Sunday, November 28, 2010

And More Nano

As a reward for meeting my Nano goal of 50k words in one month, there's been some releases.

Chapters 3 and 4 have been updated with versions that have fewer boneheaded typos.

And chapters 5 and 6 have been posted.

Crossposted

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Oh.... Canada

Bobbi's got a link to a little Canadian sketch on what they think of this TSA stuff.

Related is this thought by Robb Allen

Why it was so horrible that Bush wanted trained FBI agents who were required to get warrants first to listen in to phone conversations of suspected terrorists*, but it’s perfectly reasonable for some high school dropout to fondle a 3 year old girl’s privates?

Hell, I’m missing Bush simply because if he were in office, the leftists would be screaming for this shit to stop toute de suite and I’d be there right along with them. As it is, even feminists are champing at the bit (that was for you, Laughingdog ;) to get violated in the name of political correctness.

Yeah.... The first paragraph reminds me of this bit by Chris Matthews:

Generally speaking, the American right wing is pretty tough on law and order, and if a cop wants to stop a guy and frisk him, you’ve never had a problem with that on the right. Ever. Now you have a problem with people being scanned on airplanes. Why is there a big difference?

So either he's thinks the Right is a okay with letting the Police give random people off the street friskings? Or is he deliberately clouding the difference between a cop frisking a person before arresting them and other actions? Or maybe he thinks that fliers should be treated the same way as suspected criminals being put into police custody.

I guess flying is just like being placed into a governmental holding facility against your will. Good to know.

That is something that really cheeses me, these supposedly moral, intelligent, and oh so nuanced lefties confounding vastly different ideas of governmental power and responsibility.

They'll scream at Bush, but so many of will then line up about the patriotic duty to obey the TSA and not make waves.

Flying is not the same as being arrested. Flying is not the same as being put under warranted-obtained surveillance.

Think about how sad it is that this has to actually be said.

Not all actions of the state are equally legitimate. And their legitimacy is not dependant on the party of the man in the big chair.

You know what they call people who think that anything the state does is Ipso facto legitimate and good, provided the correct Party is doing it?


Oh and the TSA? It might not be just for flying anymore.

Don't you feel safe now?

And it's all about feeling safe.

Thus for determined and well organized terrorists, there are more vulnerable areas to get a bomb onto an aircraft than via a passenger. These more vulnerable areas are given less attention partly because they are less visible, and thus provide less visibility for politicians seeking to demonstrate that they are ‘doing something’ about airline security.

Emphasis added. Security. Theatre.
And like much of what the pols do, it gives the appearance of "doing something" while lining their pockets and increasing their power over you.

Hat trick!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

What the .gov considers a bad thing:

“unquestioning compliance has diminished.”

The fact that TSA clearly regards this as a bad thing — that it regards an unquestioning citizenry as an asset in a struggle against people who want to kill us for, among other things, being the sort of folks who question things — illustrates how completely loathsome and moronic the government’s approach to security is.

This shows that the TSA is merely a symptom of greater goverment growth and control. Think of all the other areas where those in power would just wish that the rabble would shutup, stop questioning, and get in line.

Expanded on here:

The purpose of Security Theater is to convince us that the government can do something and is doing something, and most importantly to make us accept “unquestioning compliance” with government as an American value. The purpose of Security Theater is to normalize submission. But “unquestioning compliance” is not an American value. Quite the contrary.

Paying high taxes is patriotic, at a certian point you've made enough money, you don't need to own a "military style gun", you need to buy the health insurance we tell you to buy, you need a cell-phone jammer in your car, and so on.

And of course these rules and regulations and submissions are for the little people, those in charge get handy waivers.

Bobbie wins.

She takes apart and mocks a Paul "Hissy Fit" Helmke's latest pants-pissing whine-fest.

The wording gives him away: he fears the machines. He thinks if all those baddies had was a pack of sparklers and a few five-gallon cans of gasoline, or a double-bitted axe or a pitcher of koolaid and and a can of drain cleaner, or even an SUV, nothing bad could possibly have happened. He believes objects have volition. Presumably, were he ever to go mad and murder 37 grade-school children with a 12" #2 Philips screwdriver, it would be the "Craftsman assault driver" that did the killing while the man himself looked on in horror, a helpless tool of the tool. Mmm-hmm.

This while good is not the topper line.

For that we to to the footnote:

Mind you, I find these handguns unaesthetic. They're ugly. They're in-between things of no particular utility -- but if we banned things on the basis of ugliness and relative uselessness, there's a whole lot of people who'd never be allowed out of the house.

Win.

Though I wouldn't give the gun banners too many ideas. If they move from restricting items capriciously and oppressively to restricting people in much the same way. It's not like the government has grown in intrusiveness and inanity in the things it tells you to do...

Then again when you deny the human actor in violence and blame it on the tool how much can you really value human will and self determination?

The whole point of the gun banners is that Joe Citizen can't be trusted.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Nano stuff.

Well, I don't quite have content up but soon.

Meanwhile here's the site.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Looking towards 2012

Hmmm... well we could do worse. And probably will.

Though I think Smith Comma John will just exacerbate the whole Birther thing.

Meet Andrew Traver

Well after two years Obama's finally picked someone to head the BATF.
And let's go through the list.

Chicago crony? Check
For "limit[ing] the sale of multiple handguns"? Check
For banning private person to person gun sales? Check
Which is also removing the "gun show loophole" so double Check.
For "Congress enact[ing] an effective ban on military-style assault weapons"? Check
For "an effective ban on .50-caliber sniper rifles"? Check again.
Ties with the of the Joyce foundation? Again Check

Lovely.

