamic Terrorists Attack Drive In Theater – 246 Patrons Return Fire.'”

Simple proven statistical fact: More guns equals less crime.

Speaking truth to power

| No Comments

Dr. Sebastian Gorka

Dr Gorka is the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University so he knows what he is talking about. His personal website is here: The Gorka Briefing The guy has lived an interesting life - his entry at Wikipedia

Orlando shooting - update

| No Comments

Do not know if this is a copycat or a simultaneous action but things turned out for the good this time. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Santa Monica Police Arrest Man With Explosives, Guns Going to L.A. Pride
Santa Monica police arrested a man who had explosives, assault rifles and ammunition and was planning to attend the L.A. Pride festival pride, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday morning during a press conference.

Police were called about the man who was in the area of Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street by a concerned citizen, Garcetti said. He told police he was waiting in the area for a friend.

A bit more:

In the suspect's car, police discovered three assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and a five-gallon bucket with chemicals that could be used to make explosives, police said.

Yikes. When will we wake up to the fact that Islam is not the religion of peace - I mean, go here and look at the list. This crap is happening around the world, not just here.

Here is this from Orlando station WFTV on April 6th, 2016:

Back from logging show

| No Comments

A lot of fun - they had some new events and the clown act was a bit different this year. The business is so local that it is like one big extended family. Love this place.

Fixing dinner (pulled chicken and a salad) and then ham radio network tonight at 7:00PM

Big debris slide on Baker - from the Bellingham Herald:

Massive debris flow visible on Mount Baker
Climbers on Mount Baker photographed a recent debris flow across Boulder Glacier on the volcano’s eastern flank in early June — but the barrage of ice and rock was more a geologic curiosity than a real threat to most people.

Such debris flows occur occasionally and are not a concern to anyone except mountaineers, a Western Washington University geologist said. But observers will notice what resembles a river of gray on the 10,781-foot summit that’s about 30 miles east of Bellingham.

“It’s not a threat, it’s a scientific curiosity, and it will be very visible,” said Dave Tucker, research associate in WWU’s Geology Department and a board member of the Mount Baker Volcano Research Center. “There will be a dark streak on the glacier until there’s snow.”

20160612-debris.jpg

Baker is an active volcano. Gorgeous photo with the sun glory.

Crap - Orlando shooting

| No Comments

Another nutjob member of the Religion of Peace - from NBC News:

Orlando Nightclub Shooting: Mass Casualties After Gunman Opens Fire in Gay Club
At least 50 people are dead and more than 50 others wounded after a gunman opened fire and took hostages at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning.

The shooter was identified by several law enforcement sources as Omar Mateen, 29.

The massacre — which is now the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States — began when the gunman stormed the Pulse Nightclub about 2 a.m., with an AR-15 type rifle and a handgun, officials said.

He was shot dead about three hours later when a SWAT team entered the club, police said.

An all-around nice guy - The Washington Post:

Ex-wife of suspected Orlando shooter: ‘He beat me’

It is not the gun doing the murder, it is the asshole with his finger on the trigger. More people are murdered in America by blunt force trauma (beaten to death) than with rifles.

Dear Abby

| No Comments

Dear Abby,

My husband hasn't worked for the last 14 years. All he does is get dressed in the morning and hop in his fancy car to visit his cronies.

I know he`s cheated on me many times with younger women.

He smokes fancy cigars and drinks the most expensive wine and booze day and night.

We sleep in separate beds.

Should I clobber him with my frying pan, or should I leave him, Abby?

Your advice would be appreciated.

Mad as Hell


Dear Mad as Hell,

You don`t have to take that kind of treatment from any man.

I suggest you pack your bags and move out a.s.a.p.

Don`t resort to clobbering him with the frying pan, and try to act like a lady!

Remember, you`re running for President of the United States, so try acting like it!

Abby

Coffee and logging show

| No Comments

Lulu is on her way out here so heading out for a coffee and then we will be going to the logging show.

Wolves in Yellowstone

| No Comments

An older video but still a classic - every ecosystem is profoundly interlinked:

There is a move here to reintroduce Grizzly Bears - I am in favor but this needs to be done in deep deep backcountry and carefully monitored for rogues. I have seen the damage than a curious Grizzly can do - opening a car as though it was a cardboard box, scratching through the side of a cabin while looking for food. I dearly love them but they really need their space...

Did not know this - Bill Clinton was a University chancellor. He was paid $16Million and the school was a for-profit diploma mill.

From Jonathan Turley:

The Clinton University Problem: Laureate Education Lawsuits Present Problem For Clintons
While largely ignored by the media, the Clintons have their own university scandal. Donald Trump has been rightfully criticized and sued over his defunct Trump University. There is ample support for claiming that the Trump University was fraudulent in its advertisements and operations. However, the national media has been accused of again sidestepping a scandal involving the Clintons that involves the same type of fraud allegations. The scandal involves a dubious Laureate Education for-profit online college (Walden) and entails many of the common elements with other Clinton scandals: huge sums given to the Clintons and questions of conflicts with Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State. There are distinctions to draw between the two stories, but the virtual radio silence on the Clinton/Laureate story is surprising.

A bit more:

Various sites have reported that the State Department funneled $55 million in grants during Hillary Clinton’s tenure to groups associated with Laureate’s founder.  That would seem a pretty major story but virtually no mainstream media outlet has reported it while running hundreds of stories on the Trump University scandal.

The whole family is dirty including Chelsea and her hubby. Time to clean house.

Dumb criminal award of the week

Goes to Mr. Demarcus Davis of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge:

Rapper Who Threatened To Kill Trump If "Momma's Food Stamps Are Taken Away" Arrested For Stealing Guns
There was much amusement three weeks ago, when Louisiana rapper Maine Musik said in a YouTube video recording that he would kill republican presidential candidate Donald Trump if his "Mamma's food stamps are taken away."

And this:

As it turns out in the second video, "Musik" and at least eight other people can be seen brandishing a number of weapons, including rifles, pistols and a sawed-off shotgun, reports Baton Rouge ABC affiliate WBRZ.  According to police, all of the guns visible in the video appear to match makes/models of firearms that were reported stolen by a local fun shop. The Baton Rouge Police Department reported the burglary at Meaux Guns & Ammo, located in the 9600 block of Mammouth Drive, on July 6 of last year. At the time of the report, dozens of firearms were reported stolen. Among those guns was a Ruger 10/22 Krinker Plinker.

How they found him?

Detectives said they were also able to locate the suspect by using a house number and street name visible in the video.

DOH! The stupid. It burns.

The lunatics are running the asylum over there and their electricity problems have been getting worse and worse.

This first surfaced three months ago on March 18th with this: How not to manage an energy utility - Tasmania

In August 2010, Australia provided Julia Gillard with the means to introduce a carbon tax – which she cheerfully did. Among many other things, Gillard’s scheme made hydroelectricity artificially more price competitive in the energy market. In turn, Tasmania’s government owned hydroelectricity operator (Hydro Tasmania) became positively giddy with excitement… and greed.

And then, to profit from this, Tasmania's government drained their reservoirs selling off all of their stored water. In the middle of a drought. Read the whole thing - it just gets stupider and stupider.

And now today - from Eric Worrall writing at Anthony's:

Death in Tasmania: Australia Cloud Seeding Green Hydropower Disaster
JoNova has discovered that just prior to recent disastrous flooding in Tasmania, Australia, desperate hydropower operators conducted a cloud seeding operation, despite there already being forecasts of torrential rainfall.

The whole sorry mess started, when desperately green Tasmania attempted to go 100% renewable. Tasmania thought they were on a winner, and allegedly got greedy – they may have inadvertently burned out the power cable which connects the island state to mainland Australia, trying to sell too much premium “green” electricity to the mainland.

By burning up this cable, they can no longer sell their hydro power to Australia. They can't buy power from Australia either so with their dam running on vapors, they have a serious power problem. And then, the rains come:

Hydro Tasmania seeded clouds before fatal floods, despite forecast
Tasmania’s state-owned hydro-electric power generator could face legal action for damages after admitting it cloud-seeded in or near water catchments the day ­before disastrous flooding, although heavy rain was forecast.

Hydro Tasmania’s cloud-seeding plane was sent up on Sunday morning and seeded clouds with silver iodide to increase rainfall for an hour and 34 minutes, from 10.57am, despite the weather ­forecast.

