Posted by aogTuesday, 30 June 2009 at 11:21 Comments (1) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

They knew what they were being paid for

Via Brothers Judd we have another idiot just not understanding President Obama —

A White House that is more interested in promotion than in product development has another great drawback: it squanders talent. Mr Obama has impeccable taste in advisers: he has scooped up many of the country’s pre-eminent experts in almost every area of public policy. One wonders why. On the main domestic issues, they are not designing policy; they are working the phones, drumming up support for bills they would be deploring if they were not in the administration. Apart from anything else, this seems cruel.

This isn’t an unfortunate result, this is precisely why Obama hired all those “top guns” in the first place. At best they become his paid supporters while he loots their credibility, at worst they are silenced so he has much less opposition. One might think it a bit expensive but Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that the concept of “too expensive” is not one that can ever apply to any of his actions. I don’t feel a bit of pity for any of these “experts” as if they weren’t smart enough to see this then they’re not smart enough to be experts. After all, even Judd Gregg figured it out and walked away, although right at the edge of the cliff.

Posted by aogTuesday, 30 June 2009 at 11:11 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Gaia über alles

How can I not take note of Paul Krugman’s preparation for the re-education camps for those who lack faith in AGW?

[A]s I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research. […]

[W]e’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?

I agree, and I am acting to oppose the warmenist effort to destroy our way of life and perhaps even our civilization.

P.S. As Instapundit noted, wasn’t throwing a label like “traitor” around considered excessively gauche not so long ago by people like Krugman?

Posted by aogTuesday, 30 June 2009 at 10:44 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

All Cretans are liars

Even the Obama Administration is now saying that you can’t believe anything President Obama says with regard to his policies. I assumed that Obama would end up as a failure because he’s an empty suited thug from Chicago, but I didn’t think he would unravel this far this fast to where his own spokesmen were nearly immediately disowning his statements.

Posted by aogTuesday, 30 June 2009 at 10:12 Comments (4) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Don't blame the victim

I have been meaning to write basically the same thing as this post with regard to the admissions scandal at the University of Illinois. I think the school administration were also victims because as you can see from President Obama, if you mess with the Chicago School of Politics, they will respond with vindictive fury. The voters in the state make going public on such threats a pointless exercise so what can the administrators do except go along? The alternative is to have the all of the students punished.

Posted by aogMonday, 29 June 2009 at 13:18 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Celebrating rocket freedom

“Green Rage 2” - PML AMRAAM 2.1” on a G40

Posted by aogMonday, 29 June 2009 at 10:24 Comments (15) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Marketing the Obvious

Despite the putative credit crunch, I still get many unsolicited credit card offers, despite being effectively unemployed for the last three years. Some are more amusing than others, but I was tickled by one last week for the VISA Black Card (which advertises as “the world’s most exclusive card” which seems difficult to believe if they are trying to get me to have one). Anyway, it’s got a cool black theme going on (apparently taking design tips from this very website) but the best bit was this —

The Black Card is not just another piece of plastic. Made with carbon, it is the ultimate buying tool. [emphasis added]

I hate to disillusion any prospective owners, but all plastic is made with carbon. It’s part of that whole “petro-chemical” thing. I am left wondering if any one in the advertising agency or the Black Card management knows that, or thinks no one else does.

P.S. It’s also not the “ultimate buying tool” — Bill Gates’ fortune, that is the ultimate tool. A credit card, not so much.

Posted by aogMonday, 29 June 2009 at 10:06 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

OJ does soccer?

Did I miss something or did Brothers Judd suddenly start covering soccer like it is a real sport? Did aliens trans-reverse his brain?

Posted by aogMonday, 29 June 2009 at 09:55 Comments (12) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Moving manufacturing overseas

I was aghast that the House of Representatives passed the “cap and trade” legislation. It’s a measure of how corrupt and pathetic rule by the Democratic Party has become that the fact that no one had actually even read the legislation doesn’t seem the worst part. I am sure that the chattering classes consider this new way of legislating by ignorance represents Hope and Change™ from the evil Rethuglican way, but I am just too much of a reactionary to support it.

What I thought was, isn’t this really the “Please Export All Manufacturing Jobs Overseas” legislation? China and India are not going to put such financial burdens on manufacturers which will put enormous pressure on any USA based manufacturing company to go ahead and move out. Or perhaps move to Europe — one notes (but Democratic Party caucus in Congress doesn’t) how their cap and trade worked out. It made a lot of money for the government, then collapses as politicians traded additional carbon dioxide permits for political support, collapsing the price. If some lobbiest were clever and wanted to make some serious cash, he would have slipped in a provision for equivalency for European and American permits. It would be easy, since no one has read the legislation anyway. And why not? Carbon dioxide emissions are no respecter of borders, so why shouldn’t they all be equivalent? Then you could (for a while) make a lot of commissions on buying the extremely cheap European permits and Americanizing them.

