Timing Error

SO STEYN WASN'T WRONG?

Just early. The Old Grey Lady takes up where the essayist Mark Steyn left off, looking at Europe's demographic issues*:

“But you can’t go on forever with a total fertility rate of 1.2. If you compare the size of the 0-to-4 and 29-to-34 age groups in Spain and Italy right now, you see the younger is almost half the size of the older. You can’t keep going with a completely upside-down age distribution, with the pyramid standing on its point. You can’t have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home.”

Blaming this concern on nationalism, racism or whatever won't put babies in bonnets. Gotta breed to be; no matter you philosophy.

*Magaret Sanger would be proud

IN A LONG LINE OF THINGS I WANT

Just for those short commutes, you know.

HOUSE P0RN

My wife and I are moving towards our first house purchase. The choice, no matter where we look, is an older house or a newer "postage stamp" house. We both lean towards older houses; for me, it's a function of growing up in the northeast. A house like this would be perfect; we could fill it with a platoon's worth of kids*:

Drawbacks?

1. At 318,000 smackers, it is outside our price band.

2. We don't live in the city where it is located.

3. It is sold.

But hey, p0rn's all about fantasy.

*Magaret Sanger would be proud.

EUGENICS AND I

I get the sneaky suspicion that Margaret Sanger would not approve of me hooking my decrepit, subhuman, wagon to my wife's sleek, aryan stallion. But my wife and I do; frequently and vigorously.

Have a nice day, Misses Sanger.

As a amateur historian, I'm a big believer in source documentation. "Show me the text!!", as Tom Cruise would have said were he in a better movie. If you've got the Minutes of the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton 2002 Plan Hegemony taken at some Bildersburg meeting, by all means, post them.

I've heard about Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder) and her associations with the early nineteenth century eugenics movement, but what is surprising is how, well, regular, eugenics ideas were at the time in America. 

Thanks to scribd (and I guess JSTOR, but I can't link to that unless you have an account) we can get at some of the text and validate for ourselves. Now, this is part in parcel of my Blue Eagle story below; exploring the permutations of early nineteenth century American politics is, well, fun.

If you're a geek like me. 

Some Sanger-mania follows:

A Plan For Peace

Sanger: The Pivot of Civilization

Sanger was not uncommon.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE BLUE EAGLE

Flash fiction friday story up; feel free to view the rest here. The "Blue Eagle" takes a look at another one of my loves: history. I love "what would happen if" stories.

The Blue Eagle

 

 

Lenny shuffled into the dining hall. He was about the last of the three hundred men—it was all men—that could get into the place. The dining hall served Lenny’s Work Regiment, but like everything else, was open to all comers.

 

Lenny took his seat where he usually did; towards the back, near the door and about as far away from the bright stage and the inevitable appearance of the Four Minute Man of the moment. The stage was simply set, as always; a bushel of fresh corn, apples, oranges, a slab of beef and several bottles of milk formed the static display. Fruit of the land, but Lenny always thought it was a waste, putting that stuff up there. Ought to go in a man’s belly, he figured.

 

NADER'S RACISM...

Or more appropriately, Nader's 'soft racism of low expectations':

Nader: Obama trying to 'talk white'

I have a dream, that one day my stupidity and ignorance will be blamed on the content of my character, and not the color of my skin.

(Yeah, I've dealt with this shi@ my entire life and I am pretty sick of it.)

THE MOST BLOOD THIRSTY SUPREME COURT IN HISTORY?

Yesterday the Supreme Court (US Branch) ruled that the execution of people who rape children was unconstitutional.

Today, they reaffirmed the individual right to bear arms.

Tomorrow, I expect Ruth Bader Ginsburg to yell from the courthouse steps, "What? I got to draw you a frickin' line!!!"

Or something like that.

Correlation and Causation

...or let the google god make it up. Valleywag (yes, Valleywag) on Chris Anderson's new book:

The problem here is that if we stop asking the question "why?" then we are basically making for the foundations of faith. You can always make statistics say nearly anything you want, it simply depends on the assumptions you make when you analyze and present them.

ROUGHING IT

One of my terminal goals is to take my wife on safari to Africa. In the interim, I could do with something like this for the back yard:

US DEPARTMENT OF CHALLENGES

XPRIZE Division. I say, bring it on:

Prizes reduce market uncertainties by providing a floor.  If the US were to offer a $1 billion prize for the first American company to fly a ship to orbit and bring it home 6 time in one year, we would probably have reusable space ships within five years, possibly sooner: a billion is a pretty good market incentive.

