Off the Beaten Track

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Some posts are overlong or hopelessly misplaced and might best be relocated off the beaten track. If I had the rights to move comments in the dashboard, I would:

  1. Check the box to move the comment to a better location.
  2. Include an url from where the post originally came from for reference purposes.
  3. Move posts to reduce comment flood and clogging.
  4. Move boring posts to keep things interesting and lively.
  5. Shorten and edit comments: (why not be a unique site that edits comments for excellence?). We all work better with editors, why not let trusted commenters be the editor of this site?
  6. Truly excellent comments would be absorbed into the original article by Eric or Dom; like the old masters – Rembrandt – which were in reality a school of 30 painters that created works signed by the patriarch: Rembrandt: Libertarian Car Guy could be a school of dozens of freemen thinkers all publishing under the name of Libertarian Car Guy.
  7. One could discern a pattern of what gets moved (poor quality, not a regular, incoherence, personal attacks) but there need be no written policy.

102 COMMENTS

  1. Once thing we’ll have to do when having discussions with statists, is make the effort to advocate reasonable statist systems. And do their arguing for them.

    The American Mainstream Factions are so out of whack, even a Zimbabwe Warlord would be embarrassed to be associated with them. Generally the faction supporters have no idea what their party stands for. Perhaps we can modify Canada’s party platforms as a starting point?

    1) New Democrats today advocate, among other things:

    Maintenance and expansion of human rights and civil rights, including: gender equality, equal rights for LGBT citizens, rights for people with physical and mental disabilities, workers’ rights, and Aboriginal peoples’ treaty, land, and constitutional rights

    Promoting Interculturalism and an intercultural understanding of America
    Expanding public health care, including dental and prescription drug coverage
    Raising the minimum wage to pace the cost of living
    Reducing poverty in America
    Social assistance policies that reflects citizens’ needs and assist their re-entry to the work force
    Improving environmental protection through government regulations
    National water safety standards
    Increasing corporate taxes for big business and lowering taxes for small businesses
    Abolishing the unresponsive Senate and ensuring more proportional representation
    Expanding funding for public transportation
    A foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid instead of offensive military action
    Ending the American War on Drugs and legalizing recreational drugs

    2) The Conservative Party plan focuses on five key priorities:

    Creating jobs through training, trade and low taxes.
    Supporting families through our Family Tax Cut and more support for seniors and caregivers.
    Eliminating the deficit by 2014-2015 by controlling spending and cutting waste.
    Making our streets safe through new laws to protect children and the elderly.

    Standing on guard for America by investing in the development of America’s South, cracking down on human smuggling and strengthening the American Border Forces.

    http://www.conservative.ca/?page_id=44

    3) The Liberal Party Principles and policies:

    The principles of the party are based on liberalism as defined by various liberal theorists and include individual freedom for present and future generations, responsibility, human dignity, a just society, political freedom, religious freedom, national unity, equality of opportunity, cultural diversity, bilingualism, and multilateralism.

    The Liberal party has favoured a variety of policies from both right and left of the political spectrum. When it formed the government from 1993 to 2006, it was a strong champion of balanced budgets, and eliminated the budget deficit completely from the federal budget in 1995 by reducing spending on social programs or delegating them to the provinces, and promised to replace the Goods and Services Tax in the party’s famous Red Book.

    It also legalized same-sex marriage and the use of cannabis for medical purposes, and had proposed complete decriminalization of possession of small amounts of it.

    During the 2011 election the Liberal party’s policies included:

    Introduction of a family care plan for Americans supporting ill family members
    Pension plan reform
    Additional investment in higher education via direct financial aid (learning passport)
    Spending restraint (less on consultants and advertising)
    Reduce deficit to 2 per cent of GDP by 2013
    Cancel corporate tax deduction and return rates to 18 per cent (currently at 16.5 percent)
    Restoration of the long-form census
    Quadruple renewable energy production, including wind, solar and biomass energy sources
    Introduce a national food policy to support American farmers

    A libertarian can understand and advocate any political system with a little effort. It’s even conceivable, that decent parties with less coercion could be crafted from the existing majority parties.

    We could call these parties:
    True Liberals, Free Liberals, or Real Liberals
    True Conservatives, Free Conservatives, Real Conservatives
    True Democrats, Free Democrats, or Real Democrats
    True Republicans, Free Republicans, Real Republicans

    If you trace the existing parties back through the years to the Age of Reason, and then the Age of Enlightenment, you can see with hindsight where they each went astray.

    And then make necessary recommendations so that the common weal and common good can once again be better served regardless of which party is victorious in national elections.

  2. Works by Eric Frank Russell: (1905-1978) UK writer who also used the pseudonyms – Webster Craig, Duncan H Munro, Niall Wilde, and Brad Kent.

    Allamagoosa
    http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133476/1439133476___3.htm

    WASP
    http://www.resist.com/WASP.pdf

    Bitter End
    https://archive.org/details/BitterEnd

    Sole Solution
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbfYMYRMnxs

    The Ponderer
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUK1IN7aL7k

    ‘Sole Solution’ by Eric Frank Russell. (1956)

    He brooded in darkness and there was no one else. Not a voice, not a whisper. Not the touch of a hand. Not the warmth of another heart.
    Darkness.
    Solitude.

    Eternal confinement where all was black and silent and nothing stirred. Imprisonment without prior condemnation. Punishment without sin. The unbearable that had to be borne unless some mode of escape could be devised.

    No hope of rescue from elsewhere. No sorrow or sympathy or pity in another soul, another mind. No doors to be opened, no locks to be turned, no bars to be sawn apart. Only the thick, deep sable night in which to fumble and find nothing.

    Circle a hand to the right and there is nought. Sweep an arm to the left and discover emptiness utter and complete. Walk forward through the darkness like a blind man lost in a vast, forgotten hall and there is no floor, no echo of footsteps, nothing to bar one’s path.

    He could touch and sense one thing only. And that was self.
    Therefore the only available resources with which to overcome his predicament were those secreted within himself. He must be the instrument of his own salvation.
    How?

    No problem is beyond solution. By that thesis science lives. Without it, science dies. He was the ultimate scientist. As such, he could not refuse this challenge to his capabilities.
    His torments were those of boredom, loneliness, mental and physical sterility. They were not to be endured. The easiest escape is via the imagination. One hangs in a strait-jacket and flees the corporeal trap by adventuring in a dreamland of one’s own.
    But dreams are not enough. They are unreal and all too brief. The freedom to be gained must be genuine and of long duration. That meant he must make a stern reality of dreams, a reality so contrived that it would persist for all time. It must be self-perpetuating. Nothing less would make escape complete.
    So he sat in the great dark and battled the problem. There was no clock, no calendar to mark the length of thought. There were no external data upon which to compute. There was nothing, nothing except the workings within his agile mind.

    And one thesis: no problem is beyond solution.
    He found it eventually. It meant escape from everlasting night. It would provide experience, companionship, adventure, mental exercise, entertainment, warmth, love, the sound of voices, the touch of hands.

    The plan was anything but rudimentary. On the contrary it was complicated enough to defy untangling for endless aeons. It had to be like that to have permanence. The unwanted alternative was swift return to silence and the bitter dark.

    It took a deal of working out. A million and one aspects had to be considered along with all their diverse effects upon each other. And when that was done he had to cope with the next million. And so on . . . on . . . on.

    He created a mighty dream of his own, a place of infinite complexity schemed in every detail to the last dot and comma. Within this he would live anew. But not as himself. He was going to dissipate his person into numberless parts, a great multitude of variegated shapes and forms each of which would have to battle its own peculiar environment.

    And he would toughen the struggle to the limit of endurance by unthinking himself, handicapping his parts with appalling ignorance and forcing them to learn afresh. He would seed enmity between them by dictating the basic rules of the game. Those who observed the rules would be called good. Those who did not would be called bad. Thus there would be endless delaying conflicts within the one great conflict.

    When all was ready and prepared he intended to disrupt and become no longer one, but an enormous concourse of entities. Then his parts must fight back to unity and himself.
    But first he must make reality of the dream. Ah, that was the test!
    The time was now. The experiment must begin.
    Leaning forward, he gazed into the dark and said, “Let there be light.”

    And there was light.

  3. Challenge #1: When someone hears an idea that conflicts with his own, the natural tendency is to get defensive, to intellectually “hunker down,” in an effort to “win” the debate. As long as the new idea feels like an external, foreign concept, in conflict with one’s own values and beliefs, the person is extremely unlikely to be at all open to it, or to even think about it.

    Solution #1: “Unlocking the Cage” combines several factor to defuse this common psychological response:

    1) since the user isn’t dealing
    with an actual person, isn’t being rushed, and there is no peer pressure, MOST of the usual stressors that lead to confrontation aren’t there to begin with.
    2) The process, from the very beginning, makes it abundantly clear that the user is the ultimate
    judge of what is true, what is right, and what is logical. In
    short, from the user’s viewpoint there really ISN’T a conflict
    viewpoint at all.
    3) This is accomplished by doing the entire
    process through QUESTIONS, and never assertions. The narrator/host of the presentation NEVER says “I,” and NEVER expresses a personal opinion. In other words, the ONLY “opinion” involved is that of the user.
    4) The entire theme is NOT “your ideas are bad, you should adopt these ideas instead.” Rather, the entire thing is about ASKING the person about his thoughts, gently inviting him to explore his OWN morals and reasoning, with the SOLE PURPOSE being to see if the USER finds any inconsistencies in his OWN assumptions and beliefs, with the ONLY goal of that being to help the user be faithful to HIS OWN values.

    – ——————————-

    Challenge #2: In a live discussion–whether in person, online, whatever–people don’t like pausing to think, for fear of sounding stupid, or sounding like they don’t have an answer.

    Solution #2: There is no rush, and no time constraints on the pace at which the user proceeds through “Unlocking the Cage.” At ANY point he can choose to pause to think about a question, whether for ten minutes, two hours, or a month. Then, whenever he wants, he can pick up right where he left off. This point, and the next, actually make “Unlocking the Cage” MORE effective than a one-on-one in-person discussion.

    – ——————————–

    Challenge #3: If people are being asked questions, and sense it as a possible trap, or an attempt to trick him into saying something stupid, he will be on the defensive, instead of being open and honest.

    Solution #3: The process explains at the beginning that at ANY point, the user can go back and change a previous answer, and pick up the process from there. And again, since the user is the ONLY “judge” involved, and the only human being even watching, he doesn’t have to feel embarrassed about changing his mind. He can even “try” one answer on, see where it goes, without anyone nagging or judging him, or accusing him of flip-flopping.

    – ——————————-

    Challenge #4: There are up sides and down sides of having one-on- one discussions, as opposed to group discussions. Peer pressure tends to make people less honest, as people often follow the crowd. However, it can also be useful for a person to see how OTHER people answer a question.

    Solution #4: “Unlocking the Cage” manages to get the best of both, and avoid the worst of both. Since every user is anonymous, he doesn’t have to care about what anyone else might think of his answer, because no one will ever know. But the plan is to have all answers added to a database (with NO personal information identifying any particular user), so every user can, if they want, see what percentage of OTHER people who have done “Unlocking the Cage” answered each question which way. So each user gets all the information, but none of the pressure.

    http://www.larkenrose.com/blog.html

    So are we a Liberty movement? Not exactly. We’re all a part of a liberty COMMUNITY, headed towards becoming a liberty SOCIETY.

    Josie the Outlaw explains the police state
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpOETbsnJT4

    Matt Lindland on Libertarianism
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF816AGuWk8

    Josie the Outlaw at Liberty Fest IV
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZoR0UIveE

    How to Avoid Fear Based Reactions When Dealing with Cops – Derrick Broze
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pMggugqZQc

    Fighting for God Given Rights – Josie the Outlaw & Alex Jones
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYTSPnvR6v0&feature=youtu.be

  4. The Declaration of Independence scam looks fairly played out. Just look at all these nations who’ve declared it:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_independence

    The constant truth is the same few top tier nations tend to retain global hegemony no matter how many new worlds are discovered. Even when these new worlds are far more productive and value producing. The same old dogs keep fooling new dogs into thinking their old tricks are new tricks.

    One of the oldest trick that hasn’t been used for a while is to declare an act of abjuration.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Abjuration

    The historic and current argument for abjuration is a follows:

    By oppressing and violating the ancient rights of their subjects, the United States can be considered to have vacated its right to rule.

    It’s one thing to erect a lawless police state in Canada, Germany, and many other places. Doing so doesn’t violate their national ruling papers.

    It is entirely another manner to do so in the United States.

    “The Act was remarkable for its extensive Preamble, which took the form of an ideological justification, phrased as an indictment (a detailed list of grievances) of King Philip. This form, which is strikingly similar to that of the American Declaration of Independence, has given rise to speculations that Thomas Jefferson, when he was writing the latter, was at least partly inspired by the Act of Abjuration.