It seems to me that the EUlite have once again made a profit on their hypocrisy, generating revenue and political favors while, in the end, imposing little long term burden on their industries. Meanwhile, they get the Europhilic Democratic Party to impose real burdens on their major competitor. Proper revenge for the Marshall Plan?

UPDATE:

Transterrestial Musings writes

Of course, the real problem is the willingness of legislators to vote for bills that they haven’t read, or even given time to read. Once that became acceptable, it was inevitable that they would start voting on wills of the wisp. I would dearly love to see everyone one of these criminals punished at the polls next year. Especially the Republican capntr8trs.

No, the problem is ultimately the voters, who are happy to re-elect representatives who vote on “Mad-Lib” legislation. We may also blame Old Media, who don’t want to investigate and report on this if it’s a government run by the Democratic Party.

Posted by aogMonday, 29 June 2009 at 09:18 Comments (2) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

It's the doing, not the wanting

I read this at McCabism and my first thought was — how does someone who is a non-attractive geek even for a group of high powered physicists manage to do that? I can understand why he would want to have an open marriage, and maybe why his wife would (initially) put up with it, but how in the world did he convince the majority of his co-workers’ wives to do so as well? I think about the work places I have been in, filled with similar geeks, and I just can’t imagine any of the wives having an affair with one of the other husbands in the group. I would guess the ony reason any of the wives slept with any of us was because of the marriage. I might believe that one or two of them might have an affair with some empty headed hunk or sensitive artist type, but another geek? And most of them? Is this view just a resut of my staid MidWestern life experience, or does it strike other people as odd too?

Posted by aogFriday, 05 June 2009 at 14:22 Comments (9) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Cool non-savings

Via Brothers Judd is an article on Secretary of Energy Chu’s call to paint roofs white to which Judd responds

Sure, it wouldn’t do bupkus for warming … but if it cuts consumers’ bills why not do it?

I would be very surprised if this cut costs for consumers. Any one suggesting this has very likely not actually priced what it costs to paint a roof. I would bet money that painting your roof white is a money loser because you don’t recoup the painting cost before you have to paint it again. And what does all that paint do for the environment?

Semi-off-topic — we’re looking at new air cooling systems for our house. The cost is something on the order of 5-10 times our annual energy costs to cool the house. So even if it made cooling free, it would be the better part of a decade before we had a net economic benefit. At the 20% cost savings claimed, that’s 50-100 years. That’s even with manufacturer rebates and government subsidies tax credits. It frankly just doesn’t make economic sense, we’re only looking at it because the current units are old and may fail at any time, and just do not have the cooling power needed for the house.

UPDATE: It’s even worse than I wrote here. Suppose it costs $5000 for the cooling units and $1000/year for cooling (these are ballpark numbers for my house). If the upgrade saves 20%, that’s $200/year. But 10 year T-bills have popped up to 3.8%, which means I could get $190/year by buying $5000 worth of them. So I would be netting $10/year, which means the payoff time is five hundred years. Another bump in T-bill rates and I am better off buying them and using that to pay the cooling costs. Double the energy savings and it is still a multi-century payoff.

Posted by aogFriday, 05 June 2009 at 14:08 Comments (1) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Gone to Texas

I am heading out to Texas tomorrow, with sporadic network contact (and for some reason the family will expect a larger amount of personal interaction). But before I depart, here is a quite cutting post on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Her celebration of “indefiniteness” in the application of law by the judiciary is to me absolutely stunningly bad for some one nominated to the Supreme Court.

Posted by aogMonday, 01 June 2009 at 09:57 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Time for a bit of mockery

Perhaps I am just a bit narrow minded, but when I read this article in The Atlantic all I could think about was how embarassingly incorrectly the author used the terms “irrational numbers” and “real numbers”. It was like going to a Harry Potter movie and having your three year old daughter void her bladder on your lap. Suddenly you can no longer think about the movie, only about where the nearest towel selling store is¹. Except in this case, it was if the script writer had sent the child.

Sometimes I am just not as tolerant of non-geeks as I should be.

¹ This is why I have never seen a complete Harry Potter movie.

Posted by aogMonday, 01 June 2009 at 08:15 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Maybe if you sprayed some more "nuance" on it

A quote to enjoy

[US Representative Pete] Hoekstra said he could not see a clear moral distinction between denying the due process of the American justice system to terrorist combatants on the one hand, and the administration’s covert activities in Pakistan (which Hoekstra said he supports) on the other. In war, he said, it is acceptable to hold enemy combatants until hostilities are concluded, and if we’re at war then that’s what we ought to do. “If this isn’t a war, then what are we doing assassinating people with no due process?” he asked. “Morally, where does that stand in comparison with waterboarding?”

