Pegging The Irony Meter

Barack Obama think's we've gone a little soft.

"I mean, there are a lot of things we can do," Obama said. "The way I think about it is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track."

This is from a guy who spent trillions of dollars that the Fed just printed up and handed him. He rails all the time against people who earn money and demands they give him more of what they've earned. His team blows money on one idiotic, fantasy-based escapade after another, never doing the hard work of determining returns on investment ahead of time.

Soft? Yes. The softest place of all is Washington, DC.

Herman Cain Can Take The Heat

I've seen a lot of videos of the guy now and he always does a great job dealing with serious, substantive criticism. He doesn't seem to fumble his way around difficult questions.

We Must Firewall Contagion!

Jonathan Weil, writing in Bloomberg, has a great dictionary of European Financial terms. Here's my favorite.

3. Firewall: A partition made of fireproof material to prevent the spread of flames from one place to another. Of no use in containing a financial crisis, except as vague public- relations catnip for readers of news articles who can’t tell the difference between napalm and a 10-year bond.

Usage: U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is fluent in both Euro and Mandarin, last weekend urged euro-area nations “to create a firewall against further contagion.”

These kinds of statements always get to me. Another great one is to talk about the "peripheral" countries like Greece or Portugal as if those two going bankrupt isn't going to drag down a whole bunch of big banks across the Continent. They're peripheral in the same way the hole in the hull of the Titanic was peripheral.

Read the whole thing. It's darkly funny.

Link Of The Day

Our Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings has a take on Ford's decision to pull it's anti-bailout ad from the airwaves and from YouTube. Here in the Catican, that ad was very popular. We thought it would have made for a very manly F-150 commercial.

"Real men don't take bailouts." Or something like that.

The Arts And Sciences Require Wealth And Stability

This is a tiny bit of something I've been noodling over since the London riots. Artists and scientists are luxury goods. In the short- and medium-term, you don't need them to live. You only buy luxury goods when you've got plenty of disposable income and you're secure in the future. I think the London riots, in the context of massive social spending in England, are symptomatic of societal poverty and disorder.

I would further suggest that by fighting traditional societal mores, artists and academics in general* have cultivated the very conditions that threaten themselves. They've fought to overturn and subvert traditional institutions like churches and societal mores and have replaced them with the relativism that led to interviews like this.

Buildings burned, businesses ruined and no remorse. Where will the artists and academics get their money now?

Related and a very good read: Our Precentor of Measurements has a short post and a link to an excellent essay on being a Superversive. It was quite provocative and clarified things for me.

* - Originally I had called out scientists, but I think this is unfair. When I think about my own alma mater, I'm not sure the science and engineering departments cared a hoot about which way the societal wind was blowing.

Cheezburger of the Day

My wife has had a terribly stiff neck lately and is seeing a chiropractor about it. Hence ...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

The Future Was Been Sold

... to pay for the present.

Since 2010, the government has raised taxes and slashed pensions and state salaries across the board, in an effort to rein in the bloated public sector that today employs one in five Greeks. Last week, the government announced it would put 30,000 workers on reduced pay as a precursor to possible termination and would cut pensions again for nearly half a million public-sector retirees.

A clerk in her local town hall, Ms. Firigou, like all public-sector workers, took a precipitous pay cut last year — in her case to less than $1,300 a month from $2,000 a month — as the government slashed wages to meet the terms of its foreign lenders. Her husband, who sells used car parts, has seen his commissions drop. Her mother’s pension was cut to about $800 a month from around $920.

Like many families here, the Firigous cushion the impact of such cuts and the rising cost of living with property acquired in the past. Her grandfather built the two-story apartment house in this Athens suburb, Psychiko, where the six now live, starting in the 1930s and finishing it after the Second World War. And so the new tax, probably in excess of $2,000 per year for the Firigous, stings particularly hard. “The house is the only thing we have left,” she said.

Three things jump out at me.

1. The increases in government spending did not buy "infrastructure". If they had, then these families would have seen their real assets increase over this time. If what you buy does not result in increased capital holdings then it isn't "infrastructure", it's just spending.


2. This mirrors what Victor Davis Hanson says about California. Our freeways, dams and major construction projects are decades old. Monster government budgets have not bought anything solid. We're living off the decisions of people 40 years ago.


3. Read this article and then consider the question from a recent Republican presidential debate where a guy with a pre-existing condition asked them if they would cut his benefits. The real answer, the one that will really occur, the one that is occurring in Greece right now is this: Someone's benefits will be cut. If not yours, then whose?

Cheezburger of the Day

The Kodak Playsport Is More Robust Than They Think

Preface: Here's what I'm doing, how I'm doing it and what the final chamber looks like.