The operation targeted the Upper Derwent catchment, an area that less than 24 hours later saw damaging floods which left one man missing, feared drowned at Ouse and caused major damage to property and stock.

The cloud-seeding also was within about 10km of the Mersey-Forth catchment area, which also hours later experienced rapid and disastrous flooding that killed a woman and inundated dozens of homes at Latrobe.

I really hope that the idiots that did this are fired. Not moved to another position in the organization, fired. This is incompetence on a surreal level.

Some of the 90+ commentors are from Tasmania so a lot of useful information there too - the greens were initially very opposed to the hydro project, now they think it is the best thing. Talk about consistency of thought...

About that $15 minimum wage?

| No Comments

Spotted at an airport in Amsterdam - from Legal Insurrection:

20160611-bigrobot.jpg

Keep it real - do not change the definitions. From San Antonio Current:

Republicans Force the Library of Congress to Keep Saying "Illegal Alien"
Republicans in Washington D.C. have taken an unusual interest in the Library of Congress' day-to-day business lately.

For the first time in history, conservatives hijacked a legislative appropriations bill to stop the Library of Congress from abandoning the term "illegal alien" from how it catalogs the 162 million-item collection it manages.

Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro attempted to make an amendment to the legislation allowing the Library of Congress to make the change, but it failed to gain traction in the Republican-dominated House.

And a bit more:

Thursday, Castro forced legislation he proposed earlier this year called the Correcting Hurtful and Alienating Names in Government Expression (CHANGE) Act, which would have removed every instance of the terms "alien" and "illegal alien" from federal law, replacing them with "foreign national" and "undocumented foreign national," to a vote. Republicans, however, overwhelmingly defeated the measure.

Don't want to hurt their widdle feeeeelings. Go cry me a river...

Words matter. Context matters. Illegals are not undocumented, they are illegal and no quantity of political duckspeak will change this fact.

From the BBC comes this story of Americans emigrating to a socialist nation:

Nightmare in the workers paradise
It was the least heralded migration in American history.

At the height of the Depression, several thousand American emigrants left New York on the decks of passenger liners waving goodbye to the Statue of Liberty, bound for Leningrad.

Over 100,000 Americans had applied for jobs working in brand new factories in Soviet Russia, ironically built for Stalin by famous American industrialists such as Henry Ford.

Those American emigrants who entered the "workers' paradise" were certain that they were leaving the misery of unemployment and poverty behind them. They considered themselves fortunate.

Their optimism would prove to be short-lived. Most were stripped of their American passports soon after their arrival.
Considered suspect by Stalin's paranoid totalitarian state, the foreigners were swept away in the Terror.

The American jazz clubs, the baseball teams, and the English-language schools set up in cities across the USSR, would quickly vanish with them.

More at the site - this is what communism or socialism looks like when the nice mask is dropped. How close are we here? This list gives a sobering example:

  1. Abolition of Property in Land and Application of all Rents of Land to Public Purpose.
  2. A Heavy Progressive or Graduated Income Tax.
  3. Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance.
  4. Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants and Rebels.
  5. Centralization of Credit in the Hands of the State, by Means of a National Bank with State Capital and an Exclusive Monopoly.
  6. Centralization of the Means of Communication and Transport in the Hands of the State.
  7. Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production Owned by the State, the Bringing Into Cultivation of Waste Lands, and the Improvement of the Soil Generally in Accordance with a Common Plan.
  8. Equal Liability of All to Labor. Establishment of Industrial Armies, Especially for Agriculture.
  9. Combination of Agriculture with Manufacturing Industries; Gradual Abolition of the Distinction Between Town and Country by a More Equable Distribution of the Population over the Country.
  10. Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Abolition of Children's Factory Labor in it's Present Form. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.

These are Karl Marx's Ten Planks of Communism - we are pretty close for some of them.

Tip of the hat to Ed Driscoll at the Puppyblender for the link.

Don't be evil - Google

| No Comments

Google's informal motto is Don't be Evil - unfortunately, they have been caught yet again skewing their search engine to benefit a cause. Specifically, Crooked Hillary's campaign.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

Here Are 10 More Examples of Google Search Results Favorable to Hillary
“Crime” and “indictment” are not the only terms Google is keeping hidden from searches of Hillary Clinton, a Washington Free Beacon analysis finds.

Common search terms associated with Clinton appear to have been scrubbed from Google as the tech giant has been accused of manipulating its autocomplete results to favor the Democratic presidential candidate.

Matt Lieberman of SourceFed released a video showing examples of Google skewing its autocomplete results for Clinton, while other search engines simply display the most searched terms.

“While researching for a wrap-up on the June 7 Presidential Primaries, we discovered evidence that Google may be manipulating autocomplete recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton,” SourceFed wrote. “If true, this would mean that Google Searches aren’t objectively reflecting what the majority of Internet searches are actually looking for, possibly violating Google’s algorithm.”

For example, when searching Hillary Clinton “cri,” Google finishes the phrase as “crime reform.” On Yahoo, the result is “criminal charges.” On Google’s own trend website, there were not enough searches for Hillary Clinton and “crime reform” to build a graph of the results.

Typing Hillary Clinton and “ind” gives Google users results on Hillary Clinton and Indiana. On Microsoft’s Bing search engine, a user gets Hillary Clinton and “indictment,” yielding results for the FBI investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

Lots of examples (with corresponding screen caps) at the site - pretty damning evidence if you ask me.

Home from the show

| No Comments

Good time at the gun show. Ran into someone from our radio group. It had a very different vibe from the Falcon Gun Shows - more commercial dealers. These people do a lot of events in Eastern Washington so they cast a wider net.

Picked up a tactical vest - it has magazine pockets on the front but these are just right for my hand-held radio, a small camera and notebook. I wanted to be able to try one on before buying it to make sure it fit comfortably - this one has straps over the shoulder and around the back so it will not shift while wearing it.

Also picked up one of these:

20160611-shotgun.jpg

This is a ShotLock SV200M and it secures a shotgun to the wall and clamps around the trigger. I keep all of the firearms in my safe but wanted to have something in the bedroom in case some random tweaker decided to pay a visit. Just the thing for keeping it secure. The guy sold it to me for $100 - that was a no brainer...

Picked up a roti chicken from Costco and putting on a pot of rice for dinner.

Two pictures

| No Comments

Caught my eye:

20160608-tech.jpg

20160610-sjw.jpg

Not just Zika - Rio de Janeiro

| No Comments

The Olympics are being held in Rio de Janeiro starting in August and there are some very legitimate concerns about the Zika virus. Turns out it is not just Zika.

From Reuters:

Exclusive: Studies find 'super bacteria' in Rio's Olympic venues, top beaches
Scientists have found dangerous drug-resistant "super bacteria" off beaches in Rio de Janeiro that will host Olympic swimming events and in a lagoon where rowing and canoe athletes will compete when the Games start on Aug. 5.

The findings from two unpublished academic studies seen by Reuters concern Rio's most popular spots for tourists and greatly increase the areas known to be infected by the microbes normally found only in hospitals.

They also heighten concerns that Rio's sewage-infested waterways are unsafe.

More at the site - this is worrisome. All those people travelling there and then returning home in airplanes. A real epidemiological nightmare...

Life in the country

| No Comments

Love this story - from Medford, Oregon station KDRV:

Witnesses Say Man Lassoed Suspected Thief at Eagle Point Walmart
A man on a horse chased down and lassoed a suspected thief at the Eagle Point Walmart, according to witnesses.

Police say that a woman was yelling about her bike being stolen and a nearby man unloaded a horse from a trailer, lassoed the man and pulled him back toward the store. They say that the man grabbed onto a tree and wouldn't let go.

Eagle Point Police arrived on scene and arrested the man, identified as 22-year-old Victorino Arellano-Sanchez. He was lodged in the Jackson County Jail.

America is not done quite yet - Thank God!

Our new best friend

| No Comments

There is a juvenile coyote that has been hanging around the house for the last couple of months off and on. Grace will run it off if she hears it and she doesn't go beyond the fenceline so a lot of times, the coyote will just hang out on the other side.

