Category Archives: View

View 684 Tuesday, July 19, 2011

· 3d Printing and Dentistry

· The Dance Continues, with bunnies and now cows

If you didn’t see my interview with Glenn Reynolds on the Last Shuttle, it’s here.

I have a dental appointment today. Oddly enough it involves something that would definitely profit from my dentist having a 3D printer as described in yesterday’s Mail.

Today I got

3D printing luddites.

The video you linked to is now a part of a new internet meme, wherein the entire field of 3D printing is being called a hoax…because of the way the video was edited and because of the manner in which the technology was presented.

Almost everyone is using, or has benefitted from, a product that was proto-typed in whole or in part by 3D printing. Yet, many people who use those same products on a daily basis think that the technology is a hoax?!

The technology is so disruptive that people are having difficulty facing the reality.

Wait’ll they see what’s happening with nano-biotech. That oughta be fun to watch!

Warren Bonesteel

When I did my Googling on 3d Hoax what I mostly found was convincing arguments that the technology is real; I didn’t see anything convincing to the contrary. It’s with us and more coming. I’d think dentistry would be a major use for this.

The largest year deficit in history was the Bush $500 Billion deficit, but that was dwarfed by the latest Obama deficit: it is now estimated to be $1.65 Trillion. That’s Trillion with a T, the largest deficit in the history of mankind. The Wall Street Journal has an op ed “America’s Debt-Ceiling Opportunity” trying to see the bright side of some of this, but it’s actually chilling. The President continues to act as if failing to increase spending on various projects is the same as failing to send Social Security and Veteran Benefit checks. He insists that the only remedy is to raise revenue, with symbolic “cuts”. This turns out to be a continuation of tax and spend, and none of it would eliminate bunny inspectors, Department of Education SWAT teams, etc. Of course if we eliminate the Department of Education – if the House simply refused to fund it, appropriating no money whatever for the Department of Education – we could not only save a lot of money but possibly save a few schools. Leave education to the States. They can’t do much worse that we are doing now, and some might even do a lot better, saving money while educating kids; others might see something work and try it. The United States spends more per pupil than any nation in the world with the possible exception of Luxembourg; and we don’t get much for that. Try something else.

Now that would help reduce the deficit and might even help the pupils. Of course no one will try that. The “solution” to our lousy schools is always the same, pour in more money. Don’t fire incompetent teachers, but perhaps we can give a hand to those whose education was wrecked by a tenured teacher?

And of course nothing will eliminate the bunny Inspectors. Instead we have proposals to expand those activities. We can borrow more money to federalize agriculture.

The Chicken Inspectors Are Coming –

Now the USDA will implement new rules for egg production similar to what California did with Prop 2.

It’s not just bunnies. We have to stop this cruelty to chickens. Surely the have a right to be free and the Feds must be called in to enforce it….

Law would be first federal legislation addressing treatment of animals on farms

Release Date: 07 July 2011

The United Egg Producers and the Humane Society of the United States http://www.humanesociety.org/ have partnered to work toward the enactment of federal legislation that would set national standards for hens involved in U.S. egg production. The proposed standards, if enacted, would be the first federal law addressing the treatment of animals on farms.

…

The two groups will jointly ask Congress for federal legislation which would require egg producers to increase space per bird in a tiered phase-in, with the amount of space birds are given increasing, in intervals, over the next 15 to 18 years. Currently, the majority of birds are each provided 67 square inches of space, with roughly 50 million receiving 48 square inches. The proposed phase-in would culminate with hens nationwide being provided a minimum of 124–144 square inches of space, along with the other improvements noted.

http://layer-cages.com/2011/07/08/egg-growing-and-layer-cage-conditions-to-change-in-usa/

Surely a whole new arm of USDA chicken house inspectors will be needed.

First the bunnies, then the chickens, tomorrow the pigs and cows.

Dave K

And of course any attempt to cut back on the expansion of these activities is a “cut” and balancing the budget on the backs of – well, of something. Perhaps not the poor. Dumb animals. Whatever. We need to borrow more money, because there is a problem that we have to fix, and Federal Inspectors are the only way to fix it.

