This is good news?

It's good to hear that only 1% more of the US workforce got laid off last month. Apparently, not sucking as badly at the month before means that we are in recovery. At any rate, that is the spin that the politicians are putting on this.

If a guy is bleeding to death on the recovery table, and he has already lost a huge quantity of blood, and the bleeding rate slows to 1 liter per minute from 3 liters per minute, this is still not cause for rejoicing. The guy is going to die very soon unless the bleeding STOPS.

That is the situation for these economic numbers. Losing over half a million jobs in a month is horrendously bad. If you had thought is was going to be 620,000 jobs lost instead, you still don't have cause for rejoicing. Something really awful is going on.

Keep this in mind if you see anyone smiling too much and saying "What we are doing is working!" No, the panic button should still be firmly pushed down.

Shareholder Proposals en Masse

Who are Kenneth Steiner, William Steiner, Chris Rossi, Nick Rossi, and Emil Rossi?

The Steiners are both in New York, and William is apparently a millionaire in some kind of business or other. Kenneth is a close relative of his?

The Rossis are all in California, and I haven't found anything that they do.

They have become of interest to me, because I find their names on shareholder proposals in practically every company in which I have to vote proxy shares. And they are all proposals which would make the companies less profitable, and cause LESS reason for responsible management, even though they say they are going to create MORE responsible management.

Who are these people who (1) have so much time on their hands that they can write thousands and thousands of shareholder proposals, and (2) seem so opposed to the profits of their fellow shareholders, and (3) weren't even on the radar before this year? My guess is that they are all lawyers who work for unions like the AFL-CIO or the mob or both. But I am suspicious that way.

Any ideas?

Score!

I love stories with happy endings. Happy for everyone except the pirates, that is.

The ship which had been hijacked by pirates is freed after the crew fought back and threw the pirates into shark-infested waters. The captain, who was being held hostage in a separate boat, is now free, after Navy snipers shot all of his kidnappers simultaneously. That's awesome! :)

Seriously, pirates ought to be hanged at the yardarm without benefit of a trial. That has been the traditional punishment for them for the past two thousand years, and it is a good tradition. Merchant vessels, which currently sail unarmed due to US maritime law (and what idiot passed that law in the first place?), should be permitted to carry arms again. For heavens sake, handguns would help more than what sailors are currently permitted to carry!

Christus Surrectus Est!

Indeed He is risen!

Hallelujah! Happy Easter! May the year ahead be blessed for all, and may all our lives be renewed. :)

I love Easter...

Harold and Kumar Go to White House

I mean, in an administration that is already a joke, what is one more dope-smoking idiot in the mix? At least this one is funny.

But here you have it: Harold and Kumar Go to The White House.

I continue to be impressed by Mr. Obama's choices to fill the most important positions in this nation with those best qualified to do the job.

Lasers in the Jungle Somewhere.

This sort of thing makes me happy. Why? Because men like to blow stuff up. Or burn through them rapidly with really big lasers...

Presenting: the first REALLY BIG LASER!!!

Disarming Pilots?

So there is this story in the Washington Times about how the current administration is hampering the program where airline pilots can carry weapons. The program is a good one: pilots must take a gun safety training course so that they KNOW what they are doing if they need to use the gun inside an airplane; also, it provides a last line of defense in case of a hijacking of the airplane by some wacko.

There are a lot of wackos in this country, many of whom aren't Islamic terrorists. I'd still rather not have them hijack my airplane. Let us imagine the scenario: a paranoid schizophrenic manages to conceal a razor blade in his luggage. He kills the stewardess, there is no air marshal, and he breaks into the cockpit. Does it sound like it would be a good thing if he were able to kill the pilot and take over the controls of the plane? It doesn't sound good to me.

And what was the worry about the pilot? That he was going to use the gun to kill someone on the plane? The pilot is flying a multi-ton machine filled with highly flammable liquid 45,000 feet above the ground. If he wants to kill everyone on that plane, he can. The gun would be quite incidental.

What a stupid policy decision by this administration, one among many.

The Mountain Grows...

David Brooks is apparently a slobbering idiot. This frequently happens to those in love. This is what he had to say about Barack Obama.



"I think what struck me is how incredibly even he is. And how frankly reassuring he is. It is like you’re camping, and you wake up one morning, and there is a mountain. And then the next morning, there is a mountain, and there’s the next morning, there’s a mountain. Obama is just the mountain. He is just there. He is always the same, he doesn't hurt himself. McCain can sometimes lob a cannonball at the mountain, but the mountain doesn't move, and the mountain doesn't care. And so I think his steadiness, his temperament has been the dramatic theme of this campaign, dramatic in being undramatic. And it was on display tonight. And the good part of the mountain is that he is reassuring and reliable."