Grace ran out a few minutes ago and the coyote was in our yard. When Grace charged, it would dance away but then it would initiate classic canine play behavior. A smart one too - it skedaddled when I came out onto the porch - I was watching from inside at first.

Shades of Charlie

Our betters in Washington

| No Comments

Talk about out of touch with the most basic realities - from The Washington Times:

Nancy Pelosi: Federal government, not Steve Jobs, ‘invented’ iPhone
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told an audience in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that Apple’s iconic iPhone was “invented” by the federal government instead of entrepreneur Steve Jobs.

“Anybody here have a smartphone?” the California Democrat asked attendees at a hearing on the Democratic National Convention platform. “In this smartphone, almost everything came from federal investments in research. […] They say Steve Jobs did a good idea designing it and putting it together. Federal research invented it.”

What a senile buffoon. She needs to be put out to pasture stat. Senator Boxer too.

Planning the weekend

| No Comments

Fun Gun show tomorrow - weather is forecast for rain showers. This will be interesting as the gun shows in this area have all been organised by Falcon Gun Shows. This one is by Bigtop Promotions - don't know if this is a new business or what. We will see tomorrow.

Sunday is the Logging Show and weather is forecast for clear and cloudy. No rain. Great. Looks like a fun weekend - got some stuff planned for the upcoming week so should be a busy one.

Good news from Sweden

| No Comments

More nukes! From Agence France-Presse/Global Post:

In turnaround, Sweden agrees to continue nuclear power
Sweden's left-wing government struck a deal with the opposition Friday to continue nuclear power for the foreseeable future, backtracking on its pledge to phase out atomic energy.

The government coalition, made up of the Social Democrats and the Greens, had agreed in October 2014 to freeze nuclear energy development, while the opposition has been in favour of building new reactors.

The deal is aimed at securing long-term energy supplies to households and industry, the government said.
Sweden has for years struggled to find viable alternative energy sources to replace its nuclear power, with renewable energies not yet able to fully meet the country's needs.

"Sweden shall have a robust electricity system with a high level of secure supply, low environmental impact and energy at competitive prices," the agreement said.

Yes - some clear-headed thinking. alt.energy is not viable without massive subsidies and those come right out of our wallets as taxes and higher energy costs. No sense killing off your population by making energy so expensive that they have to choose between winter heat and food.

Voting in San Francisco

| No Comments

The dead vote there (and reliably Democratic too), why not let the illegal immegrants vote too. From The Washington Free Beacon:

San Francisco Hopes Trump Fear Will Lead To Voting Rights For Illegal Immigrants In City
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is hoping that residents of the city who fear Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policy proposals will flock to the polls this November and support giving voting rights to illegal immigrants.

Eric Mar, a supervisor in the city, put forth a proposed charter amendment on Tuesday that would allow illegal immigrants who have kids that are 18 years or younger in the public school system the right to vote in local school board elections, Fox News reports.

Mar said he thinks that Donald Trump being on the ballot this November will drive Latinos who are “disgusted” by his politics to the polls on Election Day.

Yeah, nothing like subverting the Constitution when it comes to securing your place at the trough. The fifteenth amendment is very plain:

The US Constitution stated in Amendment XV, which was ratified by the states in 1870:
"Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

The right of citizens of the United States to vote - if you do not like it, change it. The amendment process is very straightforward.

Back home from town

| No Comments

Had dinner in town (a steak) and back home again. Picked up a couple plants for the garden - some lettuce and a fun curly-leaf mint as well as one pumpkin and one delicata squash.

Lake Whatcom was the site of something interesting earlier this week - from Seattle station KOMO:

Photos: Cougar swims across Lake Whatcom
Jordan Kirbyson and a neighbor had just finished water-skiing on Lake Whatcom on Sunday morning when they had company.

There was a cougar swimming across the lake.

Just beautiful!

Could have told you that...

| No Comments

There is a wonderful website called Retraction Watch that tracks published scientific papers when their thesis is discovered to be bogus and the publisher retracts the paper. This actually happens a lot more frequently than you would think. The bar to entry for publication has fallen much lower than it used to be.

Here is one example - a complete reversal with a touch of schadenfreude on top:

Conservative political beliefs not linked to psychotic traits, as study claimed
Researchers have fixed a number of papers after mistakenly reporting that people who hold conservative political beliefs are more likely to exhibit traits associated with psychoticism, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness.

As one of the notices specifies, now it appears that liberal political beliefs are linked with psychoticism. That paper also swapped ideologies when reporting on people higher in neuroticism and social desirability (falsely claiming that you have socially desirable qualities); the original paper said those traits are linked with liberal beliefs, but they are more common among people with conservative values.

We’re not clear how much the corrections should inform our thinking about politics and personality traits, however, because it’s not clear from the paper how strongly those two are linked. The authors claim that the strength of the links are not important, as they do not affect the main conclusions of the papers — although some personality traits appear to correlate with political beliefs, one doesn’t cause the other, nor vice versa.

In total, three papers have been corrected by authors, and a correction has been submitted on one more.

Sitting here laughing my head off...

Coffee and in to town today

| No Comments

Got the critters taken care of so out for coffee and in to town for a couple of things - spew will resume later this evening.

The Blind Astronomer

| No Comments

No really - amazing film:

Back home again

| No Comments

Good meeting - it was a debrief of the Cascadia Rising drill. Mostly went very good - a couple of glitches but this is what these drills are for - so the glitches do not happen in a real event.

Time to crack open a bottle of wine and settle in for the night - doing a run into town tomorrow to do some banking and paying of bills. Logging show Sunday and fun gun show Saturday.

Off for coffee and in to town

| No Comments

Got a couple errands to run and a meeting at 5:00PM - no spew until much later this evening...

Already, two rebuttals to the new carbon tax and its broad impact:

First, from Calgary Metro:

NDP carbon tax will cause Calgary Food Bank to spend extra $31K on waste costs
The NDP’s carbon tax will cost the Calgary Food Bank an extra $21,000 to dispose of expired food come January, according the organization’s president and CEO.

As the government passed its climate-change legislation by a margin of 42-29 on Tuesday, the NDP defeated a Wildrose’s amendment that would have mandated a rebate for all registered charities that will see costs rise.

James McAra, president and CEO at the food bank, said $21,000 is a lot dough for an organization that relies on donations to help families in need, adding the Calgary Food Bank anticipates waste costs will be $31,000 in 2018, when rates associated with the carbon tax rise.

And here is Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Mr. Don MacIntyre (here and here) talking about the price of food and how it will be impacted by this tax.

The guy has a point - petroleum fuel is a part of every aspect of our lives. Heat, light, making stuff, bringing it to us, taking it away. All pervasive.

We need to focus on cheap sources of power (nuclear) and not be venturing down some energy rat-hole that is only able to survive through massive subsidies.

Alberta, CA does something stupid

From the Toronto Star:

Alberta carbon tax legislation passes, marks first stage of climate-change plan
Premier Rachel Notley’s government used its majority in the legislature Tuesday to pass legislation that includes a carbon tax and completes the first stage of Alberta’s landmark strategy to combat climate change.

The legislation gives legal teeth to the multibillion-dollar tax that is to take effect Jan. 1 and will raise the price of heating bills and gasoline as an incentive to go green.

And the cost of this stupidity?

The government estimates higher heating and gasoline fees will cost the average family an extra $443 next year.

Opposition members say the government is lowballing that figure.

“This is going to pull at least a thousand dollars from every household in Alberta,” said Wildrose Opposition Leader Brian Jean.

So, for a constituent living on a fixed income in winter, the choice is heat or eat. What can possibly go wrong?

From the UK Telegraph:

Biggest annual rise in deaths for almost fifty years prompts warnings of crisis in elderly care
England and Wales has suffered the biggest annual rise in deaths for almost fifty years, according to new figures which last night prompted warnings of an urgent crisis in care of the elderly.

Cause?

“In 2015, the monthly death figures suggest that cold weather and flu may have played a part in the high numbers of deaths in the early part of the year. Changes in the population over time can also have some surprising effects on these statistics for technical reasons.”

From the British edition of the Huffington Post:

We Need a New Deal for Those Living in Energy Poverty
As I write this, an elderly person is deciding whether they can afford to heat their home, a parent is choosing a warm meal over a cold bath for their child, and a household wonders if it can pay its bills - this is unacceptable.