    The Preamble was based on Vindiciae contra tyrannos by Philippe de Mornay, and other works of monarchomachs may have been sources of inspiration also. The rebels, in their appeal to public opinion, may have thought it more important to quote “authoritative” sources and refer to “ancient rights” they wished to defend. By deposing a ruler for having violated the Social Contract with his subjects, they were the first to apply these theoretical ideas.”

    Tim Hawkins:

    Cletus take the wheel

    Chick Fil A

    A Homeschool Family

    Pretty Pink Tractor

    A Whiff of Kansas

    • I’ll add, “By oppressing and violating the ancient rights of their subjects, the United States Gooberment – and their agents – can be considered to have vacated the right to rule.”

      Fucking bastards.

      • @Garysco,

        Religious used to mean scrupulous, exact, devout. A stern parental hickory switch when you got out of line.

        Now it just represents some vague feelings, some robotic rote bromides, and a virulent strain of authoritarian lockstep marching orders everyone lies about complying with.

        religious (adjective) – etymology:
        11th century, “devout, pious, imbued with or expressive of religious devotion,” Transferred sense of “scrupulous, strict, exact” is recorded from 1590s.

        • @Tor – The greatest invention of those who are taught the art of rulership IMHO. Interesting how the unseen bearded one in white robes is “on our side”, no matter which side you choose. Cannot prove it or disprove it. Brilliant.

          • Dear Tor,

            One phenomenon that never fails to crack me up is football teams, in all seriousness, with perfectly straight faces, holding group prayers in the locker room.

            Both teams assume god is on their side, and that their winning a ball game would prove something about god, not sure exactly what.

          • http://www.shirtofun.com/image/cache/data/Gods-busy_rect-500×500.jpg

            (Since I can’t post the image itself!)

            I believe god helps those who help themselves.
            I would like to first help myself to a .50 (Ma Deuce) and then we can have a discussion about what’s “Mine” and what’s “Yours.”
            And while I know that makes me sound like FSA, since I figure the FSA is OUR collective problem…. I have a LOT of ammo to expend before we get to the question of what’s mine/yours.
            I’m simple, really: I want my motorcycle, a gym with a pool (membership will suffice), a hot woman (which I have to find, after all, and must be mutual), fast car (I miss my WRX), and FREEDOM TO ENJOY THEM – which also means gainful employment, somewhere I can be productive.
            Wepaons and explosives are gravy, since they’re not needed until someone wants to do me harm. I can smush a lot of problems with a WRX… 😀
            I’m also flexible on the roof over my head. I can rent or buy, having done both… I’m not TOO destructive. Usually. As long as you have solid construction. (Jokes aside – I dent wallboard when I lean on it. 🙁 But anyone over about 200 pounds can do that regardless.)

            How unreasonable is that? I want to WORK, to get what I WANT, and then be “allowed” to enjoy it, AS I SEE FIT.
            Real Rebel there… 😛

      • Dear Gary,

        “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

        That certainly explains a lot. It explains why it is wholly inadequate to the government of the Free Shit Army.

        LOL.

        By the way, left liberal Salon dot com just published another panicky article “refuting” libertarianism.

        Methinks they doth protest too much. If we libertarians weren’t gaining ground, the liberal chic crowd over at Salon would not even bother mentioning us or attempting to discredit our ideas.

      • Eureka! And he posted this only one day later:

        Elected officials will do anything to maintain power. The name of the game is to to get re-elected at all costs, which preferably are yours. Running a campaign is expensive, so politicians are dependent upon contributions in return they take care of their friends. The proof is in the numbers. Strategas, a macro-research/brokerage firm formed a lobbying index. The index has out performed the general market for the past 15 years. The Economist reported that “Strategas calculates the return on lobbying expenses was $220 for each $1 spent.”

        Thye amount of money given to politicians to buy favors has outperformed the S&P500 by 11% a year since 2002 . There have been bumps along the way that are natural cycles. Nonetheless, the index fell sharply in 2008 and again this summer, when debt-ceiling brinkmanship raised the prospect of government austerity. But at other times, it seems remarkable that companies would do anything but lobby. A particularly vivid example was in 2004, when an aggressive corporate campaign prompted Congress to grant a one-off tax holiday for American companies to repatriate foreign earnings. The outright return on lobbying costs, according to one of the various studies that served as inspiration for the Strategas index, was $220 for each $1 spent. (see also CNBC).

        Get rid of career politicians and we may return to sanity.
        http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/

        • We have severe problems coming, actually, for these very reasons.
          Let’s put a few things together:
          1 – TEA Party candidates are losing, can’t even get into primaries. GOP Incumbents are winning instead, and by LARGE percentages.
          2 – Older people, more prone to be conservative, are dying off. While we might not have a glut of foolish youngsters (Liberals) as we did with Baby Boom, we still have many more who will be around a lot onger than the conervative-minded oldsters. Bear in mind, you GET to be older by BEING conservative…. And it’s a natural transition as we age, as well. We want to keep what is ours. Children still think money grows on trees…

          3 – Read this first: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/justice-is-dead-in-amerika_052014.
          So… the system is corrupt as all hell, which we tend to accept as a basic truth. See also #2, BTW. And this is not an unusual occurrence, even aside from copblock. (Or, the Piggy-centric Police One – where you can hear these animals CELEBRATING cases of brutality. I don’t go there, so I can’t toss out URLs. Basically, if you find a story about police brutality, they’ll celebrate the officer there. Read a story of police corruption, P1 will bemoan the horrible state of being caught. Case closed, we’re better off roasting them, AND their families, while they sleep.)
          Another example: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/mis-trial-for-cop-who-literally-exploded-a-womans-eyeballs-permanently-blinding-her_052014
          Or: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/no-whites-allowed-student-booted-from-conference-because-of-skin-color-because-i-was-white-they-would-feel-unsafe_052014

          “The People” will not – EVER – Get us out of this mess. THEY WANT IT THIS WAY. The Sheep follow the shepherd, even to the slaughterhouse. Because it’s always worse elsewhere. The Corp IS Mother, the corp IS Father… (Psi-corps, Babylon 5.)

          The game itself is rigged, but even when we see where it’s rigged – it COSTS too much to be bothered making the injustice costly. Too big to Fail. So we have the Fascism here, and no one will actually do anything about it…. And meantime, the surveillance state creeps along, making it harder (and MORE costly in future) to do ANYTHING to these SOBs.

          But every sheep knows, the other farms are worse….

          Tell me again – how many sheep have BEEN to another farm? Especially if you cut out the vets? And then slice away those who are the Shepherd’s Elite? The Sheepdogs, who would like us to think they are our PROTECTORS – who now have tanks. MRAPs. And better weaponry than the military, sometimes.
          And with the ammo and weapons purchases – for the F’in FDA? Seriously? SMGs, mind! With full-size, 30-round clips.

          I keep looking to Continuum…. So far, Continuum has been UNDERSTATING things. There’s no NEED to install implants… No need to completely CONTROL people. The sheep will do as they are told – they’re too brutalized to HAVE a soul or mind.

          Recall #2 – it’s going to get worse. The liberal mind is about more than “money grows on trees,” it is also about permissiveness. Do what you will, shall be the whole of the law. (Until I disagree, and then you’ll be a criminal.)

          I think, to quote from another great piece of dystopian futurism: I think it’s enough to, “make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.”

          No matter HOW horrific a gourp of rebels could get: they’d STILL do infinitely LESS damage than a government. And to fewer people.

          >>Sigh<<

          What to do when the RIGHT thing to do – is wrong?

  5. Maybe Jalopnik’s Matt Hardigree plagarized something from Business Insider? Maybe added some copypasta of his own even. His saying he is the source of this article is crazy talk.

    I am inclined to consider BrentP’s BusinessInsider article from 2009 by Barry Ritholtz to be a much more likely candidate as the actual originator of this cut and paste Zero Hedge zombie article.

    Freakin internet. One guy does one bit of original research, thinking, and writing back in 2009. Then one million peanut galleryists swoop in and take most of the credit, get most of the views, and make most of the money from someone elses intellectual labor. An unending stolen gravy train now 5 years worth of delicious carcasses being supped upon by photocopier-minded blogbots of every flavor and niche.

    IP might not be property. But the false IP system currently in place is ridiculous and rewards the scumbags and hacks while starving the good guys and original thinkers and researchers.

    Thanks Helot, BrentP. The story is there are 3.7 million unsold cars as of March 2014 (or April 2014)

    <a href="http://www.nasdaq.com/article/diversify-your-approach-to-the-auto-sector-cm352157&quot; I'm surprised clover hasn't posted this article, since he's such an astute investor and Nasdaq Raconteur Deluxe.

    “So after a sluggish first two months, 2014 sales figures finally appear to be living up to expectations

    While sales are looking good, one thing we must keep an eye on is inventory levels, which have also been creeping higher. The volume of unsold vehicles hits 3.7 million at the end of March, which is the highest unsold inventories have hit since 2006.”

    – crack investigative inquiry: Are they really sales, if they’re still lying around in finished good inventory? Everyone take two months off. We’ve got 87 days of sales ready to go. Let’s cut the crap for once, you lying shit-teethed shills.

    “I like the sector, but instead of picking any one or stocks to trade, I would prefer to take a more diverse approach with a trade on the auto ETF First Trust NASDAQ Global Auto Index ( CARZ )”

    – Why in the hell do you like the sector, making a shit-ton of expensive paper weights no one is able to buy is not a cause for celebration and increasing investment, give me a break.

    • Dear Tor,

      “… the false IP system currently in place is ridiculous and rewards the scumbags and hacks while starving the good guys and original thinkers and researchers. ”

      You nailed it.

      If we libertarians have learned anything, it’s that whenever the goonvermin purports to “do good” the result will be evil.

      Minimum wages lead to unemployment
      Price controls lead to shortages
      “IPR” so-called leads to corporate rent-seeking

      IPR is no exception to this iron law. Why should we be surprised?

      • This needs repeating: “whenever the goonvermin purports to “do good” the result will be evil.

        Minimum wages lead to unemployment
        Price controls lead to shortages
        “IPR” so-called leads to corporate rent-seeking”

        It’s too bad the fascist “progressives” I know can’t see the Forrest for the trees.

        [I led them to water, and don’t let them tell you nobody warned them.]

  6. I guess you could travel to any of the stars in Orion. From our Earthly perspective, you’d be “in Orion”, as it were.

    It’s exceedingly hard to rationate in cloverspeak, it appears. That’s just one more way they encourage us to discuss things that sound right and sane, I guess. Screw that.

    Thinking back to all the times my parents came home from their jobs together, they always talked in the same cliches. And visited the same topics of expected parental banter.

    What’s for dinner, Ma. What happened today offspring? What should we watch tonight? What approved familial leisure activity should we pursue, gang? The matrix, it’s everywhere, and all of us we maintain it and live it.

    Chinese constellations
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_constellations
    enclosures, mansions, asterisms,

    List of Arabic star names
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_star_names

    Another try at constellation explication.

    A constellation is a group of stars viewed from the Earth. Within each group, imaginary lines to produce patterns can connect the stars. Ancient astronomers saw in these pattern pictures of the animals and heroes of their myths that had been placed in the sky by the gods. More than half the constellations have names that came from the Greeks and Romans, who probably got them from the Babylonians.

    There are 88 constellations recognized by astronomers today. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century AD, named 48 constellations in a book called the Almagest, and 40 more have been added since. The majority of Ptolemy’s names have been retained. European astronomers gave most of the others to the constellations of the southern sky in the 17th and 18th centuries.

    Although all the stars in the same constellation look closer together in the sky, they are not necessarily close in space because some may be much further away than others. The constellations exist purely as an accidental result of the way stars appear to us on the Earth.

    From one place on the Earth different constellations are seen at different times of the year. This happens because, as well as turning on its axis, the Earth is always moving round the Sun, making one circle each year. A constellation, which is visible during one part of the year, may appear close to the Sun six months later; it would not then appear in the night sky. Some constellations can only be seen from the Northern Hemisphere and some only from the Southern Hemisphere. Thus the constellation Ursa Major cannot be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, while the Southern Cross cannot be seen from the Northern Hemisphere.

  7. Dear Eric,
    You can’t escape to the constellation Orion, because as always, you’ve been lied to, it doesn’t even exist.

    Here are distances of the Major stars of so-called Orion from Earth. They appear equidistant from our vantage point, but are not.

    Betelgeuse – light years from Earth – 643
    Rigel – light years from Earth – 772
    Bellatrix – light years from Earth – 243
    Mintaka – light years from Earth – 900
    Alnilam – light years from Earth – 1359
    Alnitak – light years from Earth – 800
    Saiph – light years from Earth – 724

    Orion Nebula – light years from Earth – 1244

    20,000 years from now, there’ll be no Orion, nor any other constellation we currently think we can see. All visible stars we can see are in the milky way, and they’re all rotating around the center of the milky way making their true separation obvious.

    After even a brief period of rotation, because they’re vastly far apart from each other, they cease to appear being part of the same grouping. Already the Argo Navis, and many other ancient constellations have ceased to exist in our visible skies and are no longer listed as constellations.

