Silicon Valley Redneck

Metaphor

I had the notion of calling the Tea Party a sort of Bitchin' Betty for government spending.

But, then, I thought it through a bit, and the obvious metaphor for what the economy is doing - a Controlled Flight Into Terrain - doesn't really fit.

Yes, we can all see the terrain ahead, and our course clearly intersects it, and surely the folks up front can see this too, right?

Well!  Turns out the folks up front basically have this big lever that adjusts the money supply, through various mechanisms.  If the economy is cruising along, nice and level, pulling back a bit on the lever will cause the economy to climb.

Except that, if you keep this up, and pull back on the lever too far, you get - well, I'm sure there's some appropriate financial metaphor for boundary layer separation - anyway, things get chaotic, and the economy loses lift, gains drag, and starts heading down again: no longer controlled flight.

Which triggers a panic reaction: pull back on that lever some more!

So, we're in a stall, heading for the ground, and the cockpit contains three hundred stooges all fighting to be part of the team hauling back on the stick.

But don't worry.  All the important people have parachutes.

Update: turns out Bill Whittle had a closely related thought, several days earlier.  Only he's pointing to disunity of strategy in the EU, and I'm seeing totally wrong consensus in the US.

Signs and portents!

As I was finishing up my morning walkies, I heard a familiar drone in the sky.  Looking up, I saw a B-17 passing by.

Having a Frank Drebin moment, I decided that blogging about a bomber might be in order.

Conveniently, this just happens to be International Everyone Draw Convicted Terrorist Bomber Brett C. Kimberlin Day!

Not that I have anything original to contribute, but have a look around, e.g., here, and at the alarming accounts of Kimberlin's recent actions here and here.

Notice the lack of action against Kimberlin for his misuse of the legal system... and the alarming cooperativeness of the authorities when a convicted perjurer accused a lawyer of beating him up in the presence of readily-identifiable witnesses.  Apparently it's easier just to proceed with a criminal case against the accused lawyer than to, y'know, look up any of the witnesses and ask if the accuser's story is true.  (Though, to anyone who's been paying attention to a high-profile case in Florida lately, this should come as no surprise.)

But, y'know, maybe it's just real convenient for the Establishment to have a few of these rabid poodles on the loose, especially if they can be steered a bit by administration of large amounts of tax-free cash?

WTF DEA???

Seriously: have a look at this story, lately making the rounds (via Popehat).

If the facts are as represented, DEA agents stuck a suspect - maybe not even a suspect - in a cell with no water nor toilet, and simply forgot about him for five days.

There's a lawsuit in the works, but that's stupid.  Those agents need to be in freaking prison, for the rest of their freaking lives.  We're talking grossly - even grotesquely - negligent near-homicide here.

But here's the serious WTF, that hit me a few hours after seeing the story:

How is it even possible to forget that a cell contains a prisoner?  Consulting my vast expertise in formal detention facilities (TV, movies, historical tours, and having turned down an opportunity to stay in the local police department's holding cell), I notice something about cells: they got no privacy.  Old style, they got bars like old-school zoo cages.  New style, they maybe have a wall or two made of clear (easy-clean, spit- and poo-flinging-proof) polycarbonate.  Point being, anyone who walks by can't possibly help seeing that the cell is occupied.

Yes, I've heard of cells with solid, opaque doors.  They're in the Imperial Dungeon on Planet Mongo, and they're meant for tossing prisoners into and forgetting about them.

So: was Daniel Chong locked up in an escape-proof broom closet instead of an actual cell, or does the DEA office in San Diego contain a portal to Planet Mongo?

Does the U.S. government really have cells suited for tossing prisoners in and forgetting them?

Stop pickin' on T-Boone!

</ChrisCrocker>

So... America's favorite Texas natural-gas tycoon is complaining that the Notorious Koch Brothers are preventing adoption of a National Energy Policy.

Their motivation being that one of their businesses is a major consumer of natural gas, and so they benefit from the current oversupply and consequent low price of that commodity.

It seems that they've been using their considerable influence with the Obama administration (wait, what?) to prevent implementation of a Policy which would artificially raise the price of natural gas to where, according to T-Boone, it properly ought to be (and he says that because he's an expert on natural gas, and certainly not because higher prices would in any way benefit his natural-gas-selling business).

And all you peons who use natural gas to cook your meals and heat your homes, shut up: you're not paying enough, and it's all the Koch Brothers' fault.  Write your Congressman and demand that he take immediate action to remedy this injustice!

Because Texas natural-gas tycoons have families to feed too, ya know.

Facebook passwords and such

Hmmm... so, there's this foofaraw about employers demanding Facebook passwords.

Handing over your Facebook password would violate the Terms of Service, no?

Is it not, technically, a Federal felony to violate the ToS?  A totally stupid interpretation of the law, true, but one which is plausible and might even hold up in court?  Have there not been serious threats of prosecution, in years gone by, over ToS violations?

So, if your employer, or prospective employer, demands that you technically commit a felony as a condition of employment, what's his legal situation?

Terrorist EMP menace!

Well... that's the buzz, anyway.

Suppose Iran, or some non-state actor, got hold of a nuke and a way of lofting it?  All it takes is one little nuke in the upper atmosphere to knock out everything electrical in the U.S., right?

Um.  Let's take a look at an actual EMP event, shall we?  Starfish Prime caused significant disruption (not total destruction) of electrical and electronic systems 900 miles away.

And that was a 1.4 MT bomb.  Not a 14 KT fission bomb; a bloody great fusion bomb.

