Good morning.

1. Talking death panels.
2. Europe and stability.
3. Freedom and the 50 states.
4. Or Freedom and the Democratic party.
5. Speaking of freedom. Here’s one more we’re losing soon.
6. Racism or not? Would it have been decried loudly as such if the speaker was aligned with the GOP?
7. On Mr Gates rant and NATO.
8. US Bond ratings.
9. No no no, the real crime is cycling without wearing cleats.
10. TARP II? 
11. Big media, when you’ve lost the Hollywood air-heads … 
12. Color me unsurprised.
13. On QE2, was it a mistake?
14. He’s right, there are no facts at all without theory, which always predates and defines which datum are interesting.
15. Contradictions or not?
16. True or not, why the heck would you want to go public with that?

Good, err, afternoon. I’ve been off work the last two days with my parents visiting. So my schedule has gone to the dogs. I’ve a few moments of quiet this afternoon, my father and I have successfully completed our (gas) plumbing project.

Humor to start off.

1. Identification.
2. Shampoo.
3. A wheel-less bike.
4. A legal, duh, what the heck was he thinking.
5. If you do, or don’t.

Elsewhere in the world

1. Iran.
2. and more from Iran.
3. Kuwait.
4. Egypt.
5. And commentary on US Politics from down under.

Politics and the US

1. Liberals being stupid or evil? You pick. 
2. Monetary policy.
3. Energy.
4. The Civil War … I ordered the book. You should too.
5. Biz data.

Tech

1. Battery.
2. Gears.
3. Spinning platters.

Other

1. Replying to Editors.

Good morning. Sorry about yesterday, one thing led to another and before you know/knew it, tempus had fugitted.

1. Some precision tech.
2. So … cute or freaky?
3. Religion, predating agriculture.
4. An ode for Mr Wiener.
5. Violence and virtue. There’s a wonderful Taoist piece on when X is praised, Y has already been lost. I need to scare that up.
6. Speaking of virtue.
7. Job loophole.
8. Computers … not helping efficiency.
9. Three (!) banks?
10. Trust lost! Lost!? Can’t lose what you don’t have.
11. Climate and trend. 
12. Obama’s primary means of killing the economy continues apace, that is to say uncertainty. There are those who continue to assure me Mr Obama is really really smart. If so, he knows this is happening and therefore its purposeful. Toward what end does he continue to try to damage or kill the US economy? 

Those on the left, in the dozen or so instances which I came across, almost universally qualify their discussions of Mr Wiener’s recent passing out (exchanges of) PG-13 (and worse) photo’s of himself with a number of women. The qualification includes some sort of admission that “well, there’s nothing wrong with *that*). This is sort of a generic meme on the left. Whatever might be your fetish, it’s OK so long as its between consenting adults. How you know that the person with which you correspond over the Internet is anyone’s guess. However the premise itself is suspect.

Mr Wiener has been engaging in a electronic version of the guy in rubber galoshes in a raincoat whose fetish consists of exposing himself to women. If the public exposer used a defense that “he got consent” and “they women to whom he exposed himself told him they were of age” that doesn’t change the fact that this is nebishy behavior. And that is going to be the electoral poison that kills his career. Not there is a sexually tainted skeleton in his closet, but that his particular skeleton paints his character as one worthy of contempt.

Mr Clinton was a serial sexual offender, but his offense didn’t (apparently) paint him in the same corner as the raincoat wearing creep but as a powerful man with an out of control libido, both qualities that have tacit approval in some quarters. Commenter Boonton suggests that sexual hijinks in the future coming to light will have less and less impact. That may be, but those foibles and fetishes which come to light which paint you as immature at best or as weak or weird will not become more and more accepted.

It is not American puritan influence public sexual ethics that most obviously end Mr Wiener’s public career. It is the particulars and what picture they they, rightfully or not, paint of his character.

Good morning.