In 2016, the decisions listed above are ones that millions are making throughout Europe. Currently over 50 million EU citizens are living in energy poverty - 3 million of which are in the UK.

Energy poverty is a hidden epidemic. In my region, the North West of England, over 300,000 people are living in energy poverty. Many believe they are just not earning enough money to pay their bills - but this is not true. Evidence shows that energy poverty predominantly affects those in work (often in two jobs), single parent households and the most vulnerable. That is why I firmly believe that access to energy is a social right - just like food, water, shelter, education and security.

This stupid 'war' on Carbon Dioxide will go down in history as one of the more egregiously brain-dead examples of social marxism. This attempt to grab the reigns of power, to demonize progress and to redistribute money into the hands of a few oligarchs. Helped along by the useful idiots of the left and the scientists who did not have the moral backbone to decry Global Warming for the hucksterism that it is. I am reminded of the line about the missionaries who traveled to Hawaii in the early days and wound up owning sugar plantations - they came to do good and wound up doing well.

An interesting waypoint

Driving back home, I went through Longview, WA and stumbled onto a gorgeous historical part of town. Crowning a large open square was the grand old Monticello Hotel (their website). I made a mental note to revisit it as something that magnificient had to be good.

20160608-hotel.jpg

A little bit of googling and now? Not so much. From January 2014's The Daily News:

Monticello Hotel closes its restaurant, lounge
Gordon Ramsay and “Hotel Hell” couldn't save at least part of the Monticello Hotel — the owner closed the restaurant, lounge and banquet facilities Wednesday.

Owner Philip Lovingfoss decided to “pursue other endeavors,” according to a press release sent Wednesday morning to The Daily News. The notice says the closures are effective immediately but the hotel, motel, apartments and business offices rentals will remain open.

It also says Lovingfoss hopes to find someone else to step in and buy or lease the restaurant and lounge space.

Deposits for weddings and other events will be refunded, the press release states, as will gift cards and Rotary Meal cards.

A bit more:

The historic hotel — which celebrated its 90th birthday this summer — has struggled financially for several years. That’s what led Lovingfoss and manager Ginger Allred to sign up for the FOX reality show “Hotel Hell,” which filmed at the hotel this summer. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay visited the hotel and restaurant and offered suggestions for improvements. The episode has not aired — FOX says they haven’t set an air date even though Ramsay has tweeted the series starts again sometime this month — so exact details of Ramsay’s summer visit aren’t public.

The tidbits that have leaked out, though, made it clear Ramsay wasn’t impressed.

He ridiculed the motel rooms adjacent to the hotel and had the restaurant revamp its entire menu. When it reopened in June, many favorite standbys were replaced with a new, severely streamlined menu that wait staff said allowed them focus on a few great dishes. Fancier items such as roasted butternut squash rigatoni and cauliflower puree replaced items like the original hotel tournado and Dory’s famous ribs. In recent months some of the original items were added back in.

And maybe one of the reasons:

The filming started out on a sour note for Lovingfoss when he was arrested on suspicion of DUI the night before in front of the hotel — mere steps away from the production crews that had already set up in the parking lot.

Time for a new crew and some funding for remodeling - bring her back to her classic lines. The comments are an interesting read as most of them are Longview residents and know the history of the place.

The good news is that the Monticello is not the Longview Hudson Hotel - from TripAdvisor:

Crappy old rooming house left over from the 20s. Filled with felons, druggies, mentally ill, prostitutes and lots and lots of BEDBUGS. I am dead serious. No bathrooms in rooms, no phones, management absent often, DOC often arrests felons on site.

And:

This is not a B&B, it is a cheap boarder hotel for winos and drug addicts. The management is crooked and will rob you blind any chance they get. This establishment should have been condemned years ago.

How high am I

| No Comments

No, I have not recently visited the local pot shop - there are several different ways to measure altitude.

Here is an excellent article from maping and GIS company Esri:

Mean Sea Level, GPS, and the Geoid
Frequently research and technology endeavors have unforeseen but positive outcomes. When European explorers set out to find a shortcut to India, they discovered the New World. When a staphylococci bacteria culture was mistakenly contaminated with a common mold, the clear area between the mold and the bacterial colony led to the conclusion that the mold, Penicillin notatum, produced a compound that inhibited the growth of bacteria. This chance discovery led to the development of the antibiotic penicillin.

That the earth does not have a geometrically perfect shape is well established, and the geoid is used to describe the unique and irregular shape of the earth. However, only recently have the more substantial irregularities in the surface created by the global mean sea level (MSL) been observed. These irregularities are an order of magnitude greater than experts had predicted. Controlled by the gravitational potential of the earth, these irregularities form very gentle but massive "hills" and "valleys." This astonishing finding was made possible through the use of GPS, a technology designed by the United States Department of Defense to revolutionize navigation for the U.S. Navy and Air Force. GPS has done that—and a lot more.

A lot more at the site - a well written article on a complex subject. Global mean sea level (what used to be the gold standard) is altered by the fact that the Earth's gravitational field is not homogeneous. A pocket of higher gravity will pull the sea level down to a lower level.

Who ordered this - cooler weather

| No Comments

Done with the radio. Unable to contact some of the stations I wanted (remember, the mountaintop repeaters are down because of the quake) but was able to get some of them. The new antenna helped a lot!

In for a week of cool weather - from our National Weather Service:

20160608-nws.jpg

Cliff Mass goes into some detail: Major Cool Down

Fix a bite to eat for dinner and then off to the BERT meeting.

Back on the air again

| No Comments

Took a bit of a break - not much happening today so just people checking in every 30 minutes. Probably log out in another hour or two.

All in all, a very good exercise. The debrief will be interesting.

James O’Keefe strikes again

| No Comments

You may remember James O’Keefe - he was the guy that secretly videoed ACORN officials and caused that agency to be defunded. He also did those Planned Parenthood videos with them making money by selling aborted baby parts to medical companies. His current focus is New York City teachers unions and he scored big.

From the New York Post:

Teachers union would rather cover up abuse than protect our kids
‘It’s always the union’s fault,” said Patricia Puleo, the president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers. Truer words have never been spoken by a union leader.

Gonzo journalist James O’Keefe has done it again, stinging YFT officials into helping a “teacher” who admitted he hit a student, used a racial epithet and fled to Mexico.

His hidden cameras caught Puleo and another union official advising fraud and violations of workplace rules to a man they thought was a teacher who’d hit a student.

O’Keefe’s video confirmed what many already know — and the late United Federation of Teachers leader Al Shanker acknowledged, “I don’t represent children. I represent teachers.”

Unaware they’re being filmed, Puleo and her deputy Paul Diamond look utterly unconcerned about harm to the student as they focus on helping the “teacher” keep his job.

Not once in the 17-minute video does Puleo or Diamond talk of notifying authorities about the child abuse. They, instead, pretend to discuss a theoretical situation — plainly, to protect themselves from officially learning damning details — and suggest scenarios where the “teacher” can come out OK.

Unions very much had their place in American history. They were a force for good. Now they have become complacent and fat and have started meddling in the political arena which they are not, by law, supposed to do. There is a lot more at James' website: Project Veritas

From The Washington Free Beacon:

Nearly Half of D.C. Employers Said They Have Laid Off Workers, Reduced Hours Due to Minimum Wage Hikes
Nearly half of Washington, D.C. employers said they have either laid off employees or reduced the hours of employees to adapt to the District of Columbia’s minimum wage hikes since 2014, according to a report from the Employment Policies Institute.

The minimum wage in the District of Columbia has increased from a $8.25 hourly rate in 2014 to the current rate of $11.50 per hour. Mayor Muriel Bowser advocated a $15 minimum wage in her State of the District address earlier this year.

A lot more at the site - these cultural elites are absolutely clueless about basic business operation. They think that the $15/hour can magically be pulled from some orifice without any impact on the daily business operation.

Great little video about the last audio cassette company in the world - and they are busy!

We have a sunspot

From Spaceweather:

RETURN OF THE SUNSPOT:
It's not much, but it is a sunspot. Breaking a string of 4 consecutive spotless days, tiny AR2552 emerged in the sun's northern hemisphere on June 7th. 

Sunspots are of great interest as they are a good and observable proxy for solar output. During times of cooler than normal temperatures, observed sunspot activity was always very low. During the 1960's, when people were first starting to think about global warming, this was a period of very high sunspot activity.

