Pheonix Missed The Landing Zone

Some Martian helpfully draws a box shaped landing zone and what does NASA do? Thay land next to it!

Point and drag movies.

About a million years ago, during one of those assemblies in the auditorium in high school, we saw a science movie about rocket stuff with a couple of rocket launches and one of them blew up. There was some slow motion footage of the explosion and the guy talking about the show had a pointer that was a flashlight with a long lens that projected a point onto the screen. This was long before lasers had even been dreampt of. I wanted one of then things real bad. One of the thoughts I had was to connect it to the movie projector so it would control the show and make stuff go forward and backward and fast and slow and move the focus of the screen around with the pointer. I did manage to rig up a flashlight with some lenses from my ant burner magnifying glasses and it could project a spot on the walls of my room and the cat when it got dark enough at night. But I never got my hands on the movie projector much less enough string and glue to rig up the idea I had. But now just a mere 50 years later, I it's just as easy to do as downloading some free stuff and using whatever pointing device my little heart desires! Now that is somethin'.

Diagonals

I was listening to something on Diane Rehm's show on KERA this morning as a pulled into the parking lot at Wal Mart. As I sat there listening to the radio, I got to watching people as they were coming and going. There is a large count that don't seem to get that when you stagger across the traffic lane at about a ten degree angle, you are in the car lane and thus exposed to being run over about a hundred times longer than crossing the lane at ninety degrees. I got tickled watching one gal in a car trying to get past another one waddling down the lane with a basket and after switching lanes and even backing up once she honked and gave the hands out wtf to the lady with the cart who just stopped and stared then intentionally just took her defiant time on down the lane till she got to where the baskets are piled. Finally the gal in the car got around. Then I noticed the one with the cart was talking on her phone/headset thing or to herself. Then she stopped talking and looked around like she didn't know where she was for a few seconds, reversed course and went all the way back to the store and over one row and back to about the same place to her car to load two bags in her car that wasn't ten feet from there she stopped the first time but just on the next row. Then there was a car about two away from where she was just leaving it's parking place. The along comes the first lady in her car and stops behind the second gal's car to wait for the parking spot where the car was leaving. Yup, you guessed it. Second lady is watching me watch her and backs into the side of the first lady's car at a pretty good velocity. In just a few minutes they are out looking at each other's bent cars and they were no longer being ladies. So, I went inside and got me some coke and chocolate chips. They were parked at the end of the row and both were on their walky-talkies when I left. The best part was Honor Moore.

Gas, Groceries and real hard labor

There is a concerted effort by this administration to politicize the increase in gas prices and such. They really don't want folks to understand this stuff. But, it's not that gas is going up so much but that the dollar is collapsing that should be worrying us. A nation's currency value is a reflection of that nation's ability to compete in just about every form of market from how much ditch can be dug per dollar to how well educated it's citizens are. We can't blame all this on speculators either.

If you have a bunch of wealth and want it to stay a bunch of wealth, you need to possess that wealth in a form that will hold it's value against other stuff so that when you get around to spending your coin, it is worth as much as possible. Well, the fat cats know how to handle that. They trade on the markets for this and that and one of those is gasoline or oil. Other things like other currencies are good too. But a lot of oil nations and nations that have loaned us money have warehouses full of U.S. cash. So what happens when you have a bunch of people with a lot of cash trying to buy something that will hold it's value or increase in value? You have a bunch of cash competing for those things. When there is a lot of money chasing a more of less fixed amount of assets, the price people are willing to pay for those assets goes up. In this case way up. So maybe speculators are getting rich on this oil boom. Or, Maybe not!

I bought gasoline today paying $3.75 per gallon. But it's the dollar, not the gas. So you want to know how to figure out what the dollar is worth relative to another time? Go Here>>

Meanwhile, here's the short version.

In 1970, $1.00 from 2007 is worth:

	$0.19	using the Consumer Price Index
	$0.23	using the GDP deflator
	$0.17	using the value of consumer bundle
	$0.18	using the unskilled wage
	$0.11	using the nominal GDP per capita
	$0.08	using the relative share of GDP

That's right! A dollars worth of American ditch digging in 1970 is only worth 8 - 19 cents today!

Remember all those warehouses full of U.S. cash? Those people are going to make us dig a lot of ditch if we don't get real smart real soon, because, the goods and services the world used to pay us a dollar for we can only get 8 cents for now.

America In A Drug Advertising Induced Stupor

Drug companies and doctors have discovered a gold mine in advertising prescription drugs. Those medical industries no longer operate to cure people in this country but to sell them as much as possible. largely because we are inundated with prescription drug advertising, the U.S., despite having only one third as many people and access to the lowest cost food and shelter on the planet consume more prescription drugs than do the entire populations of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and Japan combined! Each year, 100,000 people in the U.S. are killed by their properly prescribed and taken as directed drugs. That is not a misprint and is not counting medical mistakes or errors or accidental over-doses. It is from taking properly prescribed medicine and taking it precisely as describe. That's how dangerous the stuff is. Here's a little more on the problem for those who like to get their medicine in video capsules. Ha!

