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Daynotes
Journal
Week of 3 May 2010
Latest
Update: Sunday, 9 May 2010 08:55 -0400 |
08:57
-
Yet another Costco run yesterday, this time with Paul and Mary,
followed by dinner. Like Barbara and me, they've both been on the run
lately, so it'd been a month or more since we'd gotten together.
We
had dinner at the usual place, but we didn't entertain the waitress as
we usually do. Somehow, and it's not intentional, we usually end up
talking about something that results in our waitress hovering nearby to
overhear our discussion. Sometimes, she brings her friends to listen
in. For example, we once had a detailed discussion about
the benefits of fellatio for pregnant women--it greatly reduces
the incidence of pre-eclampsia--and other means of inducing allogenic
tolerance. Then there was the time we were discussing murdering someone
by poison, and which poisons produced symptoms similar to those of
common medical conditions and were least likely to be detected by
a standard tox screen. The waitress's eyes were bugged out on that one,
so I called her over and gently explained that Barbara and I were
writing a forensics lab book and that Paul and Mary were two of our
technical advisors.
I'm afraid that the real financial collapse started yesterday, with Greece effectively
declaring bankruptcy and the EU and IMF starting a massive bailout. Greece didn't have much option, with their national
debt now larger than their GDP. I think Greece is likely to be the
first in a row of dominoes toppling. We may end up longing for the days of that minor recession
that started a couple of years ago.
The US is in horrible shape
in absolute terms, but we're actually in pretty good shape in relative
terms. Italy, Portugal, and Spain are in about as bad a shape as Greece, and Iceland is
actually in worse shape. Belgium, France, and Ireland aren't far
behind. Britain looks good only in comparison to nations that are
already effectively bankrupt. Canada, in the best shape of any major
Western economy, is, put it as politely as possible, in critical
condition. In reality, the situation in nearly all of these countries
is much more dire than even the published numbers indicate, because
they don't include gigantic unfunded pension and medical care liabilities, both
public and private.
Nearly every national government has
been spending much more than they take in for so long that they make
drunken sailors look like misers. I expect to see defaults spreading
from small countries like Greece into the G8, and accelerating. Back
around the turn of the century, I told Pournelle that I expected to see
the US default within 20 years and nationalize foreign-owned
assets, leaving China and every other foreign creditor holding
worthless stacks of paper. Pournelle said that was unthinkable.
Unthinkable it may be, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.
The only reason the US dollar is still the world's currency is that all
other currencies, including the Euro, would be much worse.
Fortunately,
the US has most of what it needs to withstand a worldwide economic
collapse. We can feed ourselves and produce essential goods. With a few
exceptions, we're still sitting on huge reserves of every essential raw
material. Even petroleum, although it's not nearly as easily or cheaply
accessible as what we're used to. Of course, there's an alternative to
oil-shale and other costly sources of petroleum. Unfortunately for
small nations with large pools of oil, those US assets include carrier
battle groups. If push comes to shove, we won't hesitate to use them.
Count on it. Rare-earth metals are a different story. China now
produces the vast majority of the planet's REM output, and the US will
not confront China militarily. China has already started strictly
rationing REM sales to the West, but major new US and Canadian REM
mines are or shortly will be coming into production.
The next couple of decades are likely to be interesting. As the old curse goes, may you live in interesting times.
09:47
-
I haven't been following the NYC "bomb" thing very closely, but if the
news reports I've read have their facts at all straight, this was no
bomb. It was a hoax rather than an actual would-be terrorist bombing,
unless the terrorists were stupifyingly incompetent. From the
description, this was an almost random collection of items intended to
shout "bomb!" to anyone who saw them. What it wasn't was a functional
explosive device. Obviously, whoever did this went to a lot of trouble
and expense, even buying an SUV. That tells me they're either hoaxers
with way too much disposable income, or terrorists with way too few
brain cells.