1. A strange place to call home.
2. Looking at global temperature trends.
3. Cain and Abel, err, Kemp.
4. Explaining what appears different.
5. Very very slick.
6. Obamacare fail. One wonders when all those putatively really smart people will notice that if some of their sure-fire predictions was so off base, how many of their more spectulative notions they based their support for Obamacare are also flawed?
7. When your first sentence is that silly, I guess there’s no where to go but up. 
8. What comes of not knowing the first thing about anyone in today’s military, you say insulting things about them. 
9. So regarding the Wiener affair, this is the consistent meme I see on the left, “I have no problem with people doing ‘that'” but … 
10. First off, should we “just ignore it” in the first place.
11. Look ma! No power cable.
12. Mr Kevorkian … 60% not ill? Well, that’s one way to cure depression, assist them in suicide. 
13. The choice? Aimless or reckless?
14. More bad climate science, how does this crap get the light of day?
15. Krugman vs Krugman.

My list overfloweth, we’ll see how I do at selection.

1. Libya and Congress … and separation of powers. Another on that topic here.
2. Economic performance, employment, and limiting hours.
3. Prince, some time back.
4. Faux outrage from the left. I found the outrage at corporate tax dodging (queue GM/Chrysler images) amusing. Democrats ostensibly are for graduated taxes, while any corporate tax paid by the consumer irrespective of their earnings. I hadn’t realized the Democrats were so strongly for consumption taxes on non-luxury items.
5. In awe of the aria.
6. Mr Obama’s first years, In a nutshell.
7. Egypt’s V-police matter is not going away.
8. Racist? In my house they are called “papa noodles”, ’cause I have a lot of grad-school experience in cooking them in different ways.
9. Remember the San Francisco anti-circumscision legal movement being accused of anti-semitism, here’s their ad. So, anti-semitic or not?
10. Met. Hilarion on relgious intolerance.
11. Christian response to no-longer-Christians.
12. Pox on all their houses.
13. AGW and bad science hand in hand, I guess.
14. It’s cute when Democrats slip in little racism jabs at the GOP … all while ignoring the fact that for 2 years they held the Presidency had a bi-Cameral majority.

Good morning.

1. That auto bailout again … costing 18 billion … you know my company could benefit from a free $250k per employee. I bet your’s could too. So, do you think they’ll get another bailout in 10-20 years just like last time?
2. If there is a dumber reason to take kids out of a parents home, I’ve never seen it.
3. More liberals deciding yet more freedoms need to be stomped. More here.
4. From one ignorant extremist to another.
5. Vroooom.
6. Two books, here and here. I have to admit that Flowers of Evil (in translation) was the first poetry I managed to appreciate.
7. Speaking of poetry.
8. Climate and tornadoes in Springfield.
9. Quantum Physics sans wave functions.
10. Religious tolerance discussed in Moldava.
11. Satire featuring Mr Rather and Mr Weiner.
12. A tale from antiquity.

Good morning.

1. So are screw ups the exception or the rule?
2. Why the adjective, female? Beauty matters … it’s just that human physical beauty is not the most important category of beauty.
3. A bet.
4. Movement left by a group with a suggestion as to why … which also one might suggest implies that the more we move lef the less healthy our society is. 
5. For the election season, a signage salvo.
6. In a piece on “percentages” it’s odd that he quotes 3% as the Gay population in the wake of last weeks CDC announcement that that 3 is 1.5. 
7. Some thoughts on Wienergate.
8. Vouchers in a different venue. I wonder if the same people against school vouchers would be for these. If so, why the difference?
9. Yuck, evil evil evil.
10. Kyoto II and Mr Obama … holding the Bush line faithfully. Happy now?
11. Some praise for a selection of Mr Obama’s.
12. A good post on climate.
13. Why? 
14. I think Church-as-hospital is one of the better metaphors.

Commenter Boonton has on a few occaisons mused about complex industrial accidents and the avoidence of the same.