Innovation on the cheap. Via IP.

PICTURE

Received this picture by the email; if anyone knows who took it, I'll be glad to credit it.

QOTD: HEARD AT WORK

"The reason you haven't heard too much about it in the news is that things are going pretty well."

So true.

ONE PHONE TO RULE THEM ALL

It is settled; my wife approved my purchase of the iPhone (a few months from now). Amazing little device, useful for productivity:

And controlling my massive robot horde. Sweet.

Via Danger Room, which also points out this nifty Internet Terror Monitor. That's worth a few good laughs.

GOOEY GEOPOLITICAL GOODNESS

Strangemaps looks at China: Airstrip III and some of the complexities the Chinese face from terrain. I wrote in response to one of my professors questions that the main threat to China was it being broken up and sold for spare parts on the nationalist market. I'm not sure how he took that.

Bottom line, the landscape of China ain't so flat and outside the heartland, hic sunt leonus:

Its size and its penchand for autarkism dictate China’s three main geopolitical objectives:

• maintain unity of the Han heartland;
• maintain control over the non-Han buffer zone;
• deflect foreign encroachment on the Chinese coast.  

LOW IMPACT INVASIONS

"So clean, you'll never now you've been occupied".

My problem with global warming are more political/sociological; as far as the efficiencies that will come from the environing, I say bring it on.

This is pretty neat:

The refineries, which can take in food slop, plastic, paper and styrofoam and output synthetic gas or hydrous ethanol, were developed by McLean, Va.-based defense contractor Defense Life Sciences, Purdue University and the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland.

And from the Army.mil:

"And as one might think, the sort of waste stream that goes into TGER is a mixed waste stream: it's paper; it's plastics; it's ammunition papers; it's food-slop garbage. And so getting a really high-quality fuel source out is kind of a problem," Valdes said. "So we decided instead to design a system that would convert the trash into electrical power. 

Now I don't have to fear our future killbot overlords converting us into coppertops: they'll need our crap just to power up.

via Danger Room.

MA DEUCE: A HISTORY

Nice piece on the ma deuce and it's replacement.

I'm sure whatever replaces the ma deuce will be shiny.

ICE, ICE, BABY...

Yeah, bad title. But cool news: ice on Mars, the nearest thing Earth has to a backup hard drive.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: ENERGIA CITY

Now for something a bit different (and longer; breaks my 2,000 word limit by inches). The story takes place not long from now, and kind of sets the stage for the other stories I've been writing. I'm not arrogant enough to call it Wodehousian, but that's what I was aiming: please enjoy, even if I fall far short of the mark.

ENERGIA CITY: HOME OF ROCKETS

 

The Mayor of Energia City sat at his desk in the Penthouse Office/Apartment complex on the top of Machine Towers, home of the Energia City Hall. His body man, and constant companion, Reginald, was at his side.

SCIENCE MADE STUPID

I actually thought some of this stuff was true: 

via Neatorama.

SKINNYDIPPING INTO THE FUTURE

Charles Stross has a fascinating read on some near edge technologies. 

My favorite is the nanopaper: 

The end result is undamaged cellulose fibres suspended in water. When the water is drained away Berglund found that the fibres join together into networks held by hydrogen bonds, forming flat sheets of "nanopaper". Mechanical testing shows it has a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, making it stronger than cast iron (130 MPa) and almost as strong as structural steel (250 MPa). 

I have an unhealthy obsession with pens and paper. I like my paper smooth to the touch and generally about 110lbs. Sexy.

"YOU LIKE ME, YOU REALLY LIKE ME"

Over a Pajamas Media, a Congressional report on "Why the World Hates America". The congressional report is pretty puerile stuff (like those declassified Presidential Daily Briefs). It is weak tea belched from the bowels of our beloved Bureaucratic processes. 

Right trumps liked, any day of the week, in my book; I just wish our overlords remembered as much.

MY BOY MUQTADA: LET'S SEE HOW THIS GOES

Muqtada al Sadr, after defeating the combined armadas of the Americans, Iraqis and Great Kahn in a do or die battle over the planet Zebulon IV, got his as@ unceremoniously stomped back here in reality (specifically Basra and Sadr City).

So, from Iran, he's disbanding JAM and relying on the Special Groups (Iran Associated Militias) as a sort of Imperial Guard. JAM turned jelly will focus on the 'cultural' front.

Makes sense.

Look, I recognize four levels of analysis: the International System, the State, the Culture and the Family. You attack a level based on your perceived ability to win; it's similar to three dimensional chess they play on Star Trek. After getting rolled by the irresistible momentum of State sovereignty, Sadr (and his handlers) decided to shift levels downward.

