What Matt Taylor Should Have Said About His Shirt

A dude lands a probe on a comet zillions of miles away and a pack of harpies goes bananas because he's wearing a shirt with pictures of comic book chicks on it. The story becomes his shirt and not the unbelievable feat of engineering and science.

Why? Why did anyone listen to these shrews in the first place? Because we did, that's why. We choose to listen to them every day, rather than doing what we should ...

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Scene: Press conference room. The room is buzzing with reporters awaiting his apology for wearing a sexist shirt. Matt shows up, this time wearing a button-down Playboy-logo shirt with a cigar stuffed in the breast pocket and carrying a big tumbler of bourbon on the rocks. He stops at the podium, takes a big swig from the tumbler and sets it down. He looks at the room in scorn.

"I'd like to start this by saying I despise every one of you in this room. You chose to come here, hoping for me to apologize for wearing a shirt when you could have been chasing down those harridans and asking them what their problem was. I'm going to start with a brief slide show about the mission."

Matt, clearly with a bit of a buzz, proceeds to flash about 3-4 slides up on the screen with massive equations and geometry diagrams. They're inscrutable.

"I know what these mean. The hags that complained about the shirt don't. I doubt any of you have a clue, either. I'll be giving hard copies of them to each of you so you can see what real work looks like."

Matt takes a drag from his drink again, puts it down and pulls out his cigar. As he studiously clips off the ends of the cigar, looking intently at it and not the reporters, he says, "You know, you guys have a choice. You can either report on accomplishments and ingenuity or you can write gossip columns. You have chosen to write gossip columns."

Matt lights the cigar and takes a puff. After a bit of obvious pondering while looking at the smoke rising from his cigar, he takes another drag from the tumbler and says, "For the life of me, I can't figure out why I should care what a pack of whiny, little, spoiled brats has to say about what I wear. I never have before. Why should I start now?"

He puts the tumbler down and stares at the reporters. "Why do you? You need to ask yourselves why you decided that these pipsqueak scolds deserved your attention. I'm beginning to wonder if their ranting is as much as you can comprehend."

There's a long pause as he picks up the tumbler again and turns to leave. "Maybe you should spend a little time studying physics instead."

Matt walks out, never looking at the reporters again.

Another Reason I Love Twitter

Twitter allows me to connect with athletes and musicians. I've become a big Peter Furler fan and whenever I mention him in a tweet, he always says, "Thanks!" by favoriting that tweet. Recently, I tweeted a photo of a friend's grandson whose shock of black hair made me think of Newcastle striker Ayoze Perez. I mentioned Ayoze and it must have brought a smile to his face because he favorited it, too.

.@ayozepg I'm thinking I need to get this little guy a number 17 Newcastle United jersey. :-) pic.twitter.com/5J9liHUIOe
— K T Cat (@ktcat) November 15, 2014

Here's a little of the real Ayoze himself:

Animal-Induced Insomnia

On Saturday, I made the mistake of changing our Maximum Leader's food. Seduced by Science Diet's claim that their new food had no grains and was therefore better for cats, I ditched the Purina One Salmon and Tuna.

Bad move. The new food was not a hit with Her Serene Furriness and she let me know in no uncertain terms most of Saturday night. She was hungry. Very hungry.

We've also had a rabbit make occasional raids on our yard, getting in through a place in the fence where erosion had created a hole underneath. The Catican Guards could detect these invasions and would rally to our defense with leaps and barking, driving the lagomorphic intruder away in great pomp and style. On Saturday night, the rabbit was particularly aggressive.

Sleep? Why, no, we didn't get much. Why do you ask?

Yesterday, we picked up a bag of Purina One and replaced the anti-rabbit portions of the fence. We briefed the Catican Guards on the new situation and fed our Maximum Leader into a state of digestive torpor.

Ahh, sweet, sweet peacefulness.

The Guards during the briefing session. Note their attentiveness.

What If The Arawaks Had Battleships?

Reading Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, a few thoughts have struck me re: America being built on the back of genocide and racism.

As background, the first natives Columbus met were helpful, peaceful Arawaks. Columbus, without any apparent moral qualms, captured some of them and used them as guides, interpreters and intended to bring them back to Spain to show to the King and Queen. His actions seemed natural and unquestioned as there is no record of debate on the topic.

While the Arawaks were peaceful, the neighboring Caribs were not. They were slavers and cannibals and the Arawaks were terrified of them.