Complex project development, in a book which came out in the 80s (Have Fun At Work, by Mr Livingstone) was an interesting read. The main thesis of the book was that complex projects (those are too large basically to fit in one smart persons brain … and he gave specific concrete ways to recognize those projects) fail. They all fail (or at the best have horrible delays and massive cost overruns). Much of the book devoted itself to orienting tech/engineer personel to recognize if your project was one of those which would fail and how to prevent that from career or psychic injury to self. As a sidelight he noted the only way that complex projects succeed. Complex projects succeed if heirarchical information pathways are removed and replaced with a model in which everyone can talk (and does talk) to everone. The cannonical such project is the Lockheed Skunkworks, which developed the SR-71, the U-2, and stealth combat aircraft. In their working environment, aerodynamicists and systems engineers sat next to draftsmen and machinists. “Can this …?” questions didn’t filter up and down the chain but you would ask the guy who might know the answer directly.

Big systems with complex working parts are put in place all over the world. Refineries, airplans, chemical plants, nuclear power plants and so on are all complex working systems. One way in which one might approach minimizing the occurance of complex accidents is to follow the Kelly Johnson/Skunkworks approach and shift it from project development to ongoing system operations. Why isn’t this done?

One reasons might be tied to morale. The Skunkworks team was a high morale operation. They had an impossible (basically) cutting edge project. They worked rediculous hours because of their excitement and the demands of the project and the basic urge human urge for success and to win, defined in this case as completion of the project, to scale that technical mountain. How can this translate to a multi-decade task of keeping equipment running safely, a far more mundane and routine task? If one identifies a clear difference in the two tasks as one of morale. High morale is essential for the operation of a non-heirarchical task/team project. High morale might also be an essential telling point in the operation of a long term operational facillity if one were to attempt to shift it to a more skunkworks-like approach to management. You can’t do that without high morale.

Ultimately government “regulation” of industrial workplace might be better served not trying to pretend it knows better how to drill offshore, run nuclear plants, and so on. It can on the other hand, have a better shot a spotting any number of ways in which workplaces are poisoned by poor morale and other working conditions conducive to failure (reckless risk taking has its own signature on morale). The point is, inspectors might be better served watching dynamics of workplace (social) chemistry and less on technical questions which they have, likely, less (or captive) expertise (not to speak of other agenda).  

Good morning. I hope everying had a memorable memorial day.

1. A slight problem of diction.
2. Sedimentary remains of little bugs.
3. Comparing economic stresses.
4. Conservative think tank and climate.
5. Cute little tyke.
6. I don’t think the West is “re-evaulating” … they are oblivious.
7. Anti-semetic … or is something else at play.
8. For Memorial Day, here and here and lots more here.
9. Let’s see, after 8 years of Democratic obstructionism in the same venue (which was likely praised by this source) … now … now(!) it’s horrible. How about, it was bad then, it’s bad now. But you’d have to be admitting it was bad then, see.
10. An actual Israeli take on the Obama/Netanyahu dialectic.
11. To be attractive and female (and non-Muslim) in Pakistan.
12. Taking the anti-Palin prize.
13. Talking foreign policy. Question, have any of Obama’s foreign policy “successes” not been a result of continuing the course set by Mr Bush? 
14. Moving on the Arctic fer oil.
15. They can have prayer’s in the Senate, the House, just not High School. Whatever.
16. Taking a very narrow view, seeing that globally it is the Sacramental churches which are the ones which are showing the most growth.

Woohoo! Three day weekend. 😀

1. Some pointed questions, which perhaps should, but which will not, be asked at press conference with the POTUS.
2. The tale of two eVehicles, here and here.
3. Lost features of the computer world. Lost? It is a shame that ARexx or the equivalent never moved into the Linux or Windows world.
4. Religion or agriculture as the seed.
5. $3 million per job, at that rate … well, you know. It looks like when a company gets big gov’t grants, they get to borrow government inefficiencies and waste.
6. A poor tipper to boot. He may be innocent until proven guilty, but he sure seems like the horses back end.
7. Please. They both kinda suck.
8. Talking taxes and spending.
9. Some wise advice on what not to say.
10. British take on Mr Obama’s oratorical technique.
11. Rednecks on the Internets. Heh.
12. Public schools and Katrina.

Good morning. I was real busy yesterday, and didn’t troll for links much. Here’s what I’ve got.

