REPENT, THE WORLD WILL END YESTERDAY

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Friday, November 20. 2015

REPENT, THE WORLD WILL END YESTERDAY

I'm supposed to read the papers and paste some of the more interesting items on this page for you to peruse. We're all supposed to have a few laughs, go tsk, tsk, or on the odd occasion, applaud what we see. Today I was brought up short, as they say. Like a baby midget in the circus. I'm still capable of being shocked, I guess. The papers are full of man's inhumanity to man these last few days, but nothing about a terrorist attack surprises me anymore. Doesn't even move the meter, I'm ashamed to say.

It was more the mundane aspect of the depravity I discovered that got to me. The everyday humdrum attitude that everyone seems to have about it, like it was traffic or inclement weather. I found myself on the KTLA5 webpage while I was looking for something. I gather that KTLA serves the eastern part of Los Angeles, mostly. Here's a list of the headlines I found on one page, all labeled "Local News":

Downey Police Officer Apparently Targeted in Fatal Shooting in Station Parking Lot

Suspected Carjacker Fatally Shot by Deputies After Allegedly Taking Hostages at Downey Restaurant

Firefighter Fatally Shoots Wife, a Sheriff’s Deputy, in Apparent Murder-Suicide: LASD

Man Holding Knife to Hostage’s Neck in Front of Burning El Monte Home Shot by Police

Suspect in Killing of Woman Found Buried in Valinda Yard Is Fugitive Santeria Priest Accused of Rape

2 Found Dead, Others Injured After Shooting Spree in Banning; Man in Custody: Police

Fresno County ‘Murder Suspect’ Arrested in El Monte on Rape Charge: Authorities

Human Remains, Including Skull, Found at Valinda Home During Dig Linked to Missing Person Case

L.A. County Firefighter Suspected in Sexual Assault Case Arrested Near El Monte School: Police

Man Arrested After Allegedly Filming at Least 7 People in Brea Starbucks Bathroom

Teen Charged After Allegedly Raping 72-Year-Old Woman at Senior Living Apartment Complex in Huntington Beach

The Newspaper neglected to mention that the "fugitive Santeria priest" suspected of murder had raped a child. All the news that fits, I guess, and the fact that the rape victim was a child can't compete with everything else the headline has going on.

I can't say I blame the news organization. They have a lot of ground to cover. I didn't even bother listing all the plain old murders I found on that page. There was a kind of monotony to them. The KTLA news page even tried to get me to pay attention to a car wreck. That doesn't even register as bad news to me anymore after reading the rest of the happenings from one little corner of our world.

Well, don't worry, you can count on me to keep bringing you the news, but as soon as I'm done, I'm shaving my head, putting on flowing robes, and fashioning a placard that reads REPENT, THE WORLD WILL END TOMORROW. You'll find me out on the sidewalk, waving at passing cars, and apologizing to everyone for not making the sign 50 years ago when it would have been timely.

A Florida State University researcher has discovered an artificial material that mimics photosynthesis and potentially creates a sustainable energy source.

His discovery generates exciting new prospects for how this process could be used to forge new energy sources in a carbon neutral way. Potentially, hydrogen could be transported to other locations and burned as fuel.“In theory, this should be a self-sustaining energy source,” Mendoza-Cortes said. “Perhaps in the future, you could put this material on your roof and it could turn rain water into energy with the help of the sun.”But, unlike many other energy sources, this won’t have a negative effect on the environment. “You won’t generate carbon dioxide or waste,” he said.

I see. He's terrified of producing a beneficial trace gas, or any "waste." He will, however, propose the mining of lots of manganese, a material that causes permanent neurological disorders, tremors, facial muscle spasms, difficulty walking, acute bronchitis, aggressiveness, and hallucinations. But he'll make enough juice to charge his phone, so it's all good.

UnitedHealth may exit Obamacare individual exchanges

UnitedHealth Group Inc raised new questions about the viability of Obamacare on Thursday, saying that in 2017 it might stop selling individual plans on the insurance exchanges created under U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

I don't have any questions about the viability of Obamacare, and never did, but thanks for playing.

