Punishment of the Innocents

Last gym day of the week, and pleasantly sparse with folks, especially boisterous educationalists. As shule winds down its session, they get fewer and fewer, which, of course, leads to the hypothesis that educationalists exercise in direct proportion to the teaching (?) of students?

Anyway, much ado about the Yankee government scandal over the Internal Revenue Service investigating special interest non-taxable groups. From my experience with the IRS, its the non-taxable part that attracts the boll, they could care less about one’s politics so long as taxes are paid with proper humility and proskynesis.

It has become evident however, from the posturing of the chief executive, that a stage of post-glitch governmental operations has been reached known as the “Punishment of the Innocents.” This usually follow the “Hiding of the Guilt” phase. At this point the YG will conduct an investigation that will – probably – determine that career civil servants acted improperly and will be severely punished by being fired or worse. This will not be what actually happened; it is only a scapegoat activity. What likely actually happened is some overzealous political appointee (and yes, I know that is redundant) will have instructed the civil servants who work for this pol to do this evil.

Why do such happen? Simply, because we have political appointees. They have no controls other than elected politicians who appointed them. And civil servants cannot talk to the elected politicians. So any improper or illegal instructions from a political appointee have to be obeyed or the civil servants will be fired or labeled whistleblowers.

This is the tyranny of modern bureaucratic democracy. We do not trust those who work for us but we do trust those who steal from us.

And we punish those who work.

government, politics, tyranny, evil

Add IED to the List

The absence of intrusive, boisterous, obstructionist educationalists continued at gym. Most calming. Good session although the only sticking piece from the science podcasts was some bit about Australopithecus Sediba naturally overpronating.

This put me to mind of the IEDs in Boston yesterday. Ugly. Quite fitting for that city, I hate to say.

I used to travel to Boston a couple of times a year. Not fun. The airport proper is not too bad, if a bit creaky, but it is downhill from there. If one is motoring then the first joy that disappears is the tunnel under the river into the city proper where six lanes neck down to two and everyone is playing barbarian bumper cars. Alternately, if one is going to stay in city there is the subway which is a patchwork of patches and environmental disasters. The section where they have diesel buses running exclusively in tunnels is a toss up between coughing up your lungs or tossing your cookies, to use the vernacular. And the odor sits on you the whole trip so that everyone knows you have ridden the subway to and from the airport.

If you are leaving the city, as I most often was, to go to Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, one got to contend with street designed for mopeds, none orthogonal or adequately marked – a quaint New England custom not localized to Boston – before an interminable motor through depressing countryside.

Staying in city was worse. If one was going to one of the shules on the Charles, there was the joy of dealing with folk of such arrogance as to make congressional staffers seem humble and modest. If one was going downtown the atmosphere was one of impending injury either from muggers or constabulary. Surliness characterized the inhabitants and depression. The only good thing I can say about Boston is that it always made me delighted to return to Alibam.

That was my experience, and while it is individual it is surprisingly uniform. So while I sympathize for those harmed yesterday I sympathize more for all who went to Boston in joyful expectation.

humans, government, depression

Meaningful Criteria

This has already been a bit of a strange day. Today is again near phase change, but offering greater end temperature. What makes it strange is that today’s podcast, an episode of “The Techie Geek” ran out after a bit more than a half hour. This is way short and I had to cast about for something else to listen to for the last third of my session. So I ended up listening to an episode the the Guardian’s science podcast and about all I can recall of that was an interview with the authors of a book on Newton and chronology bashing.

Which got me off to thinking about all this grrr brrr about the nine justicers of the Yankee republic and the matter of same gender marriage. This was primed not just by all the rot uttered on national news programs this week but also by two articles, one [Link] decrying the absence of scientific study of homosexual family life, mostly by the age old gem of denouncing sociology, psychology, and political science as stamp collecting with prejudice. How political science got into that list eludes me. Not only does it fall into the category of any-discipline-that-sez-it’s-a-science,-isn’t, but I am not at all sure what the relationship is between homosexuality and political academia, except individual inclination?

The second article [Link] about how any decision by the nine justicers will impact Alibam where the general attitude towards the homosexual is filtered through rabid religiousness and often with a rope over a tree limb. This fails to display anything except the journalistic dark side of Alibam.

What gets left out of all this discussion is any rationality. The black robed nine are not supposed to be rational, although they will claim it, just legal. But the fact remains that almost all of this is boggish stercus tauri. Simply put, mating (reproduction) is a biological interaction/relationship; marriage is a social interaction/relationship. The first fellow barely got it right that one of the primary purposes of marriage is to provide material support for the raising of children. Everything else is primarily social prevarication and overcomplication.