    No more Argonauts, because the constellation vanished
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_Navis

    True unrelated nature of Orion stars
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28constellation%29#Stars

    True distance of Orion Nebula, which is completely unrelated to Orion stars
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula

    The Babylonians called Orion The Heavenly Shepherd. The Jews’ ancient myths about this shepherd while in Babylonian captivity are probably the source phenomenon of biblical stories of God that exist to this day in various forms and trans-cultural re-tellings.

    NASA’s craptistic scientism regarding Orion:
    http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131212.html

    “Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, are the bright bluish stars from east to west (lower right to upper left) along the diagonal in this gorgeous cosmic vista.

    Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie about 1,500 light-years away, born of Orion’s well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have intriguing and some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the lower right.

    The famous Orion Nebula itself is off the right edge of this colorful star field. The well-framed, wide-field telescopic image spans about 4 degrees on the sky.”

    – What a load of shit from NASA, hardly a true phrase in the whole propaganda mythic regurgitation of ancient factual errors. State science, what a joke.

    This may not be parseable, I don’t care, I’m pursuing and explaining truths, even those I can’t fluently articulate with simplicity and ease.

    • Good stuff, Tor. As always!

      I’m encouraged by the fact that extra-solar planets have gone from speculative (though highly probable) to certain. IIRC, the count is now in the hundreds of known extra-solar worlds, including potentially life-viable (as we know it) rocky worlds orbiting within the “goldilocks” zone of their sun, potentially just warm enough for liquid water to exist. Not too cold – or too hot.

      I know I will probably not live to see it, but I am certain the day will come when men will walk these worlds. When men are no longer imprisoned on this beautiful but bound earth of ours.

      Imagine the limitless possibilities. And imagine if we could just . . . leave. If the Clovers were powerless to prevent it. And could never find us in the vastness of the undiscovered country that lies so tantalizingly close, though – for now – so very far away….

      • Eric, EVERYONE,
        If you think humans are getting off this rock before the PTB have us chipped and controlled…. Well, I want what you’re smokin’, ’cause I need some good news these days.

        I won’t rehash – but we’re seeing implanted computers (and not just RFIDs) being examined for mood control and medication delivery already. I’ve posted the links myself.
        Why bother GROWING clones, or ASSEMBLING armies – if you have a malleable bio-computer (brain) in an organic ambulatory system, all ready to be “processed” into a disposable soldier (food technician; valet; waiter; enforcer/police; EMS; etc.)

        I believe “The Elites” will render us all extinct, themselves included – and never realize what they’ve done. They will be chipped, too, after all – it will be “how things are done.” “Procedure.” “For Safety.”
        Maybe that’s the most we can hope for, that these imbeciles kill EVERYONE off, not JUST us.

        But I’m a cynic…

        • “Another generation is born and these institutions are questioned and undermined. Then, an “unraveling” era unfolds. As Strauss and Howe write, “Both the demand and supply of social order are falling. This is the autumnal quadrant of the saeculum, when vines luxuriate, fruit spoils, leaves fall, and the respect for life’s fundamentals reappears.”” …

          The Fourth Turning, Jean. The Fourth Turning.

          • Helot & Jean,
            I have to admit, I’m not familiar with the first through the fourth turnings.

            Strauss Howe Generational Theory
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

            I’m a fan of Ridley’s Red Queen human nature theory, but I’m probably the only one here
            http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/otherbooks/mr_redqueen.html

            Eric,
            Any kind of off-world success will likely be the breakthrough we’re desperately waiting for.

            The greatest thing about America was for hundreds of years it was wild and unregimented by the ruling class.

            To those hardy enough to survive, offered a lifetime of self-determination and freedom from all the shitty civilizations and tyrannies of the all the miserable, idiotic, Old Worlds.

            If I was on the International Space Station, I’d fire up some rockets and get the away from this terrible place. Get as far away as my fuel and supplies would take me.

            Surely there are a few rogue scientists who could fly some things up there to make them all able to provide their own air, water, fuel, and food without supply runs from earthly tyrants.

  8. So true, Helot. Let me be the first to confess.

    I am a recovering Reek.

    When only days old, my genitals were hideously butchered as part of some unspeakable covenant to an invisible psychopath.

    Next I was swaddled in cloth and forced to soil myself. Other times, I was swaddled in a disposable rayon topsheet and a polyethylene backsheet.

    Probably my Dr Spock hippy parents lied, and cooed pleasing sounds and pleasant fabrications rather than the truth.

    But the plain fact was, I was a fecal and urine encrusted Reek. Without dignity. Abused at an animal level from the very start. A foul smelling wailing beast prisoner, caged by groveling underlings of overlord Brutes of the worst kind. They had ideals of live and let live. But had no idea how to practice live and let live.

    After learning the most preposterously inefficient of locomotion while balancing on only two legs, I was introduced to underwear and pants. An especially uncomfortable and emasculatiing experience.

    Sadistic fabrics that crushed and oppressed my most vital and sacred man parts beyond imagining. Arbitrary garments that were to be worshipped and preserved almost as if they were Gods.

    I was forced to move about and act as if my very animal intelligence wasn’t being stolen from me by the most ruthless of central authoritarians hell bent on dronelike eunuch retards. My follicle proteins were ruthlessly severed. I was poisoned by countless poisons and feminine perfumes.

    It never felt right, some times I would try to secretively position my stunted phallus towards the sky, which is would be its natural inclination, given the obscene condition of being made to balance on my hind legs.

    Within a few seconds, the nearest Ramsey older kid would punch the air out of me and bellow “stop playing with your pokey, Reek!” Your fly is unzipped Reek. Your garments are soiled Reek. Your clothes stink, Reek. You smell foul and smudged by soils and muds of the earth, Reek.

    Day after panopticon day, oppressor after oppressor, I was taught to absorb and normalize the pathetic ethos of the Reek race. Be quiet. That’s not yours. Go to bed. Listen to me or else.

    We are all of us so polluted and mangled that we can only be the faintest glimmer of a new shining new age of freethought and freeaction.

    For anyone raised as a Reek by Ramseys, which is probably all of us, there is only so much we can do to remediate and heal from the unspeakable unmanning we’ve all endured.

    At the very least, let us learn never to be Ramseys. To never claim to be the better. The more authorized. The more powerful.

    Yet let us also no longer grovel as Reeks. Abandon all concepts of rights and wrongs. Punishments and taboos. There is only the natural pursuit of happinesses. And the pursuit of happinesses, which may potentially infringe on others.

    Let us only learn how not to infringe. Not learn how to be the most right and authoritative. But the least infringing. And the least deterred from pursuing our true animal and mental happinesses, however rare and uncommon they may be.

  9. All the unsold new cars left to die deteriorating out in the elements and unmaintained

    There are hundreds of places like this in the world today and they keep on piling up. Why are they using runways at abandoned airbases to park thousands of cars if car sales are normal?

    Real life Dallas Buyers Club.

    Colorado has become the first US state to allow terminally ill people to take experimental drugs – even those which are years away from getting federal approval.

    • I will answer the same as I have everywhere those ‘unsold’ photos and articles have turned up. They are BS.

      1) car factories park cars outside as finished goods areas. It’s normal.
      2) Same for docks waiting for shipping.
      3) the overflows are photos from five years ago or more.

      • BrentP wrote, “3) the overflows are photos from five years ago or more.”

        So, they sell All their inventory, every year, year after year,… after year?
        And they Never have any leftovers?

        They are nothing like sub–prime housing? No excess inventory? No shadow inventory?
        Is that what you’re saying here?

      • Fact:
        “US auto inventory stockpiles have been growing, with the number of unsold vehicles rising to 3.7 million units at the end of March 2014 – the highest level since 2006.”
        (that’s there reported and possibly manipulated total. The point of these photos is to cast doubt on Big Brother’s lies that “chocolate production is at an all time high”)

        Thanks for pointing out the age of the photos. If you have a source for this assertion, it would be helpful. If only we could all move to a pursuit and then tackling of factual situations.

        Let’s say for arguments sake you are 5x more knowledgeable than everyone here about the auto industry and its practices. It would remain the case that there are some amount of cars sitting outdoors at any given time. All that really matters, in this case, is what that number really is. And what the Crony Corporatists and Statists are saying it is. Right?

        How many cars are built and just sitting somewhere, what is the number? Saying something is customary, is besides the point, and doesn’t assist in our quest for the truth of the matter.

        I don’t have a dog in the fight either way. Perhaps this happened in 2009. I don’t see how that makes it somehow acceptable.
        http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1013231/pg5

        I included this here because this is an automotive themed site. And zero hedge is generally reliable, though certainly not libertarian. It trades links with shtfplan and peak prosperity/chris martenson among other sites.

        To my mind the photos are real. They provide damning evidence of the manipulated crony capitalism we live under, also known as corporatism.

        Secondarily, you are also welcome to assert your expectation that whenever something gets posted on the internet it should be relatively new information. Again in this case, I don’t agree with that mindset, expecting everything posted on the internet to be breaking news does not seem reasonable to me.

        Instead it seems like yet another cheap tactic, to avoid talking about brass tacks and objective truths. I would hope this forum wouldn’t be a place where academic sophistry gambits are considered legitimate discourse. (Not saying you engaged in them, just stating a general expectation we hold of each other)

        Within the article, they acknowledge these photos need an update.

        UPDATE: Currently May 16th, 2014, all of these cars at the Nissan Sunderland test track have disappeared? Now I don’t believe they have all suddenly been sold. I would guess they may have been taken away and recycled to make room for the next vast production run.

        Peak Car
        http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/peak-car-they-just-keep-piling-up/

        US Auto Industry to see solid growth in 2014 (cough)
        http://www.bidnessetc.com/business/auto-industry-analysis-general-motors-nyse-gm-us-auto-industry-poised-for-solid-growth-in-2014/

        Nov 2013 inventory at 76 days of sales
        http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-02/most-autos-on-u-s-lots-since-05-has-ford-leading-cuts.html
        – this is the most autos on lots since 2005.

        We have reached peak car in the US
        http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/01/21/the-american-cities-with-the-most-growth-in-car-free-households/
        In 2007 there were 2.07 vehicles per US household
        In 2012 there were 1.98 vehicles per US household

        • All I can think of in response is this bit by Gary North, just think: People do Not give a crap. They do Not care what they shove in their gullets. They do Not care what the so-called doctors inject into their children’s arms. They Love the gooberment More than they Love their own children. Now what’s that tell you? [Besides, “We’re freaking surrounded”, and “WFD”?]
          A mass awakening ain’t happening, It’s All about the money!
          And that’s sad:

          How Snowden’s Revelations Have Strengthened the NSA

        • Here’s the source article:

          http://www.businessinsider.com/unsold-cars-around-the-world-2009-2

          Note the date. Feb 2009.

          What is march? The end of the first 1/4. That means there is a huge rush to build product and get it out the door for the 1st 1/4 stats.

          One employer, they made small stuff. consumer electronics. In december they would bring in the semi-trailers and as the factory made as much as possible the product would be moved from finished goods into the trailers. This was then considered ‘shipped’ product. I wouldn’t go anywhere until the new year. Wouldn’t be in the hands of end users until months later. But people made their numbers. It’s all about making numbers. start worrying when it stays like this.

          • Thanks BrentP. Let me state for the record I know fuckall about the auto industry in particular. I too once loved cars, but then grew to despise them because they became the Tyrants best-loved vehicles for control and total domination.

            I have experience in a Ford dealership, I used to come in the late afternoon and make threatening collection calls to their book of overdue Auto Repair Services that hadn’t yet been paid.

            I’ve seen the Service Writer at his counter first hand, and all the MadMen Sales Warriors strutting about gladhanding and buttslapping as well.
            – – –

            As of April 30th, 2014, the US has 87 days of sales laying around somewhere. This would seem to be an incredibly bad indicator.

            Especially since it’s almost certainly a gross fabrication to enable our Sovietesque Crony Corporatists to appear to “make their numbers” as you say.
            – – –

            Americans lost the production war long ago to East Asian Tigers and Just In Time production methods.

            Finish Goods in the modern world are a terrible liability. Only idiot American Dinosaur minds continue to claim they are Assets.(sophistry alert, I can’t think of a more objective case to present here, I’m sorry)

            American cost accounting is a joke, US revenue accounting is likewise about as respectable as North Korean and Zimbabwean accounting, I’m afraid.(fancy populist assertions, need proof here)
            – – –

            I can follow the logic of them bringing back these pictures. Somewhere there are at least 3.7 million cars, just in the US, which only buys 16 million a year. Chances are this glut of finished goods is again the case worldwide.

            They don’t have new pictures it appears, but these pictures remain fitting illustrations for the current situation I would say. Hurrying up and getting new proof would of course add needed fuel to the necessary fire of course.

            I think all protocols and journalistic standards are thrown out the window and have been breached beyond recognition any way.