Sadr announced his intent several months ago to level shift from attacking the State to launching an offensive against Culture. So now Sadr is operating, primarily, at the level of Culture (with harassing fire directed at the State level). He'll have to attack the Culture's Rule Set and detach the the population from the overlying State; that takes awhile, but it's a valid long term strategy (think Hezbollah).

The Iranians know how the game is played; one day, so will we.

EVERYONE'S GOT A 'BLOG'

I need to look into getting me one.

I've got a couple of flash fiction stories sketched out; here are some of the blogs I plan on researching (yes, I do that) prior to executing them.

Dumbonyc Blog :Flesh out the scenery for Elephant and Johnny.

Pamela's Blog ( it's near peer competitor, thevenicebeachblog, looks dead, but what a cool header): going to help Mordechai and Sevania get around.

And a few Puget Sound Blogs, like Sound Politics, SPS Libertarian and Patrick's Sailing Blog will help lay the ground for Energia City: Home of Rockets!

WOMEN ARE HARD TO DRAW

At least for me. See, you've got to get women shapes (triangles; alot of triangles) down, before you stylize (cartoon) them.

My solution has been to steal liberally. New find, Chris Reccardi:

Also of assistance is Posemaniacs. In a bout of OCD, I clipped and merged into a .pdf a good bit of the female poses (6mb low quality version; the original 156mb file would cost more bandwidth than I'm willing to spend right now). Snag a copy here.

Useful for those times when my internet connection is dodgy; but no substitute for the live site.

WALKABOUT: CASSINI IMAGES

Nice neighborhood. Gorgeous images from around Saturn, taken by the Cassini probe.

Robots get to have all the fun.

SPACESUIT COMPETITION

I wish I had known NASA was holding a spacesuit competition. 

Hell, I could have drawn a better spacesuit than that; and my suit would have had wicked lasers. 

Sigh. 

Well, I still hope that by the time NASA ambles up to the moon, valet parking will already be in place.

HOUSE OF SAUD STUDIES ECONOMICS 101

SAUD: So, dude, we are getting windfall profits here. With Chindia's explosive growth and the Merkins underproducing, it's champagne all around. Let's fly to Harrod's, England and shop.

DUDE: Yeah, see, well, your producer surplus is cutting deeply into folks consumer surplus. You know what happens then?

SAUD: Folks by more?

DUDE: Um, no. Folks decrease demand for a product and chose alternate means.

SAUD: Bah! The Most Pristine Republic of Cali-Flori- ANWR is too politically sensitive; the only oil the Europeans got is olive and the Russkies can't dig through the tundra fast enough.

DUDE: So, eventually, political pressure will increase and the Merkins will dig up their back yards for oil, at least until they innovate their way out of dependence.

SAUD: Never happen. Supply in America is artificially controlled to compel behavior.

DUDE: Don't believe that; American politicians aren't as powerful as you think. They'll put job security way ahead of principal.

SAUD: The hottest circle in hell is reserved for those who would criticize a politician!!!

DUDE: I'm just telling you what happens. The price of oil goes up until it collapses; and let's face it, outside of swank clothiers, what does the House of Saud have to offer?

SAUD: Hmmm. Good point, so what do we do?

DUDE: Learn a lesson from the MAFFIA. You have to keep your host healthy. Increase production.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: INITIAL ENTRY

My latest flash fiction friday story; on time, with fewer calories. Please enjoy.

At sixteen thousand feet they drop.

The plane is a four engined Grunt/Cargo-27M Spartan II aircraft. It carries three crew up front and two in the back. The plane is configured to move one squad of Grunts, twenty one in all, and most of their equipment. There is plenty of space in the back; the Grunts don't take up much room and their equipment is palletized on the back ramp for easy push off on landing. 

Mordechai Kim sits along the side of the plane's hold; he's strapped in like the rest of his squad. He's wearing black/grey combat slicks that cover him from the neck all the way to his feet, where they harden into boots; his gloves are retracted. The slicks give a Grunt ballistic protection up to about 7.56 mm, though any impact will probably break a bone. Still, good enough. Half his face is covered by the polarized lenses of his glasses. They are multichannel. Through them, Mordechai can monitor the network; the rest of the world. On one screen, he's watching CNN; the newsies are just starting to cover the fight. On another screen, he's looking at the TACOPs, as information, maps, orders and requests stream across. On a third screen Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero is conducting her final PMCI's, or pre-mission checks and inspections, on the Squad's systems. Mordechai reminds himself to put his glasses away later or he will lose them. 