I rather think that the mountain is growing day by day. Sort of like a volcano. Before it blows up...


(click on the photo for an informative and dramatic film clip)







And that alarms me. Am I foolish to be paranoid by something that is of tremendous force and power which looks like it is about to blow up?



So which is the volcano? The president and his foolish spending habits with the nation's money, or is it the United States economy itself? I think it's the former that is going to cause the destruction. Certainly, though, I will be among those struck down, along with thousands around me.

Some "Creative" thinking about stimulus money

Today, I was reading an interesting article about the town of Union, which received half a million dollars to help it counteract its homeless problem, in spite of the fact that there aren't any homeless people living there.

Now that's government efficiency for you.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is encouraging the town of Union to "be creative" with how they use the money. Now, if ANY person running a town in a America (especially my own) which is in a similar situation wants to have my advice, here is a creative solution for you:

Drop the local sales tax to match the amount of money you have received. The drop in sales tax will stimulate sales, which in turn boosts the economy. A good economy means well-paying jobs. And that, in turn, means that people can pay for their houses.

Creative, huh?

What about if you don't have a sales tax? Then if you have an income tax, drop that one to match the amount of money you have received. It will have a similar effect, though instead of stimulating sales, it will stimulate more start-up businesses. The overall effect is the same though: people can pay for their houses, and they don't wind up homeless.

I'm not a genius, but this idea is definitely one of genius. It should be pursued.

What I hear these days:

With a nod to the original article (Thank you Politico.com), I read such stuff these days and hear the following:

Wormtongue: Rush is the GOP's brain
By MIKE ALLEN | 3/1/09 12:11 PM EST
Text Size:

White House Chief of Staff Grima Wormtongue charged Sunday that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

Wormtongue, speaking in deliberately soothing tones, told anchor Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Limbaugh has been up front about “praying for failure” by President Saruman.

“I think that’s the wrong philosophy for America,” Wormtongue said. “What Americans want us to do, and what President Saruman has been very clear about, is work together setting our goals …

“Our goal, Bob, is to continue to reach out and it’s our desire that the Republicans would work with us and try to be constructive, rather than adopt the philosophy of somebody like Rush Limbaugh.”

Wormtongue’s comments were in line with a new strategy by White House allies in the private sector to make Limbaugh synonymous with the GOP.

The union AFSCME and Americans United for Change began airing an ad late last week showing a clip of Limbaugh saying “I want him to fail,” along with quick cuts of top Republican congressional leaders saying, “No … No. … No … No … No … No.”

Asked by Schieffer if the GOP really pays that much attention to Limbaugh, Wormtongue replied: “I do think he’s an intellectual force, which is why the Republicans pay such attention to him.”

“He has been very up front, and I compliment him for that – he’s not hiding," Wormtongue said. "And whenever a Republican criticizes him, they have to run back and apologize to him and say they were misunderstood.”

Limbaugh, appearing in Washington Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, defended and even amplified his earlier remark.

“This notion that I want the president to fail, folks — this shows you a sign of the problem we've got," Limbaugh said. "That's nothing more than common sense. And to not be able to say it? Why in the world do I want what we just described — rampant government growth, indebtedness? … What possibly is in this that any of us want to succeed?”

Wormtongue pointed to the fact that Limbaugh was a major speaker at CPAC as a sign of his status in the Republican Party.

Earlier in the interview, Emmanuel foreshadowed a future White House line by accusing critics of the president’s budget of using “scare tactics.”

Thank you also hotair.com for directing me to the article.

The Borneo Monster

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of...

And to think, a large creature like this might still exist and not have been detected or catalogued after two hundred years of natural philosophy.

Let's hope it's real!

"I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade."

Interesting article in the New York Times, which yes, sometimes has stuff worth reading. Rarely, but it does happen.

At one point, a kinesiology student is quoted with the line in the title: "putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade."

This is the thing I want to dispute, because with an adult assessment of the problem, one sees immediately that it is not true. The thing grades are supposed to reflect is a student's mastery of the material. If a student has put in a lot of effort and hasn't mastered the material, then it definitely should NOT be rewarded with a high grade.

This argument is better understood if you don't think about it as "writing papers and getting an A, B, C, D or F." Instead, imagine that the classroom is Kodiak Island, and the assignment is to survive a bear attack. Depending upon your mastery of such skills as "running fast," "throwing the bear off your scent trail," "shooting high powered rifles accurately," or possibly "shouting and screaming at the bear until it decides you are more dangerous than he is," you may pass the assignment.