Cab medallion owners sue NYC, blame Uber for ruining business

Owners of New York City's taxi "medallions" filed a lawsuit (PDF) against city regulators today, saying their business has been devastated by the decision to allow companies like Uber to compete using "E-hail" services. A medallion is required to operate a New York City yellow taxicab, the only type of vehicle allowed to accept passengers who hail cabs on the street. Until recently, those medallions could sell for over $1 million. Companies like White & Blue Group, one of the plaintiffs in the case, managed fleets of licensed taxicabs by leasing out the medallions.

Here's an errand for you, kind reader. Apply for a permit to do anything in New York City. Then tell the person behind the counter you don't need to fill out any forms, or pay any fees, because you wrote 200 lines of javascript, frosted it with a little html, and pasted it into your phone. I promise I'll drag the river to find you.

Students want Woodrow Wilson's name removed from Princeton

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber told the students he agreed with them that Wilson was racist and that the university needs to acknowledge that, according to a video posted to YouTube. But a school spokesman said the president also told students it is important to weigh Wilson's racism, and how bad it was, with the contributions he made to the nation.

Let's make a deal, college kids. I'll help you jackhammer his name off the building if you'll help me erase his signature from the Revenue Act of 1913.

Help! My short position got crushed, and now I owe E-Trade $106,445.56

When you’re long, the worst you can do is lose is everything. But when you’re short, everything and a lot more is at stake. He should have known better, no doubt, but you have to feel for this poor guy. This is what apparently happened, as Joe explains in his GoFundMe plea. “I was holding KBIO short overnight for what I thought was a nice $2.00 fade coming,” he wrote. “At the close of the bell I saw the quote montage clear out and figured today there was no action after hours in the stock. So I went to my office for a long meeting. I got out of the meeting and saw a message from one of my buddy’s, he asked if I was ok since I was short KBIO.”

I have no sympathy -- none -- for a college graduate that can't pluralize "buddy."

Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

On Tuesday, the American Medical Association (AMA) called for a ban on direct-to-consumer advertisements for prescription drugs and medical devices. Such ads drive demand and costs for expensive name-brand treatments when those drugs may not be appropriate or when clinically effective, low-cost options are available, the doctors group said. The announcement is part of a larger effort by the association to make prescription drugs more affordable.

I have only one observation. If a man and a woman are in separate bathtubs, no amount of medication will initiate sexual activity between them. That's a cast iron fact.

Forget paleo, go mid-Victorian: it’s the healthiest diet you’ve never heard of

The implications of a better understanding of mid-Victorian health are profound. It becomes clear that, with the exception of family planning, the vast edifice of post-1948 healthcare has not so much enabled us to live longer but has merely supplied methods of controlling the symptoms of non-communicable degenerative diseases, which have become prevalent due to our failure to maintain mid-Victorian nutritional standards. Dysnutrition is arguably the largest cause of ill-health today.

Sounds great. I'm all for a return to mid-Victorian Napier-style foreign policy, too: "Come here instantly. Come here at once and make your submission, or I will in a week tear you from the midst of your village and hang you."

Why the VW #DieselGate Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg, Part 2

There are of course some things that one could not have predicted. For example, it now seems that this scandal might be part of a broader “era of cheating software”, including everything from slot machines to voting machines, as well as an EU probe of TV makers into “Volkswagening” their energy efficiency test scores.

I have another theory. The emissions rules to limit CO2 are stupid and unattainable, and Volkswagen workers had to choose between fibbing and mass ritual suicide in the parking lot.

Half of New Yorkers Say They Are Barely or Not Getting By, Poll Shows

The poll, conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, shows great disparities in quality of life among the city’s five boroughs. The stresses weighing on New Yorkers vary widely, from the Bronx, where residents feel acute concern about access to jobs and educational opportunity, to Staten Island, where one in five report recently experiencing vandalism or theft.

Half say they are barely getting by, and the other half didn't hear the question because their head is in the oven.

My Home-Built TTL Computer Processor (CPU)

This processor that I designed and built is an accumulator-memory machine, that is, a single register is used in programming. I wanted an instruction set similar to those of the 8-bit microprocessors I was used to. However, the Z-80 and 6502 CPUs had complex instruction sets, with variable instruction lengths. I knew from experience that a programmer uses only a subset of these, so I designed an instruction set that was similar to this commonly-used subset. It has 16 instructions in all, with eight arithmetic-logical operations, and eight data movement and jump instructions.