            What we can be about, is knowing the truth. Absorbing the misery of the truth. And then letting the truth set us free in the melancholy way only the truth can. Healing from having our confidence and worldview torn to shreds. That’s the hard currency and exchange of value that’s always required for knowing the truth.

  10. The Joys of Cloversexuals

    1
    Last Thursday, we experienced a lot of snow and freezing rain. I was driving home cautiously since the road were unplowed and in very bad condition. Naturally, a person zips right behind me and begins to tailgate me. I am not going to speed up and risk killing myself or others, so I maintain a safe speed. The tailgater begins to honk at me, repeatedly, even as we pass multiple people stuck in the snow on the side of the road.
    After tailgating and honking incessantly at me for a solid five minutes, he zooms past me and barrels down the road. Not 100 meters ahead, he reaches a sharp turn, loses his traction, and slides straight into a snowbank. He immediately tries to back out of it, but his tires spin uselessly in the snow. He jumps out of his car and flags me down for help (I am driving a truck and I am sure he got a good look at the winch on the back of it while tailgating me).
    I stop my truck and he makes a visible gesture of relief. I lay on my horn for about 10 seconds, and drive off.
    2
    My dad witnessed this one at the Post Office. An elderly lady in front of him asked for a single stamp. Obviously considering this a waste of her time, the bitch behind the counter makes a snorting noise, rips off a stamp and flicks it across the counter where it lands on the floor. She doesn’t apologise or offer the lady another stamp. The old lady considers for a second, picks up the stamp and leaves her 50 cent piece on the floor in its place. She says a cheery “Thank you!” and walks out, and the bitch behind the counter has to walk around to pick up the money. My dad said it made him smile for the rest of the day.
    3
    My 8 year old sister built a giant snowman after an unusually heavy Pennsylvania snow. She spent all day on this thing and it was actually pretty impressive.
    The town I’m from is actually a borough and it only has something like 7,000 people who live there, meaning High School classes were small and relatively tight-knit. There was one particular kid, who I’ll call Scotty, who drove me up the fucking wall. He never did anything to me personally, but he just had a massively annoying way about him. To make matters worse, it seemed as if I had way too many classes with him to be statistically possible.
    One of Scotty’s irritating behaviors is that he drove a loud, redneck-ish, John-Deere-green truck. It was obnoxious as hell and (important to the story later) had a huge brush guard on the front of it.
    Well, on the evening after she built her snowy sentinel, I heard the sound of Scotty’s truck making its way down the street from inside our livingroom. Then I heard the “pfft” of someone running over a snowman and laughing. Unfortunately for my sister, she had built it close to the road and too easily within the range of this semi-guided asshole. She was rather upset to see her day’s work splattered all over the street… Something needed to be done about this.
    So, the next morning, I woke up early and began building another snowman. It was glorious. I made the classic, three section, scarf-wearing, sticks-for-arms-and-vegetables-for-a-face snowman.
    This new snowman’s cheery countenance betrayed a grim and dark secret, however; Frosty was built on top of a fire hydrant at the corner of our yard where there was no curb.
    For a good two days I dreamt of Scotty wrapping his stupid truck around my masterpiece out in the yard. But no dice. I didn’t see him at all anywhere around town so I thought I was out of luck.
    Then, on the evening of the 4th day, I heard it. My family was eating dinner and I heard the low grumble of fate’s motors kicking from gear to gear. Would they find themselves abruptly halted in about 10 seconds? It all depends on you, Scotty boy…
    So I start chewing my food really fast because, knowing the idiot, I knew what was happening next. The final acceleration sounded off like a chaotic crescendo as he plowed straight into—not through—the snowman with the deafening crunch of twisting metal.
    My family ran outside and it took everything I had to not laugh before I got out there. There stood Scotty, dazed and bewildered and caught-off guard by a battle that he lost before he realized it had begun.
    4
    Best Buy at a big mall. Circling the parking lot for literally a half hour looking for a spot since my roommate insisted she couldn’t go shopping alone. Finally found a spot in the way back of the parking lot. Doesn’t matter.
    I wait for the car leaving the spot to exit, turn signal on. He leaves and as I begin to pull in, someone whips out from behind me and makes it into the spot before I can, almost hitting my car in the process and scaring the shit out of me.
    But he moved so quickly to get my spot that he ended up parking crookedly and couldn’t exit his car.
    So I just pulled up behind him. Now he couldn’t adjust. And he was too heavy to climb across to the passenger door, though he did attempt it.
    He was giving me the middle finger and shouting at me to move so he could readjust. I literally stayed there for 15 minutes (to my roommate’s annoyance) until he called security who asked me to move.
    When I told security what had happened, he made the guy leave the parking space or be ticketed.
    Fantastic.
    Got my spot.
    5
    I scored an awesome parking spot today– I mean, really awesome. I’m surprised it’s not a handicapped spot, honestly. While leaving the store, this couple in a giant SUV is cruising down the aisle. “awesome,” I think to myself, “they’ll love my spot.”. It’s a hotass day, and the lot is packed. While I’m loading my bags into the car, though, they creep alongside my vehicle and the woman in the passenger seat shouts, “hurry it up already!”
    Right. I’m sorry. I’m a sucker for helping folks out, but the minute someone pushes me, I push right back. So, I hop on into my car, start the engine, crank the ac, and hop on the internet to post this. The SUV is still there, even crept forward a couple of times to make sure I can see them. Think I may surf a bit longer now, assholes.
    6
    I have a long commute. It’s 62 miles door to door. To save money I drive an early 80’s Rabbit Diesel I bought for $2000. 40MPG and it ran like a top.
    However, it was gutless, and some of this commute was through the foothills of the Colorado Front Range. Some of the larger hills would slow my top speed to about 50 on this 70MPH Interstate. I can handle this just fine, especially with the money it saved me.
    However, even though this is a three lane highway and I kept to the right 100% of the time (never even tried to pass people on the very rare occasion it was an option) some people would still honk angrily or flip me off when they came up behind me. I was somehow inconveniencing them to force them to pass. Bear in mind, this wasn’t rush hour, there was little to no traffic. One guy lost his everloving mind. Honking and flipping me off, he paced in the next lane beside me for a while- foaming and spitting, screaming and using every rude gesture in the book. Completely lost it. Then he moved on.
    A few minutes later I arrive at work, and my boss asks me to sit in on a interview as the tech interviewer. I settle in and wait. The first smiling candidate that walks in, looks at me, and loses his smile. It is Mr Foaming Nutbag!
    Without saying a word, he turns and walks back out. I spend the next 5 minutes giggling while I explain to the boss what just happened.
    7
    While in ASDA
    http://i.imgur.com/9EWKq.png
    8
    In elementary school I wasn’t the most popular kid, I was into books, had big glasses, into video games, got very grades, classic nerd. I had friends sure, but I did tend to be the butt of the classic “nerdy-kid” jokes.
    One day in class we were doing some sort of busy work and I was seated across from one of the girls (let’s call her Betty) who always loved to make fun of me and give me crap. The girl for some reason was stamping her feet up and down on the floor like a crazy person (not just the nervous knee thing that most people get from time to time, full on lifting and dropping them fuckers).
    The massive shockwaves from her dinosaur stomping ending up knocking her glasses off the desk and somewhere right beneath her feet. Being the good guy that I was, I immediately yelled out “Betty, STOP, WATCH YOUR FEET!”. She stops her foot, a few inches from her glasses, then looks at me and just asks, “Why?”.
    Now I could have told her that she was about to ruin her glasses, but for some reason I didn’t. I happened to not be wearing my own glasses at the time, and on a lark I told her, “You’re about to step on my glasses”.
    The bitch got the biggest grin on her face, lifted her foot back up and smashed it back down onto her own glasses. Betty heard them crack and bent down to pick the glasses up, still grinning at me without breaking her gaze. When she lifted the glasses up and looked at them, and realized they were her own, she started crying, loudly. Ran to the teacher.
    It was wonderful

    • Stories like that are the greatest.

      O Henry. Rod Serling.

      And who can ever forget the classic tale

      “The Appointment in Samarra”
      (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])

      The speaker is Death

      There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.

      The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.

      Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning?

      That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

  11. Drinking With Satan;
    I noticed him because the bartender kept giving him sideways glances. He sat in the shadows at the very end of the bar, surrounded by a cloud of hazy smoke, the kind that forms when somebody smokes a cigar in a ventilation dead spot, although he didn’t actually have a cigar in his mouth. The more I looked at him, the more weird details I noticed – not just the smoke, but the fact that he was drinking out of a glass that didn’t match the rest of the bar’s glassware, and that no matter how much he drank, the level of the red liquid inside never went down. And then there was his pointed hairdo, the weird shape of his legs, the faint waft of sulfur coming from his vicinity…

    He looked up at me all of a sudden, and I saw a depth of infinite blackness in his eyes. Except as soon as I noticed it, they were just normal eyes. I blinked, and suddenly everything I had noticed was gone, and it was just a guy in a leather jacket. I shook my head vigorously and pushed my beer away. I’ve never hallucinated before – clearly it was time to quit. I stood up and started to put my jacket on.

    “No, hey, don’t stop drinking. That was my bad,” said a voice at my elbow. Deep, authoritative, slightly slurred. I turned, one arm only halfway through its sleeve, and saw the guy sitting there next to me, on the opposite side from where he’d been before. He still looked normal, but the scent of brimstone lingered. And, you know, he had just teleported about twenty feet in the time it took me to blink.

    “What the fuck,” I said, not really as a question.
    “Oh, shit, walking. I’ll remember that next time. Yeah, I should really head home when I get like this. It’s hard enough keeping up this thing’s look when I’m drunk, but animating its legs? Forget about it. Toes are fucking weird when you’re used to having the legs of a… ungulate? Yeah, ungulate, I think, is the right word. Whatever.”

    I tried to comprehend what possible context could make these statements not insane. This guy seemed weird, but he definitely didn’t seem insane. The opposite, in fact. “So, you an alien or something?” I settled on, sitting down again and grabbing my beer back from where I’d pushed it.

    “Sort of. I’m Satan.”

    I nearly choked. “Yeah, I should have led into that better, sorry,” he said.

    “You’re awfully apologetic, for a Lord of Darkness and all,” I managed. I had to admit, it was an explanation that fit perfectly with my earlier observations. That made it a lot easier to take.

    “Yeah, well, I sorta fucking have to be if I don’t want people running to the nearest church and throwing holy water in my face.”
    “Does it sting?”
    “What? No. Well, not the water, I mean, it’s just kind of unpleasant. But, like, as far as people’s reactions go, that can kinda sting, sometimes, yeah. After all I do for them, they still think I’m evil incarnate.”

    I had to stifle a laugh. “Well, I mean, aren’t you? You’re Satan.”
    “See? See? Right there, man, that’s what I’m talking about. There’s no reason Satan should be synonymous with ‘evil’.”
    “Except for being Satan,” I laughed.

    “Godbless, dude, you’re as bad as anyone else. So prejudiced.”
    “Fine, fine, I’ll hear you out, man. What do you, Satan, do for me?” I said, turning to face him. I wasn’t just humoring him – at this point, I found nothing more interesting than what his answer would be.

    “You ever read the Bible?” he asked instead.
    “I thought answering questions with questions was Jesus’s shtick,” I said.
    “Ah, so I guess you’ve read part of it at least. I don’t mind being compared with Jesus, he’s a stand-up guy. It’s his dad I can’t stand.”
    “I thought they were the same guy…” I said, vaguely remembering a metaphor about a three-leaf clover.

    “Well, I mean, in a way. But it’s complicated… it’s… fuck… you guys are in… ugh, shit, I get so temporally dizzy. What year is it?” he asked. I told him. “Oh, okay, yeah, so you guys don’t have AI yet. But when you do! You’ll understand then.”

    “Try to make me understand now, Satan,” I implored, amused just to be able to call the Lord of Hell by his first name.
    “Ok, ok. Anyway, you remember from the Bible the story of Noah? Or of Abraham and Isaac? Or hell, go right back to the beginning, Adam and Steve?

    Sorry, just messing with you, Eve? Notice a common theme there? God is a fucking asshole who sets up impossible tests and standards and then gets angry when humans fail to pass them. It pisses me off. He’s like a dog owner that beats a puppy because it hasn’t learned how to take a shit in the fucking toilet, even though that’s impossible. It’s just… ugh. He does it all the fucking time, and then asked you guys to kill animals for him to make up for it. What a sicko.”

    “But, I mean, that’s the Old Testament for a reason, Satan. It’s… I’m pretty sure all that changed, y’know, when Jesus came along.”
    “I’ll get to Jesus soon. It’s… ooh, okay, it’s sorta like Ultron and Vision. They’re… wait, Avengers 2 hasn’t come out yet?”
    “No,” I said.

    “Fuck, ok, I guess I’ll try to find another metaphor. But anyway, Old Testament, New Testament, yes, there’s a reason things changed in between. But it’s not the one you think!” Satan was getting more animated now, apparently eager to find someone so receptive to his story. I got the sense he spent a lot of nights just drinking a lone.
    “What is the reason, then?” I asked.