CHOICES

(Purposefully obscure): In the course of my duties, I investigated a man for wrong doing. I came to the conclusion that he did do what he was accused of and recommended further action.

Today, that man killed himself.

My initial reaction was that I pulled the trigger. It took me awhile to get past that thought. But I no more pulled the trigger than I encouraged him to commit the acts of which he stood accused. Right now, sitting here at my keyboard, I am more concerned for his direct victims, and what they must be going through. I know we will take care of them; it is what we do, and why I enjoy the job I do.

He made his choices and in doing so he created victims. Today, he made his final, bad, choice.

Free will is a bitch.

DELAYED GRATIFICATION: APPLE

Snap: the $199-$299 iPhone. With MS Office/iWorks support. Sweet; I'm glad I waited. 

TOUGH LOVE FOR THE AIR FORCE

SECDEF Gates finally does something no enemy of the US ever accomplished: he decapitated the USAF fighter mafia:

In bypassing the Air Force's "fighter mafia" in filling the chief of staff's position, Gates appears to be sending a message to the service that it needs to prioritize missions that support the current ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as transport flights, in-air refueling and overhead surveillance, according to Pentagon officials.

My hat is off to you, SECDEF Gates. Well done.

If you're in the fighter mafia (blood free wars or your money back!!) don't worry: with the earth's population of robots at four million and growing, your replacements will be along directly.

IO9 LINK GRABBING

Pill ships:

And nano-iron.

Nano-iron is harder and stronger than plain old iron, with a sweet crystalline structure sure to impress supermodels.

The future can be reduced to a problem of power storage (efficiency will be the upside of or Global Warming Mania) and material sciences.

KILLBOTS: BLOG ALL YOU WANT

...about setbacks and program failures. These puppies are inevitable on the near future battlespace. Numbers game: the hegemon just does not have a lot of people.

THE SOFT SCIENCE CASE FOR SPACE

I keep noodling around about structures, agents and globalization. Sure, we're globalizing, or congealing, what have you. Some good and bad in all that.

What's unique is that for the first time, this wave of globalization has the opportunity to pull together the entire upper level of structure: the international system.  As we move towards a one size fits most uber culture, we loose out on fault tolerance. No more undiscovered countries.

So we have to make some: space. Structure outputs the discontents, and they have to go somewhere. Space adds a level of blessed anarchy above the international system (and don't bring up population: numbers are meaningless against ability and intent).

Currently the two serious spacefaring combines are the US and the EU (cash)/Russian (know how)/China (nationalism). In the short term (fifty years) the US will show a preference for moving bodies while the EU/Russians will want to move bots; that may change as they see the US achieve a comparative advantage. SEN McCain favors landing a man on Mars (or woman) while SEN Obama would prefer to slow down and build kindergarten schools, or something. 

These are all philosophical divides, and they're older and more influential than any current arguments.

Do we hide and caves and fear the night or do we grab a spear and go out and slay our demons. 

The past was a combination of both; I think the future will also be a combination of both.

Check back in fifty years and let me know if I'm right or wrong.

I'M ABOUT 1.35 MILLION DOLLARS SHORT

In 2008 economics. Otherwise, I'd be backing this into my garage right now.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: POLLY PENGELLY PENDRAGON

Yeah, I'm late. Apologies all around; between work and school, my fun has got to slip. Polly Pengelly Pendragon is a new character; she actually started out as a series of sketches I've been working on, when I asked myelf, "o.k., good sketch, but what does she do?"

I am spatially oriented.

"They should put gravity out here," said Polly Pendragon, to no one in particular. She floated in a full lotus position, a meter above the floor.

CALEEFORNIA GOT'S THE INTERNETS

Instapundit receives:

They have no internet feed or cable. Sounds like phones are not 100% . They are finding without the big I network info is not at their fingertips. Its a fragility in the system.

Go west, young man, go west.

CHINA SYNDROME

Get your dose of reality over at the futurist:

A genuine superpower does not merely have military and political influence, but also must be at the top of the economic, scientific, and cultural pyramids.  Thus, the Soviet Union was only a partial superpower, and the most recent genuine superpower before the United States was the British Empire. 

The US has been about to be overcome since I was born and I suspect that will continue long after I gone.

LEARNING SOMETHING NEW: WINDFALL PROFITS

Suppose you have a product traded between X, the world producer, Y, the importer and Z, the consumer.