That is a nifty piece of work. After the zombie apocalypse, he'll be an emperor-god because he'll be the only man on Earth able to program an LED register to show the vague outlines of a naked woman.

Well, that should tide you over until tomorrow. Remember, Maggies Farm loves you and wants you to be happy, so if by some twist of fate you accidentally enter the broadcast area for KTLA, roll up the windows, lock the doors, and keep driving.

Posted by Roger de Hauteville in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:12 | Comments (38) | Trackback (1)

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A lady of my acquaintance invited me to the Plymouth Thanksgiving celebrations; parade, food, store window decoration contest...etc.

Cool, until I went on the town's web page and read the security restrictions; no backpacks, nothing larger than a ladies purse, all food and other items brought in must be in a clear zip lock bag, nothing that might be used as a weapon.

'Land of the Free' my ass. Guess the backpack that I carry my Nikon, lenses, batteries and flash equipment is right out.

These idiots want to be safe (as opposed to feeling safe and important), invite all concealed or open carry gun owners to attend and bring your piece. Shotguners and riflemen half price.
Recently someone prated at me, "Nobody needs an AK47", I replied "The people in Paris did".

Still trying to figure out how I get out of this with the Lady.

#1 John the River (Link) on 2015-11-20 09:11 (Reply)

Tell her you lost your pacifier and don't want to suck your thumb in public. She'll understand.

#1.1 BillH on 2015-11-20 09:55 (Reply)

Given that quite a few ladies purses are large enough to transport crew served weapons. that's not much of a restriction.

#1.2 William O. B'Livion on 2015-11-20 14:47 (Reply)

You go, Roger! Love the asides -

#2 Claritas on 2015-11-20 09:58 (Reply)

Re: Dieselgate

It was guaranteed to happen. Govt. puts mandates on car companies with little regard to the whether it is technically or economically feasible. For a long time, things were bubbling along and incredible advances were made but maybe they've hit the wall or at least gotten to a place where the advances are even harder to come by.

Now cars cost more than houses used to cost They are certainly cleaner and more efficient than they've ever been - and I think we have to acknowledge that government played a hand in that, but there comes a time when whipping the horse won't make it go faster and if that lesson isn't learned, whipping it more still becomes hazardous to its health.

#3 mudbug on 2015-11-20 10:06 (Reply)

With regard to corrupted voting machines--OF COURSE! Why do you think the boys and girls from Chicago were so adamant about selling your state legislature on the new voting machines. Voting machines manufactured by the same people who manufacture slot machines--sheesh! How naive can you be!! Then there is also the fact that Chicago/Seattle Union flunkies really, really need to get all cities, counties, states doing what their mob bosses want done. All you gotta do folks is go back to the hand counting method and see how things change in your state!

#4 another one on 2015-11-20 10:17 (Reply)

All you get from beating a dead horse is tired.

#4.1 Sam L. on 2015-11-20 14:44 (Reply)

Re: photosynthesis. Ugh. This wasn't an article, it was a paid advertisement for affirmative action. Unclear if this material was actually created and tested, or if this was a computational exercise.

Moreover, there are lots of such successful studies in the literature. All with the same hype. I hope something good happens one day, but hard to get excited over this at this stage.

#5 DrTorch on 2015-11-20 10:35 (Reply)

Photosynthesis is interesting but no magic bullet. There is only so much energy per unit area in sunlight (and with night, seasons, clouds, often much less).

The good thing about plants is they go ahead and build millions of acres of photosynthesis units on their own, so that's good. If we need to manufacture it, it's a whole different story.

#5.1 jay on 2015-11-20 12:51 (Reply)

'Forget Paleo, go mid-Victorian'

The article was full of statistical and data interpretation errors which by total coincidence all favored the belief that there are magic foods. There was also a new word, so new the dictionary hasn't caught up yet; dysnutrition. As far as I can figure out dysnutrition simply means you aren't eating the magic foods so everything bad that happens to you is because you are ignoring the superior intelligence of the quacks and magic foods they are selling. The article was in fact 'disinformation'.