Looking at the Solar Flux graph from yesterday's post: Our Quiet Sun we can see the the current solar cycle is quite a bit lower then previous ones - again, entering a period of low solar activity and cooler temperatures on Earth.

Making a sandwich. The new antenna is working wonderfully - much stronger signal.

Heading out for coffee and a couple of hours on the radio for Cascadia Rising. This drill is a lot of fun and really well organised.

Lulu is coming back for the logging show this weekend and there is also BERT and WECG meetings tonight and tomorrow - busy couple of days.

Just wonderful

| No Comments

In a land where the proletariat are eating grass to survive, this happens - from Ars Technica:

Despite missile mishaps, N. Korea fires plutonium plant back up for warheads
Although North Korea has had a string of bad luck with its only suspected nuclear-capable ballistic missile—which had four failed test launches in the last two months—the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is clearly intent on shifting its nuclear capabilities into overdrive. On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that North Korea's government had apparently re-activated the nuclear fuel production reactor at Yongbyon—the plant responsible for the creation of plutonium used in the DPRK's nuclear weapons program.

The analysis by the IAEA, as IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said during a news conference on Monday, pointed to “resumption of the activities of the five megawatt reactor, the expansion of centrifuge-related facility, [and] reprocessing—these are some of the examples of the areas [of activity indicated at Yongbyon]." In this instance, "reprocessing" refers to the extraction of plutonium from irradiated uranium fuel.

These conclusions were reached based on satellite imagery, as North Korea has denied IAEA inspectors access to the plant. But if the IAEA is correct, the expansion of the centrifuge facility would indicate that North Korea is preparing to produce more fuel for nuclear warheads.

All the resources being spent on this and they do not feed their own people. Where's Team America when we need them...

Overextended

| No Comments

There is a device called a SteadiCam which provides very smooth movement for a hand-held camera. Here is a guy checking one out - everything is fine until the last few seconds. That Arri runs about $70K not counting the lens.

Here is how it should be done

Home ownership in Connecticut

| No Comments

As many as 20,000 houses affected - from the New York Times:

With Connecticut Foundations Crumbling, ‘Your Home Is Now Worthless’
Sandra Miller was at work in January when her daughter called from their home here on Oakridge Drive with alarming news. The house was making loud noises, as if someone had jumped off the counter and landed with a bang. For seconds afterward, the house shook.

A while later, it happened again, and again. Over the next several hours, terrifying bangs rattled the house. The next morning, Ms. Miller called Bill Neal, a structural engineer, who delivered the same stunning assessment to her that he has now told hundreds of homeowners: The concrete foundation was crumbling and, as a result, her house was gradually collapsing.

What and why?

The stone aggregate used in the concrete mixture has high levels of pyrrhotite, an iron sulfide mineral that can react with oxygen and water to cause swelling and cracking. Over the past 30 years, the quarry has provided concrete for as many as 20,000 houses.

A lot more at the link - needless to say, lots of litigation. Homeowners insurance does not cover this kind of slow collapse. There is a state website here: About Concrete Foundations and our Investigation

Back to the routine again

| No Comments

Life is good. Spent a couple hours on the radio and doing the same tomorrow. Had hamburgers for dinner (including one for the dogs) and watched a couple episodes of Bones - fun show!

Reading the internet over a glass of wine and then to bed.

Stop the insanity - Canada

| No Comments

Words fail - from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Canada will get gender-neutral national anthem
Canada is set to get a gender-neutral national anthem, along with its first-ever cabinet composed in equal numbers of men and women.

The House of Commons has voted 219-79 to change wording of "O Canada," with the phrase "all thy sons command" becoming "in all of us command."

Changes have been made to national anthems before but to make one just for political correctness is unreal.

Our quiet sun

| No Comments

First time in two years - the sun has been spotless for the last four days. Solar flux is down too.

Here are two images - the Sun and Solar Flux from 1948 to present:

20160607-sun.jpg

20160607-107.png

China in the news - WWIII

| No Comments

China is very busy expanding into the South China Sea - from Defense One

Now China’s Fake Island Has a Farm
China is clearly militarizing in the strategic South China Sea—causing international alarm and increased defense spending among neighbors. But as it asserts its claim to the region, it’s also throwing some softer elements in amid the militaristic buildup—including lighthouses, a tourist resort, and a hospital. The latest awkwardly placed civilian outpost is a farm.

The farm sits upon a manmade island that China has built atop the contested Fiery Cross Reef, according to a new report (link in Chinese) in the state-owned news portal Xinhua. About 500 livestock have been raised there—including pigs, chicken, and geese. There’s a vegetable garden covering about 4,000 square meters. There’s even a fish pond.

And not just vegetables:

Meanwhile on Woody Island, in the contested Paracel islands, China is planning resorts that will host weddings and diving trips. In February, satellite images revealed missile launchers being deployed on the very same island. We can see the ad copy now: “Just like the Maldives—but with missile launchers.”

Yikes - meanwhile everybody over here is riled up about which toilet to use. Classic case of misdirection.

Our Secretary of State is in China right now - what is he doing about this?

Good job Anonymous

I love it - the perfect weapon to use. From the UK Mirror:

Hackers spamming ISIS supporters on Twitter with graphic PORN
Online hackers are spamming ISIS supporters on Twitter by following them with THOUSANDS of graphic porn accounts.

The accounts, known as 'pornbots', feature nothing but graphic sexual images and are automatically generated, but almost never tweet and therefore cannot be deleted as spam.

The hackers target tweeters who use a lot of ISIS hashtags and strike rapidly, sometimes following them with several hundred accounts in just a few minutes.

The islamists are incredibly prudish in some senses -- theirs is a culture of sexual fear and incompetence hence their treatment of women and gays. Porn is the perfect tool to enrage them and set them off half-cocked... These are one-time throwaway accounts so they cannot be filtered as spam or blocked.

Classic Anonymous video from March 24th 2016 related to the Brussels terrorist attack:

Greenpeace has used the legal system for years to damage resource extraction companies (oil, timber, mining, etc...) Now the shoe is on the other foot - from Forest Industry:

Resolute Files Racketeering Suit Against Greenpeace in U.S. Federal Court
Resolute Forest Products Inc. (NYSE: RFP) announced a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia against Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace Fund, Inc., STAND (formerly ForestEthics) and a number of their associates. The complaint included federal racketeering claims and racketeering, trademark, defamation and tortious interference claims under Georgia law.

These alleged claims arise from, among other things, Greenpeace's self-described "Resolute: Forest Destroyer" campaign falsely accusing Resolute of, among other things: (a) "destroying endangered forests," and "operating and sourcing wood . . . in violation of law"; (b) causing the "destruction of endangered species" and "critical caribou habitat" and risking a "Caribou Herd Death Spiral," "extirpation" and "extinction;" (c) "abandoning" and "impoverishing" the Boreal's indigenous communities; and (d) impairing the Boreal's ability to mitigate climate change.

The complaint describes in detail the falsity of these and other malicious and defamatory accusations. Among other things, the complaint explains that far from being a "forest destroyer," Resolute has planted well over a billion trees in the Boreal – which is a billion more than Greenpeace – and is responsible for virtually no permanent lost forest acreage. The complaint also demonstrates that Resolute also has not impaired the Boreal's ability to absorb greenhouse gases, and, instead, has improved that ability through harvesting and forestation as recognized and encouraged by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Nor has Resolute abandoned, exploited or impoverished First Nations or other communities within the Boreal forest, but instead – and again unlike Greenpeace – has created and sustained substantial benefits for these peoples through shared economic participation in the forestry business. The complaint also details how, to support its false accusations, Greenpeace has fabricated evidence and events, including, for example, staged photos falsely purporting to show Resolute logging in prohibited areas and as having harvested areas that were actually impacted by fire.

There is a website for this lawsuit: Resolute v Greenpeace - much more at that site.

From the International Business Times:

Congressmen Defending ExxonMobil Against Investigation Received Almost $100,000 From Company
Exxon has a lot of friends in Congress, but they didn’t come cheap. A study from the Public Accountability Initiative finds 13 members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology collectively have received at least $98,270 in contributions from ExxonMobil employees and political action committees connected to the company.