Arrogant Stupidity

Emerson said in 1837: "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." and Susan Jacoby takes us to task for it today. I hope a lot of people will pay attention to her and others who are talking about this because arrogant ignorance and certain stupidity is crushing everyday people and squandering lives. If I hear one more person start a conversation with "I feel" or "I believe" without a damn good "because", I am going to scream!

Powerset, Wiki Helper

Aside from the annoying high to low tone PR reading voice narrating about the worst demo on the net and the fact that it will take many years to index the Internet, this is could get handy.

Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.

Far Flung

My kids left town going in opposite directions last Saturday. Some info is starting to trickle in from their missions. Here's the Tower in Paris via Ben. I doctored it with a mirror effect but just for fun. Maybe there'll be pictures of gamblin' and bright lights from T&W soon.

Avalanche! Whew, that was close.

I was picking out a shirt this morning and accidentally knocked a couple of CDs off the shelf behind me in the closet. I picked them up to put them back on the shelf and noticed one was a Windows 98 SE upgrade. That reminded me that I need to tweak a computer for one of my friends that has 98 on his machine. So I started going through some of the CDs on the shelf and discovered several copies of Windows -various versions and lots of other stuff some of which needed to be in the trash which led to a fit of sorting that progressed through the closet and on to my computers in the other room and culminated in a to-do list and a trash can full of ancient CDs. All that was more than I wanted to do all day but I haven't even started on that pile. Lemme see here, where's my freon rig? Maybe I'll do laundry - tomorrow would be better for that. I need some zip locks so I can rig up a pack of stuff to take to the computer tweak next week. Uh-oh, now I've got the files and documentation for my own two computers mixed up. Where the heck did I put that product key finder? I know, some biscuits and jelly would be real good about right now. That I can do!

It 's Not Just In Lubbock

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."

[Butch Hancock]

Culture, Infantilisation and the new ethic of capitalism

When I ran a shop in Sweetwater, in one of my former lives, I hired a young man to work there under my supervision as an aircraft mechanic. JT had some of the best manipulative skills and manual dexterity I have ever seen in a young feller his age. But JT had a fun loving personality that was a little loud and a little full of himself. He could on rare occasion handle himself appropriately if professionalism and long periods of focus were not required. But he was young and he was a little loud which prevented him from learning much or appreciating his real talents and potential. After a while, he started missing work and coming to work late and was always out of money. He was an easy mark for every hustler of either gender in those parts because all they had to do was tell him how smart he was and get him talking. The gals all knew they only had to smile and JT would empty his pockets. He would spend every dime and all his time for their slightest attention. They trained JT to think he was lonely and miserable if he was not with them. Some of them never had to worry much about their next pay-check as long as JT had his job. I finally had to fire JT because his performance no longer made it possible for him to do enough work to even pay his wage. When he asked my reason for his termination I told him it was because he had become an easy mark and explained to him what I've just said here.

JT lived in a spectrum of society that seemed smaller to me then than it looks to me today. I knew from talking to him and listening to him that he had a pretty broad talent and natural curiosity and a bonus but somewhat back-seat desire to hone his understanding and appreciation of some finer arts of culture. My advice to him was to slow down, stay home more and read a few good books.

I was reminded of the JT experience from reading Josie Appleton's take on Benjamin Barber’s new book, Consumed.

This paragraph jumped out at me:

Barber argues that the new ethic of capitalism is one of ‘infantilisation’: money today is to be made in maintaining adults as needy children, who stuff down dumbed-down films, saccharine food and video games. While in the early stages of capitalism it benefited the capitalist system for everybody to save their pennies, now it benefits the system for us to splurge every penny and borrow more. While in the time of Franklin people were encouraged to restrain themselves and reinvest, now, says Barber, we are encouraged to act on every immediate whim, to be the grasping child in a sweet shop unable to say no.

Many years after JT was gone and I had moved on through a couple more lives, I got a phone call one evening from JT. He said he never stopped thinking about what I told him when I fired him. He had moved back to the Dallas area and said he had become successful and owned his own business glazing buildings. He said he just wanted to thank me for taking the time to shoot straight with him about what I thought back then. He said I had been right. I told him I didn't think either of us actually knew I was "right." I suspect JT just grew a little like most people do sometimes if they live long enough. But, that's not a good way to learn.

Folks would more likely to grow up with fewer scars if there weren't so much commercial interference. But ultimately, each of us have will pay the price if we let the noise replace our own thoughts. I hope there's a pendulum effect in this and that the thing is starting to swing back toward a desire for substance. Failure becomes our own fault in the end. But there are some good books on the subject.

Ben Stein lies.

You know that standing ovation Stein gets in Expelled? Not! & Five more things he doesn't want you to know. >>>

Making the world go 'round.

Brian Cox

It sure is nice to see smart young people.

Career Moves

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)