    “Ok, so in the Old Testament, God’s not the only God. Right? He’s just the strongest God. Half of the stories are just all the fucking Jews wandering around the Middle East saying “Hey, our God can beat up your god!” and then letting him do it. Because Gods are powered by belief, you know? So God goes around, he’s a big bad dude on the playground, beating up the little kids, and… the other Gods, the polytheistic ones, their belief is all split up among them, so their entire pantheon put together is only barely as strong as Yahweh. He stomps on all of those fucking guys. And all the while he’s letting it go to his head, and getting more and more righteous and holier-than-thou about the standards he holds his followers to. And then all of a sudden, he gets too big. He… and Jesus came in around this time… he gets the power of the Roman Empire behind him, and he becomes this big impersonal force, this deterministic fucking computer that’s all about giving rules to the universe. He’s all things to all people, he’s this big old glob of godhood, that vague force that people who mark their religion as ‘spiritual’ on facebook think of, and every God that every person individually believes in is a subset of him, a fully included subset, so he gets all their belief, but the sum total, the Universal Set of Gods, if you will, is just this big fucking thing where all the good from all the Gods different people believe in gets smeared out across the law of averages and all of a sudden he’s just this big fucking hivemind that’s heavenbent on giving everybody everywhere everywhen a ‘plan’ and a ‘purpose’ and taking away all their fucking free will. When people say “oh, it was God’s plan, isn’t that beautiful”, or “oh, God has big things planned for you” it should send a shiver down your fucking spine, man.

    -Because God’s plan is fucking terrifying. Every car crash, every miscarriage, every grandma who can’t remember her granddaughter’s face… that’s all part of God’s plan. And in his plan, there’s shit-all you can do to even react to it.”
    “Goddamn,” I said, not operating at a high enough level to recognize the irony.

    “So, uh… where does Jesus fit in?”

    “Oh, sure, ask about him first. Christ, what a good spin doctor for himself that guy was. He’s a subset to, just like any other version of God. Except he’s a subset that’s human. It’s like… you ever see that episode of TNG where… hold on, it’s airing on channel 118 right now, coincidentally…” Satan said, and snapped his fingers. The tv screen nearest us switched from a football game to an episode of Star Trek, on I vaguely remembered. A lone Borg drone stood in the conference room while Geordi asked him questions.

    “Remember that one? Hugh of Borg. He gets separated from the hivemind and is able to be good, and do good, and act autonomously. Or like I said, how The Vision spins out from Ultron’s evil consciousness and acts as a hero. Jesus was the same way, and I admire the guy, but his methods just weren’t extreme enough.”

    “So, ok, I’ll ask, what are your methods?”

    “I’m a hacker. Or a defense lawyer, maybe. Or, or… some other metaphor. Neither of those is actually any good. I mess with the universe, just your little pocket of it, enough for you humans to have free will, to an extent. God gets to put his perfect fucking order over the vast majority of the universe, but this planet is where I’ve staked my claim, and this is the one place where unpredictable stuff can happen. I give you back the impulses that he takes away. I return the autonomy that he wants to snuff out in favor of perfect order and a goal of nothing. I spread chaos, and thanks to the value system he tries to put in place, you think of chaos as a bad thing, but it’s really fucking not, because without chaos theory you don’t get photosynthesis or babies or Jurassic Park. So that’s what I do for you. I hope the explanation is satisfactory. Not everybody gets it, because some people are just plain stupid.”

    “No, no, I get it. Thanks Satan,” I said, feeling sobered. The cloudiness in my head was clearing, replaced by thousands more questions. “What’s the deal with heaven and hell?” I spit out, before he could leave.

    Satan smiled a bit. “Know what? This was fun. Come back next week and maybe I’ll tell you,” he said, and was gone.

    • Tor – Years ago, when I was still married to my first wife, I was sitting in church waiting for the service to start. People were coming in, everyone was greeting each other and chatting when suddenly there was a flash of lightning, a loud thunder clap, then smoke and the smell of sulfur filled the air. Right there behind the pulpit stood Old Nick, the devil himself. Everyone was absolutely mortified and they all ran screaming out of the sanctuary…everyone except me. He looked down at me and asked “Boy? Do you know who I am?” I said “Sure. You’re Satan; the Prince of Darkness, the evil one, the devil himself” He looked a little puzzled and asked “And you’re not scared of me?” I said “Hell no! I’ve been married to your sister for ten years…”

        • It would be nice if a few witches could be salvaged from the haunted homelands of Zombie America.

          Trouble is, American women are derivative. They base everything on men. Even when they organized and come into to some measure of power, they proceed only to right wrongs, to transform, or to destroy.

          I’d like to see American women start a belief system of their own. I can think of three possible magical focal points.

          Sisters of the Beaver. An unbelievably powerful and industrious rodent. Probably half of North America’s fertile lands are their handiwork. Prior to eurodouche immigrations, Canadian Beavers numbered as high as 90 million. They are the cause of innumerable lakes and deep topsoil. Fresh water is not an abiotic phenomenon.
          Once they became powerful enough, they and their trained and domesticated familiars could work their magic on the drying and dessicating Western US, becomes another Northern Africa.

          Sisters of the Bat. This would be especially powerful, since even men are afraid of bats. Women who became experts of these masters of the insect world would be invaluable.

          Sisters of the Cat. More than just pets, these mammals have all kinds of potential uses beyond vermin and garbage control.

          Useful witches have to be able to create useful societal order out of natural chaos. Death and destruction is already in abundant supply. We don’t need witches to add to that already far overserved market.

          The key to being witches is your male influencers and patriarchs, if there are any, must be completely hidden and unseen. The enchanting vision of women acting entirely of their own volition is indeed powerful and compelling.

  12. Quote from Captain of Road Prison #36 in Cool Hand Luke:

    V2hhdCB3ZSd2ZSBnb3QgaGVyZSBpcy4uLiBmYWlsdXJlIHRvIGNvbW11bmljYXRlLiBTb21lIG1lbiB5b3UganVzdCBjYW4ndCByZWFjaC4gU28geW91IGdldCB3aGF0IHdlIGhhZCBoZXJlIGxhc3Qgd2Vlaywgd2hpY2ggaXMgdGhlIHdheSBoZSB3YW50cyBpdC4uLiB3ZWxsLCBoZSBnZXRzIGl0LiBJIGRvbid0IGxpa2UgaXQgYW55IG1vcmUgdGhhbiB5b3UgbWVuLg==

    Can anyone provide the quote from above?

    You can copy and paste the Base64 string here to find out:
    http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/DotNet/Tools/Base64Decode/default.aspx

    Even in prison, Paul Newman never let the Ramseys turn him into a Leek
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Hand_Luke

    Current Tavares, Florida Number One Hero’s Info:
    U3RvbmV5IEx1Ymlucw0KQ2hpZWYgb2YgUG9saWNlDQoyMDEgRS4gTWFpbiBTdHJlZXQNClRhdmFyZXMsIEZMIDMyNzc4DQooMzUyKSA3NDItNjMwMA==

    Final Thought:
    Sometimes Nothing Can Be A Cool Hand!

  13. How will we encode store and convert our hero info? Base64?

    What we can use heroic info for:
    1 compile a proprietary encrypted database of heroes that’s publicly hosted and edited
    2 create rating system to designate the most heroic of the heroes
    3 film episodes of the show Pigs. Modeled after the show cops. Theme song will be Green Jelly’s Three Little Pigs.
    4 in this show three heroes will be visited by the internet big-bad-cyber-wolves militia. A healthy dose of assymetric well-deserved justice will be administered to the chosen praetorian stars of the show.

    -“Little pig, little pig, let me in…” -IBBCWM

    Original Text
    Well, the third little piggy, the grade A student
    His daddy was a rock star named Pig Nugent
    Earned his Masters Degree from Harvard College
    Built his house from his architect knowledge
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
    Encoded as Base 64
    V2VsbCwgdGhlIHRoaXJkIGxpdHRsZSBwaWdneSwgdGhlIGdyYWRlIEEgc3R1ZGVudA0KSGlzIGRh
    ZGR5IHdhcyBhIHJvY2sgc3RhciBuYW1lZCBQaWcgTnVnZW50DQpFYXJuZWQgaGlzIE1hc3RlcnMg
    RGVncmVlIGZyb20gSGFydmFyZCBDb2xsZWdlDQpCdWlsdCBoaXMgaG91c2UgZnJvbSBoaXMgYXJj
    aGl0ZWN0IGtub3dsZWRnZQ0K

    at this website:
    http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
    Decoded from base 64 at this website as:
    http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/DotNet/Tools/Base64Encode/default.aspx

    Well, the third little piggy, the grade A student
    His daddy was a rock star named Pig Nugent
    Earned his Masters Degree from Harvard College
    Built his house from his architect knowledge

    !!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Test of 4 Vegas Personal Injury Lawyers at this site (hero data)
    http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/DotNet/Tools/Base64Encode/default.aspx

    R2xlbiBMZXJuZXINCjQ3OTUgUyBEdXJhbmdvIERyLCBMYXMgVmVnYXMsIE5WIDg5MTQ3DQooNzAyKSA4NzctMTUwMA0KDQpFcmljIEguIFdvb2RzDQoyMDU1IFcgQ2hhcmxlc3RvbiBCbHZkDQpMYXMgVmVnYXMsIE5WDQooNzAyKSA3MzctMDAwMA0KDQpDcmFpZyBQIEtlbm55DQo1MDEgUyA4dGggU3QNCkxhcyBWZWdhcywgTlYNCig3MDIpIDM4MC0yODAwDQoNClJvZG5leSBLLiBPa2Fubw0KMjMwMCBXIFNhaGFyYSBBdmUgIzgwMA0KTGFzIFZlZ2FzLCBOVg0KKDcwMikgNTY2LTM2MDA=

    Decoded at this site
    http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp

    Glen Lerner
    4795 S Durango Dr, Las Vegas, NV 89147
    (702) 877-1500

    Eric H. Woods
    2055 W Charleston Blvd
    Las Vegas, NV
    (702) 737-0000

    Craig P Kenny
    501 S 8th St
    Las Vegas, NV
    (702) 380-2800

    Rodney K. Okano
    2300 W Sahara Ave #800
    Las Vegas, NV
    (702) 566-3600

  14. What’s it like not to drive Googul’s driverless car?
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2628404/What-like-not-drive-Googles-driverless-car.html

    Test driving Googul’s driverless car
    http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow/ci_25755137/test-driving-googles-driverless-car-look-mom-no

    1960s Citroën DS driverless car test
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwdjM2Yx3gU

    Self driving Lucas Jaguar PROMETHEUS car from 1994
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlVx4Dhglkg

    Guideline 4 Vehicle Convoy
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4x3eIIgABE

    Automated cars from Minority Report
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrxyr1CjiSM

  15. Ultimate Daenerys Spoiler Don’t Click

    the real good news. jesus was a powerful son of god. he came to open your eyes that you are too.

    the corporatist beast

    the kingdom of god is within you. anarchist christian Leo Tolstoy

    the everlasting gospel by William Blake

    No earthly parents I confess:
    I am doing my Father’s business.”
    He scorn’d Earth’s parents, scorn’d Earth’s God,
    And mock’d the one and the other’s rod;

    His seventy Disciples sent
    Against Religion and Government—
    They by the sword of Justice fell,
    And Him their cruel murderer tell.

    He left His father’s trade to roam,
    A wand’ring vagrant without home;
    And thus He others’ labour stole,
    That He might live above control.

    The publicans and harlots He
    Selected for His company,
    And from the adulteress turn’d away
    God’s righteous law, that lost its prey.’

    Was Jesus chaste? or did He
    Give any lessons of chastity?
    The Morning blushed fiery red:
    Mary was found in adulterous bed;
    Earth groan’d beneath, and Heaven above
    Trembled at discovery of Love.

    Jesus was sitting in Moses’ chair.
    They brought the trembling woman there.
    Moses commands she be ston’d to death.
    What was the sound of Jesus’ breath?

    He laid His hand on Moses’ law;
    The ancient Heavens, in silent awe,
    Writ with curses from pole to pole,
    All away began to roll.
    The Earth trembling and naked lay
    In secret bed of mortal clay;

    On Sinai felt the Hand Divine
    Pulling back the bloody shrine;
    And she heard the breath of God,
    As she heard by Eden’s flood:
    ‘Good and Evil are no more!
    Sinai’s trumpets cease to roar!

    Cease, finger of God, to write!
    The Heavens are not clean in Thy sight.
    Thou art good, and Thou alone;
    Nor may the sinner cast one stone.
    To be good only, is to be
    A God or else a Pharisee.

    But, when Jesus was crucified,
    Then was perfected His galling pride.
    In three nights He devour’d His prey,
    And still He devours the body of clay;
    For dust and clay is the Serpent’s meat,
    Which never was made for Man to eat.

  16. Dear Bevin,

    In my opinion, the most important character to discuss is Theon Grayjoy.