While we are at it we can expand the budget of the BATF so that it can sell more guns to Mexican cartels in order to track where they go.

And the Dance goes on.

View 684 Monday June 18, 2011

· Obama’s War

· Libyan Strategies

· The Budget Dance

· More evidence?

= = =

I was interviewed by Glenn Reynolds on The Last Shuttle: http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86&load=5745  ·

Obama’s War

Obama’s War continues in Libya with both sides claiming victory. Obama and some NATO allies proclaimed the rebels as the recognized and legitimate government of Libya. In retaliation Qadaffi took a victory lap with Mission Accomplished parades in various parts of the country he still holds, celebrating his continued rule. Some of the ceremonies were elaborate. Meanwhile the rebels celebrated the successful retention/re-conquest of the port of Brega in the province of Cyrenaica over in the eastern part of Libya, far from Tripolitania where Ghadaffi pretty well rules; considering that NATO has given them total air supremacy and a great deal of air support, the only surprise here is that it has taken the rebels so long to retake Brega. Perhaps they have decided that it is more effective to fire their weapon in the general direction of the enemy rather than in the air in exuberation.

Brega is about 100 kilometers east of Marble Arch, the jumpoff point for British Forces in the game Afrika Korps. The Marble Arch was built by the Italian colonial authorities to mark the border between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica provinces of Libya and also as a sort of celebration of the creation of Libya as an actual nation.

Probably the most objective reporting coming out of Libya is from Al Jazeera:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/
africa/2011/07/2011718131010939797.html, which reports that Brega has changed hands several time. Al Jazeera has not declared a winner here. It reports that rebel advances in the west out of their Tripolitanian enclave of Misratah have been indecisive, and

Russia criticised the United States and other countries on Monday for recognising the rebel leadership as the legitimate government of Libya, saying they were taking sides in the rebellion to oust Gaddafi.

"Those who declare recognition stand fully on the side of one political force in a civil war," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced recognition of the rebels on Friday during a meeting of the international contact group on Libya in Turkey.

While the US, UK and France have taken a stronger line towards Gaddafi, Russia and China have taken a softer line, with both countries not attending the contact group meeting.

In a speech on Saturday, Gaddafi described the rebels as traitors and rejected suggestions that he was about to leave the country.

Strategies

Most of the world sees the Libyan war as a test of the power and will of Western Civilization. The President of the United States, once said to be the most powerful nation in the world, indeed in the history of the world, has made the overthrow of Qaddaffi a major goal; but as the world watches, weeks go by. The United States lets it drag on, breaking things and killing people but accomplishing little else. Libya is not recovering. There is no major economy. There is merely a slow grind, life with land mines and snipers, neither peace nor war in the rebel areas; in Qaddafi’s areas there is mostly stability but one never knows what NATO will consider an important target.

Our strategy seems to be to continue to borrow money so that we can keep on breaking things and killing people, mostly Khaddafi supporters but sometimes rebels (we apologize and borrow more money so that we can pay reparations). We have recognized a rebel “government” but no one can name its leaders or what its objectives are other than turning Khadafy and his sons out (dead or alive; alive they are to be sent to a court in Holland). We have made no deals with these rebels regarding being repaid for our efforts. We don’t have oil deals.

President Obama has not stated his goals in Obama’s War.

In the old League of Nations world, Libya might become a mandated territory under some colonial power which would try to establish rule of law and some kind of orderly means for changes in government. That won’t happen now, although it is probably the best thing that could happen to Libya. In a real world in which things are left to their own devices, Libya would break into at least two nations, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, as it was before Italy united those former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. That would leave the interior desert Fezzan to fight over, but the break would be at Marble Arch, which is, not astonishingly, about the dividing line between Loyalist (Qadafi) forces and rebels.

