March 2013
1 post
Welfare for the white middle class
This article is about how Lockheed is sucking money out of the government in the form of defense contracts. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jeremiah-goulka/48479/lockheed-martins-herculean-efforts-to-profit-from-defense-spending-the-epic-story-of-the-c-130
November 2012
3 posts
Must be seen to be believed →
October 2012
7 posts
Conservatives want to strengthen families?
If conservatives really wanted to strengthen families, they would push for classes in high school that would focus on relationships. Families are in deed fragmenting and kids are growing up without learning how to keep an argument from becoming a spite-forming vow.
Conservatives shouldn’t be pushing abstinence education. They should be pushing counseling.
Ayn Rand
To the beautiful young woman sitting next to me last night in the sports bar:
You and your handsome boyfriend make a lovely couple and I hope you are happily married and make some beautiful children. You said you watch the first “Atlas Shrugged” and had read the book. In the spirit of conviviality and bonhomie, I didn’t respond in the most candid way. I said “I’m...
The \"The masses are in the fields, laboring\"...
This joke was in Hedrick Smith’s “The Russians”. It is told as a joke by Russian men to describe how they see Russian women.
A sociologist wants to see how different ethnic groups react to the same situation. He takes two men and one woman from different ethnicities and puts them on islands, dropping each off in separate locations. The ethnic groups he picked were English,...
September 2012
9 posts
The joys of H.264 conforming H.222 streams
The specification is more of a hint than a rule:
To provide display specific information such as aspect_ratio, it is strongly recommended that each AVC video stream carries VUI parameters with sufficient information to ensure that the decoded AVC video stream can be displayed correctly by receivers.
Isn’t the correct display the whole point?
Rob Delaney: Thing I thought today: →
robdelaney:
I tried unsuccessfully to quit drinking many times before I finally did it for good in 2002. There were a bunch of reasons; chief being that I knew what I was doing was dangerous to myself and others. When I finally wound up in a Los Angeles emergency room surrounded by cops and doctors, strapped…
The great(est) Dane (Cook)
shitmystudentswrite:
William Shakespeare was perhaps the greatest Dane Cook to spawn out of his era, and his ability to create comic verse should not go unlooked.
Torque 3D game engine on GitHub
GarageGames to Release T3D as Open Source
Why are we doing this?Nine months ago, we realigned the goals of GarageGames; making Torque 3D available via a permissive open source license is a strategic move towards fulfilling the company vision. Our first goal was to use iTorque to build a new product we call 3 Step Studio. We envisioned a game development tool that requires no programming at all...
Mark Cuban explains the stock market
Mark Cuban says it explicitly:
I bought and sold FB shares as a TRADE, not an investment. I lost money. When the stock didn’t bounce as I thought/hoped it would, I realized I was wrong and got out. It wasn’t the fault of the FB CFO that I lost money. It was my fault. I know that no one sells me shares of stock because they expect the price of the stock to go up. So someone saw me coming and...
August 2012
3 posts
Why Iran is going to get the bomb and what we...
Conservatives and neoconservatives have been beating the war drums about Iran getting the bomb. They would like us to either attack Iran or support an Israeli attack on Iran. Bibi Netanyahu has been trying to chump President Obama about it.
Iran will get the bomb because the computational requirements for simulating nuclear explosions keeps getting cheaper. Many of the experiments conducted by...
Note to Will Cain
You wanted to know about lies in that clip in which you appeared:
1) Amy Holmes mentions that he is from a swing district. Cook has it at +1 R. She didn’t mention the benefits of incumbency, as if a seated Congressman and a challenger start from the same position.
2) Your schtick about being a leader is hollow. You talk about “doing the unpopular” when Ryan was acting as a...
June 2012
4 posts
Big Brother update
I got an email from Google+ suggesting that I add certain people to my circles. One of the people was someone I have followed on Twitter. I have never exchanged email with this person. How the hell does Google know about this person?
Bottom line: I don’t need your help Google. Butt the hell out of my private life.
What's not to like about liberals
There are times when I think that I have a lot in common with liberals. And then I stumble across something like this and I am reminded that there are people who call themselves ‘liberal’ who have a self-serving agenda that has nothing to do with liberalism.
“The Stranger”, a ‘liberal’ bastion in Seattle made Shaun Scott a nominee for it’s Genius Award...