Those same 13 committee members, all of them Republican, recently launched a counterinquiry into an investigation scrutinizing whether Exxon deliberately misled the public over the reality of climate change. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched the investigation into Exxon in November; in March he was joined by attorneys general from five other states, plus the attorney general for the Virgin Islands.

Just business as usual - hope their constituants remember this when they are up for election. Another argument for term limits for our congresscritters...

Dumb criminals - France

| No Comments

From the UK Telegraph:

Armed robbers thwarted trying to hold up McDonald's where 11 special forces officers happened to be eating dinner
Armed robbers bit off more than they could chew when they held up a McDonalds in eastern France whose diners included a group of hungry officers from an elite military force.

Around 40 customers were chomping on their burgers on Sunday evening in the fast food outlet in a shopping centre in Besancon when two men burst in, fired in the air with a shotgun, threatened the guests and ordered staff to open the till, which contained €2,000 (£1,550) in cash.

However, unbeknownst to the robbers, among the terrified customers were 11 off-duty members of the French paramilitary special forces, Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, or GIGN - the Gallic equivalent of the SAS - who were not amused at having their meal of Big Macs and French fries disturbed by the low-level criminals.

Oopsie - talking about making a bad decision. Hat tip to Bayou Renaissance Man for the link.

Cascadia Rising - the twitter feed

| No Comments

Lots of cool stuff going on today and tomorrow - here is the twitter feed for Cascadia Rising

20160607-liberal.jpg

Back home - coffee and radio

| No Comments

Out for coffee and checking in to the Cascadia Rising drill.

We have our first crispy person of the season hanging out in town. Usually get one or two drifting through each spring with a mouth full of gimme.

I am done

| No Comments

Time to go to sleep

Electronics humor

| No Comments

From a Facebook post:

20160606-resist.jpg

Massive pruning done

| No Comments

A lot of the emails are automated ones letting me know of various earthquakes around the world. All rounded up, looked over and then deleted. Likewise the software bug lists. Down to a couple emails that need replies (do this tomorrow) and a couple I am saving for the content.

Now on to the internet - feeling tired from today's drive so will not read the whole thing but I'll process a good chunk and catch the rest tomorrow.

Was listening to Moby's Long Ambient release while driving through rush hour this afternoon. Much better heading North than South last week. Wonderful stuff - the link goes to his page and the download button does just that, no registration, just one big ZIP file. Four hours of lush quiet ambient music.

Back home

| No Comments

Pulled into my driveway about two hours ago. Debriefed with Lulu, took care of a needed phone call, having a glass of wine and sitting down to a couple hundred emails. I am on some high-volume email lists so know how to prune this down to a reasonable volume in a short time but still...

Cascadia rising tomorrow.

Heading North today

| No Comments

It is about 300 miles between here and home - starting my journey in an hour or two. Pack up the room and get coffee first.

It will be good to get home...

And that is it

| No Comments

Time to go to sleep - heading home tomorrow.

A very good trip, lots learned and will be back here next year.

Looking forward to the next 51 weeks too - I do love to do some traveling but home is where the heart is...

Someone gets it

| No Comments

Great story from CNBC:

Climate accord 'irrelevant,' and CO2 cuts could impoverish the world: Scientist
The world's historic effort to reduce carbon emissions is likely to be a costly if not quixotic endeavor, according to one expert, whose recently published research warns that decarbonizing the globe could have devastating consequences on the world's way of life.

A bit more - they were talking about the huge amounts of money that would be needed to effectively reduce our carbon footprint and then the article goes on:

Those vast sums are why M.J. Kelly, a University of Cambridge engineering professor, recently wrote that the push to restrict carbon "is set to fail comprehensively in meeting its avowed target, and a new debate is needed." For that reason, Kelly is skeptical that initiatives like the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris will achieve its lofty goals.

In peer-reviewed research, Kelly argued carbon dioxide should be considered the byproduct of the "immense benefits" of a technologically advanced society. Cutting carbon, he added, could result in a dramatic reduction in the world's quality of life that would usher in mass starvation, poverty and civil strife. Massive decarbonization is "only possible if we wish to see large parts of the population die from starvation, destitution or violence in the absence of enough low-carbon energy to sustain society."

More at the article - I find it refreshing that CNBC actually published this thoughtful and detailed article. Carbon Dioxide is the gas of life - without it, there would be no plant life on this planet. It is a key element of photosynthesis.

About those windmills in England

| No Comments

From the UK Telegraph:

England not windy enough, admits wind industry chief
England is not windy enough to justify building any more onshore wind turbines, the chief executive of wind industry trade body has admitted.

Hugh McNeal, who joined RenewableUK two months ago from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, insisted the industry could make the case for more onshore turbines in some parts of the UK, despite the withdrawal of subsidies.

But he said this would “almost certainly” not be in England, as the wind speeds were not high enough to make the projects economically viable without subsidy.

Emphasis mine - now we are getting to the heart of the matter. These large projects are energy sinkholes and when construction and maintenence is figured in, are net energy losses - they generate zero net power. Those subsidies are coming from government collected taxes and your electric bills. Since the government does not make any money to speak of, these dollars (or Europs in this case) are yours and my tax dollars. Money out of our pockets.

For more and the windmills dirty little secret, check this out: Windpower's dirty little secret

Last night in Seaside

| No Comments

Going to miss this place - got a big hug from the bartender when I told her that I was heading back North tomorrow morning.

Also, the people I bought the antenna from (Elk Antennas); I ran into them this morning and told them that I was going to be using their antenna Tuesday morning for Cascadia Rising and the guy shook my hand and thanked me. Really nice people - father and his son and daughter.

Planning to be on the road around 11:00AM - hope for the best with rush hour. Maybe last Tuesday was an aberration of Memorial Day weekend... Driving on the OR side of the Columbia river valley (U.S. Highway 30) until the Lewis and Clark bridge at Longview and join I-5 there.

Last day

| No Comments

Heading out to take Grace for walkies, coffee and then the last day of the SeaPac conference - spending tonight here at the hotel and then home Monday.

Had Having a really great time - lots of learning, meeting people, just hanging out in cool places, good food, etc... Planning to bail on lunch and head out to Camp 18 for dinner again - that pot roast was really tasty and want to see what their turkey dinner is all about.

Spot on - The Millennial Song

| No Comments

Hat tip - Gerard

The WiFi at the hotel just went down for five whole minutes! Waaaaaaaaaa!!!

I know - a first world problem but still, got a big case of the shivers...

Winding down for the year

| No Comments

Last day of the conference is tomorrow - Sunday and it closes at 3:00PM. Spending Sunday night at the hotel and driving back home Monday sometime - probably head straight home. There are a couple of fun places I have not been to for a long long time but I need to be on the air Tuesday morning so do these later with Lulu.

Chinese food for tonight (Kung Pow chicken) - delicious as always. The waitress asked me if I had just moved here. I guess that seeing people for more than a day or two is unusual here - a lot of the regulars at the Bridge Tender are now greeting me by name and asking me if I want to join them in some shots. They know that I am just down for the conference but I like to go where the locals hang out and get to know them a bit.

In a way, this place reminds me of Hawaii a little bit - I feel very much at home here. If it wasn't for that damnable Cascadian Subduction Zone lurking 80 miles off the coastline I could be happy moving here. Not planning this mind you - I dearly love Maple Falls and have too much crap to pack up but still, it is nice to find good places.

Definitely heading back here next year - learned a lot and Seaside is a fun place to visit.

Simon's Cat

| No Comments

Saw there was a new one out - being from the Pacific NW I can relate:

Another break

| No Comments

Picked up a couple of hand tools and one antenna (one of these: Elk Antennas 2M/440L5 Dual-Band Antenna)

I know that every time you buy an antenna, the ashes of Nikola Tesla spin a little faster but getting a Log Periodic antenna to work right - especially on two different ranges of frequencies - is a black art so I would rather pay the premium to have someone else work their magic. This is for my two-meter rigs - the ones I use for local and emergency communications and it offers nice directionality - I can aim my signal to hit my target instead of radiating it evenly around 360° and wasting 80% of it.