In a world of US realism, the United States might make the rebels a deal: We will throw out Khadaffi and we will establish a government under US supervision with a US – or possibly British – Resident Advisor. That will endure for ten years. During those ten years we will develop oil resources. We take 60%. That’s half for development and 10% to repay ourselves for the costs of your liberation. We will deal with Khadaffi as we choose: possibly we will hang him, but we reserve the right to use silver bullets. You will get Delta Force and the SAS for as long as it takes to throw the Colonel out and restore order, then ten years of occupation by constabulary. We will also provide security of your borders in the event that your neighbors find the attraction of your oil coupled with your military helplessness irresistible. Now go find someone willing to sign this agreement. We will recognize him as President. Have a nice year.

Of course President Obama won’t do that. What he will do is not at all clear, but it probably involves continuing to borrow money so that we can go on breaking things and killing people.

See also http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/07/11/rope-a-dope/ 

The Budget Dance

The budget Kabuki continues.

The Republicans want to get out with a whole skin. They don’t know how.

The Democrats want new taxes; they prefer it if they can blame those new taxes on the Republicans.

The Tea Party Independents continue to be disgusted – and they are the key to the Presidential Election. They abandoned the Democrats for Reagan. They abandoned the Republicans for Clinton after Bush pledged “No New Taxes” and flipped them the bird with his “Read My Hips!” tax raise. They abandoned the Democrats for the Gingrich Coup when Clinton showed that he was a New Democrat in name only. They abandoned the Republicans after the Great Republican Spending Spree that followed Newt Gingrich’s resignation. They went for Obama in hopes of Hope and Change, and they abandoned Obama and the Democrats in the 2010 election.

The Country Club Republicans want to continue their ruling class collaboration with the Democrats, and do not seem to understand that the American Middle Class has had enough of the Kabuki Dance.

And the beat goes on.

Irrefutable Evidence

For what it is worth:

CERTIFIGATE

‘Irrefutable’ proof of Obama forgery

Document details show typewriter had variable type way back in 1961?

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=322389

As for me, I don’t think it is worth much. I include it mostly as a curiosity. Irrefutable Proof that this document is a forgery does not prove that Obama was not born in Honolulu. It would say a lot about the competence of the intellectuals who were put in charge of making this issue go away.

Worth Your Time

These are open tabs in my Firefox. They have been recommended, I opened them for a look, promptly lost the recommendation in the vast swim of stuff that comes in, and now there are far too many open tabs. I need to close them which will result in their being lost. given the flow of information around here. There’s no optimum solution to this, but one thing I can do is just make a list of places you might find it worth while to visit. I had intended to write comments, and indeed I reserve the right to do so in future, but I do have to clear some space in my tabs, and I seem to be falling further and further behind.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/
columnists/tr_fehrenbach/article/American-
space-age-is-finished-1468100.php

http://www.space.com/11959-gop-
presidential-debate-nasa-future-republicans.html

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/
press_releases/press_release.php?id=1541 

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/18/
byte-retracts-anti-apple-rant-by-blogger/ 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/
why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html

http://kriswrites.com/2011/06/29
/the-business-rusch-you-are-not-alone/

View 683 Sunday, July 17, 2011

Happy Anniversary, Roberta.

The national news has been full of the story: the California Department of Transportation, CALTRANS, having decided to spend a billion dollars adding car pool lanes to the 405 Freeway, had to close the 405 for the weekend. The 405 is the main north-south exchange, through Sepulveda Pass. It connects the main part of Los Angeles with the San Fernando Valley and parts north. For weeks there have been warnings of Carmageddon, Doom, Death, and Destruction. The world’s greatest traffic jam. And so forth.

In fact nothing happened. Like the “Day without Illegals” in which all the illegal aliens were supposed to stay home, in an “Atlas Shrugged” sort of demonstration on how necessary they were to the economy, the freeways were clear, traffic was light, and it was a fairly pleasant weekend.

Bob Holmes sums it up nicely:

Carmageddon and Y2K

Jerry,

Now that the South half of the Mulholland Drive Bridge is down and the 405 Freeway has reopened about 18 hours earlier than planned we will undoubtedly hear from the usual suspects that the fears of massive traffic jams were overblown and all that planning and fear mongering was not necessary.

These are the same folks that hsve been saying that the Y2K fears were nothing but a big scam. After all none of the horrible things that we were warned about actually happened.