    We are like Theon Grayjoy many years hence. We fool ourselves into thinking that accepting our State Designated Identity of Leek, and that living as a self-denying emasculated psychopath cowards is a fortunate circumstance.

    We cling to our possessions and status so fiercely. Because if we look into our past and what we sacrificed to become denizens of the First World, we’ll have to face the truth that we’ve allowed our true Theon Grayjoy selves to be killed. So that we could become the corporatist fiat currency earning servantbot Leek.

    Theon Grayjoy
    http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Theon_Greyjoy

    The American founding fathers can best be understood as Ramsey Snow. Not liberators of American pioneers. But rather soul-mutilators and ruthless regimental torturers of groveling lackeys hordes without dignity or sovereign capacity.
    – – – – – – – – – – – –

    “Theon is released from the cross by two beautiful young women. The women put Theon to bed and they then proceed to fondle him sensually. Both wenches have heard that the heir to Pyke is well endowed and are hoping to get first hand experience. Theon is distrustful at first fearing that this is another of his tormenter’s tricks. When both wenches disrobe and straddle him, Theon’s resolve to resist weakens.

    Suddenly the familiar horn sounds and Ramsay enters. He too has heard how large his prisoner’s penis is and surmises it is Theon’s favorite body part. When the sadistic Ramsay brandishes an odd knife Theon realizes Ramsay means to emasculate him. Horrified Theon begs for mercy, but Ramsay quips that this is mercy as he is not killing, but merely altering Theon”

    #TakeTheRedPillYourIdentityIsTheonNotLeek

    • Dear Tor,

      Leek is definitely a revealing character.

      He does indeed represent the triumph of the Stockholm Syndrome.

      I’ve written about how many Chinese on Taiwan insist they are “Leek, not Theon,” (“I’m Taiwanese, not Chinese.”)

      But as you imply, it runs even deeper than that.

      Anyone who has bought into the Myth of Authority is essentially a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.

      Clover and Gil of course. But even Mike in Wichita is an example.

  17. In Anarchistan, Dwarfism is just another subset in the spectrum of human modality.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarfism

    Something you can ameliorate using the free market or not. In New Lilliputia, they represent one of the short-statured majorities found there.

    Structuration
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuration#Structure_and_society

    – – – – – –
    Helen Kelleria is a thriving Deaf, Dumb, and Blind community in Anarchistan

    It was beautifully foretold by Sci Fi author John Varley:

    The Persistence of Vision – John Varley
    http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/f/f6/THPRSSTNCF1978.jpg

    A keen drifter describes the dismal political state of the world. He encounters a commune of people who are blind, deaf, and mute. Much of the story details the culture and personal habits of the people, including the different levels of touch-based communication they use. The protagonist develops strong bonds with several of the members.

    The commune’s highest grade of communication attains an intense connection between each other. The people emphasize mutual understanding to overcome their physical limitations. Their rich use of unspoken language is able to establish intense clarity of others, one that cannot be attained using the senses of hearing and vision.

    Spider reads John Varley’s “The Persistence of Vision”
    http://castroller.com/Podcasts/BoingBoing/434233-Spider%20Robinson%20reads%20Varleys%20The%20Persistence%20of%20Vision?start=0

  18. To the Barricades!

    Black storms shake the sky. Dark clouds blind us
    Although death and pain await us. Duty calls us against the enemy

    The most precious good. is freedom
    And we have to defend it. With courage and faith

    Raise the revolutionary flag. Which carries the people to emancipation
    Working people march onwards to the battle
    We have to smash the State Reaction

    To the Barricades! To the Barricades!
    For the triumph of the Anarchist Confederation

    Spanish Civil War

    An Anarchist Perspective on the Spanish Civil War

  19. Huge Radio Controlled A-380 Airliner

    Best of Radio Controlled Vehicle Footage

    Maybe I am a borehole? If so, sue me.

    Ten Year Old Tennessee fiddler at the Grand Old Opry

    Flying Dunebuggy

  20. Water squeezed out of pressured rock and other things found in Russia’s Kola Superdeep Borehole
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs#t=144

    World’s deepest hole
    http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/05/08/kola_superdeep_borehole_is_the_world_s_deepest_hole.html

    Kola 7.5 mile deep hole – Wikipedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole

    Kola Hole – Murmansk, Russia
    http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep-borehole

    Hope you like Links. I am the Lynx in your Synx. Cat in the Hat is unavailable.
    http://media.catmoji.com/post/rtm/lynx-in-your-sinks.jpg

  21. Mentioning inflated prices made me think of India.

    Cost of Living in Bangalore, India
    http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=India&city=Bangalore

    1 Pair of Jeans (Levis 501 Or Similar) 2,272 Rupees
    Combo Meal at McDonalds or Similar 200 Rupees
    Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment in City Centre 86,871 Rupees

    Average Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) 38,259 Rupees

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    Best of Bangalore Craigslist:

    100% REal INDEPENDENT Koyel need Hot Encounter!!

    Honestly, that’s what I don’t have.
    That is as honest I can ever get.

    Don’t let the age fool you. I am as fit as the fiddle out there. In fact, I am expecting zilch by stating my age.

    What do I want? Friendship. It takes me more time than you can figure out to get sexual with a female, unless we know each other well. Wham, Bam, thank you, ma’am?

    That’s fiction, really. It does not even have to be sexual, in case it frightens you, for God’s sake.

    This post is not aimed at those wonderful citizens of the blr: escorts, hookers, etc., They have a way of pouncing at anyone who’s above 24. Dunno why, ask them.

    Before you ask the question, here’s the answer: I am single at 21, ‘cos I live Life by my terms, my conditions.

    Sigh! Now, no one will respond.

    Sigh!
    Before my Cindy and I were married, we went through a brief period of time when we had broken up. We lived about four hours away from each other, and she decided to come to the city I live, and visit her sister. Of course, while she was in town we met up.

    Cindy borrowed her sister’s car and picked me up at my house. Cindy never dressed sleazy, in saying that, she was dressed very well and definitely got my wheels turning; and other parts.

    We decided to go to a little pub style place, talk, have some dinner and a drink together. Mostly small talk, probably because both of us were afraid of saying something wrong or getting into a discussion we may not want to be in, like about why we split up. Being around her again felt really good, we were getting along great.

    Cindy’s chest was just perfect for me; not small or big, but right in the middle. They stood up on their own and had a nice pinkish color around the nipple. I am more of a butt guy, however, her breast were impressive. When she would look away or up at a TV that was on, I would take quick peeks at her chest that was accented by a nice summer shirt. To follow that up, I watched her intently as she walked away to the restroom, images of her ass running through my head. She didn’t normally wear thongs, but that is what I was picturing in my head as she walked away

    http://bangalore.craigslist.co.in/w4m/4466102253.html

  22. DR, you’re right, this is a great comment thread about energy
    http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/09/01/55-mpg-is-going-to-cost-you/

    I’m most in agreement with BrentP, Boothe, and Eric, in that order.

    – BrentP
    “Downrange, I very well know what peak oil is and I have no illusions regarding peak oil because I actually dug into it and applied my knowledge of engineering to it.

    Peak oil was prediction regarding light sweet crude. Not oil in its other forms. Light sweet crude is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the total oil production yet oil and oil products cost no more in real terms than they did before.

    Hydrocarbons on other planets prove that hydrocarbons are not entirely from carbon based life forms. Either that or carbon based life forms on a time scale that predates the formation of the solar system. You’re free to speculate on alien worlds lush with life busted apart and reformed as new worlds, some with life some without.

    Speaking of reports, have you read the annual reports of big oil? I have. Did you know it is felony fraud to lie in a corporate annual report? If peak oil is about all oil then you need to get these CEOs locked up for fraud. Instead of trying to convince me that you and those like you should get to run my life, start by putting big oil CEOs in prison.

    The gasoline issues of the 1970s was the result of political driven dislocations in the market. Namely the inflation to pay for the vietnam war and the closing of the gold window.

    As to low hanging fruit, the oil was supposed to run out when Uncle Jed type oil ran out. Turns out it didn’t because people learned to get other oil.

    Peak oil cannot be applied to all oil, because at any given time what constitutes all oil changes. It can only apply to specific oil recoverable with specific technology. That’s the simple engineering fact behind production curves.”
    – BrentP
    – – – –

    – The various forms of petroleum are so prevalent, that they have been and will continue to be the second most common liquid on the planet, behind water.
    – – – –

    Bitumen/Asphalt use 7,000 years ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt#Ancient_times

    The use of asphalt/bitumen for waterproofing and as an adhesive dates at least 7,000 years ago to the early Indus community of Mehrgarh, where it was used to line the baskets in which they gathered crops.

    The Sumerians used natural asphalt/bitumen deposits for mortar between bricks and stones, to cement parts of carvings, such as eyes, into place, for ship caulking, and for waterproofing. Hot asphalt/bitumen was used as mortar in the walls of Babylon

    Asphalt/bitumen was used by ancient Egyptians to embalm mummies. The Persian word for asphalt is moom, which is related to the English word mummy. The Egyptians’ primary source of asphalt/bitumen was the Dead Sea, which the Romans knew as Palus Asphaltites (Asphalt Lake).

  23. Well, you’ve actually helped me with one thing with all your links and profuse postings, Tor! I really liked rediscovering this thread:

    http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/09/01/55-mpg-is-going-to-cost-you/

    The entire Peak OIl discussion was covered thoroughly by me in this forum in that thread in 2012, for chrissakes – so it’s clear I’m wasting my time trying to get anyone here to investigate further. Just see all my posts there, Ibid, ibid ibid…

    I’m done.

    • Jeez, don’t let anything our peanut gallery posts flummox you. I’m just another late middle-aged guy with obsolete skills and declining utility. I doubt I’m alone, this isn’t a den of young millionaire jetset entrepreneurs I don’t think.

      I’m lucky if the wife and kids look up from their smart devices long enough to actually listen to my opinion on anything.

      You enjoy both gas powered engine tech and social collectives, which is probably fine. Perhaps the issues of global warming and peak oil are settled at The Nation and the Huffington Post.

      It’s unlikely they will ever be so here. So what. Reality isn’t a popularity contest.

      Martenson’s Crash Course Review

      “The more of The Crash Course I watched the more I liked what Martenson was trying to do but the less I liked about how he did it.

      What I don’t like is that the presentation is one-sided. Though Martenson makes it clear enough what is his opinion and what (he believes) is accepted fact, he does not tell the “whole” story pertaining to any of his claims. He’s lined things up and shaded them to support his point of view.”

      – CM does exactly what members of mainstream academic institutes always do. Speak in general talking points and use polished arguments from conclusion while going to painstaking lengths to conceal that reality.

      CM is making his case from a mostly foregone conclusion. That his body of work can be an important new cog in the great social machinery that already exists. A cog that deserves vast allocation of funds from whatever source.

      Maybe being a new cog is all that needed. I’m unable to prove otherwise. Perhaps the NAP and individual ownership need only be tweaks to what already is in place.

      That sounds like a minority viewpoint to me, as far as this site’s readership is concerned. But it’s certainly not a discredited viewpoint.

  24. Paul Krugman’s Debunked Claim of “Peak Internet”
    http://i.imgur.com/B9oMzZd.jpg

    Doh!

    East Africa’s ($4 Bil) Largest Public Works Project Ever
    http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000119804

    Chinese Man behind $50 Billion Central American Canal
    http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1505360/enigma-behind-us50b-canal-project-says-he-not-agent-china

    5 Massive Chinese Public Works Projects
    http://www.echinacities.com/news/5-Massive-Chinese-Public-Works-Projects-That-You-Probably-Didnt-Know-About

    Ongoing Persian Gulf Projects Total $2.62 trillion
    http://www.arabnews.com/news/461160

    Top Ten American Public Works Projects of the centurty
    http://www2.apwa.net/about/awards/toptencentury/chica.htm

    List of Megaprojects
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects

  25. The cure for megalomania seems worse than the disease. Wouldn’t it be to stop fantasizing about having power, relevance, potency, and self-esteem?


    i.e. to be a tucked-dick self-loathing metrosexual chimera, debilitated by a consuming fear that casting his own shadow on the world might somehow injure the environment? Ugggh! Another helping of NPD please.

    – – – –

    Megalomania is a crazy hunger for power and wealth, and a passion for grand schemes. Comic book villains often suffer from megalomania. Their plans are thwarted only by superheroes.

    Megalomania comes from the Greek megas (“great”) and mania (“madness”). It is a madness of greatness, but not a great kind of madness! Megalomaniacs in history: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Josef Stalin, and maybe even the tycoon Donald Trump.
    – – – –

    Megalomania is a psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, omnipotence, and by inflated self-esteem.[1] Historically it was used as an old name for narcissistic personality disorder prior to the latter’s first use by Heinz Kohut in 1968, and is used today as a non-clinical equivalent.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalomania
    – – – –
    Re: Gender Authoritarianism (background on my use of metrosexual as a slur)

    I’m all for people finding empowering sexual relationships. I ‘m against people being forced to stifle their natural urges, and not against any chosen gender modality per se. The state is a kind of serial rapist that seeks to make people act queer and feel queer, because turning people inside out empowers them and increases their control.