One other factoid: marriage is not, per se, about generating children, but raising them. That’s post birth. By such qualification, any marriage absent children isn’t really a marriage. Anything differing from that observation is social and/or religionist poo. So all this stuff about elaborate cereminies and elaborate clothes and elaborate rituals is just that, extraneous, unnecessary, superfluous elaboration.

It also needs be noted we can have these elaborations so long as we do not lose sight of their ornamental, afunctional nature. And any discussion we have about marriage and sexual orientation needs to get rapidly beyond, and dismissive of, these geegaws and to the meat of the matter, which is the raising of children. In that regard, SCP’s opinion is that it does not matter what the composition of the household is, so long as it includes children being raised by the other members of the household.

Selah.

humans, behavior, marriage, government, stupidity

Auschwitz Education

Another lovely spring day with waking temperatures around the liquid -> solid phase change of dihydrogen oxide. At least it may be lovely once the rotation of Tellus as insolated the sky. But a quiet day at gym absent all the educationalists and with the into-the-week fall off. I didn;t count cars when I left this morning but less than yesterday.

The podcast today was an episode of the CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” and about all I can say about it is the nothing was abiding. The only bits I recall are about animal mating, one about a competition between male and female fish, newly discovered, intended to reject inferior males, on the female part, and to impregnate as many females as possible, on the male part; the other about crickets with infirmity – parasites – being rejected as mates, except for ones near death who put all their energy into sounding well and fit rather than becoming such.Somehow both these evoked visions of male bogs in Las Vegas.

But I did notice a bit on the electromagnetic audio-visual receiver about the teenage geek who sold an app to Yahoo and this led me to contemplate shules and educationalism. I have commented previously on the low information density in public shules, less today than when I was a bairn. But after hearing a murmur about kids who consistently ace aptitude tests and sag at course grades, it hit me that the information rate is also low. Then it occurred to me that public shules are designed for bogs, that the recognized high achievers at these places are the brightest bogs, a sort of Hitler’s Germany ideal, and that the geeks and nerds are excluded. Which indicates the real danger of high shule drop out numbers, not so much that bogs are exiting but that nerds are as well from under stimulation and antipathy to standardized testing. We can always handle some reject bogs, after all they are only going to swill beer and watch spectator athletics on television, but loss of nerds is a danger to the continuance of the species and the nation.

The point is that nerds, and often, geeks, do not become educationalists. So the folks charged with teaching the young not only do an abysmal job of it, but they are averse to dealing with nerds and geeks. So they basically ignore them unless there is some opportunity for oppression and punishment.

I then had occasion to put this into the context of a recent bit of Alibam legislation, a repulsian punishment of the democrud educationalist association, that permits children in “failing shules” to be moved to better shules along with their share of the educationalist trough. I won’t go into the politics of this. A lot of it is about getting religionist mysticism back into the curriculum and distancing kids from liberal social engineering, hence making them even more troglodytic than their parents. But what occurred is that for nerd and geek kids, all of the public shules are failing, and abysmally. Sadly, I doubt that they will be permitted to exit. After all, if they did, then they could learn and the educationalists would have no one to torture and oppress.

humans, behavior, government, education, tyranny

Happiness Everywhere

OK, it’s Sol day but so far there isn’t much indication of Sol. But then yesterday all the evidence was indirect, much cloudiness in the sky so that all the light was diffuse. But it is also the end of week out and time once more to hawg tabs.

First, from the Australian National U we have the offering (?) that life is a soliton. [Link] It is an intriguing proposal since it offers all sorts of fixes to why and how questions, and it is, I think, testable. And somehow reading it on sundae makes it seem all plausible. I have to admit to not knowing a great deal about solitons. They rose to prominence after I exited shule, and at the time were supposedly dissipationless, so outside my interest area.

I also ran across this cartoon [Link]

and it struck me on several azimuths. When I go to gym I usually get exposed to that rather painful pseudo-science commercial about Einstein and a coupon web site that I always think should end with the speaker being rushed off to hospital after he gets some noxious chemical all over his hand. In the ’50′s and ’60′s the bog view of scientists was shaped by the containment response monster movies from Hollywood and Nippon that were nuclear war wet dreams. Now the scientist facade has been absorbed by the corporate prevarication.

But the part that is most humorous about this is the famous modifier. That is largely a bog thing. Scientists don’t idolize other scientists. We respect and even admire, but we don’t make them celebrity shibboliths, at least until after they have discorporated for some time. So saying that one wants to be a famous scientists is largely a bog perversion and almost assuredly doomed to failure.