1. Perhaps, “virtue ethics is for idiots” but is that a statement to put alongside “consequential ethics are for knuckleheads” … what is this meta-ethics for kindergarden? 
2. A “score” being touted.
3. Sometimes we all feel that way, eh? (just not at the same time, thankfully)
4. School admissions and wealth.
5. Welcome to America, were a little “do you know who I am” and $5 will buy you a sandwich.
6. Speaking of American responses.
7. A conversation the liberals avoid. More tight coupling of healthcare and politics means more politics in healthcare. Is that a good thing? That’s really what we need, Tammany hall healthcare, where you need to confirm your political alliance and graft vouchers before your mom gets her bypass. Connections get you stuff. Wonderful. Welcome to the new world as envisioned by Mr Obama and company.
8. The economics of piracy (not software but on-the-sea with guns and stuff piracy).

Good morning.

1. Stradeggy and the President, speaking tours (noted here as well). So what was Obama’s strategy in suggestion on opposite days that Israel receed to pre-67 borders and not receed? 
2. Still wrangling with the OSB assasination.
3. I think probably a better hybrid car solution than batteries, at least for recovering braking energy as batteries lose a lot of energy to heat (which also damages the batteries).
4. This is what climate stupidity looks like when gussied up to look like science. Two points. Heat a pot of water to say, 50 degrees (c). Observe. Now heat it up 1-2 degrees more … big difference, eh? Secondly, too bad there is no actual statistical evidence that violent storms have increased over in their intensity or freqency over the last two centuries.
5. Here’s a hint why we might think that they have increased, besides confirmation bias in the mind of the true believers.
6. That being said, the contrast is remarkable, MI before and after.
7. When three men call you an ass, buy a saddle. However, on the Internet, I’ve noticed that if you ignore someone … it’s really like they’ve just gone away.
8. The very old and very new tech finding a meeting ground.
9. Akin to Catholic cover up?
10. A Litmus test for partisan bias. 
11. Lot’s of pea-wits out there.
12. Marriage. We had a small wedding. Hopefully my daughters will do the same. Our anniversary was just last weekend, 18 years. Our first song was not “Damnation”, but perhaps not much better (I don’t know that song). Ours was Lyle Lovett’s “She’s no Lady, She’s my Wife.” 

Good morning.

1. Healthcare and the elderly, two (elderly?) gentlmen discuss … here and here.
2. All those wealthy backers.
3. On ascetic toil.
4. So, this brings up a question, how do you remember Ms Hill and that kerfuffle? True victim or politically motivated character assasination? 
5. Coming to understand Obama. Unless he is saying something politically damaging to himself, there is no reason attribute his statements as being anything other than noise.
6. For graduation.
7. China.
8. I laughed out loud. How about you?
9. For Memorial Day, some thoughts on sacrifice.
10. Our friendly neighborhood racist, sees everyone else as racist it seems.
11. Why is that man being paid for public pronouncement? Perhaps it’s a for a public display of liberal bigotry in full feather.
12. One for women’s rights, just not in Illinois.
13. Another girl going, uhm, very fast!
14. The DSK kerfuffle.

Good morning. 

1. Winning the lottery, and consequences.
2. Big angry white bears.
3. Tax and consequence.
4. So, now what Mr Constitutional lawyer?
5. What happens now that we have unwisely ignored Mr Hamilton’s advice in the Federalist (regarding confirmations).
6. I think he’s wrong on that exacty point (kids for quite some time are going to be using a whole plethora of devices for their formative artworks), but the main point remains. Oddly enough, this weekend our “family movie night” movie was the 80s film Diva, which by the by I’d recommend. They had no idea what a reel to reel tape was.
7. Abuse in the Catholic church and a few myths exploded. 
8. I can never tell which is more affecting, the art or the words.
9. Fun with wet rodents.
10. That 11th commandment (of politics).
11. Non-orientable pasta, seems to me there’s a whole bunch or horrible puns in that notion.
12. Ooooh, incorrect stupid memes from the last election return from the dead. Uhm, Ms Palin was not incorrect in her answer, there were at least 4 different doctrines that could be described as “the Bush Doctrine”. Being unable to answer when an interviewer pretends there is only one is not incorrect but spot on.
13. The tea leaves predict, lots more Arab unrest.