Same folks with the irrational fears of Nuclear Power, Food Irradiation and many other very safe things thst, in fact, save lives.

Once again, as in Y2K, excellent planning and execution have made a potentially very difficult or possibly disastrous event a non-occurance.

Why is it that the idiots seem to have the loudest voices?

Bob Holmes

Forewarned is forearmed, and planning for impending problems can often mitigate them. Be Prepared is no bad motto.

To Arms! To Arms!

Three Arms! Four Arms!

Besides, forearmed is forewarned!

That will only make sense to Pogo fans, and not all of them.

Of course if it were left to me, I’d put the billion dollars they’re spending into paying down some of the debt. We don’t need car pool lanes, which won’t be used – Los Angeles employment patterns are such that carpooling is very difficult to arrange – and we do need to have the deficit reduced. But that’s another story.

Colonel Ted Fehrenbach wrote This Kind of War, the best work I know of on the Korean War; it’s also one of the necessary works to read when contemplating military philosophy, on the same list with Cameron’s Anatomy of Military Merit. He has done a short piece on the last Shuttle and the American manned space program that is well worth your time.

Mail 683 Friday July 15, 2011

· Your tax dollars at work

· China overtakes US?

Dear Jerry,

One new application of technology to the arts you may be interested to know

about:

In recent years I’ve had the good fortune to become water brothers with rock legend David Crosby, of the Byrds, Crosby Stills and Nash, Crosby-Nash, and other groups. He tells me he and Graham Nash now have a new, extremely lucrative profit center: when you leave a Crosby-Nash concert, by the time you can get your butt out of the chair and out to the lobby…they’re already waiting to sell you THE CONCERT YOU JUST HEARD on a USB thumb drive, directly from the soundboard in high quality mp3, all tracks correctly identified, nearly three hours of music you know for a fact is great, for US$40. And they get to keep ALL the money–as opposed to the miserable fraction of the ticket price (or CD price) that ever reaches them.

At the end of a tour, they’ll put EACH CONCERT up for sale at their website.

In effect, they’ve finally become their own record company. The means of production have passed into the hands of the people; all power to the people! David and Graham are both terribly pleased. It was David’s idea.

He’ll be 70 in another month, making him a Sixties Survivor twice over, and he’s hard at work on a splendid new solo album….produced by his son, James Raymond.

Be well and prosper, my friend.

–Spider Robinson

Subject: Cost of Rural Broadband Access

A study shows that the stimulus of 2009 went out and spent $350,000 per household to bring broadband to rural areas. I won’t waste your time listing the alternatives that would have cost less.

http://blogs.forbes.com/nickschulz/2011/07/05/how-effective-was-the-2009-stimulus-program/

—

Dwayne Phillips

Lie to Me –

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/spot-tsa-airport-security-program-catch-terrorist/story?id=14062893

"The U.S. government has already spent approximately $750 million on the Screening of Passengers by Technique (SPOT) program, which in part trains airport security officers to look out for "micro-expressions" of travelers that may betray nefarious planning, and plans to add another $254 million to the program in 2012"

Of course we know that not a single terrorist has been identified during TSA screening of any kind. Even so,

"But a spokesman for the TSA told ABC News that the SPOT program was just one in several layers of airport security that have successfully deterred another Sept. 11-style attack and the many arrests resulting from SPOT show that it is an effective tool in detecting deception, whether in criminals or potential terrorists." The lie that really needs detecting is the one about TSA having stopped another 9/11-style attack. A plane won’t be used as a missile again simply because it is too hard to get to the pilots now and the passengers won’t sit still for it.

R,

Rose

we also have to understand that we have the lowest individual tax rate in the industrialized world.

– depends on how we define the terms.

It is of course a side issue. Still it ought not be ignored, overlooked and put aside in discussion.

Stock ownership is now much in the hands of groups (Calpers?) such that (shades of Coase) there isn’t much of a coalition to scream about the double taxation of taxing the business income then taxing the owner’s income.

(then too much of the business income goes to senior management rather than to ownership as funds rely on appreciation over dividends another distortion in the natural course of events)

That fight about double taxation and Sub Chapter S pattern – pass the profits through and tax the owner – has been abandoned to argue about the so called death tax which mostly winds up the estate and collects on sheltered income.