May 2012
5 posts
Decoding Keynes
On twitter, I follow some people who espouse ideas that are diametrically opposed to mine in an attempt to learn why they believe those things. I often try to engage them via twitter, but it is an awful medium for actual exposition. It is great for invective though. Sometimes, my attempts at engagement are mistaken for heckling and I get blocked. Such are the hazards.
I follow one woman,...
WatchJon Stewart and “Awesome”
April 2012
4 posts
Teenage boys and sexual innuendo
Sitting at the table eating breakfast and the bacon was a little over done. Bookzilla, 15, said that the bacon was a too hard and she liked it a little more chewy. I started talking about how each brand of bacon was different and sometimes it went from being really limp to hard in an instant. I was looking more at JMan, 12, than Bookzilla and his eyes tightened mischievously. JMan made eye...
Karma missed me this time
JMan, 12, was helping me make brownies. He measured out 1/3 cup vegetable oil, but didn’t have the measuring cup over the bowl, which is how I had previously instructed him to measure it. He carefully moved it over and dumped it into the bowl.
He said, “Karma missed me this time!”
Larry's Leather Lads
I was living in Germany in 1979 and working for an American contractor. My job was on the periphery of the intelligence community. Some of my colleagues had previously been active members of that community.
When Khomeini came to power in Iran and the American embassy in Tehran was overrun, my colleagues in Germany and I would discuss what could be done about him. There were those who favored a...
2000 times
I have an idea, which is probably not unique. The idea is to cap individual income at 2000 times the amount of the average income. Since the average income is around $50,000, that would make the annual cap somewhere around $100 million.
So what happens to the extra money if you make more than $100 million? You donate it or it is forfeited to the US government. You get to look like a mensch...
February 2012
1 post
Spreading Romney
Someone is trying to turn romney into a verb.
See here.
December 2011
4 posts
Portlandia
The buzz is building. NY Times and The New Yorker both ran pieces about Carrie Brownstein. Season 1 is available on Netflix.
Thinking about the franchise business
Mars Hill Church looks like a wonderful franchise opportunity. It is all margin, tax free.
War Horse
I responded flippantly to a tweet by someone this morning with regard to Steven Spielberg’s film making. The tweet was about how Spielberg always wants a happy ending. I showed “Saving Private Ryan” to my kids on Veteran’s Day and my daughter said the movie kind of sucked because everyone dies. That movie was an exception to the Spielberg tradition.
I just saw the...
November 2011
2 posts
About time
For reasons that I don’t completely understand, a couple of the lefty (or what passes for left) stalwarts in Seattle are against Proposition 1183. Goldy goes full-on crazy here:
The knee-jerk, government-shouldn’t-be-in-the-booze-business crowd will have plenty to drink to when Costco’s $22 million Initiative 1183 wins tonight—and it will win, by a comfortable margin—but you...
The Truant Muse: Confession →
moorehn:
I have been off Facebook for one week. I was one of Facebook’s early adopters in the U.S., having been lured into it by my English colleagues in early 2007 when it was all the rage in London media. (True story: I had just emailed a story to my British editor on mergers and acquisitions, and he…
October 2011
3 posts
Bumbershoot
The last time I was at Bumbershoot, Johnette performed and I really wanted to see her. When I was a student at Santa Clara U, we had Dream 6 up from LA to open for The Untouchables, and it was one of the rockinest concerts I have ever seen. Kind of under attended by the Catholics, but a stormin’ time nonetheless.
I had waited in line to see Janeane Garofalo and I noted that there were...
Five rules for a new economy →
September 2011
1 post
Fetishizing 9/11
I have a new post up at my old blog. I have watched the response to 9/11 over the last ten years and it has turned my stomach.
The Bush Administration should be vilified for their irresponsibility. Instead, they were retained in office in 2004. Our form of representative democracy has serious structural flaws. Elections don’t work as a feedback mechanism on the course of government.
August 2011
12 posts
Paradox
Apple, as of this writing, valued more highly than all of the Eurozone banks combined. That’s not the paradox. The paradox is a comparison between Apple and Microsoft.
Apple is a model of a top-down organization, where Steve Jobs makes decisions and others implement them. To be sure, ideas originate elsewhere in the organization and flow upward to Jobs, and decisions are made by other...
Remembering
Bookzilla was about three. We were waiting at the video store to check out. She was on my shoulders. It was easier to put her up there than try to keep her in check off my shoulders.
“Look, Poppa, they are just like us!” I looked and she was pointing to the guy in the lane next to us.
“He’s got a moustache, you have a moustache. He’s got a beard, you’ve...
WatchColbert v. Spin Doctor