According to the news reports, there were no high
explosives present in the SUV. None. (Unless, of course, they're not
telling us something.) The collection of "M-88" firecrackers probably
totaled less than 2 grams of low-explosive flash powder, considerably
less than is present in one real M-80 or Silver Salute. Detonating even
a real M-80 next to a propane cannister would have no effect on the
cannister, if it were sealed. Yes, in the proper mix with air, propane
can detonate as an FAE, and a full backyard grill cannister of propane,
properly dispersed in air, is the equivalent of maybe six or eight
kilos of dynamite. But there was never any chance of achieving that
proper fuel/air mixture in the SUV, so at worst the propane would have
burned rather than detonated, and produced an impressive fireball,
which the several gallons of gasoline present might have added to,
assuming the gasoline had somehow been released from its containers.
Then
there was the fertilizer, which everyone has been leery of since the
Oklahoma City bombing. The problem is, the only fertilizer that can be
used in an explosive mix is pure ammonium nitrate mixed in
stoichiometric quantities with fuel oil or another fuel. That wasn't
the type of fertilizer found in the SUV. Whatever fertilizer was
present was inert, about as explosive as dirt.
Incidentally,
none of my comments are intended to take anything away from the NYC
bomb squad folks. These incredibly brave people had no idea going in
what they were facing. It could have been a ton of acetone peroxide,
for all they knew. But it does grate on me to hear the authorities
talking about this incident as though they had foiled a serious and
deadly terrorist plot. Why can't they just stand up and say, "Our
heroic bomb-squad folks, at the risk of their lives, went in and
determined that the bomb was a fake and there had never been any real
danger."? Yet another example of keeping people scared so they'll be
compliant.
Thanks to long-time reader SVTarheel, who pointed me to this forum page, I now have the local cable channel lineup.
TWC QAM LOCAL CHANNELS
April 19, 2010
| GSO | WS | CALL SIGN | FORMAT |
| | 116-4 | 78-1 | WFMY (HD) CBS | 1920x1080 |
| | 116-3 | 85-315 | WFMY(sd) | 528x480 |
| | 87-4 | 78-2 | WFMY2 (wx) | 704x480 |
| | 115-2 | 78-3 | WGHP (HD) FOX | 1280X720 |
| | 115-1 | 85-316 | WGHP (sd) | 528x480 |
| | 115-3 | 90-1 | WXII (HD) NBC | 1920x1080 |
| | 87-3 | 90-2 | WXII2 (this tv) | 704X480 |
| | 115-4 | 85-314 | WXII2 (this tv) | 528X480 |
| | 116-6 | 85-508 | WGPX | 704x480 |
| | 91-1 | 83-3 | WCWG (hd) | 1920x1080 |
| | 117-20 | 85-502 | WCWG2 | 528x480 |
| | 116-1 | 118-45 | WXLV (HD) ABC | 1280x720 |
| | 116-2 | 85-505 | WXLV (sd) | 640x480 |
| | 87-1 | 117-48 | WMYV (hd) | 1280x720 |
| | 87-2 | 85-48 | WMYV (sd) | 528x480 |
| | 91-4 | 90-4 | UNC-HD (PBS) | 1920x1080 |
| | 91-3 | 91-4 | UNC-SD (wunc) | 528x480 |
| | 87-5 | 90-5 | UNC-KD (wunl) | 704x480 |
| | 87-9 | 90-3 | WUNC-KD | 528x480 |
| | 91-5 | 78-7 | UNC-EX (wunl) | 704x480 |
| | 117-414 | 85-14 | TWC NEWS14 | 528x480 |
Also,
93-1248 appears to be the Weather Channel, so I've left that one
active. We also have a few other possibly interesting channels,
including apparently the Tennis Channel. I didn't realize there was
such a thing.