Columbus and the Spaniards are frequently portrayed as greedy thieves and racist maniacs. Whatever their motives, let's engage in a little alternate history fantasy for a moment. Imagine that the Arawaks, instead of possessing technology equivalent to the Caribs, had superior weapons and boats? Now assume that this technological disparity lasted for, say, 200 years. Don't you think that over a 200 year time period, even the peaceful Arawaks would eventually say to each other, "You know, I've had my fill of these little swine Caribs. They can't seem to control themselves. Let's go finish them off once and for all."

Or how about this: "My wife and kids never seem to have enough fish to eat. Those pathetic Caribs do nothing but use up resources and make trouble. Let's go beat the tar out of them and take their islands."

There's an offhand remark in the book that some of the native tribes had done just that prior to Columbus' arrival, blotting out some particularly annoying neighbors. The Aztecs most certainly did that to bordering tribes prior to Cortez.

So what's the big deal with singling out the Spaniards? Yep, they killed to looted. Columbus himself was monomaniacal about finding gold. I find it hard to believe that any of their contemporaries would have acted differently.



Here, we see Arawak battleships in action against the Caribs.

Sing Along With Jonathon Gruber!

The thing that leaps out at me every time there's another Gruber video surfacing showing how he thinks we're all imbeciles and every time Obama says he's going to do something directly contrary to the stated wishes of the voters is that we're all just so much window dressing to them. We're all cardboard cutouts on the grass beneath the balcony where El Presidente and his retinue speak at us. We're extras on the movie set providing crowd noises. What we want doesn't matter to them at all.

With that in mind, I offer this hack job on a verse of a song by that Soviet-loving idiot, Woodie Guthrie.

This Land Is Our Land

This land is our land
  It is not your land
Back to your hovels
  you simple morons
We make decisions
  We know what's best, yeah
You only think you get to vote

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Author's note: The word, "yeah" is a great syllable-filler when you need to finish a song to close off a blog post and get to Costco to do the week's shopping.

Sea Turtle Off Cape Kinau, Maui

On previous trips to Maui, seeing sea turtle was a rare treat. This time, we saw lots and lots of turtles. In fact, on our last snorkeling session, I had to push one out of my way to keep it from running into me. The turtle didn't mind, it just kept cruising along, doing whatever it was it was doing.

The video below was shot with my GoPro Hero3 without any filters at all. On this trip, we discovered that the red filter at less than 20' of depth makes a hash of the scene, turning everything a sickly yellow. There's another filter designed for snorkeling that is only slightly red and I'm going to get one of those before our next tropical island foray.

In the meantime, this video really is best seen in full screen and HD. The lower res versions don't do the turtle justice.

Enjoy!

How The Rich Get Richer, Japanese Style

Here's how I think it works.

1. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) prints money and buys government bonds.
2. Government retirement accounts sell their bonds to the BoJ to buy stocks.
3. The Japanese stock market goes way up.

At the same time:

1. Rich Japanese borrow money at artificially low interest rates using their accumulated wealth as collateral.
2. They invest this money in the stock market.
3. They make scads of cash because of numbers 2&3 above.

In other words, if I, rich Japanese dude, can borrow at 1.5% and invest in the stock market where the return is 10-20%, it's free money for me. Note that nothing was actually produced. No goods or services were provided. At the risk of seeming egotistical, I will quote myself from The Rise And Fall Of Bear Stearns.

Midway through the book, I found that I despised Alan Greenberg. He is the quintessential greedy banker. Nothing has value to him and all that matters is making more and more money. Even the money loses meaning as money after a while and it becomes just a pile of poker chips. In reality, money represents value created through human labor. $20 is equivalent to two grown men working for an hour on your landscaping, a point seeminly lost on Mr. Greenberg. When he found a new financial instrument that allowed Bear Stearns to reap more profits, those profits were just numbers in an adding machine. Contact with the real world was lost as time went on.

This is Alan Greenberg on a national scale. Short of some kind of Black Swan event, clobbering the market, this bet is a sure thing. Printed money is pouring into the stock market. What direction can it go but up? As soon as the central bank ceased to be independent of the government, this was bound to happen.

Meanwhile, you, wage slave that you are, have no such collateral or access to big, low-interest loans. You toil along and pay your mortgage or rent and buy groceries and gasoline without enough yen on the side to join the party. You stay where you are while I float in a sea of money.

This is what happens when governments, central banks and the wealthy collude. It's a hallmark of fascism. Awesome, no?