Also, picked up a small transmitter designed specifically to operate as a WSPR beacon (pronounced as whisper).  $30 it was a zero brainer and this way, I do not have to tie up my rig for this. WSPR is fascinating - it is an outgrowth of the signal processing developed by K1JT (Joe Taylor) at Princeton University for receiving very faint signals from spacecraft. You can reliably work around the world on one or two watts of power - traditional ham radio systems need 100 watts on up. Needless to say, it is digital only and the throughput is very very slow - on the order of character or two per second but...  it will go through.

Heading back over to pick up a few more items - some tee shirts and some additional small stuff. The banquet is tonight but it is in the main hall which is not air conditioned so I am seriously thinking of bailing out. It was really muggy in there - the New Garden is calling to me again...

Lunch break

| No Comments

Ho. Li. Crap.

Feel like someone unscrewed the lid of my brain and poured in several gallons of data. Going to take a couple of weeks to Google more and assimilate it all. Learning antenna theory. Next seminar of interest is at 2:00PM

Going out for lunch and then cruise the flea-market and vendors booths. Looking specifically for a couple of things and have researched data and online prices so I will be able to shop effectively. If the prices are too high, I will just come back Sunday at 3:00PM when they are faced with hauling that wonderful XYZZY back home and I will offer them cash.

So much for the weather forecast - Cliff Mass had it nailed but National Weather Service? Not so much. Went to get a camera from my truck this morning and it was already 80°F at 8:30 - will check again when I go back to the conference:

Cliff Mass Weather Blog:   Weekend Heat Wave

National Weather Service forecast for Seaside Oregon:

20160604-nws.jpg

And one more - Venezuela

| No Comments

A Coup in 3 Weeks?

Makes perfect sense - they are running out of beer - from Musings from the Chiefio:

Prediction: Venezuela To Have A Coup In 3 Weeks
Forget the food riots. Forget the blackouts. Forget the 2 day work week and lack of medical care and medicines. This is serious.

Venezuela is running out of beer.

Much more at the site - a long and wonderfully documented examination of socialism in all it's glory. Sucks to be you...

Goodnight but first...

| No Comments

A few kind words about Hillary Clinton - after all, it is her turn to be president:

Hillary is a greedy, corrupt, power mad, misanthrope who schemes like Gollum and we’d have never heard her name if not for Bill. Imagine being so close to something you covet and earning none of it. What does that do to a person? Hillary’s grasp exceeds her merit and, like a Greek tragedy, she invariably fails spectacularly. She seeks not to earn power but cheat her way into it. Earning things gives you self respect and humility. Lacking that, Hillary is a toddler with a flamethrower. Her entire career is that she married someone important. That put her off my list. I wasn’t forced to stifle gag reflexes over a human puppet spawning cascading ethical lapses. It seems like even Hillary’s supporters are tired of her problems. I picture a few naive innocents swept along with tide of fearful courtiers bowing to Lady Macbeth. I’ll never vote for someone based on their spouse.

Just one part of an epic rant from Adaptive Curmudgeon who has been away from their blog but returned tonight with an opus magnum. Go and read the whole thing.

Getting oil from point A to point B is done with railroad cars. Warren Buffet owns Burlington Northern and is best friends with Barry O. A nice pile of income transporting all that oil when a pipeline would do the same cheaper and safer.

From the Everett Herald:

Train derails, spills oil, sparks fire in Columbia River Gorge
A train towing a highly volatile type of oil derailed Friday in Oregon’s scenic Columbia River Gorge, igniting a fire that sent a plume of black smoke high into the sky and spurring evacuations and road closures.

Eleven cars derailed in the 96-car Union Pacific train and at least one ignited, releasing oil alongside tracks that parallel the region’s treasured Columbia River, said Aaron Hunt, a spokesman for the railroad. All the cars were carrying Bakken oil, a type of oil that is more flammable because it has a higher gas content and vapor pressure and lower flash point than other varieties.

A lot more at the post including a rundown of recent accidents. This particular wreck may have been a Union Pacific but they were running on BNSF tracks. Buffet gets a bit of squeeze from everyone.

Back home - my tribe is increased

| No Comments

Because there is so much emphasis on Saturday and Sunday, most people come here just for those days..

Lots of members of my tribe are in town now - once you know what to look for, you can spot them a mile away.

Missed it by →← that much

| No Comments

There was signage off the main highway directing me to the Salt Works but nothing further. Coming back and re-reading the website, I find that I missed a subsequent turn. Tomorrow is spoken for but maybe Sunday afternoon or Monday on my way out.

Heading off to the Bridge Tender to drown my constant sorrow.

Off to the salt mines

| No Comments

Got Grace fed and gave her her ear meds (she had an infection - much better now) so heading off to the Salt Works to see what is there. Gorgeous warm afternoon. Had some ice cream after lunch so I am sated for the day - not planning anything for dinner.

Really good article from The Seattle Times:

20,000 to practice readiness for Northwest megaquake, tsunami
Imagine a devastating earthquake and tsunami have cut off Pacific Northwest coastal communities. Phone and internet service have collapsed. Ham-radio operators living on the stricken coast fire up their radios, contact emergency managers and report on the magnitude of the disaster so that no time is wasted in saving lives.

This is the kind of scenario that will be rehearsed during the second week of June in a massive earthquake and tsunami readiness drill that has been developed by the U.S. government, the military, and state and local emergency managers over the past few years to test their readiness for what — when it strikes — will likely be the nation’s worst natural calamity.

The June 7-10 exercise is called Cascadia Rising. It is named after the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia.

Just what we are looking at:

Awareness of the seismic threat looming just off the Pacific Northwest dates back to the 1980s, when researchers concluded that coastal lands long ago had been inundated by a tsunami. Research also indicated that a tsunami that was documented in Japan in January 1700 originated from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, also known as the CSZ.

Research suggests that the CSZ on average produces magnitude 9.0 quakes every 500 years, but big quakes have been separated by as few as 200 years and as many as 1,000. So it is impossible to predict when the next monster quake occurs. However, tectonic stresses have been accumulating in the CSZ for more than 300 years and seismologists say it could rupture at any time.

More than 8 million people live in the area that is vulnerable to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It contains the most heavily populated areas of the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle and Portland, as well as Interstate 5, one of the nation’s busiest roads.

More at the site. This is a groundbreaking ('ar 'ar 'ar) project. The whole idea of the Incident Command Structure that FEMA and CERT uses today was developed as a result of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Before then, every agency had their own methods and organization. The results of Cascadia Rising will be analysed and will help bring ICS into the 22nd century.

That's it for the day

| No Comments

Had lunch at the New Garden (Hunan beef with soup and spring roll - again, excellent!) and wandered around for a bit. Spent some time with the DX people (operating over long distance) and done for the day.

Thinking of heading out to the Lewis and Clark Salt Works - they had used up all of their provisions on the way out and needed to kill and preserve food for the way back. Salt was their preservative so they spent a couple weeks boiling seawater.

Turned out to be a gorgeous day with Saturday and Sunday forecast to be even nicer. Tomorow is the big day for the conference and things wind down on Sunday - closes at 3:00PM. I head back home on Monday sometime.

Back at the hotel for a bit

| No Comments

Heading out for lunch (Chinese) - it got quite warm so came back to park Grace here with the air conditioner on and put on a Hawaiian shirt and some shorts.

Lots of stuff going on at the conference - fun! One of the speakers is an Emergency Radio guy from Bellingham that I have met a bunch of times. We recognized each other - small world. 

Up and at 'em

| No Comments

Heading out for coffee and a croissant and then spending the day being radioactive.

Grace will not like this as she will be spending a lot of time in the truck but I have a nice nest for her where the back seat is. Come out and spend some time with her ever hour or so. The hotel parking lot is just two blocks from the venue.

Minimal posting until later this afternoon - weather is forecast to be overcast with diminishing clouds so not wearing the Hawaiian shirts just yet - the weekend looks great though.

Our border is secure

| No Comments

Yeah and I have a bridge you might be interestd in. From The Washington Times:

Smuggling network guided illegals from Middle East terror hotbeds to U.S. border
A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan who authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.

Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.” He is in custody, but The Times is withholding his name at the request of law enforcement to protect investigations.

Thanks Barry and Hillary and Jeh - you bunch of morons.

The warmists keep saying that warming temperatures will cause bee populations to die off. Actually not at all - during warmer times, the bee populations flourished.