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On Friday, I finally performed pressure tests on my Kodak Playsport camera. Using a brilliant idea contributed by Tim Eisele, I connected my pressure chamber to a tire on my MGB. This avoided the risks associated with charging the chamber with a air pump at a gas station where it might explode from overpressurization.


I decided to test the camera as is, with no silicone protection over its ports. The camera is rated to 10', but I wondered if it could handle more. I turned the camera on, started it filming and then sealed it up in the chamber and pressurized it.


The pressure chamber leaked, so the pressure was not constant. I left it alone for 38 minutes and during that time the tire pressure declined from 35 PSI to 15 PSI. That would be roughly equivalent to submersing it to 81' and slowly rising to 35', using 0.43 PSI per foot as an estimate. This is way beyond what we want to do with the camera. For one thing, I'm only rated to 60' and for another, we feel we can get good footage in the kelp beds at about 30-40'.

The camera did not leak and it kept filming the whole time. However, when the pressure was released, the camera turned itself off. I'm not quite sure why this happened, but I suspect the power button thought it was being pressed and when the chamber suddenly depressurized when I disconnected it at the end, it felt like the button had been released.

The camera surpassed all expectations without any modifications. With a good dose of silicone over all inlets, I think it's ready to hit the water for real. Thanks again to Tim and all the rest of you who helped me work through this idea. I hope to share some cool La Jolla kelp bed videos with you real soon.

Update: Tomorrow morning, I'm going to hop on Kodak's support chat and share this with a company rep. I can't wait to hear what they have to say!

Solyndra As A Metaphor

What if the improper loan guarantees to Solyndra weren't deliberate theft and its bankruptcy was not the work of greed? What are you left with? Just this: Solyndra as a metaphor for the West.

It was an investment in a future of clean technologies and clean energy bought with borrowed money, money that was limitless. That was the vision. The truth was that ignorant and incompetent people blew through hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to accomplish the impossible.

Former employees of Solyndra, the shuttered solar company that exhausted half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, said they saw questionable spending by management almost as soon as a federal agency approved a $535 million government-backed loan for the start-up.

A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.

As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?

“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.”

Solyndra didn't have to earn those loans, it simply sold a utopian vision of the future to credulous and willing buyers. Because the money wasn't earned, spending was free and easy. There would always be more money out there to spend.

Sound familiar?

What if Solyndra had survived? What if it had somehow managed to get grants or subsidies or favorable import taxes levied on its Chinese competitors? Would we have bought anything of value?

Well, the goal of the Solyndra investments was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are global. Reducing them a little here while they're increasing hugely elsewhere is worthless. Since China, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, India and the entire developing world in Africa and South America aren't doing a thing to prevent these emissions, the entire Solyndra debacle was pointless even before it started.

Kind of like Eurosocialism where life's bumps and bruises were going to be legislated away, paid for by and endless stream of someone else's money. It's not just that the effort failed in the execution, it's that it was doomed from the start.

Britain's generous welfare state was supposed to raise the poor out of poverty and create a more just and civil society. Oops.

Working on the MGB Today

... and I have proper supervision.

What Is It About Waterfalls?

At lunch the other day, I wandered over to one of my favorite lookout spots on Sunset Cliffs. The tide was out and some rocks were exposed. A stared at these tiny waterfalls for quite some time and then pulled out my Droid and got some video.

I'm thinking that waterfalls are shiny, sparkly and moving and that's why we love them.

If You've Ever Had To Watch A Chick Flick And Didn't Want To

... or if a woman in your house is into those softcore vampire books and movies, I think this ad series was made for you.

I love them. Just love them!

They're Selling, You're Not Buying

Everything is sales. In terms of the economy, the Administration and the Fed, you are the customer and what they want out of you is for you to buy things.

That's grammatically complicated, so let's see if we can spell this out.

The Administration and the Fed make a "sale" when you buy goods or labor. If you're a company, they want you to buy labor - hire people. If you're an individual, they want you to buy things - houses, cars, appliances, llama food, whatever. The economy is in the tank because you're not buying. In fact, some of you are selling - selling houses, selling labor (firing people) and selling stocks. Working with the Administration, the Fed has a new plan to help you make the "buy" decision.

The latest move by the chairman was a decision to dramatically recast the Fed's $2.65 trillion securities portfolio in an effort to reduce long-term interest rates. The Fed plans to shift its holdings so it will have more long-term U.S. Treasury bonds and more mortgage debt than previously planned. It hopes the lower rates will boost investment and spending and provide a shot of adrenaline to the beleaguered housing sector.

Just how this is supposed to work is beyond me. Interest rates of all durations - long, short, medium, microscopic, galactically huge - are all near historic lows. We just refinanced our house and we're now practically borrowing money for free. We're paying about 4% or somewhere around there. Going from 4% to 3% isn't going to make me go out and buy a house. Interest rates are now irrelevant. Just look at this.