#6 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-11-20 10:42 (Reply)

For the rest of us, Gone Windy's use of "magic foods" here may be hyperbolic but at least it's fallacious. There are virtually no magic foods, of course, which Gone Windy knows you know therefore to lodge this bit of exxpected question-begging or strawmanning, or whatever it is.

Whatever it is is a transparent construct aimed at avoiding cognitive dissonance while peddling a false faith. Gone Windy therefore labors to forfend or limit as much as a conversation about a) the consequences of the usual processed, animal-based, sterile Western diet and b) the benefits of substituting a sane, nutritious, plant-based diet as possible.

Of course c) disease trending never comes up, this too by design or unconscious instinct, all the while Gone Windy is demanding science he won't absorb. It's a tidy bundle.

The usual processed, animal-based, sterile Western diet is itself the obvious, contemporary food fad, while the healthful diet that preceded it and supersedes it in so many places on the globe is already proved historically, anecdotally, and especially scientifically.

Causations and correlations tend to stymie humankind; look how long it's taken us to outlaw Marxism, given its record. Heh.

This doesn't mean the globe is fed well or that the West is fed as poorly as the world's worst, just that what's wrong in the West stands alongside what's wrong anywhere the statistics come back as negatively as our own. The bad differs, but it's still bad.

And it is this way because of blind faith and cultural disposition, not science, or investigation, and especially not by experience.

That much weight is bound to press our various Gone Windy's into all sorts of contortions and so it does. No, you can't even lead horses to water.

#6.1 Ten on 2015-11-20 13:17 (Reply)

By the way, excellent blogging, Roger. Intelligent, funny, broad, and diverse.

The piece I reference (Dr Paul Clayton, Fellow at the Institute of Food, Brain and Behaviour, Oxford; Dr Judith Rowbotham, Visiting Research Fellow, Plymouth University) is particularly well-written, given that it seeks to introduce the topic and its theory, and not constitute some thirty page white paper. Appreciated.

#6.1.1 Ten on 2015-11-20 13:31 (Reply)

Accessed your inner Gang of Z, did you?

#6.1.2 Sam L. on 2015-11-20 14:46 (Reply)

And here, folks, we have a case in point. Observe the habitual denial, the wistful projection, the futile diversion. It is a pattern, no?

Because SCIENCE!

#6.1.2.1 Ten on 2015-11-20 15:40 (Reply)

I generally find GWTW's comments reasonable, so mistakenly (without reading the source material) thought yours seemed overly snarky. Having now read the source material, I don't understand GW's comments at all. One, two, or all three of us may have gotten up on the wrong side of the morning this bed.
My apologies, Ten.

#6.1.2.1.1 Sam L. on 2015-11-20 19:44 (Reply)

I admit having lost any ability to get up on the right side, somehow. It's a target rich environment.

#6.1.2.1.1.1 Ten on 2015-11-20 20:45 (Reply)

When I saw the article on mid-Victorian diet I was interested. I do indeed know what they ate in the mid-Victorian period and I thought this would be informative. But before I went to the article I googled the word ‘Dysnutrition’. Usually when you google a word one of the things you get is a definition. But Webster never heard of the word . I did find some of the fad diet sites that described it, this from stoneageddoc.com: “Dysnutrition describes the substitution of the food that nature intended for us with processed foods that leave us dumpy, diabetic and demented’. He goes on to cite most of the diet faddist talking points ‘too much starch, sugar, fat and alcohol’, ‘too little vitamins, minerals and other nutrients’.
So I then went to the article where the author first tried to recreate history by debunking the death rates and health in merry old England during this period. Made me suspicious right away because the article was about the diet and now the author is telling lies and rewriting facts. Then a little further down the author’s agenda was exposed by his statement: ‘In the 1870s Victorian health was challenged by cheap sugar and the first generation of mass-processed high-salt and high-sugar foods’.
I won’t bore you with a long explanation the fact is simply that this mantra ‘mass-processed high-salt and high-sugar food’ is bad for you is at the root of every fad diet and every quack today. This article is simply the authors bigotry, which by the way flies in the face of science, and it is the same ‘sugar/salt/fat’ food bigotry that 100% of the quacks and food faddists use today. This was not a legitimate article about mid-Victorian diet it was just another anti-science hit piece against mass-processed food, salt and sugar.
The ‘magic food’? Onions, watercress, cabbage, beetroot, fish, meat and fruit like apples and cherries.
I am flabbergasted that any intelligent and educated person thinks these magic foods will make you live longer AND just as flabbergasted that anyone thinks sugar, salt and fat is bad for you. Every year for the last 50 years our life expectancy increases AND all the quacks agree we eat too much mass processed food, sugar, salt and fat. Sugar is the most studied food in the world and the ONLY negative effect they could find from consuming sugar is dental carries. Salt is essential for life and more harm is done by limiting salt than by consuming too much. Fat is a necessary component in the human diet we must consume fat. As for mass prepared foods, I just don’t see any harm coming from it. This includes bread, pasta, hamburger helper, mac & cheese, etc. Where is the evidence that this is killing us?
Was I too windy or hyperbolic as Ten claims. Well Ten is a vegetarian or vegan or something and totally convinced his diet is the only way to eat. I generally go easy responding to Ten because to him this is religion and to me it is simply truth vs BS. I genuinely believe I am correct in that eating meat is not only not going to hurt you but it is healthful as well. I believe that for most people without a genetic illness salt and sugar are not going to hurt you or kill you. So there it is; too windy and hyperbolic for Ten, but there it is. Now I’m going to get some chocolate bars and enjoy them.

