Where Diversions Lead

I had a chance to watch a bit of the movie "Fracture" earlier today.  Anthony Hopkins is one of the stars.  His work is always great.  Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for me to recommend the movie.

However it was enough to cause me to do a little reading about one feature of the movie; a kinetic sculpture. It appears for only a few fleeting seconds, but it is a thing of wonder.

That naturally led to the discovery of some other kinetic sculptures.  I will be sharing some of these nuggets with you in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned!

If I never grow up, then I'd love to earn my living creating this kind of art.

Why We Fight

Today in Afghanistan, young women can learn to box.

Have their photo taken.  Sadly, reflections of Afghan women appear to be the dominant photographic mode.  This is an improvement of sorts, I suppose.

Be rescued from life threatening living conditions...caused by husbands and their families, sadly enough.

Learn to play music!

And here is the price we pay for their liberation.

There is a price for freedom.  When we free others from bondage, we ensure freedom for ourselves.

Let us be grateful for their service and for the freedom they bring the world.


The Taliban created the conditions where a woman could not be photographed without her husband or father's consent.  Where no woman would have learned boxing....or reading or writing or mathematics.  Where women were considered property on par with livestock and often treated with less consideration than livestock with the approval of the former government.  Where music was banned.

Let us not abandon those who teeter on the edge of being the victims of oppression before their oppressors have accepted liberty as the legitimate objective of humanity.
All the photos may be viewed here.

Fresh From The Sea

"Fish, and plankton, and sea greens, and protein from the sea. It's all here. Ready! Fresh as harvest day!"  Box - Logan's Run 1976


Scientists have discovered a way to generate ethanol by designing a custom e. coli that breaks down seaweed at temperatures that are close to ambient.  Other ethanol processes require the application of large amounts of heat.  This reduces that energy benefit from the resulting fuels.  There are some studies that indicate that creating ethanol from corn actually consumes more energy than is present in the resulting fuel.

As the story indicates, algae is still a better alternative to seaweed processed by e. coli.  But if we can come up with seaweed based fuels, then what other options can we discover?

We Are From The Government...

...and we are here to screw you over!

At least, that seems to be the case when Freddie Mac, a wholly owned subsidiary of Uncle Sugar chartered to improve the opportunities for people to buy homes, decides to invest in complex derivatives that would pay Freddie Mac more if homeowners were unable to refinance at lower interest rates.

Stop and think about that for a second.  The people that run Freddie Mac make millions of dollars.  Their Congressional chartered organization is supposed to improve accessibility to market rate mortgages.  They then take the investment position that pays more money to Freddie Mac (and thus the Freddie Mac executives) if people are not able to refinance their homes from higher interest rates into the much lower current market rates.

Conflict of interest?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Any folks wonder why I distrust the government and want it reduced in size and scope.

Spike Lee Or Bill Cosby

Words to heed, but Via Meadia wonders.  Will the people who mocked and scorned Bill Cosby for trying to help families and kids do better now turn on Spike Lee?

See what Mr. Lee had to say at the link.  Or the link at the link.  Or something.




The larger point being that the pursuit of education is the single most successful activity that one can perform.

Baby It's Cold Outside

One of the most significant reasons for my skepticism regarding human induced global warming is data.  More specifically, that there is data that suggests that our climate is less sensitive to changes in CO₂ than the more pessimistic climate models suggest.

She argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years.

Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.

One of the other reasons for my skepticism is the evident lack of "science" being practiced by some of the more vocal "scientists" that are hyping the potential impact of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  The seem to prefer dismissing legitimate skepticism rather than to offer a serious response.

Natural Rights

"Ah yes, [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness]... Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. The third 'right'? - the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives - but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can ensure that I will catch it."

- Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Powerline has a great follow up to my recent post about Warren Buffett's tax-paying habits.

Mr. Buffett's rejoinder? Shut up.

Apparently, when a successful billionaire investor like Warren Buffett demands changes to the tax code, the rest of us are expected to bow, scrape, and make the usual subservient intonations.  We aren't supposed to ask questions about the purported facts in support of those proposed changes.  We are supposed to defer to our "betters".

Screw that!

First Mr. Buffett and his secretary can release all of the tax information that supports...or not...the current rhetoric.  Then we can have a discussion about how whether the facts support...or not...the proposed policy.  Then we can have a discussion of how that policy change would affect the rest of the country.

If Mr. Buffett wants to be a personal example for policy change, then he can accept all of responsibility that goes along with being such an example.  And that does include more than a modest amount of scrutiny regarding his personal life.

The other option is that he could pay the $1,000,000,000 he currently owes the federal government.  He could write an additional check because he thinks he should be taxed more.  And he could write a bigger check for his secretary so that she isn't one of those "people who got the short straw in life" in his eyes.

Until that comes to pass, I have some advice for Mr. Buffett. He should be familiar with it.

Shut up.

The Myth Of A Free Buffet

Or a free Buffett...one of the two.

After months of the seemingly fallacious assertion that Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, we finally have some facts to work with. 

The ever astute Mrs. Megan McArdle-Suderman has looked things over and found....surprise!....perhaps someone is stretching the truth a bit here.  Or comparing apples with bananas or kiwi or something.  She has a link to the original ABC report.

The summary?