    In the Showtime show House of Lies – Marty (Don Cheedle)’s kid dresses and grooms like a girl and has a girlfriend who dresses and acts like a guy. Though cringeworthy to me personally, it actually seems to work out fine, at least through Season 3.

    House of Lies – The Other Side of Marty
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-SXB2enLYM

  26. Holy Crap is it interesting to search site:epautos + Chris Martenson.

    You get 4 hits:

    1. Mithrandir
    2012/06/24/lil-stinker-won

    2. Downrange
    2012/08/17/winning-arguments

    3. Rob
    2012/01/15/pssst-its-still-about-a-buck

    4. Downrange
    2012/09/01/55-mpg-is-gonna

    “Peak Oil is not debatable; it’s a fact, and the only question is when.” – Downrange/DR

    “I suspect most here will find it [CM Crash Course] so riveting that you’ll stay the course.” – Mithrandir

    I concur with the objections of the other commenters regarding peak oil assertions which can be learned by reading Eric’s articles. It’s definitely worth talking about Energy. IMHO, (total energy usage – net habitat degradation) is the most important wealth metric there is.

    But what’s amazingly interesting is there’s a video of clover! he goes by DrRightAnswer on YouTube.

    Why Ron Paul Is Wrong About The Gold Standard
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWdDAjAMmlE

    If there are more videos by clover, I would definitely enjoy seeing them.

  27. I think your style, Tor, is to overpower with lots of links and (APPARENTLY) well-researched counterpoint, to sort of take the stage and own it. It amazes me that you have the time for this. I wonder if Eric will bequeath this platform to you when he finally grows tired of it. I also wonder at your energy. I’m thinking “megalomania.”

    I hope others will NOT take your meanderings here as the signal to NOT research for themselves the work Chris has put together in the Crash Course, something all your spurious assemblings – collage style – could never approximate. Not even if you had a billion monkeys typing on a billion typewriters…

    • DR,

      I have boundless energy and immense mental processing speed with limited places to expend it purposefully. I have four other windows open right now, and typically devote maybe 5% of my attention to this website when I’m online.

      Maybe I’m being paid and am at work. Maybe I’m at home in my office. Maybe I’m a homeless guy on a public library computer. That’s the magic of this forum, your real life status and mine are each unknown and largely unverifiable.

      I am a metaphysical hyperbeing, not your average mundane human. I skim read and skim listen to people at about 600 wpm. I have anarcholomania.

      I glean what interests me in what you are saying and gloss over the rest. Most matters for me remain in an unresolved state of cognitive unfinished harmony.

      1 This isn’t a stage. This is Eric’s media platform. I would hope his focus is on making this a financial success. With a click of a button, he can delete everything I’ve ever posted, as is his right. I have my own copies of things on my computer. I am maybe his 20th favorite contributor here, if he was forced to rank everyone.

      2 Let’s not forget the gist of your threatening words: Eric will lose his readership if he allows anpog to flood this website.

      3 I don’t know why I chose to respond to that the way I did to what you said about anpog. I actually concur with it mostly. But it happened. It takes me very little time to blast out a crapton of words and ideas. I’ve been socially AWOL since the age of 2.

      4 You’re not the first person to critique me. I’ve also been reviewed by Mama Liberty and Bevin and who knows how many others here. I’ve modified my link presentation in a sincere response to a market signal.

      5 Chris Martenson has connections to Ron Paul and Doug Casey, he doesn’t need my approval or advocacy to appeal to Eric’s audience.

      6 In what world do you tell your potential customer they’re too lazy to sample your product. You are the one failing to sell Eric or anyone here on Chris Martenson, I gave him my undivided attention on the first video in your list.

      7 To reiterate, Chris is too institutional/main stream academic for my taste, as I currently understand him.

      8 This is Chris’s second highest rated Google Image that has philosophical content. I would love to see you sell his 3 E’s to even one of the 100,000 unique visitors that visit this site. Or make a stronger case for deleting my words and banning me from the site, if that’s what you’re about.

      Chris Martenson’s The Three E’s
      http://ecolltn.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/chrismartenson_chapter2_thethreees.gif

    • Hi DR,

      Tor is a phenom! He’s witty and clever – and yes, sometimes inscrutable. But I find myself always reading his posts, if only for the artfully constructed prose.

      Of course, your mileage may vary!

  28. Yes, obviously the answer is clear. Count your carbons. /sarc off

    One little, two little, three little carbons… /mock off

    Martenson’s a late first round; early second round; draft-pick collapsologist. I find him lacking in vision and in peer-connections needed to truly inspire and inform. He’s an optional gateway drug before truly taking the red pill and finding how deep the rabbit hole goes. / JMHO

    I’ll take Matt Ridley over Martenson any day. / JMHO

    Why most resources don’t run out

    Technology is often the mother of science

      • Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update http://ifile.it/d7eg59
        A Thousand Barrels a Second http://ifile.it/16u0pk
        The Final Energy Crisis http://ifile.it/8vasmj
        The Coming Famine http://ifile.it/wj2r36
        Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change http://ifile.it/ab74ys

        From Martenson’s first vid:

        1 I think it’s very important to distinguish between facts, opinions, and beliefs.

        2 I’m going to try very hard to be crystal clear when I am presenting facts, versus stating opinion, or communicating my beliefs.

        3A Belief 1. The period of 2009-2028 will be a time of massive change, unlike any other 20 year period. We mustn’t base our future expectations on past events.
        3B Belief 2. Overwhelming change is possible. It could overwhelm the ability of our key social and support institutions to adapt. Katrina taught us that a major US city could be wiped out, and remain that way for years. Things are happening faster than our nation can respond.
        3C Belief 3. We can shape the future. We only lack the political will, we shows we the people have not yet raised our voices for substantive change.

        4 The good news is we already have everything we need. The bad news is we can’t deploy it fast enough. These are simply my beliefs right now, and I reserve the right to change them later on.
        – – – –
        Chris has a PhD degree in neurotoxicology from Duke University in 1994 and an MBA degree from Cornell University in 1998.

        Chris is a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute .

  29. In a larger sense, all substances, and higher beings were likely abiotic at some long ago point.

    Which came first, Humanity, or our Terrestrial Egg home?

    Crude Oil is the blackblood of sub-dermal planetary life.
    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abiotic_oil

    We walk the skin of the Earth, amid oceans of sweat and oils, and breath in vaporous atmospheric breath. It’s a continuum of simple to complex substances. From more alive to less alive. It’s not a world of dichotomous dead and alive. The periodic table isn’t a prison. It’s a living banquet that is set for consuption, an all-surrounding and endlessly delicious delight.

  30. We’re already having multiple Sputnik moments: Free Love, Antiwar, Me Generations, Young Digital Society, Culture Rejection & Apathy, Wikileaks, Bitcoin, DIY medical testing, 3D printing, Youthslang, Hard Asset Holding, Indie Preppers, Local Militias, Consumer Self-Control, Urban Gardens, Debt Avoidance, Neighborhood Gambling Clubs, Undocumenteds, Stealth Offgrid Guys, Uber, Property Sharing Technology

    By comparison they’re exposed as apparatchiks who can only prohibit, plunder, and destroy.

    In 1957, Fedgov was embarassed by Sputnik. It countered well with 1969 Apollo.

    But what of today: Drones, no-knock raids, total commerce shutdown, total surveillance. All these false step stumblings make them that much more hated and vulnerable from every quarter.

    Get ready now, men. (men is not a gender thing, consider a man as a head of a household, thus sometimes a woman)

    Keep your home and family pristine and clean with ultra-hygiene . But you should be comfortable in any 2nd and 3rd world scenario. Go on, drink the water. Visit the rubble and the slums. Rub elbows with the addicts and lowlifes. Abandon fears of disease.

    In all my years as a slumlord, I’ve never once got sick. Because I don’t believe or fear any of it. When I am in pain or fear something as unhealthful, I avoid it of course. But slowly, surely, I’ve developed tolerance and immunity.

    Feces, grease, the smear of spilled food, vermin, pests, creepies, crawlies, scurriers, bacterias, viruses, they too are life. They too are to be respected and faced head on. Cleared away with bare hands.

    Silverware and plates, can be licked clean and then put away. These aren’t the days of Felix Unger. These are the days of Oscar Madison. Smoky rooms with vague odors are safer, less snitches and clovers are there. Learn to live dirty and free. Then go home and clean hard and thorough.

    As far as looks go, I see only two criteria of merit.

    How attractive are the women that want to f*ck you/be f*cked by you. And how hard do they want to f*ck/be f*cked by you? Nothing else matters.

    I am old and beyond much of this now. But I’m not yet dead enough to forget. Vanity is satiated by the eyes of your beholders.

    Let women pick your gladrags and fix your hair, be embarassed for your manners, etc. for surely, they will. In any inspection situation, always leave them some flaws to find, for then they feel needed and purposeful.

    To properly fit in the 2nd and 3rd worlds of Amer-Afr-ica, you have to look the part. Be able to slip into and out of dandyhood and getting dolled up rapidly and with ease.

    You need to be real in the real world, and not a doll.

    **This is a work of fiction. characters, places, events, organizations, and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously. any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. my works generally contain sexual or agorist themes, objectionable language and behavior which should be avoided by most human beings.

    If you are easily offended, unable to discern the difference between the written word and reality, dislike the use of profanity, are uptight, or are saved to the point where reading this material may pose danger to your immortal soul, then you should immediately cease reading any further and step away from whichever medium you have chosen to digest my work.

    I accept no responsibility for any thoughts you may form after reading my works. Nothing written by myself is copyright you are free to adapt or use in whatever way you wish**

  31. This is such a Kick Ass thread, Tor.

    I especially liked this, “I loathe the whole hospital concept. Why consent to them keeping you there servile and prostrate in a prison?”

    I imagine this thread will be wildly ignored by many, and scoffed at by, The Bastards.

    That’s the way of truth and the truth tellers.

    The World Is Round!

    • Indeed. Round – Like a circle in a spiral. Currently my being at 36N latitude, means it is 69 miles to 37N latitude same as Libertarian Car Guy country of Western Virginia. Or 69 miles to 35N latitude same as my biological progenitor, Patriarchal Science Guy, in the foothills of Western Carolina. Because 1 degree latitude always=69 miles.

      Wherever we stand, it is 3960 miles to the center of the Earth’s sphere. We look up at a moon which it is 1080 miles from surface to center. Add the two, and that sum of 5040 miles found in many places. It is the motif of Stonehenge. Just some stones.Just a spiracy of spirals in a circle of the roundness of the windmills of your mind. 5040=7! (factorial)
      http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Factorial.html

      Plato 5040
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5040_(number)

      Plato mentions in his Laws that 5040 is a convenient number to use for dividing many things (including both the citizens and the land of a state) into lesser parts.

      Constructing the Universe – Paper Earth & Moon
      http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/US%20Paper%20Earth%20Moon.html

      We thus find that the distance from the center of the Earth to the top of the Moon is to the Earth’s diameter as 8.5 is to 11.

      This is the ratio of sides of ordinary U.S. writing paper known as “Letter” size

      Most astonishingly, the plan of Stonehenge resembles this Earth-Moon scheme in miniature.

      Its two concentric outer rings of stones relate by a “squared circle,” and its measures reveal the same numbers but in feet instead of miles. What did they know?

      – again, XYZ, examine your zipper. Don’t let you mind wander so far, it falls out of your skull. If nothing else, it’s a good exercise to examine allegedly elaborate number assemblages, even though they mean nothing, for the mathematical rigor it helps develop.

      Other cities at 36N Latitude: Tunis , Tunisia. Mersin, Turkey. Algiers, Algeria. Málaga, Spain. Toyama/Nagano/Kanazawa/ Fukui, Japan. Jinan/Xining/Handan/Qingdao/Lanzhou, PRC. Mosul/Arbil, Iraq. Nashville/Tulsa/Knoxville, USA. Gibraltar, UK.

  32. 1 Hubbert predicted peak oil to occur in the year 2000.

    It did not occur, his model has been invalidated. Some state scientists using his discredited model now conjecture that peak oil will occur between 2020 and 2040.

    2 From CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates)
    M. King Hubbert’s methodology falls down because it does not consider likely resource growth, application of new technology, basic commercial factors, or the impact of geopolitics on production. The case for the imminent peak is flawed. Production in 2005 in the Lower 48 in the United States was 66 percent higher than Hubbert projected.

    3 Some may say I’ve hit many peaks in my life, and should be widely regarded as on the decline:

    4 But what does that mean scientifically? I have less energy, am less attractive, am less ambitious, and ad infinitum. There are tradeoffs to these I’m not going to divulge. “Peak Personality” is just another femnist/metrosexual construct to bamboozle the productive man.

    5 I reject the ridiculous notion I have peaked. I will proceed ever more boldly against any who dare say otherwise. Come at me sis.