#6.1.2.1.1.2 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-11-20 21:03 (Reply)

Yammering. And without paragraph breaks, a Gone Windy signature.

#6.1.2.1.1.2.1 Ten on 2015-11-21 05:07 (Reply)

Incidentally, note Windy's not addressing chronic conflating of personal whim and "science", and conversely, the chronic avoidance of actual science of nutrition. These are pillars of the fallacy and will be the last things to fall, if they ever do.

Windy also replaces health with longevity, another dodge, and illustrates he's never checked the actual sciences when he rattles off the particular foods he personally asserts as healthful - apparently unaware of the contradiction - and further, when he promotes myths amply disproved by the real science.

In other words:

1. Health re: diet is what Windy says it is, this being "scientific";
2. Unless for rhetoric's sake, he can conflate it with longevity and avoid it altogether;
3. Food is food, except when it's not, it then being Windy's preferred, anecdotal menu, offered without any evidence of either health or longevity;
4. Any deviation from the above thinking is polarized so as to disallow, Alinsky-like, as "magic";
5. Demanding science, Windy chronically avoids the real McCoy. I've tried, I know;
6. But none of Windy's ways and means may be construed as psuedoscientific. That's just not possible and therefore it's disallowed. QED.

All this is nonsense, of course, and were Windy intent the subject and not just a rhetorical revision of it, he'd not hold to any of it. Why? Because the scientific evidence is indeed rife and because it spans decades.

But according to Windy, apparently, there is no science of nutrition because nutrition is unscientific. Challenging this bald-faced denial of recorded fact makes one a kook because everybody knows kooks challenge this particular status quo. Again, QED, reams of material notwithstanding.

In effect our various commercialized, industrialized animal agriculturalists have redefined science, remodeling it from the pursuit of knowledge - of which copious science exists about nutrition and diet - into the end dogma of any findings that can be molded to suit a foregone conclusion and preferably, often by building that dogma into a random article promoting animal agriculture and industrialized processed Western food.

But science is not a belief about a finding, per se, a belief or finding that prevents any new or modified or replacement finding from ever existing. Science is the act of finding, and Windy prevents that occurring, going so far as to ignore and then it when it does come to pass, as he has again here. It doesn't exist because it can't exist and therefore it doesn't exist.

Invoking this odd unscientific SCIENCE! is a rhetorical dodge. Argumentative branding. A smokescreen. But being faulty, it's no more faulty than constructing a half dozen fallacious parallel constructs to enable the dodge to exist.