(via hit and run)

Posted by aogMonday, 01 June 2009 at 08:10 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Smash the State

I have been following the claims that closures of Chrysler dealerships have been politically motivated and wondering if the evidence was strong enough to justify a post. I didn’t wonder a bit, though, at Old Media’s strong lack of interest in investigating the issue.

But what did occur to me while reading this is how much easier it is to close dealerships now than it was before Chrysler was purchased by the Obama Administration. Car dealerships are generally strongly protected, in an almost guild like fashion, by state and local law, which prevented the Big Three from adjusting their dealer networks to suit reality. The Obama Administration, however, can simply ignore those laws as it goes about its business. A classic case of government creating a problem and then claiming it requires government to fix it, rather than say removing the government cause that created the problem in the first place.

Posted by aogMonday, 01 June 2009 at 07:56 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Paying for your mistakes

According to the Obama Administration, we must close Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo because, despite the facilities being excellent, its reputation is tainted. Well, why is that? It’s basically an invention of American Old Media, so why not drop a special tax on them to pay for the closure, since they caused the problem? The Obama Administration clearly has no moral or practical issue with such taxes of attainder, so it seems a good solution to me.

Posted by aogTuesday, 26 May 2009 at 08:49 Comments (23) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Asking for it

The impending financial collapse of the state of California has drawn a lot of weblogging attention. I am firmly in the “blame the voters” camp.

One can look at Governover Schwarzenegger’s political trajectory to see this. The Governator tried to get some reforms enacted in 2004 but was crushed at the polls. The voters made a clear statement that they had no interest in accepting any of the downsides of maintaining the fiscal health of the state and the Governator (understandably, but not to his credit) gave the voters what they wanted, good and hard.

Even the putative “voter revolt” in the rejection of the recent ballot initiatives is much less than it has been portrayed. The turnout was, to the best of my knowledge, less than 25%. So it could easily be that a majority still favors high spending and intrusive government. It’s easily possible that every single “no” vote was from someone who also voted against then candidate Obama and nothing, really, has changed.

I also want to dismiss the complaints of “jerrymandering”. I certainly think jerrrymandering is a Bad Thing and should be avoided as much as possible, but ultimately it’s just an excuse. People still vote, the elected still get the majority of votes of voters in their actual district, and the districts must contain roughly equal numbers of citizens. In a state where a legislastive majority is held by a thin margin, jerrymandering can mean frustrating the actual will of the voters. But given California’s massive party imbalance, that’s clearly not the case in that state.

As far as I can see, California is still checked in to the Hotel, the voters still suffering from reality dysfunction, wanting low taxes with high spending, extensive government economic intervention without affecting business, and strong public labor unions with effecient government services. Good luck with that!

Posted by aogTuesday, 26 May 2009 at 08:33 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Cut off from civilization

SWIPIAW cut our internet connection cable over the weekend, digging up the yard to put in some new plants. However, after several trips to buy parts and some splicing effort, she has the household back online, at least well enough to get by until the official repair people arrive.

Plants

For erp

Posted by aogThursday, 21 May 2009 at 14:12 Comments (41) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Obama Hagiography Reports

New York Times ♥ President Obama

Posted by aogWednesday, 20 May 2009 at 11:23 Comments (6) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

What precisely is the problem?

I was thinking about President Obama’s travail in dealing with the inmates at Camp X-Ray. One thing that occurred to me is the massive double-think required of the standard opponents of keeping the inmates there. Supposedly this detention is a horrible stain on our national honor because the conditions are so horrible and unjustified. Yet when Obama tries to shut it down, we find that other nations (those supposedly horrified by Camp X-Ray) either refuse to accept the inmates or would treat them so badly that we can’t send the inmates there. The latter is a particularly large effort in double-think. How much of a stain can our treatment of them be if it would be an even greater stain to turn them over to various other nations? Believing both of those at the same time — that’s impressive.

Posted by aogMonday, 18 May 2009 at 19:34 Comments (2) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Is our long national nightmare over?

According to the NAR

Since the BATFE has not appealed the decision of the Federal District Court of March 16, 2009, which ordered the agency to vacate their classification of APCP as an explosive, and the period for their ability to do so has expired as of May 16, 2009, on advice of counsel, the judgment is considered final although we have not received confirmation from BATFE. Accordingly, members may operate under the understanding that APCP rocket motors are no longer regulated as an explosive material by BATFE, and no longer require the permits formerly required by the agency to buy, sell, or possess such motors.

Woo hoo!