• Payment on a $250,000, 30-year loan at 4%: $1301.87


• Payment on a $250,000, 30-year loan at 3%: $1162.34

They've been trying this same thing for a few years now and it's not working. They keep lowering interest rates and borrowing and spending and nothing's happening. It's like they have no idea at all why you aren't making that "buy" decision.

The only thing they refuse to do is to drastically cut regulations and surrender power to you.

News You Can Use

Despite the presence of air bubbles, it's not a good idea to breath in toothpaste foam.

I *Can* Drive 65

I was at the dog park the other day, giving some R&R to the Catican Guards, and was noodling around on my Droid2. I decided to look up the most efficient speed for the FredMobile (a Nissan Altima) and came across this link and this chart.


It turns out that at lower speeds, fuel economy is dominated by your RPM and gear ratio. At higher speeds, wind resistance is king. Recently, I've tried setting my cruise control at 65 MPH on longer freeway trips* and I've discovered that the car seems to feel better at that speed than it does at 70+. At the higher speeds, it feels like its straining.

* - and also when I want to have fun just tooling around the neighborhood. Man, that Wilson kid can run!

A Flying Giraffe?

The Catholic science blog, The Deeps of Time, has the story. Wild!

Nouriel Roubini Needs To Get Away From The Office

... and spend some time doing things.

Nouriel is a really cool guy. He correctly predicted the crash, he talks a lot about debt and best of all, he's got a great accent, so while he's talking about interest rates and sovereign defaults, you feel all sophisticated and worldly for listening to him. He also has a huge blind spot. Here's what he has to say about avoiding a global depression and how to restore growth.

(T)he reasons for advanced economies’ high unemployment and anemic growth are structural, including the rise of competitive emerging markets. The appropriate response to such massive changes is not protectionism. Instead, the advanced economies need a medium-term plan to restore competitiveness and jobs via massive new investments in high-quality education, job training and human-capital improvements, infrastructure, and alternative/renewable energy. Only such a program can provide workers in advanced economies with the tools needed to compete globally.

Emphasis mine. Nouriel, buddy, I love you, but you have no idea at all what you're talking about. Here's the main reason we've got slow or no growth.

A very tiny subset of the overall process by which the government buys products and services.
All that yap about infrastructure spending is just baloney. What it really means is that more money will be spent this way (government) and less money will be spent your way - pulling out your cash and making the purchase. Government stimuli don't buy infrastructure so much as they buy Integrated Process Teams, Working Group Charters and Lean Six Sigma Events.

Nouriel needs to push himself away from his desk and go work in a government contracting office for a year. Then he can come back and write things that actually have a basis in the real world.

Hugh Hefner is an Emasculated Drone

Update: In honor of the new TV series, The Playboy Club, I'm bumping this post from May of 2010. Enjoy.

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... that's one of the things I learned from watching this video from the Witherspoon Institute's report on the Social Cost of Pornography. While clinical in nature, the portion of the video I'm referring to is still not safe for work nor is it safe for children. Go to 45:05 to hear how Hugh gets off.

Update: The video has since been moved to a private area. Suffice it to say that Hugh requires the ministrations of several playmates in sequence followed by a viewing of porn followed by more ministrations. Getting Hugh to fruition requires slightly more work than writing a 15-page paper analyzing Paradise Lost and seems to be less satisfying for all concerned.

The video originally interested me because the researcher was discussing brain plasticity (I used to do research in neural network artificial intelligence) as it applies to pornography rewiring neural pathways. It's sparked an interest in brain plasticity that might generate some blog posts here, but after thinking about this vignette for a while, something else occurred to me.

Hugh Hefner has totally emasculated himself. His own porn has rewired his brain to the point that he can no longer function as a normal, healthy man. The researcher describes the irony quite well, but doesn't take it the final step.

Hugh helped destroy all of our social norms and remove barriers to open sexuality. Now he's a wimp, a sissy, a girly-man. All of the music stars who make videos where girls with fake boobs are draped all over them in various states of undress, suggesting an orgy to come are simply walking down the road to total emasculation. All the flexing of muscles, the primping in front of the camera, the guns and fast cars and other trappings of masculine success are just props in what amounts to a reenactment of Poe's Masque of the Red Death. They're poisoning themselves, slowly but surely until in the end, the pleasures they pursued so hotly are denied to them forever.

He (the chief rapper or rock star) bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure (the porn filling his video and his life), when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry -- and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Party on, dudes.

Feelin' Groovy

This weekend, we trimmed the monster catnip plant that lives in one of our raised beds. Our Maximum Leader, who loves to be with us while we garden, thoroughly enjoyed the event.