Any of the above skills, applied with a sufficient degree of mastery will earn you a grade of "survives unscathed," "survives with minor injuries," or "survives with major injuries." Lacking mastery will earn grades of "badly mauled and maimed for life," or else "killed and eaten."

Now if a person tries to run, and runs with all their effort as best they possibly can, and the bear still catches up with them (which is probable), then their effort won't matter when they receive the grade of "killed and eaten." If a person tries to use the rifle and doesn't kill the charging bruin, their efforts won't be much appreciated by the dread jaws of their evaluator. On the other hand, the person who drops the bear with a high caliber bullet through the left eyeball deserves the grade of "survives unscathed" since he or she has displayed full mastery of the skills required to complete this assignment.

Homework reflects real life. It's supposed to at any rate. Effort doesn't count in life. Only results.

The Stupidity of Popular Science

In many ways, I feel sorry for the family who now has to undergo this. They loved their boy, and wanted him cured. So they took him to some ex-Soviet era scientists to try what may politely be called a "controversial" treatment. The use of fetal stem cells.

With predictably bad results. Poor kid.

I say "predictably" bad, because there are things about fetal stem cells which make them obviously bad medicine and bad science. This is altogether independent of the moral dimension of using the flesh of a baby that has been killed as a life-extender for someone else. That aspect reminds me of certain horrendous Irish fairy tales.

But from the SCIENTIFIC merits alone, fetal stem cells have always been an unpromising waste of money. There is the two-fold issue involved with them that is an apparently unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, the cells are foreign tissue, and a recipient's immune system must be suppressed if the cells are not to be attacked and destroyed by the recipient's body. This is a situation that often results in the recipient's death. On the other hand, the cells are capable of turning into any tissue... including cancerous ones or else just benign tumors. And there is precious little that keeps them from doing so. Except for the patient's immune system, which would have suppresed the tumors... if it hadn't been suppressed so that the cells wouldn't be rejected in the first place.

The more one suppresses the immune system, the greater the probability of tumor growth. The more one fights against tumors, the greater the chance that the immune system will reject the tumors.

Ultimately, if you ran a drug company and had any other drug that caused tumor growth or tissue rejection in two thirds of all who take it and no effect in one third, you would throw that drug in the trash and never look at it again. I often wonder why that doesn't happen with fetal stem cell technology, especially since ADULT stem cell technology avoids the twin problem rather handily.

Economic Folly

I'm reading this article which says that sales figures rose "unexpectedly" and "defied economists' predictions." I've read several articles like this one, and they have phrases of predicted doom such as this:

...which marked the weakest holiday selling season since at least 1969.
"This is a big surprise, though the net rise in sales is less impressive than it looks because (December and November) were revised down by 0.3 percent each," Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research note. "The headline relief today is welcome but it is unlikely to last."

Now, I work in a scientific field, where if the facts don't work out the way the model predicts, we assume the model is wrong. Facts, as John Adams once said, are stubborn things. I am not going to say that the economic woes of this country are over, especially since I am convinced my government is going to be working 24 hours a day to make sure they continue. However, the model predicted a worse economic situation than the one which appeared. People didn't act as predicted.

As I say, in my field, we don't make excuses for faulty data, and we sure as heck don't change the data, which in this case would mean FORCING people to behave the way you wanted them to and keeping them from buying or selling if you want economic activity to be bad. Change the economic model until it correctly predicts behavior. In the meantime, don't be surprised that people act differently than your wrong economic idea says they will.

More wasting of money: sexually transmitted disease

Great. So now it stimulates the economy to prevent sexually transmitted disease? Does it stimulate the economy to the tune of $355 million smackeroos? Frankly, I think distributing free Viagra or Levitra would be rather more stimulating, in all senses.

Honestly, doesn't it seem like this is just a couple of hundred people (our congress and president) having fun spending money on the toys they have always wanted. And in the sense of the "stimulation" mentioned above, "toys" is a very dubious thing indeed... I did a quick calculation of how much money is being handed out, and if the LOW figure of $1 trillion is correct, it means that every single American is forking over $2200 to whomever their least favorite congressman wants to give the money to.

Could the government please stop stimulating us? It's beating me down too badly.

It's been a while. But with this new era of "Hope" and "Change" threatening us, I may have to vent occasionally by posting a few things here.

Like this item:

Pelosi says that contraceptives will help the economy.

Is she venal or clueless or both? Our economy is NOT based on contraceptives. It is based on (1) finance, (2) heavy industry, (3) a consumer service sector, (4) information flow. None of those are rooted in "contraception" as the solid ground which feeds them. In fact, one could argue that contraception diminishes the future size of the market for each of these sectors, but I will leave that for the present.

Idiot.