Posted by aogMonday, 18 May 2009 at 15:17 Comments (39) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Collapse of the Attention Wave State

cjm wants to know how many universes can dance on the head of a pin which reminded me of a philosophical point that nags at me. I apologize in advance for throwing out a non-political post.

In that previous thread the collapse of the quantum wave function problem came up and the “many worlds” theory to explain it. A thought occurred to me and I did a bit of research on that and found out that my thought wasn’t a new variant on the problem but the actual essence of it and that I had been misunderstanding the many worlds theory for years.

What I was thinking was “how do we know that the wave function actually collapses?”. Consider quantum computing. You can, with just a bit of hand waving, consider that to be a micro version of the multiple universe theory. In effect, quantum computing works by splitting a small region of our universe in to little micro parallel universes. The computation in question proceeds in all possible ways in these microverses and at the end, the one with the answer is “picked”, the rest disappear in a wave function collapse and voila, you have done a massive calcuation in a very small time. But — if you were in one of these little microverses it would seem to you that the wave function had already collapsed to your specific facet of the overall computation.

Why, then, can’t we take the same view, that our reality is simply one eigenstate of a much larger quantum wave function and what we see as wave function collapse isn’t anything of the sort? That view, it turns out, is the actual multiple universe theory. The use of the term “parallel universe” is actually misleading, it’s really quantum wave eigenstates, but that doesn’t sound as cool to non-geeks. How plausible this is depends on what you think the fundamental nature of reality is. In the multiple universes view, our “reality” isn’t the physical structure of the universe, but just an information encoding imposed upon it. The fundamental reality is like a co-axial cable, and our reality just a cable channel transmitted on it. You can add as many more channels as you like, each channel thinking it’s the “real” thing.

As someone once noted, “reality may not only be stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine”.

P.S. Just as an aside, related to the final quote, a problem for we materialists is believing that randomly evolved biological intelligence is capable of comprehending the fundamental nature of reality. Why would that be the case? Yet so many materialists simply assume that. A bit hubristic, wouldn’t you say?

Posted by aogMonday, 18 May 2009 at 14:45 Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

We'll fill in the protest signs later

This is from the New York Times (via Brothers Judd) so it may well bear no relationship with reality, but

While there is growing anticipation that the summer will bring the spectacle of a pitched Supreme Court confirmation battle, some Senate Republicans are lowering expectations that they are planning any major political fight.

That’s Stupid. How can you plan on whether to have a political fight before you know who the nominee is? Doesn’t the value of such a fight depend, just a bit, on who exactly President Obama nominates? Or is this an admission that’s its all Kabuki and the details that affect the lives of we peasants irrelevant?

Posted by aogThursday, 14 May 2009 at 20:16 Comments (46) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

It's good to be the Prez

The new Chrysler-Fiat partnership will get around U.S. restrictions on executive pay by having its top officers deemed Fiat employees.

— Detroit Free Press

Given that the same government has both created those restrictions and obtained a controlling interest in Chrysler, we can reasonably presume that this avoidance meets with the approval of that government. Anything for a friend, eh?

Posted by aogThursday, 14 May 2009 at 12:20 Comments (5) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Notes from the War on Prosperity

How’s that economic recovery going?

Well, it seems that the “stimulus” package has had, if anything, negative effects if one correlates Obama Administration predictions with actual results or current predicitons from the same source that there will be no job growth for the rest of the year. Gosh, who could have forseen that?

But it’s not just a failure to win, but a miasma of corruption as well. And shades of Smoot-Hawley — wouldn’t want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Plus, let’s massively raise the cost of doing business just to be sure that no pocket of private prosperity is left.

Oh, and Fannie Mae is still burning money like it’s Nero in Rome but that’s not important enough for the White House or Congress to waste their time on, nor is there any point to investigating on how the finanical statements comfing from the FMs managed to get so out disconnected from reality — we know it was those Evil Money People and Hedge Funds.

The truly sad part is, despite the Tea Parties, I expect that the architects of this burning the lifeboats to keep the Titanic passengers warm project will get re-elected, and that’s all that matters, because they will do fine regardless of what the American Street endures.

Posted by aogThursday, 14 May 2009 at 08:53 Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Ping URL

Carbon is people!

Orrin Judd is off an another anti-carbon jaunt, which is initially amusing because people are made of carbon, so a good way to get less carbon is to have less people, which is probably not quite what OJ wants.

But it’s bogus on a more serious level, which is that if there is one thing immigration from the third world to the USA does, it is greatly increase the “carbon footprint” of the immigrants. On that basis, it is quite reasonable for the “anti-carbon” crusaders to vigorously oppose immigration. Such a regime would also make it reasonable for ordinary people to oppose immigration, because it makes every immigrant a direct drain on their own standard of living. If the immigrant’s carbon footprint goes up, the native’s must go down, if we are to hold the overall level constant or declining.