Still it’s worth considering the effect if imputed income were taxed at the various individual rates – of course folks can’t pay money on imputed income they haven’t received. So we see such things as Boeing building the -80 with money that would otherwise have been paid as excess profits tax. But I digress.

The point is that to speak of individual tax rates without addressing the tax on returns on equity and on capital both at the business level and at the capital gains tax level is flat misleading and so unproductive in any ultimate sense.

Regards

CEM

==

The important point continues to be: who is more likely to invest wisely? A command economy says government experts are better able to allocate resources. This does not appear to be true. To the point:

Jerry,

If a Capitalist society is the economic equivalent of a Maxwellian gas, the command economy is the economic equivalent of a laser: it can achieve spectacular results — at the cost of wasting 95% of the total energy (productivity) of the system.

Jim

Precisely.

Of course I thought of you…

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/09/psych_grads_knacked/

“A study in America has found that taking a degree in Psychology condemns you to a lifetime of being lower paid than those who study proper sciences, and lower paid than the average among university graduates.”

Of course, I don’t know if this study is “proper science” itself…

Chris

I tend to agree. My original intent as an undergraduate was to go to medical school, and a psychology degree offered the best opportunity to have a very high grade point average. Fortunately I got interested in history – Dr. George Mosse saw to that. And I was steered into a second major in European Literature and Thought, and Rupert King got me interested in ecology at a time when that was not a popular subject. I had an undergraduate assistantship with Van Allen for a while. But I did not take much in the way of hard science. After Vertebrate Embryology made it clear that I wasn’t going to get into medical school I was left with psychology – and Paul Horst promptly sent me to the math department to learn real mathematics and probability. That led to Operations Research and it was as an OR man that I was an aerospace professional even though my first aerospace job was as Aviation Psychologist and Human Factors Engineer. A varied career. I do not think an undergraduate degree in psychology is very valuable, but then my opinion of most of the “social sciences” is not high: see my Essays on The Voodoo Sciences.

China Overtakes US?

A new Pew Global Attitudes survey released today finds that while the U.S. is better regarded around the world now than it was in the Bush years, in 15 of 22 nations surveyed most say that China either will replace or already has replaced America as the world’s “leading superpower.” This view is especially widespread in Western Europe, where at least six in 10 respondents in Britain, France, Germany and Spain see China eventually overtaking the U.S.

The emerging perception of China’s superpower status no doubt reflects global recognition of its growing economic might, and the fact that the U.S. is increasingly seen as trailing China economically. Nowhere is this more evident than in Western Europe, where the percentage naming China as the world’s “leading economic power” has increased markedly over the past two years, along with the view that it will ultimately eclipse the U.S. as global superpower.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303678704576442400450218990.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

——– Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Not astonishing. Regretable, but not astonishing. Walter Lippman once said that diplomacy is akin to writing checks; actual military and economic power are the bank accounts against which those checks are written. We have drained both of those accounts.

Apparently, David Slater, a well-known nature photographer, left his camera on the ground in an Indonesian national park, and a macaque monkey walked over and snapped a bunch of photos, including this (remarkable!) self-portrait:

MONKEY SELF-PORTRAIT

Cheers,

Dan

Bastille

Jerry,

Not to forget that DeSade himself spent years in the Bastille. In 1777, Sade was tricked into visiting his supposedly ill mother, who in fact had recently died, in Paris. He was arrested there and imprisoned in the Château de Vincennes. He successfully appealed his death sentence in 1778 but remained imprisoned under the lettre de cachet. He escaped but was soon recaptured. He resumed writing and met fellow prisoner Count de Mirabeau who also wrote erotic works.

In 1784, Vincennes was closed and Sade was transferred to the Bastille. On 2 July 1789, he reportedly shouted out from his cell, to the crowd outside, "They are killing the prisoners here!" causing something of a riot. Two days later, he was transferred to the insane asylum at Charenton near Paris, and missed the major event of the French Revolution on 14 July.

Henry Barth

Dublin