#6.1.2.1.1.2.1.1 Ten on 2015-11-21 10:39 (Reply)

One man's cogent argument is another man's yammering.
I find the food elitism and food faddism to be not very different from 'The barefoot doctors of India' where India is trainig quacks to do real medicine. Every food nut has his/her favorite and magical diet. It prevents obesity, diabetes, cancer, alzheimer's, wrinkles and ugly. They also have their 'bad food' which are the cause of all man's ills and coincidently it is always the same foods and additives. To be honest I wish it were true, I wish it were that simple; eat these foods and be healthy and eat those foods and get sick. I like order in my world I like a formula, a plan, a recipe to success. But it just isn't true. The food bigots will bend the data and hide the inconvenient truths to hold on to their mystic food magic but if it were really true it would be obvious and there for all to see. Everyone who ate junk food (or salt, sugar, fat and meat) would be obese and die young and everyone who carefully ate the least appetizing food would be slim, beautiful and live to be 100. The simple fact is for most people (the people without a genetic disease that requires a specific diet) it doesn't matter what you eat as long as you get your MDR's You can eat carrots and tacos for lunch or potato chips and dip it doesn't matter as long as you get your minimum daily requirements in your food. Everything else is pure superstition and 'woo'.

#6.1.2.1.1.2.1.2 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-11-21 10:53 (Reply)

It's yammering, Windy, precisely because it's factless. It's all anecdote and whim, with appeals to fringes, outliers, and anything else you can conjure up to deny - and deny is the right word, psychologically-speaking - that the science exists.

Each of your comments contains at least a few obvious logical fallacies.

The simple fact

There is no simple fact here. "The simple fact" is purest rhetoric. It's simple urgency and demand, not a description of reality at all.

#6.1.2.1.1.2.1.2.1 Ten on 2015-11-21 11:07 (Reply)

“It's all anecdote and whim”
That from a fad dieter whose very diet is based on anecdote and whim. All observations in life are anecdote, it is the conclusion based on these observations that is either correct or incorrect. It has been my observation in life that people want answers and will readily turn to magic to get them. The idea that our diet can make us healthy or sick is very seductive and there is in fact a measure of truth in it. My point is that we know the truths. We know what our bodies must have and how much they must have to be healthy. We know this and have ‘enshrined’ it in the minimum daily requirements. There is more to this equation of course but essentially that’s it. If you get your MDRs throughout your life and have plenty of calories as well you will have fully satisfied your nutritional needs. This isn’t a radical position or easy to disagree with. BUT there is a confounding factor(s) in that some people are born with genetic disorders/diseases and those people do indeed benefit from a diet that restricts or emphasizes certain foods. This ‘loophole’ in our dietary knowledge allows the quacks and food fadists to put their nose into the tent. The logic is simple; if a low carb/sugar diet is good for a diabetic THAN a low carb/sugar diet MUST prevent diabetes. Voilà, case closed, anyone who disagrees is yammering, factless, and It's all anecdote and whim.

But in the end it doesn’t seem to make a real difference exactly because humans are omnivorous and can and should eat almost anything. So your fad diet won’t usually hurt you but it still isn’t magic. That is it won’t prevent illness or make you live longer as is so often claimed in support of the various fad diets. Who has not read that the Mediterranean diet is ‘healthier’ and that people who follow it live longer healthier lives and that those people living around the Mediterranean are so much smarter than we mere Americans who eat too much fat, sugar, salt and processed foods. This is the mantra of all the fad diets, i.e. some reference to science and a population that lives longer and healthier lives and Voilà a new fad diet is born and supporters fall into line and call you names if you disagree.

#6.1.2.1.1.2.1.2.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-11-22 11:25 (Reply)

Re: prescription drug advertisements

I understand them from a free speech perspective and I understand them in the case of an elective sort of condition, but seems stupid otherwise. I hope my doctor would be better prepared to prescribe a medication than I would just because I saw some ad on the TV.

I doubt that the ads contribute much to the cost of the drugs, but if dropping them makes a difference around the edges, so much the better. I would prefer that the drug companies do that voluntarily like the makers of spirits declined to use TV for advertising for a long time.

#7 mudbug on 2015-11-20 10:53 (Reply)

I think the hiatus was a government decree, something with an "or else" attached.

#7.1 Sam L. on 2015-11-20 14:48 (Reply)

I do not understand people. If you are living in a city that is very pricey and barely getting by, why don't you leave the city? So many better places to live with a lower cost of living and improved quality of life.

New York sounds like it would be a hell hole for someone who doesn't have the financial means to enjoy any of the supposed benefits of the Big Apple.