10:25
-
I saw an article yesterday about browser share. It said that
Internet Explorer had fallen to less than 60% share. My impression was
that IE had fallen to less than 50% quite some time ago. A CNN Quick
Vote I noticed this morning, although not scientific, tends to confirm
that. With 62,245 responses in, that poll places Internet
Explorer at 41% (25,689 responses), Firefox at 37% (23,104),
Other/Don't Know at 11% (7,127), and Chrome at 10% (6,325). I suspect
at least half of those Other/Don't Know responses are OS X Safari and
Opera, so even if all of the Don't Know responses are IE that would
mean that IE is no longer the majority browser, at least if the poll
numbers are anywhere near accurate.
To me, full HD looks only
slightly better than upscaled SD. Yesterday, I watched a couple of
minutes of the local NBC affiliate's news in full 1080 HD and
compared it to a DVD upscaled to fill the screen. (I realize that cable
HD is compressed and of lower quality than OTA HD). Yes, HD was crisper
than the upscaled DVD, but the difference was only noticeable when I
flipped back and forth between the signals. The DVD looked very good
indeed. Certainly good enough that I see no reason to buy a
Blu-Ray player, ever.
08:09
- If there are any botanists among my readers, I'd appreciate an expert opinion on the identity of this foxglove.
0000
Barbara planted it for me, as a start on my "poison garden". At the
time, I forgot to check the label, but I assumed it was Digitalis
purpurea. Now that I see it in bloom, I'm not so sure. I wonder if it's
some other foxglove species or sub-species, or perhaps a hybrid.
08:09
-
Thanks to everyone who commented on my foxglove plant. The consensus
was that it is in fact a D. purpurea or some sub-species. The color of
the flowers confused me, but those that are pink in the image are now
turning much darker, and the ones that are yellow in the image are now
turning pink.
Yesterday, something I had for forty years or more suspected to be true was confirmed. Some of my many-times-great grandparents were Neanderthals. Yours probably were, too, unless you are of pure African ancestry.
10:08
-
Oh, yeah. I signed up for Facebook yesterday. Just about all of my
friends were already on it, and one of them said the other day that
they all talked about me behind my back. So I figured I'd better get an
account just in self-defense.
My first experience with Facebook
was, to put it mildly, creepy. Once I'd completed registration, the
next screen I saw was a list of suggested Friends. I was surprised to
see that I actually knew many of these people. How did Facebook do
that? They had my first and last names (not my middle name, which I
routinely use), DOB, email address, and IP address. They did not
have any of my web site addresses or any access to my email client's
contact list. And yet they came up with a pretty reasonable list.
Another
problem is that, as an author and the keeper of one of the earlier web
journals still active, I "know" a lot fewer people than "know" me. I
started getting friend invitations from people whose names seemed
vaguely familiar, the first few of which I accepted. I'm being much
more selective now.
00:00
-
08:55
-
An article in this morning's newpaper reports that two separate
forensic audio analyses of a tape made during the Kent State shootings
40 years ago this week have established what many people suspected all
along. Despite claims at the time that the guardsmen had panicked and
opened fire on their own, these analyses both report an audible
command, "Prepare to fire."
So, it appears that the guardsmen
were simply obeying an order, the result of which was more than a dozen
young people killed and wounded, some of whom weren't even
demonstrating but were simply minding their own business, hundreds of
feet from the confrontation. Two of the four students who were killed
were simply walking to class, more than a football field away from the
confrontation, and were probably not even aware that the
confrontation was taking place. One student who was wounded was about
750 feet from the guardsmen.
My question, at the time and now,
is why those guardsmen were issued live ammunition. Whoever made that
decision must have realized the potential for tragedy. Throughout the
race riots and anti-war protests of the late 60's, the National Guard
was often called out, but almost never issued live ammunition. Those
guardsmen were perfectly capable of defending themselves without loaded
weapons. They were facing a group of unarmed college students, many of
whom were girls. One guardsman suffered minor injuries before they
wheeled and opened fire. And shot more than a dozen kids. And now we
know that they did so not because they panicked, but because they were
ordered to do so.
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by
Robert
Bruce
Thompson. All
Rights Reserved.