While it is difficult to justify the exact percentages, it is pretty easy to see that those pushing the Buffett-secretary myth are comparing his secretary's total tax load (including payroll taxes, including the part paid by Mr. Buffett's company) with Mr. Buffett's cap gains tax rate (but not including the corporate taxes paid by his company).

Cherry picking has done been done.

A couple thoughts via Glenn Reynolds.  Mr. Reynolds had a secretary at Dewey Ballantine that made $50k per year back in the 1980s.  Mr. Buffett's secretary, Ms. Debbie Bosanek, only makes $60k today.  Not only could Mr. Buffett voluntarily pay more in taxes if he feels he is under taxed, he could also voluntarily bump Ms. Bosanek's paycheck if he feels that she is one of "the people who got the short straw in life."  Even a 90/10 split would be an improvement over the current situation for Ms. Bosanek.

Not that $60k in Nebraska is anything like a truly short straw.

The cold hard fact is that the number of super-rich that pay lower income tax rates than their secretaries is quite slim.  The number of the super-rich hedge fund managers that benefit from the "carried interest" rule is an order of magnitude smaller.  Changing the law so they pay income tax rates instead of the capital gains rate might be a good idea.  Doing so will not raise enough money to spit at when compared with our current deficits.

I'd love to have both people release their complete tax information so that we can truly compare apples to apples.

Even better would be to have Mr. Buffett put his money where his mouth is by writing bigger checks to the U.S. Treasury and to his most worthy secretary.  I'm betting that it will take pigs in the sky and ice in Hell before either happens.

Violent Solutions

"My mother said violence never solves anything." "So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that."

- Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

Weeeee....Weh Weeeeeeeeee!!!

They might as well be pinwheels.  Don Surber has the news about 14,000 abandoned wind turbines.

Now erecting a wind turbine is not an inexpensive proposition.  And building one isn't either.  So how does it make any fiscal sense to abandon 14,000 wind turbines in some of the prime wind power generating locations in the world?

Because there is no profit in maintaining them.

Government subsidies encourage fabrication and erection.  But once those subsidy spawned profits have been reaped, once the low hanging fruit has been plucked, how can a company justify spending money on an enterprise that continues to lose money?

If only they were small enough that you might hold one in each hand.....

Go get 'em Maxwell!

Hard To Do With An Ebook

As John Scalzi says....

An Errant Tweet Is All It Took?

Perhaps Snoop Dogg would be better off keeping certain comments to himself.

• “Snoop Dogg to W.H.: Legalize pot,” the Politico today, in a post time-stamped 6:34 AM EST, and highlighted by Matt Drudge.

• “Drug dog busts Snoop Dogg’s bus,” CNN today, in a post time-stamped 3:42 PM EST.

Both Ends Against The.....

....middle?

A little link love for Tom Briscoe.

I think he is on to something here.  Both the Tea Party and Occupy movements are frustrated with the government covering for corporations, "too big to fail", bailouts, etc.  Neither side is particularly enamored with the way corporations get the government to create near monopolies as well as shielding them from the liability of their mistakes.  I think there is some common ground here.

The primary difference seems to be that the Tea Party folks recognize that corporations have a legitimate function, but that they should rise and fall based on their own merits rather than be government fiat.  The Occupy folks regard corporations as being illegitimate.

Based on the tweets on Twitter and Facebook entries made via their cell phones.

The solution remains to have a smaller, more effective, and more transparent government. If only the Occupy folks could get on board with that idea.

Just Disgusting

This sort of thing just drives me around the bend.

Ms. Marion B. Tasco is slated to retire after her 6^th term as a Philadelphia coucilwoman.  She will then begin her 7^th term as a Philadelphia councilwoman.  Her "retirement" will earn her $478,000.

Pitchforks, tar, and feathers were invented for just such an occasion.

Media Bias - Smaller Scale

I ran across this article about a small, New York based, public TV station a while back.  The author maintains that he saw repeated incidents of bias on the part of station employees and managers during his time on the staff.

With my own eyes, I saw producers laughing and cheering at TV news reporting the assassination attempt on President Reagan. 

While by not no means definitive, it does provide an interesting insight into some portion of the media.  This is the sort of thing that begs for an undercover investigation!

BOCE Photography

Arthur S. Mole was one of the greatest producers of the large scale photography of human activities.  Specifically, he organized large crowds into visual sculptures.

This image from Parris Island naturally drew my attention.

You have to click on the image to appreciate the scale of coordination needed to create this image.  Another interesting note, these Marines and recruits were under the command of Brigadier General Pendleton when this image was created.  The Marines' largest base, located in California, was named after General Pendleton.

More on Mr. Mole's photography here.

Map Of All Maps

When it comes to esoteric geekery, cartography yields the field to no other subject.  Slate recently published a review of what they claim may be the best American wall map....ever!

You can go to the creator's website and see more for yourself.  And perhaps even buy a copy.  The spent years working on it!  That ought to be good for a couple bucks.

The Utility Of Religion

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

-Time Enough For Love, by Robert Heinlein

Pick A Spending Cut

There is a guide to the GOP candidates and their potential federal spending preferences over at the 10^th Amendment Center.

Sadly, Ron Paul is the most prolific as well as the most specific candidate when it comes to spending cuts.  Gary Johnson continues to be my candidate of choice even though his spending proposals are not as specific.

Mr. Obama is not listed.  Primarily because despite his protestations to the contrary, he has no intention of limiting federal spending.