Artistic Urchin

We found this perfect sea urchin shell while walking on the beach near Kihei, Maui. My wife took this photo with her phone with the urchin resting on a glass table on our lanai. I love it.

The photo was left large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Black Durgon Triggerfish

Yesterday, we found a new favorite snorkeling spot on Maui, better even than Ulua Beach. It's Cape Kinau, way down south almost at the end of Makena Road.


I got a lot of video, including a nice one of a sea turtle. While the Black Durgon below aren't colorful, there was just something about their schooling and swimming I loved. The video is still in 720p, so full screen and HD might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Do Spiders Get Motion Sickness?

Sitting on the lanai of our rental here on Maui, there's a tiny spider who has spun a web between two chairs. The breeze is blowing her* back and forth as she sits in the center.

I had to use manual focus to get the shot. My eyes aren't the best, so I apologize for the mediocre quality.

Is she getting airsick as the wind blows her this way and that? Strangely enough, when I see spiders in windy webs, I feel a little sympathy for them, wondering if it's hard to hang on and if they get nauseous. It's all very silly, I know. Spiders have been doing this for millions of years. I'm sure by now they've learned how to spin tiny air sickness bags which they store on their front legs.

* - Notice how I made the spider feminine? I did that to smash the patriarchy! Not only that, I think she's a lesbian. Take that, you heteronormative bigots!

A Few Thoughts On Mass Amnesty

So President Obama, as near as I can figure, is threatening to turn a couple million illegals into citizens if he doesn't get his way with some kind of "comprehensive immigration" bill. On the surface of it, this seems insane. The more I think about it, the more insane it becomes. Here are a few random thoughts, in no particular order.

1. Someone ought to ask him or his henchcreatures, "What is a border?" As far as I can tell, we don't have one. If unattended children can get into a place without much effort, then that place isn't secure at all. What's the point of even drawing a line on a map and saying this side of the line is one thing and that side of the line is another if children can cross the line at will?


2. If Obama can leave the southern border unguarded and then turn everyone who crosses it into a citizen, why can't a future president do the same with a different nationality? What if a devout Catholic president said that everyone from Ireland and the Philippines can get in for free and then I'll make them a citizen with a wave of my magic wand?


3. Where in the constitution does it say that he can do this? Article II, Section 2 is the closest I could find to granting the president such powers, but it seems pretty sketchy to me. 

   The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

   I could see where that might allow him to grant amnesty, but making them citizens is another thing entirely. All of the stuff about rules for becoming citizens is granted to the legislature.


4. How does this not end with impeachment? Can you allow any president to simply run wild? Clinton committed perjury and that was enough for impeachment proceedings. This is orders of magnitude worse. If this happens and is allowed to stand then you no longer have a legislature worthy of the name.


5. Where on Earth did Obama and his cronies go to school? What were they being taught? I know the answer to that one already. They were taught by the same lunatics that teach my daughter right now. It's all activism all the time. There are no rules, no classics, no standards, only injustices to be fought and fought and fought. Rage, organize, vote, picket, protest - these are what she is taught, if only implicitly and yet constantly in every class, science included.


6. If it does not end in impeachment, how does this not end in secession? If the president can make things up out of thin air and impose his will on the states, a la King George, why do they have to stick around and take it? Dittos for a judiciary gone mad. To take one instance, Californians voted legally to amend our state constitution to define marriage and the Supreme Court said our constitutional amendment was unconstitutional. From that point on, Californians ceased to have control over their government.


7. Further along the secession point, how much weed and porn do you need to consume on a daily basis to surrender sovereignty in border and sovereignty in law and lay around taking it? If Federal courts can overturn your voting and Obama dissolves the border and lets everyone in to vote, you cease to be a citizen and have become a subject. Does anyone care?

I guess that last thought is the most important. Is moral relativism so pervasive that only a few holdouts still care about this stuff?

It's a weird time to be an American, man. A really weird time.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating either impeachment or secession. This is just some noodling around, a free thought writing exercise triggered by the events of the day.

Urchins And Coral

... seen while snorkeling at the Molokini crater. I left it large so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Mission Trails Clouds Time Lapse

When the groomer called and told me the Catican Guards were running an hour behind schedule, I was already in the truck heading over to pick them up. Fortunately, I had my camera gear with me and was near a very nice photography spot in Mission Trails Park. The video below was the result. Enjoy.