I cannot feel sorry for people who refuse to make changes in their lives that may improve their situation.

#8 MissT on 2015-11-20 10:57 (Reply)

We are bracing for a flood of New York City refugees any day now. Don't think we're going to let them in, though.

#8.1 Jim on 2015-11-20 14:18 (Reply)

I love that home built computer. I did that years ago when I worked in digital signal processing. I had a computer design that used all small scale integrated circuit TTL chips. However it was a lot easier to use an 8080 or a Z80 in your DIY computer. I remember when the Zilog Z80 came out and we were amazed because it contained 25,000 transistors and would operate at the blazing speed of 5 MHz We even got one to operate at 7 MHz.

#9 Ray on 2015-11-20 11:19 (Reply)

Getting immune to bad news, eh? Yep, the way I feel also. All I want to do is create my compound and wait "it" out.
One of these days I'm gonna get a t-shirt that reads, "I survived the obama years"
Steve

#10 Steve on 2015-11-20 11:25 (Reply)

426 days to go.

#10.1 JJM on 2015-11-20 13:08 (Reply)

That many?!!! Geez! I'll never make it!

#10.1.1 mudbug on 2015-11-20 13:42 (Reply)

Go looooooooooooong on your booze vault.

#10.1.1.1 Sam L. on 2015-11-20 14:50 (Reply)

Re: Help my short position got crushed

That guy was an idiot. If he sold at the best time in the last four months, he would have gotten about $5.00/share expecting the stock to loose $2.00. That happened on 11/16, when it hit a low of $0.44 and closed at $1.72. Since he didn't cover then, we can assume he is either greedy or that price wasn't his target meaning he bought it somewhere around $4.00 or less or he just wasn't watching his position. So he expected the stock to lose more than half its value! On 11/17, it closed at $2.17 so now he's in a short position, the stock is going up and he still doesn't cover!

As they say, "Bulls make money, Bears make money, but Pigs get slaughtered." That should be changed to "Pigs and idiots get slaughtered."

#11 mudbug on 2015-11-20 11:31 (Reply)

Ah yes a couple of articles about the crony capitalism (as opposed to free market capitalism) that poisons competition. The taxi business and the 'regulatory' agency have a long history of protecting against competition, and paying a price for that 'protection'. If the taxis were doing such a great job people wouldn't be calling this newcomer. But the fact is, apparently, that Uber provides better and more economical service--because they have to.

And the protected class is whining.

Doctors, it appears, want to control what their patients learn about treatments available. Why shoudl patients be kept in the dark?

#12 Jay on 2015-11-20 12:43 (Reply)

Emissions:

Everyone is running from the new heavy equipment and heavy truck because of the emissions. No one wants to dump DEF into every piece of equipment constantly and have it break down after 1000 hours. And the new light trucks are going to be all aluminum, including Ford. Good luck surviving a crash.

If your kids are thinking of going to trade school for diesel mechanics, steer them otherwise. The trade schools get money from CAT and the other big companies to work on the NEW stuff. That no one is using in mining, construction, logging, farming and manufacturing. It's a useless education.

#13 fjord on 2015-11-20 12:51 (Reply)

So will we reach a point soon where the used, pre-emissions diesels will be worth more than the new stuff?

#13.1 Another guy named Dan on 2015-11-20 15:17 (Reply)

already there.

Pulling a dinosaur out of the bush and rebuilding the engine (Cat engine cores $15,000) and putting it back into commission costs a good penny.

Need to get the boot off the neck of manufacturing and mining though.

#13.1.1 fjord on 2015-11-21 10:41 (Reply)

426 days to go until things start turning around. Unless the Word that Rhymes With Witch gets in.

#14 Jim on 2015-11-20 14:19 (Reply)

On Woodrow Wilson -
Democrats spend an inordinate amount of energy expunging the history of their heinous past. I used to think today's Democrats were naive and did not want to judge them wrongly as being evil. I am now free of having to make a judgement - by intentionally wiping their history it is they who are acknowledging their own evil. Past actions, done in good faith do not need to be intentionally erased - they've incriminated themselves.

#15 L.B. on 2015-11-21 09:08 (Reply)

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Friday, November 20. 2015

REPENT, THE WORLD WILL END YESTERDAY