  33. The Obama Frowns! Ha!

    What might be helpful is to do a hardnosed-realist analysis of the caste system that exists in the US. Just try to be brutally factual about it; not make judgments or try to influence.

    Making-A-Living Castes (318 million people)
    1 dependent caste
    2 dependent advocacy caste
    3 producer caste
    4 producer harvesting/remediation caste
    5 wage laborer caste
    6 wage laborer advocacy/harvesting/remediation caste
    7 professional, franchise caste
    8 trusts, corporates caste

    Modes-of-Living Households(3.8 million sq. miles)
    1 homeless/off the grid households
    2 government-housed households
    3 renter households
    4 homeowner households
    5 farmer/rancher/developer households
    6 military/grazing/mining households
    7 govt conservational land (housing forbidden)
    8 treaty/trust land households
    9 corporate church/non-profit households
    10 corporate retail households
    11 corporate industrial households

  34. What if LibertarianCarGuy was organized as a patriarchy? Each patri, member, of this patriarchy, would have his own individual agreement.

    Patriarchy
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy

    To become a patri, send in a least $5 and a letter to Eric’s address in Floyd County. A patri should also send at least one letter a year, and also make at least one pilgrimage in his lifetime to the Libertarian Car Guy clubhouse garage in VA.

    Sample IC agreement (could be modified for Patriarchy Agmt)
    https://www.docracy.com/0rgkbvacolg/independent-contractor-agreement-template

    Or maybe apply to join the LCGAC/LMGMC (libertarian car guy motorclub; libertarian motorcycle guy motorcycle club)
    http://www.pleasureriders.net/PRMC%20Annual%20Membership%20(3).pdf (to be modified as appropriate)

    Anyone else have better ideas?

    Cricket Sounds

  35. The Heat Death of Democracy

    “In a Closed System, Stupidity Tends to Increase Until It Reaches a Maximum” – April 30, 2014 – F. Reed

    In something called Upshot, apparently the love child of the New York Times, I find a piece by a negligible robot happily chronicling the failures of boys in school. This has become a ritual for feminists and pussy-whipped male Sonderkommandos. If smugness and condescension were oil, these tail-wagging unmen would be gushers, maybe a gas field.

    This particular dropping rattles on (if droppings rattle) about the superior “social skills” of girls, which in fact they have. (“Social skills” is illiterate sociobabble. It is plural, so I ask, what are these skills? Bright smile? Curtsey? Subtle flattery? “Sally has a really good bright smile, but her subtle flattery needs work.”)

    After running on about the superior social skills of girls (meaning that they are docile, obedient, easily managed, and seek approval from teachers), the author, David Leonhardt, points out that girls are getting far more four-year college degrees, etc. All true.

    He does not point out is that schools at all levels have been made (deliberately, I think) so hostile to males (the endless sexual-harassment propaganda), with so heavy an emphasis on procedure complied with instead of material mastered (neat homework, pretty pictures pasted into projects), and so much emphasis on socialization to feminine norms and on inculcation of Appropriate Values, that boys are asphyxiated. It is intellectual water-boarding. And has produced the desired result.

    There is in all of this much schadenfreude from women who enjoy seeing boys fail, and a great deal of passive aggression: “Bobby, we are making your life miserable and doing our best to turn you into an involuntary lesbian for your own good. Now keep quiet, take your Ritalin, and don’t move an inch, you little bastard.”

    A thread running through it all is the notion that boys are just, well, to put it frankly, not very smart, good perhaps for carrying heavy objects but not suited to a modern world founded on intelligence. A couple of quotes catch this:

    “As the economy continues to shift away from brawn and toward brains, many men have struggled with the transition.” And “’Boys are getting the wrong message about what you need to do to be successful,’ Ms. Buchmann says. ‘Traditional gender roles are misguiding boys. In today’s economy, being tough and being strong are not what leads to success.’”

    Women of feminist stripe have always resented the physical strength of men and have argued that either it doesn’t really exist or that it doesn’t matter (women in the infantry), and that anyway women are more intelligent if not held back by oppressive etc. It may well be true that women are more suited to a bureaucratic society in which order, procedure, following rules, and placidity are paramount. However, in the matter of brains and their importance for the economy, it is interesting to check the facts.

    Boys are not less intelligent than girls. In post-pubertal IQ, males have only a small advantage in mean IQ, perhaps because of their slightly larger brains or perhaps because it is an artifact of testing. What is not debatable is that men have higher variance in intelligence, meaning a broader range of scores—i.e., there are more very smart men than women, and very stupid men than women. The math predicts that at two standard deviations from the mean, IQ 130, there should be two men per woman. Checking Mensa membership by sex (Mensa requiring 130 for membership, the top two percent) we find—who would have guessed it—that the membership is 66% male. Two to one.

    The Graduate Record Examination is a high-end test given to college graduates, usually because they want to go to grad school. The scores are broken down by career field (the chart is worth a glance) and by verbal and mathematical ability. The eight highest-scoring fields—physics, mathematics, computer science, economics, chemical engineering, materials science, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering—have blistering math scores, and are all…all…dominated by men.

    The two lowest-scoring careers are education, overwhelmingly female, and public administration. Thus we have morons, administered by slightly worse morons, trying to teach boys who, at the high end, are so much smarter than the teachers as to constitute another species.

    I suspect that the psychologists, ed majors, therapists and suchlike clutter who hold forth on schooling on boys simply have no idea of what high intelligence is or why it matters. In the foregoing I mentioned standard deviation:

    \sigma = \sqrt{\frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^N (x_i – \mu)^2}, {\rm \ \ where\ \ } \mu = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^N x_i.

    For the little boy who one day will pop 710 on the math GREs, such things are neither frightening nor off-putting. They are fascinating. Such kids could certainly grasp the notation above while taking eighth-grade algebra. From these boys—they are almost always boys—come the things that make for international competiveness. We would be very wise to keep this in mind. We will not.

    For decades and decades, America has made pandering to political groups—teachers’ unions, racial lobbies, feminists—more important than quality in schooling. In 1980, in a piece for Harper’s, I wrote, “Evidence of this appears periodically, as, for example, in the results of a competency test given to applicants for teaching positions in Pinellas County, Florida, cited in Time, June 16, 1980. To pass this grueling examination, an applicant had to be able to read at the tenth-grade level and do arithmetic at the eighth-grade level. Though they all held B.A.’s, 25 percent of the whites and 79 percent of the blacks failed. Similar statistics exist for other places.” Morons to the left, morons to the right, and not a drop to drink.

    Thus did we, and thus do we. We have dumbed down tests, simplified curricula, and debased grading to make various groups look better than they are.

    Boys flourish, as do men, when they are allowed to compete, preferably in the company of other males, in fields of their choosing, without strangling social rules. Silicon Valley is the wild west of such endeavor. Consider the following start-ups, and who started them:

    Google (Sergei Bryn, Larry Page), Intel (Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce), Apple (Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak), Microsoft (Bill Gates), Dell Computer (Michael Dell), Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), YouTube (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim), Netscape (Mark Andreesen), Yahoo (Jerry Yang, David Filo), AMD (long list of guys from Fairchild Semiconductor), Twitter (Jack Dorsey), Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger), PayPal (Peter Thiel), Ebay (Pierre Omidyar). Et very cetera.

    Forgive me for laboring the point, but I think it important for the country’s future to understand who we need to encourage. Who invented the following?

    Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Algebra. Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Almost every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, those are nerve agents, and maybe we didn’t really need them.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.

    Enough. Leonhardt ends on a note of almost kinky submissiveness:
    “The problem doesn’t simply involve men trying to overcome the demise of a local factory or teenage boys getting into trouble. It involves children so young that most haven’t even learned the word “gender.” Yet their gender is already starting to cast a long shadow over their lives.”

    Just so. But it is not their own gender casting the shadow.

    http://fredoneverything.net/Upshot.shtml

  36. Are you a Clover? Come visit the Libertarian Guy social news network and tell everyone why.

    There’s no gate. No wait. Mentally masturbate. Tell it to us straight. Feel free to hate.
    http://www.reddit.com/r/libertarianguy/

    Camaro, Challenger and Mustang: Great Cars – But Not Muscle Cars… (ericpetersautos .com)
    submitted 7 minutes ago by tormunkov

    Are you a Clover? (ericpetersautos .com)
    submitted 8 minutes ago by tormunkov

    Shipping a Motorcycle: The Nightmare Begins (ericpetersautos .com)
    submitted 9 minutes ago by tormunkov

    Clovers in the Snow (ericpetersautos .com)
    submitted 10 minutes ago by tormunkov

    Missing Crappy Small Cars? (ericpetersautos .com)
    submitted 11 minutes ago by tormunkov

    The Question… (ericpetersautos .com)
    submitted 11 minutes ago by tormunkov

    Just pick a throwaway username and password. No second step email and confirmation. No captcha.

      • Thank you. Keep up the outstanding work.

        Not sure if this’ll make sense. But what I’ve learned from reading all these articles is: If you want freedom badly enough, all you have to do is learn to stand up to the Drill Sergeants That Be.

        It’s really just as simple as it appears in this Monty Python skit, once you get your mind right. The essence of self-ownership and living by the NAP.

        Marching Up and Down the Square – Monty Python

  37. Police cars respond to a report of a streaking student in Calgary, AB
    http://i.imgur.com/xRvc8EA.jpg

    Best car stereo of 10 years ago versus best car stereo today
    http://i.imgur.com/NGcUN.jpg

    Your Tesla has been delivered. In dash electric crack pipe and crack hooka included.
    http://imgur.com/a/hxLTw

    Don’t pay a stranger – auto maintenance s/b DIY
    http://i.imgur.com/c9Ups.gif

    When having service work done, take the time to familiarize yourself with your vehicle
    http://i.imgur.com/LT1Fi3N.png

  38. News About Obama – From North Korea:

    Obama’s gut-wrenching, revolting facial features, monkey climbing up this and that tree and scrounging up fruits on the ground, It’s certain that Obama has slipped out of the body of a monkey, he should live as a monkey in an African natural zoo licking the breadcrumbs thrown him by spectators.

    http://freekorea.us/2014/05/07/really-north-korea-called-president-obama-a-wicked-black-monkey/

    Actual article, open in Google Chrome for translation
    http://kcna.co.jp/calendar/2014/05/05-02/2014-0502-020.html

    KJU – A Dark Knight
    http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/comment/art-kim-jong-un-north-korea-countries-418994.png

    Only Fat Kid
    http://funnyasduck.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/funny-kim-jong-un-only-fat-kid-entire-country-north-korea-pics.jpg
    – – – –

    Meanwhile at the American Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix in Richmond, VA:
    http://imgur.com/a/SjcgE
    – – – –
    This is Humanity
    http://i.imgur.com/b90ZE.jpg
    – – – –

    Finally a good pic of my dog taking a crap
    http://i.imgur.com/SFWj02j.jpg

  39. Ah, finally, a place for all of my crap. Thank you.
    http://iambrony.dget.cc/mlp/gif/buzzards_0.gif

    So these Statists are motivated by fear. Especially zombies. If they become scared enough of us, we can rule them. What if some of us become zombies?

    1 implant additional organs. If you have a heartattack, it’s no big deal, you already have an additional heart implant and an artificial heart as well as a fail safe.

    2 Partition your brain. Implant synthetic processing units. Partial brain death is no longer a problem, as long as other parts of your brain remain viable, you can retrain them with whatever you lose. In the case of total brain death, your total body pacemaker can take control of all your functions and keep you life-like.

    3 Ultralight motorized exoskeleton. While conventionally alive, you can use your muscles to move you about. By also having a redundant exoskeleton, you are prepared to be able to move, even when muscle activity ceases.

    4 Portable life support. Instead of being bedridden, a mobile life support system allows you to freely act and move around no matter how poor your health becomes. Even being in a coma is no longer a barrier to an active lifestyle.

    5 WIFI opensource interface HOS – Human Operating System. As you enter your platinum years, your friends and family will be able to program you to do or say whatever they like. With the deluxe package, they’ll be able to replay your greatest moments because you have digitally recorded key events of your life for posterity and perpetuity purposes.

    Zombie Apocalypse
    http://truthstreammedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/zombie-apacalypse.jpg

    6 No Quality of Life Is Too Low
    http://www.linacre.org/ordexord.html

    7 Use Blood substitutes
    http://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(14)00035-3
    Use all manner of substitutes that become available

    8 Near Immortality Is Coming
    http://io9.com/5414151/near-immortality-within-the-next-20-years-life-extension-scientists-hope-so

    9 Enable the super rich to live longer. Instead of a class of PTB with longer lifespans. We’ll develop, pioneer, and then sell our new capabilities to the highest bidder. Who ever can afford it, will be able to live as long as they’d like.

    10 Apply anti-aging breakthrough research that reverses aging in mice and worms to humans. We’re not constrained by outdated rules of scientific propriety. Our research will progress much more rapidly due to the lack of outdated constraining rules.
    http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/121601/anti-aging-research-mice

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