From the Journal of Hymenoptera Research:

Abstract
The small carpenter bees, genus Ceratina, are highly diverse, globally distributed, and comprise the sole genus in the tribe Ceratinini. Despite the diversity of the subgenus Neoceratina in the Oriental and Indo-Malayan region, Ceratina (Neoceratina) australensis is the only ceratinine species in Australia. We examine the biogeography and demography of C. australensis using haplotype variation at 677 bp of the barcoding region of COI for specimens sampled from four populations within Australia, across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. There is geographic population structure in haplotypes, suggesting an origin in the northeastern populations, spreading to southern Australia. Bayesian Skyline Plot analyses indicate that population size began to increase approximately 18,000 years ago, roughly corresponding to the end of the last glacial maximum. Population expansion then began to plateau approximately 6,000 years ago, which may correspond to a slowing or plateauing in global temperatures for the current interglacial period. The distribution of C. australensis covers a surprisingly wide range of habitats, ranging from wet subtropical forests though semi-arid scrub to southern temperate coastal dunes. The ability of small carpenter bees to occupy diverse habitats in ever changing climates makes them a key species for understanding native bee diversity and response to climate change.

Emphasis mine - there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere then too. Everything was just fine.

A geek-tastic three-fer

| No Comments

Elon Musk has an interesting idea:

Elon Musk believes we are probably characters in some advanced civilization's video game

Game over...
Astronomy is getting really interesting:

Holy Hell the Universe Is Expanding Faster Than We Thought

Windows 10 - not just a good idea:

Windows 10 nagware: You can't click X. Make a date OR ELSE

Fortunately, there is an excellent Win10 blocker available at Ultimate Outsider - click on the first link to download GWX Control Panel and keep MSFT's grubby little mitts off your metadata forever.

Home for the evening

| No Comments

Spent a delightful four hours in a seminar (long distance operation - tips and tricks) - the conference doesn't "officially" start until tomorrow but people were doing stuff so hey...

I had heard about Camp 18 so drove down and had dinner there - holy cow, talk about a destination restaurant.

Here is their website - the place is on about 40 acres and has all kinds of logging and railroad equipment on display. Worth spending a day just to look at everything. There was a blacksmith shop but it was after 5:00PM and locked up. Dinner was excellent - I had the pot roast and it was almost as good as my own. Served with braised root vegetables plus onions and celery and oven roasted baby red potatoes. I didn't have lunch this afternoon as I was planning for this meal but still only got about half-way through. A lot of food. Needless to say, Grace was very happy to get her dinner tonight - the gravy was especially adored.

Here is their menu (PDF) and here is the page with the history. All the timber for the construction was felled and milled by the owner from local trees. There was also a very nice logger's memorial building with a great bronze statue and plaques for the local fallen loggers. I took some photos and will get them up after the conference.

Had two pints of beer at The Bridge Tender and sitting here surfing for a bit before bedtime. Early bed tonight as tomorrow is a full day with seminars starting at 9:00AM.

Lazy morning today

| No Comments

Woke up around 10:00AM - went out for coffee and breakfast and back at the hotel for now.

Was raining all morning but it has let up - heading out to conference registration and a 1:00PM seminar. Supposed to be really nice and warm for the weekend.

Mining Platinum

| No Comments

It turns out that there is a very rich deposit of Platinum metal to be found in the USA. Along our highways.
The latest from Cody's Lab:

It comes from the normal wear of automotive catalytic converters and the actual yield is comparable to a very good ore deposit - something to think about...

Highly recommended. Very fresh ingredients and well prepared. Heading back there a couple of times on this trip. That good! I had tried a couple other Chinese restaurants the last trip here but was underwhelmed. This one floats my boat!

Here is their website: New Garden Asian Cuisine

Making beer? Seriously - from PR Newswire:

SodaStream Launches Homemade Beer System
SodaStream International Ltd. (Nasdaq: SODA), the leading global manufacturer and distributor of Sparkling Water Makers, has announced the release of its new home beer system, the Beer Bar. The brand is an exciting concept of making quality home-crafted beer using sparkling water and a unique beer concentrate brewed to perfection.

The Beer Bar is unveiled with a light beer called Blondie that has a smooth authentic taste, and a hop filled aroma. The Beer Bar enables consumers to concoct crafted beer in seconds by adding Blondie concentrate to Sparkling Water. Blondie contains 4.5% alcohol by volume, the average level found in most global beer brands. A one liter Blondie bottle yields approximately three liters of beer.

Sounds interesting - you buy a one liter bottle of beer concentrate and dilute 1:3 and carbonate. Available online from their German site but nothing here in the states yet. Cost would be the key issue (as well as flavor of course). Also, some simple math indicates that the concentrate would be at 13.5% ABV - price it too high and it will not sell. Price it too low and it will become the next bum-beer similar to Four-Loco or Steel Reserve. There are people out there who would drink this straight.

I once tried to finish a Four-Loco and could not - one of the fouler things to assault my palate in a long long time...

Road trip - Colon, Michigan

| No Comments

1,200 people, two gas stations, one pizza parlor, and a single pharmacy. From Mental Floss:

A Small Michigan Town is the Self-Proclaimed "Magic Capital of the World"
Colon, Michigan, might just be the most magical place in the United States. The tiny 1200-person town has just two gas stations, one pizza parlor, and a single pharmacy. But it’s also home to three magic shops (which sit about three blocks apart), and a magical legacy dating back eight decades.

In the short video “Magic Town, USA,” Great Big Story explores the self-proclaimed “Magic Capital of the World.” Going behind the scenes with the town’s three magic shop owners, John Sterlini of Sterlini Magic Manufacturing Company, Rick Fisher of Fab Magic, and Greg Bordner of Abbott Magic, the video explores the town’s unique magical identity.

Fun place to visit if we are ever in the area.

Yikes - diphenhydramine

| No Comments

Bad news - from New York's CBS affiliate:

Research: Long-Term Use Of Benadryl, Many Over-The-Counter Cold Medications Linked To Dementia
New research is warning about a possible link between a very common allergy medicine and dementia.

CBS2’s Dr. Max Gomez reported that long-term use of an antihistamine known as diphenhydramine, which is commonly sold as Benadryl and included in many over-the-counter medications for cold and allergies, may increase the risk of dementia and even cause irreparable harm.

Diphenhydramine, which also causes drowsiness, is in popular sleep aids such as Tylenol PM, Advil PM, and ZZZQuil.

Going to be some interesting lawsuits over this one if it pans out...

Barry goes off-script

| No Comments

Obama is very good at reading a TelePrompTer - it got him elected twice. When he goes off-script, the results can be hilarious. Here he is trying to demean Donald Trump and looking very much the fool:

Tip of the hat to Gateway Pundit.

A fun day

| No Comments

The Lewis and Clark monument wasn't much - a lot of history and a nice meadow but that was about it. Grace had a nice run anyway.

Nosed around Astoria's harbor a bit - there was an old cannery building that had been opened up as a 'museum' but nothing like the one on Lulu Island in Canada - saw a couple places I want to go back and check out.

Was told of a Chinese restaurant that recently opened and is supposed to be quite good - heading out there for dinner in a bit. One of the nice things about Seaside is that everything is within walking distance and the whole town is very dog friendly. I had been to Cannon Beach a couple times in the past and it was nice - a bit more 'arty' than Seaside but last year, I drove down there and it had gentrified completely. Why spend $30 for an entree with a small piece of fish when I can two large pieces of fresh halibut and chips for $14 at the Bridgetender.

Horrible wingsuit accident caught on video (joke):

Off to an adventure

| No Comments

Day one in beautiful Seaside Oregon.

Had coffee (some things do not ever change) and some breakfast and now ready to head out to explore the several Lewis and Clark monuments around here - this is the end of their epic expedition from St. Louis all the way through the unexplored continent to the Columbia River and Oregon Coast.

Light overcast - nice temperature. See what the day brings. I walked by the convention center where the SeaPac conference is being held and people are starting to move in - lots of trucks filled with goodies!!! Looking at antennas and maybe a power amp if I can get a decent price.

Forgot to mention yesterday that my soundtrack for the drive down was Texan bluesman Ray Wylie Hubbard - here are two of his songs:

March 2023

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from June 2016 listed from newest to oldest.

May 2016 is the previous archive.

July 2016 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9