So... to create widespread destruction... our hypothetical enemy needs to use his hypothetical fission bomb that any serious industrial power ought to be able to build (but many seem to struggle with)... and use it to light off a megaton-range H-bomb, which is not widely regarded as being an easily-built item even given the fission trigger.

And then they need a missile capable of delivering that H-bomb (close to a ton, for a well-evolved design in 1958; likely much more for a first try) around 250 miles above the middle of the U.S.  And, if it doesn't have the range to do that from their own territory, they'll need a place to launch it from - maybe a cargo ship; I don't think Cuba would want to play that game this year.

And, looking at the effects described for Starfish Prime, just one of those bombs would create a Big Annoying Inconvenience.  What did the feller say about striking at a king?  We'd have plenty of resources left to track down the perpetrator and retaliate memorably.  A successful, properly crippling attack would need several H-bombs, and several missiles, and... well, basically, we're looking at Russia, or China, or just maybe France or England being able to pull it off.

And, somehow, I don't think anyone's been testing H-bombs without us and the Russians noticing - nor the big missiles, for that matter.  So, the sneak attack by a new Power would involve a bunch of untested hardware.  How good do we think their mathematicians and rocket plumbers are?

News flash: California Stupid Party is still stupid

When I started taking an interest in state politics, 'bout twenty year back, it didn't take me long to observe two things:

1. The Democratic Party was irredeemably corrupt, and
2. The Republican Party was totally useless.

Seriously: the Republican Party Elders were concerned only with putting on a show, and holding onto the little share of the action that was reserved for them, which has been shrinking for a long time.  (This congressional district, for example, used to be a RINO set-aside, but has long since been assigned to a Corporate Democrat.)

The Democrats need to allow the Republicans a small noisy presence in government, as all the state's problems can be handily blamed on the existence of those few Republicans.

It's only gotten worse, as Tim Cavanaugh notes.

Only way to fix it would be a hostile takeover of the Party... or a whole new party.  Either way, the establishment press would be implacably hostile from the get-go, and would promptly assign the new movement a defamatory label and a fictional list of horrible goals, which would be firmly and preemptively fixed in the public mind before the organization had even gotten started.

Oh noes!

There's a terrorist in my office!  Sitting in my chair, typing on my keyboard!

He must be a terrorist: he makes small purchases with cash!

From here:

Using cash for small purchases like a cup of coffee, gum and other items is a good indication that a person is trying to pass for normal without leaving the kind of paper trail created using a debit or credit card for small purchases.

Uh, yeah.

Color me old-fashioned and call me a conservative  fascist  Rethuglikkkan  Teabagger terrorist, but when did plastic money become the normal way of paying for small fiddly stuff?

Yeah, I know: most people these days do seem to use their cards for everything.  And many of them lose track of how much money is left in their accounts, and suddenly the overdraft protection kicks in, and a day's worth of small purchases gets really expensive when a half-dozen $3 transactions get tagged with $35/transaction overdraft fees.

And aren't the merchants coming out behind on this?  They get charged for the card transactions, and they're not allowed to pass the cost along to the individual purchaser (courtesy of a so-called consumer-protection law that actually protects the interests of the credit-card companies).

Heck, lots of people didn't used to have bank accounts at all (and, if it weren't for the overdraft charges, the banks would be losing money on them now).  Somehow, though, if you don't handle all your finances through the banking system, you can no longer be a functioning member of society.  And also you're a terrorist.

(Yeah, in my case it would actually make sense to use my cards more, since it shifts the actual payment back by a few weeks, but I've always been in the habit of paying cash for groceries, gas, pet supplies, fast food, and basically anything under $20 and most things under $40, depending on how much cash I have left in my wallet.)

Afterthought: What other highly suspicious activities can we think of?  Not using Facebook?  Not staying signed in to your Google account?  Not tweeting your every move?  Not geotagging your tweets?

Another reason everyone needs to read Terry Pratchett's books

Big News Distraction of the Day: it costs more than a penny to make a penny!  Oh noes!!  We needs cheeper pennys!!!!

As PTerry pointed out: the penny gets spent more than once.  Many times more than once.  Coins circulate.  A spent penny is still a penny, and the new owner can spend it again, and so on.  The initial cost of making it is of little consequence.

Now, having the currency debased to the point that the metal content of a coin is worth more than the face value... that's a problem.  That's why modern pennies contain almost no actual copper, and dimes and up no longer contain even a hint of silver.  But I don't think we're there with zinc pennies.  Yet.

(The utility of the penny in this age is another question entirely.  The cost of minting it is a red herring, though it costs several pennies to buy one herring of any color.)

Gee, ya think?

(Starting over after the Monkeysphere mishap.)

According to this article, "markets" dominated by high-speed automated trading can - surprise! - exhibit wild behavior.

Quotable:

These kinds of trades appear to generate emergent behaviour that has nothing to do with the actual value of a company. Instead, these events are unavoidable properties of the system itself.

Like I said: school of anchovies.

As Joy likes to point out: "The trend is your friend, until it ends."  The objective of these super-fast trading algorithms is to be the fastest lemming in the swarm, and to turn aside just before the cliff.

Thing is, even if you are the lead lemming, it's a little tricky to spot the cliff in time to turn aside.

And, if you're not the lead lemming, there's no way you can see what the swarm is responding to.  You may be offered an explanation at 11, on The News for Lemmings, but the commentator really knows little more about it than you; he saw which way the swarm moved, and may have heard some rumors as to the reason, but the reality is probably that someone tripped, or was startled by a grasshopper, creating a minor perturbation that the swarm amplified.