The video is available in full 1080p, so a full-screen viewing might be worthwhile.

Imaginary Friends Are Fun!

... and the president has millions of them.

“To everyone that voted, I want you to know that I heard you,” Obama began. “To two-thirds of voters that chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”

He listened to people that didn't talk? I wonder what they were saying to him. I bet it was something about global warming, racism or contraception. Those are really, really important things. Those are the kinds of things imaginary people talk about a lot. They must be, because that's what the Democrats tried to sell for the last few months of the campaign. It's too bad the imaginary people didn't go vote. They're probably smarter than the goobers who did.

Maui Sunset

Not spectacular, but still very nice.

Crazy Tea Party Republicans Hating Women And Minorities

Just look at this picture of Mia Love (R) who won her Congressional race in Utah. Look at it! It represents everything that's wrong with the Rethuglicans.

#WarOnWomen #Racism

San Diego Au Naturale

Here's a little palate cleanser for all of the election news. This is a photo from Mission Trails Park here in San Diego. It's what San Diego looks like, sans imported water. I left it rather large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

I Don't Understand. Am I Supposed To Wolf Whistle Or Not?

So there's a video of some chick walking past a bunch of minority dudes getting catcalls and wolf whistles. (I'm not going to find it and share it here because I'm too lazy right now.) This has feminists in Full Freakout Mode, demanding, err, something. I'm not quite sure of what they want, probably because what they want is fundamentally contradictory with something else they want and so the whole thing is incoherent.

Now I come to find out that Lena Durham, Hollywood social justice fascist that she is, penned this piece of rubbish for the mass murdering trolls at Planned Parenthood giving a list of 5 reasons why you should vote.

1. When you vote, you feel so, so good...I wore fishnets and a little black dress to vote, then walked around with a spring in my slinky step.

Wait, what? She wore fishnets and slank around all day? I dunno, maybe she did it in her bedroom where no one could see her. If she did it out in public, then she was deliberately inviting ogling and wolf whistles. But we were just told that guys aren't supposed to do that.

I give up. I have no idea what these bitter, feminist skanks want. It's all so Escheresque. The staircase is going up and down at the same time and there are people walking on the top and the bottom and if you turn the picture to any side it still makes sense and now I think I just sprained my cerebral cortex trying to figure it out.

Whatever. Here's something we can all understand. A wonder goal by Papiss Cisse.


Now that makes sense.

Update: If you watched that goal and want a laugh, watch the first 20 seconds of this video to see a group of British sports talk blokes witnessing it live on TV in their studio. Wonderful.

Scott Peters Is The Worst. Or Maybe The Worst Is Carl DeMaio

Thanks to redistricting, our Politburo congressional midterm election is one of the few competitive ones in the whole country.

Aside: isn't that awesome? In a nation that prides itself on being a democracy, our congresscreatures effectively have positions for life.

Money is pouring into this race from all over the place and their ads are omnipresent on TV, usually playing back-to-back. There's not a single positive one in the lot, save for a 30-second spot where someone says Scott Peters handed them wads of cash or something.

Carl DeMaio is this runty, gay dude who oozes loud-mouthed self-importance. Scott Peters is a diffident, WASP-y weasel who looks like the type seen in the background of Mussolini photos wearing tailored suits bought with looted money. If either of them sat next to you at a bar, you'd be handing the bartender a $100 bill to clear a $15 tab and heading for the door without waiting for the change and most of your drink untouched.

I have no idea what either of them stand for or what they'd do once elected. I do know that Scott Peters did his best to wreck San Diego by having us borrow tons of money so he could hand it out like a big shot. In any case, I don't have the slightest notion what my vote means in the race between these two.

A bigger pair of loathsome, self-aggrandizing weasels you might never find.

And there's no one else on the ballot.

Thanks to our election rules, there is no one from the Green Party, the Libertarians or even the Peace and Freedom party for whom I can vote. I can't even protest vote. This weekend, after enduring another pair of ads which informed me that Scott Peters' hand was in the till up to the shoulder and Carl DeMaio was a puppet of the Tea Party and hated students, I told my wife, "That's it! I'm voting Libertarian or Green Party or ANYTHING but these two!" She quite agreed. Then I looked up the ballot and found no other choices.

Yay for democracy.

Purple And Fuzzy

I'm pretty sure I've posted a photo or four of this kind of flower before, but, gosh darn it, it's fuzzy!

I left it large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

More fuzzy = more better.