As it should be.

Next, a rather encouraging article [Link] about how Alibam is ranked number 45 among the states of the Yankee republic in “happiness.” Does that mean we are number 5 in “seriousness”, or just “misery”, as is implied? I hate to say this but I don’t think I want to live in a “happy” state. I want to live in a competent state, which is unlikely, perhaps impossible, for any state to be.

It turns out that the rating is based on some whacked psychology index and the difference between states is statistically irrelevant. The “happiest” state is Hawaii, which from what I have learned about I would not want to even visit there. FD SCP went there and it was a nightmare, especially the trip. But the whole life style there is stressful and irrational. Not that the life style in Alibam is at all rational, at least for all the bogs. So maybe this is just a bog thing? Can we induce all the bogs to move to the Sandwich Islands and leave the rest of the YR to the geeks and nerds? How can we do this? And how soon?

Next, and contributing to that happiness, is a lovely [Link] entitled “There is no such thing as emptiness. There is only quantum foam.” I have to object to the “only”. It is unnecessarily derogatory. And I prefer vacuum to emptiness. And it is nothing new to physics and physicists. And if it bothers the bogs, then they will move all the sooner to the sandwich islands. But the point is something that children know and see and adults can’t, that there is no emptiness, just stuff we can’t get a good grasp of. [Link]

Next, another happy article [Link] entitled “Would you hire someone with poor grammar skills?” The answer, both in the article and in the poll is a resounding NAY. Those who cannot have an acceptable competency in syntax (and spelling) cannot communicate and hence are almost useless in the workplace. Only as idiot savants segregated and kept in a greenhouse can such be. And thereby the exceptions are few and limited to the mentally exceptional. So bogs with bad grammar can collect rubbish.

And lastly, another lovely article [Link] entitled “NASA chief: Earth is DOOMED if we spot a big asteroid at short notice Action on REAL threat to the planet ‘put off for decades’”. You have to wonder at that “short notice” and “decades”. This is not news, incidentally. It has been known for a long time. What is news is that the Yankee government has finally admitted that if a big space rock comes along we get to join the same death society as the dinosaurs.

I particular liked a quote from the NASA Grand Exalted Pall Bearer:

“The president has a plan. But that plan is incremental. And if we want to save the planet, because I think that’s what we’re talking about, then we have to get together … and decide how we’re going to execute that plan.”

The plan incidentally, is to do nothing until his term runs out and then it is the next guy’s problem. Great confirmation here of how politicians operate. And I won’t make the usual kerfuffle about reading this in a furrin newsmedia.

Not that it isn’t understandable. First, the cost is way high because we’re really talking Space Patrol here. And second, it makes no difference from a politician difference. If the big sky rock doesn’t come in a politicians term, no harm done, and if it does, no more elections. So why worry? So why do anything?

Enjoy the ice cream.

humans, behavior, government, stupidity, astronomy, extinction

Furlough Follies

Today is Luna day, or at least that is what my internet sources indicated. I can see how moon day -> monday, but how did Luna -> moon? My OED, now almost as old and flatulent as myself, indicates that the old english is mona and there are similar words in other european languages. Evidently when the Roman tide receded it took back a good part of the language dominance as well, at least more than they used to promulgate in public shule when I was a student.

This raises several queries: did most of the people consider the departure of the Romans to be boon or bust; how much of what is taught in shule is propaganda or history twiddling; and others?

On the second, my hypothesis is a great deal. I base this on the following. Public shule, after about the third grade at least, is very information sparse and no one in the instrumentality seems to care about it. But they have to be concerned about something. So the obvious hypothesis is that there is some hidden agenda and since it is whacked the educationalists have to dedicate their faculties (no pun intended – its Luna day) to getting the prevarication right.

As to the first I have no such insight. There are, at least, two sides, one the return-to-the-past faction who have the delusion that they can return society to the status quo ante romanum, and the other the protect-us-from-the-past faction that have the delusion that they can engineer society to utopia. Both are nutso, as I believe the Fonz was known to say on occasion as the script dictated. Society, as I am reminded by a recent physics article I read on the viscoelasticity of blood fluid, is like catsup (ketchup?) If you want it to move, it does not; and if you want it to stay well behaved, it does not. Steering society is a matter of movement versus no movement, direction is always unintended, it seems.