Notes from here.

Some more basic info here.

And a more detailed bio here.

This'll be a confirmation hearing to watch. And a man and an agency to keep a real eye on.

Link walk started by the prof.

Edit: Am I surprised? Not really, this is the kind of guy that Obama'd pick. I am a bit interested that he picked the guy now. I guess such a confirmation would be damaging during the election season. Lame duck time?

Peons and Servants

As predicted the Media's bleating about the US being ungovernable because Dear Leader isn't being reveired as much as he used to.

Commenting here Tam wins: “I was unaware that I had asked to be governed, public servant.”


The problem is never with the leftist brain-trust trying to run our lives, no it's with the uppity peons. If only the government had more power, if only Obama had more staff (what dozens of new czars wasn't enough?), if only you stupid rubes would just shut up and let the government help you.


On a related note the administration found another way to "govern".
They want to mandate cell phone jammers in all new cars... for the children of course. Never mind the issues of constitutionality, enforceability, or even base functionality (how does the jammer know to jam only the driver's phone? Or is it illegal to use a cell phone anywhere near a car inside or outside). And then there's that the whole "distracted divers" plague is greatly exaggerated.

I know, government overstating a problem in order to justify some crackpot liberty lessening scheme. Shocking.

And if you have a real problem with the government doing this, well, just get a waiver. Then the law won't apply to you.

Oh wait.

"Can you and I get waivers from Obamacare? No! But big companies, big unions, and big universities can."

Well, okay then, just make sure you work for or are a member of one of these groups.

Remember to be among those that govern. Because you don't want to be among the governed.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Reform, like rules and taxes, are for the little people.

Look who's getting an exemption from Obamacare.


Founded in 2002, the New England Healthcare Institute – known as NEHI – is a nonprofit, independent health policy institute dedicated to transforming health care for the benefit of patients and their families.


So an institute dedicated to finding ways to reform the health care system had to apply for an exemption from the administration’s reforms to the health care system?



Lovely. Well in all fairness, NEHI is all about transforming healtcare for all you rubes, why should their plans have to change? It's not like Congress or the President have to follow the rules of Ocare, why should their water-carriers?

Oh and don't worry about people who lobbied for "Reform" being rewarded by the administration, even if that reward is an exemption from said reform.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Data integrity.

When collecting data the instruments used and the method of collection is vital. This is especially true with non-repeatable, representative data.

What do I mean by those terms? Non-repeatable is when you cannot go back and measure it again. Unlike measuring the deflection in a piece of steel or capturing a fish from a given area, temperature data is time sensitive. If you want to know the temperature in Oxnard at 14:54 March 2nd 2004 then you've got one chance to do it.

Oxnard fits into the second point, representative. All instruments only record a small area, relative to the actual medium being tested. It's like having a thermometer in your house, it does not record the temperature of the entire house, just the immediate area where it is located.

Hence the location is vital. Put it close to a radiator and it'll be warmer, in the freezer much colder, and so on. Hence when recording temperatures over a long period the integrity of the recording station is vital.

Since one small instrument is often used to represent the temperature of a vast area a small change in location or ambient conditions can create the illusion of a global change (would you think your house is on fire because your thermometer is reading your oven temp?).

The example is not as ludicrous as it appears since much of the global warming claims depend on variations on less than the order of individual degrees.

Doug Ross shows just where these probes are placed.

Also moving the amount of shade a probe gets will dramatically affect the temperature, as will the kind of probe and even the methods of averaging. The uncertainty analysis of global temperature data must be exceptionably laughable.

And even with the existing data how about comparing "human emissions (the alleged cause) and temperature (the alleged effect)?" Nahhh...

This doesn't even mention the lack of experimental verification or variation, the incredibly small time scale of "valid" data, the attempts of "scientists" to obfuscate their methods and hide raw data, and that coincidentally every solution of global warming involves the same type of big government mass industrial control.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Things I'd never imagined...

Watson being a blogger and Holems jumping up and down like a giddy schoolgirl.

On the other hand he didn't say "The game is a foot," so that wins.

Can't talk...

Nano'ing.

Have managed to keep up the pace so that's good, but it does take alot of work.


Meanwhile here's somethng to read until I get some chapters cleaned enough to put online.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Hog Feed

I was reading the Corner and was struck by this great snark:

Second: corp money? Yes. Apparently it is the intention of the Republicans — I’m sorry, Repukes, to use the technical term — to put CORP MONEY into the college system. Cons are just aslosh with CORP MONEY; bags are dropped off every morning along with the milk and newspapers. They’ll have to do something with it. But of course they won’t! They’ll hang on to the CORP MONEY so they can fund another election, where they will run on grinding the poor and the sick into a grey, nutritious slurry that will be fed to genetically modified pigs."


Then I scrolled up and saw who wrote it. James Lileks. Cool to see him writing there.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Respect

Well look who's a sore... winner. Barney Frank is offended, offended that he had to campaign, that someone dared to run against him. That doesn't sound like the words of a man who won by double digits.

That, is what entitlement looks like. A politician that goes ballistic over having to run for what we used to call public service. Consider it, if they're this angry at having a slight treat to their power, how entitled will they be when it comes to exercising that power?

No wonder they think they can run our lives better than we can.

As always, Reynolds has the best advice:

But Frank’s childish behavior provides a good lesson in how to deal with the political class. Mock them, and don’t treat them with the respect they — wrongly — feel is their due. They’re not used to being challenged. Keep it up, and odds are they’ll either quit, or embarrass themselves fatally.


That's why if you find yourself near a politician, record everything.