In a time of shortage (for whatever reason) X becomes a price setter, while Y and Z become the price takers. In order for Y to realize windfall profits, then the government, G, would have to impose tariffs or quotas on the movement of goods from X to Y. Y could then sell product above world prevailing prices to Z; in effect, windfall profits for an importer Y lies in tariffs/quotas that raise prices above world prices.

In the absence of quotas and tariffs, then windfall profits fall to X, world producer, and is represented by the cost inputs it takes to manufacture/dig up the product and what they can sell it on the world market.

I learn something new everyday.

ILLEGAL TO CRITICIZE PUTIN

What a strange, highly predictable, little structuralist of a man.  Erasing people critics from T.V. shows; a digital stalin.

Probably the most interesting line:

"Putin is now prime minister but is still widely considered Russia's leader".

Russia is toast. Once the rule sets hit the door, forget about it: the method, manner and time of decline are mere details.

DON'T LET THE DOORKNOB HIT YOU...

Swamped at work, but I couldn't let this pass:

Breaking: Air Force Chief, Secretary Resign

Kind of what happens when you depart from your core business of, you know, fighting wars, to jet off into some delusional la-la land. Besides, the Small Wars Crowd can make due with UAVs, Marines and Naval dismounts, IMHO; task the Army with everything under 15,000 feet, hire fedex and spin off cyberwarfare dominance to a bunch of teenagers in a garage.

Small War Crowd wins over Next War Crowd by default.

VENDY'S

A frequent theme in my fiction; add a Homer Simpsonish "Vendy's...is there nothing they can't do!!"

HISTORY: ON THE EDGE OF RIPENESS

I generally don't read instant history books; sensational tomes about current events written by or about people I don't care enough about. 

The decision on the part of the Hegemon to invade Iraq is, ahem, contentious. It will be less so, as time goes by, and scholars emerge from behind the barricades to do an accurate post mortem.

Until then, I think I'll buy Feith's "War and Decision".

The Website, with links, .pdfs and inline citations is a pretty awesome resource in of itself.

When you have a limited amount of book dollars, you decide wisely on what you buy...

THINGS THAT GO CRAWL IN THE DAY

Wall crawlers.

SERENISSIMA DEUX

A floating city concept; love it.

via io9

FROM BIMBO ERUPTIONS...

...to Preacher Eruptions. Truly we have gone full circle.

I caught snippets of Reverend Pfleger's performance at trinity Church. One thought came to mind: shouldn't he be in blackface and wearing white gloves? Minstrel show for the masses.

Supposedly, there's a tape out there of Mrs. Michelle Obama turning in a similar performance at Trinity Church. I haven't seen anything pop up on 4Chan yet.

Here's some cheap theology: my dad taught me that blessings come from God. Extending the logic a bit, it seems to me that once you let a man intercede between you and God, you deflect your blessings. Now, that intercession can take one of two ways: either you elevate a "Dear Leader" to a position of worship, or you throw in some "Ole White Debbil" into some position of fear. Either way, you are basically telling god that you view him as something less than awesome.

Your choice.

Since Trinity is viewed, in some quarters, as the One True Black Church (tm), perhaps it's fair to lay the absolute decline of Black America at the feet of their type thinking (waiting on your "forty acres and a mule" versus buying the damn "forty acres and a mule"). You now, when I add up the net value add of One True Black Churches like Trinity, I come up with the following list:

1.

Look in the mirror, folks, and find your "debbil".

And that's all I have to say about that.

CARLOS MENCIA MADE THIS SAME POINT...

...a few years back:

"But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours? . . . That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.”

---Dr. Fadl 

The New Yorker story A Rebellion Within makes for great reading. Discusses the breakdown of the intellectual underpinnings of Jihadism, Qaedaism, Radical Extremism, Agitating Agitators or whatever the hell this week's title is for a very old, predictable and transient phenomena.

Me, I'll just be happy to watch this iteration die; that way I can catch a breath, walk about for awhile, and wait for the phenomena to rise again in another ten, twenty odd years.

TYRA AND I

Growing up, I had this torrid thing for Tyra Banks (NYTIMES Story here). Our relationship culminated in my securing one of those life size Liquor store cut outs of her and giving it pride of place in my bachelor pad.

Last time I saw the cut out, my wife was packing it for a move. 

You know, one day I'll have to ask my wife what she did with it.

BUT WATCH IT DEGENERATE INTO A MOVEMENT...

Libertarianism:

“We are in the beginning of a libertarian moment,” said Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason, the libertarian monthly.

We could do well with less talk of a Libertarian Party and more talk of libertarianism to the Parties.