On which notes, I see [Link] that the furloughing of Yankee government folks will commence on 26 April, after adequate time has been afforded the social groups called unions the opportunity to do their Tarzan imitations before being totally ignored. For Greater Metropolitan Arab and much of Nawth Alibam, this is the equivalent of the Romans leaving. While a few folks will be left in place – not furloughed – they will be in one of two categories. The first are the executives and their immediate staffs. The theory is that they are needed to run the place. The actuality is that a fiction has to be maintained that they can run the place. The second are the folks who make sure the place doesn’t burn down or rot or whatever while folks are off. They don’t run the place; it runs them.And so they are important and necessary, unlike the executives.

The problem is that the remaining folks, who do work – mostly – will get a day off each week, which cuts their income down by about 0.2. Not quite since their tax burden reduces too, but close enough for SCP hand waving. Anyway, these folks will have about 0.2 less money to spend. And most of that cut will be reflected in reductions in what they think are discretionary spending. That will vary from person to person and household to household but after we get past mortgage and loan payments, basic food, fuel and utilities, and basic clothing, everything else will fit into the discretionary spectrum. Maybe not everything for everyone, but close enough.

So if you are in the business of selling or warehousing or even manufacturing the items in that spectrum, or associated with those items, expect a reduction in your business. If you sell fancy clothes, or clean fancy clothes, expect to take a hit. If you sell cars or houses, expect to take a hit. If you sell entertainment or recreation, expect to take a hit. If you sell services, like cleaning or lawn care or window washing, expect to take a hit.

This will be like the recent recession with one major difference. The recession was specular. Only the folks who lost jobs cut back. This will be a continuum. It will be all over nawth Alibam like an oil spill and the animals choking to death will be the small second and third derivative businesses.

Welcome to third world Amerika.

Bog Time

How bogs do daylight savings time [Link]

Reason to be happy to be a nerd.

But I still hate the Yankee council of thieves for inflicting this tyranny.

government, tyranny,

Tuit Day

Today is Pi day, March the Fourteenth, 3.14, which makes more sense as a holy day than a lot of those proclaimed by the Yankee government.

Contemplate your roundness today. And maybe, eat some pie!

Daylight Dislike

Have I told you today that I hate daylight savings time?

Last two weeks it was light enough at 0600 that I could go out and spread squirrel (and bird) seed without a headlamp.

Today it is 0700 and thanks to a front moving through still dark.

Congress critters are foul blackguards who should be daily lathered with Lava soap.

congress, government, daylight savings, dislike

Sequestration Management

Half way through the gym week! Another not bad day, but then the weight bouncers and cacophonous educationalists are sparse on “T” days. This was science podcast day and much of the content was concerned with the sequestration, largely in the form of eye wringing and hand weeping.

Much of the discussion was about how the cuts had to be taken, being specified in the usual lazy governmental fashion as salami slices – supposed equal distribution of pain. And of course the heads of agencies were trying to break those rules by telling their minions they could cut as they pleased. In other words, if you don’t do salami slicing be prepared to take the political heat when you cancel some pet rock project. Most managers aren’t likely to do so, not so much because of the political heat and the whining of the project principal.

On which azimuth I heard a few interviewees indulge in Tarzan chest thumping declaring that their project could not be cut without complete compromise. Hearing this took me back to my own days as a manager of R&D. And I had project managers who declared thusly.

And I dearly loved it when they did.

Let me start by saying there are three types of project managers:

• those who know they have to take some cuts and so long as it does not exceed their “fair share” they accept stoically and continue to manage;
• those who take their cuts, whine for a while, and then manage on; and
• those who declare that any cut will ruin their program, which is the most wonderful thing since sliced raisin bread with crunchy peanut butter and Kosher garlic dill pickles.

I should comment that that list also is in order of management competency from good to abysmal.

But it’s the last group that actually save the day, a case of arrogance and poor cooperation doing good for a change. First, one has to understand that with R&D projects there is a greater aspect of risk: risk that the project will fail miserably for some unforeseen reason; risk that the project will fail miserably for some foreseen reason; and  raisk that the project will fail and amount to nothing. Now all projects are sold on the basis of the best possible outcome, and after a while poor project managers tend to have drunk the yellow Kool-Aid enough that they start believing it. So in the mind of the project manager everything is “IF-THEN” when actually it is “IF – MAYBE THEN”.

So if you have enough of the soap opera managers, who usually have denied that their projects have a probability of success of about 0.2, you can select the 0.8 riskiest, cancel them entirely and not have to cut any of the lower risk projects managed by competent managers. At worst you can cut the cuts down to nuisance rather than meatless Fridays. And all because of these folks who declare any cut is mortal and thereby let you cut everything.

Makes life much easier for a manager. And overall, better for progress.

organization, government, sequestration, management, stupidity