dispatches from TJICistan

I could have come up with this logo for just $4k !

http://jwz.livejournal.com/1058572.html

Rohde and Muller looked for a periodic signal in the history of biodiversity … the strong peak in their power spectrum indicating a 62-million-year cycle was a surprise. We found evidence of the same cycle in three more data sets…

It takes about 200 million years for the Sun to complete one orbit around the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Moreover, the galaxy is a thin disk, and there is also a motion along a vertical direction. As our solar system slowly orbits the Milky Way’s center, it oscillates through the galactic plane with a period of around 65 million years. When we move up in the disk, we are pulled back down by gravity, coasting past the midpoint, then rising back up again, akin to a weight bobbing up and down on a spring.

Was this the missing mechanism?…

It turns out that the biodiversity minima of the 62-million-year cycle happens when the Sun is “bobbed up” on only one side of the galaxy…

cosmic rays … [ are ] showering the north side of the galaxy’s disk. We are protected by the galactic magnetic field, much as the Earth’s magnetic field protects our planet. When we rise to the north side, we are less protected — and the ensuing flux of cosmic rays contains particles of such energy that they can reach the Earth’s surface…

Huh.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/…

The District’s open, all-are-invited taxicab industry is so saturated with drivers that the entire enterprise is threatened, according to a D.C. Council member who has filed a bill to cap the number of cabs allowed on city streets.

Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham introduced legislation Tuesday to limit the number of taxicabs in D.C. through either a medallion system, like ones used in New York City and Chicago, or a certification system.

The soaring number of taxicab operators in D.C. — roughly 8,000, most of whom own their own cars — is a “pressing and urgent problem,” Graham said. There are more licensed drivers in D.C. per capita than any place in the world, he said, and new applicants continue to take the required class, giving them access to the driver exam administered by the D.C. Taxicab Commission. A glut of drivers could jeopardize the chances of any cabbies making an adequate living, Graham has said.

This is the same problem we have in so many other areas of life: so many business folks stay in business despite not making a living, that then they all starve to death.

You know, coffee houses, bookstores, flower shops…all of those people are wasting away.

Best response to being caught assaulting a citizen and then lying on the police report:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

“When an officer is involved in a violent incident, he’s going to use his best recollection when writing up the statement of charges,”

If you or I do it, it’s “assault” and “filing a false report”.

If a cop does it, well, “the department stands behind him”.

http://ffffound.com/image/3b942047d3ce50…

Ha!

http://bloodletting.blog-city.com/hondur…

Honduran thought experiment…

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument that the following events had transpired;

April 2003: Following the spectacular celebration in Al Firdos square, and the electrifying images that accompanied it, Rush Limbaugh takes to the airwaves and circulates the idea that George Bush should be eligible to be president for unlimited terms. At this point in time, GWBs approval rating is close to 70%.

May 2003: Having sparked a huge debate in America regarding the wisdom of keeping Presidents for more terms due to the long nature of insurgency warfare, senior members of the GOP suggest that a non-binding referendum should be held on changing the constitution to allow George Bush to be President for multiple terms. The results will be tabulated only amongst state legislators as ‘a representative sample.’ The US Congress issues a law making it illegal for non-binding ballots to be printed for such a referendum, fearing that it could be used, should the results favor the President, to retrospectively declare a constitutional ammendment.

Early June 2003: Right wing factions from Europe and Israel ship ballots for this referendum to the United States. Upon hearing of this, the Governor of Virginia, where the boat containing the ballots is docked, activates the Virginia National Guard and seizes the ship and its cargo.

Late June 2003: Right wing groups begin mass demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, stating that the freedom of speach is being threatened and that they are being disenfranchised. George Bush starts taking to the airwaves along with Hannity and Rush proclaiming that Freedom is at stake, and making thinly veiled threats that there will be civil unrest and blood in the streets if the vote is not permitted.

July Fourth, 2003: In an emergency session in congress, President George Bush is impeached and removed from office. Dick Cheney then issues orders to the FBI, in conjunction with the US Special Operations command, to arrest George Bush and fly him out of the country.

The Prime Minister of Israel, along with Right wing factions in Europe demand that George Bush be reappointed as the President of the United States.

Now, imagine that instead of this happening in the US, it is happening in Honduras, and instead of it being a head of state from the right wing, imagine the head of state is from the left wing. Well, you don’t really have to imagine it, because that is what is happening.

Well said.

Is Obama ignorant of what’s going on in Honduras, or is he actively in favor of a left wing government overturning the local constitution and seizing power?

I’ll be charitable and assume the former.

A cute little story about sharing woodworking with a girlfriend.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_ham…

CONCORD, N.H. - A federal sharpshooter had tax evader Ed Brown’s head in his crosshairs and was ready to pull the trigger during a failed attempt to arrest Brown at his rural New Hampshire home two years ago, the agent told a federal jury yesterday.

You are sheep, and you are here so that government employees may sheer you.

If you refuse to be sheered, you might as well be killed.

In other news, man, those government emploee pensions are sweet!

http://www.retrocomedy.com/2009/07/15-cr…

She totally deserves it. Seriously, what kind of woman doesn’t “store test” for fresher coffee?

Creepy old ad, or strange new kink? You decide!

“OK, this time, you be the insufferable customer with too many questions about the espresso, and I’ll be the angry-sexy barrista!”

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/radleybal…

You know…

…if Walmart had given, say, the Cato Institute somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, after which Cato issued a joint letter with Walmart executives calling for the federal government to pass new policies that would hurt Walmart’s competitors, I’m pretty sure people like Matthew Yglesias would be calling Cato a bunch of corporate whores.

But this isn’t the Cato Institute we’re talking about. It’s Yglesias’ employer, the left-wing Center for the American Progress.

So you see, that means it’s all okay.

Firm uses government power to harm rivals, seek rents.

Film at 11.

From the “public resources, private use” files

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

The city went on high alert last Saturday. More than a dozen police officers fanned out around Fenway Park to direct traffic and shoo away photographers who got too close. Twenty-four meters were bagged so no one would park. Another 75 spaces along four streets, including popular Yawkey Way, were closed to the public.

An unscheduled makeup game? A poorly advertised concert?

No, it was a wedding reception, specifically Red Sox principal owner John Henry’s wedding reception, and city officials took unusual measures to give him space and privacy.

By closing off all the typically congested roads around Fenway to unvetted parkers, the city essentially allowed guests of Henry and new bride Linda Pizzuti to park at the door of the reception and valets to zip down cleared streets.

“Does this mean when I have my Christmas party in the winter, I can call the city and ask them to block off parking on my street?’’ asked Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association. The answer from city officials: Not exactly.

I’ve got no problem with private resources being used in this way; I object to public resources being used in this way.

There are two possible stabs at solutions:

* pass some attempt at “good government” legislation that will never be followed

* privatize the public resources.

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

In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivaled and non-excludable. This means, respectively, that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good.

As the greens keep telling us, the more folks use roads, the more they impact others.

As the Fast Pass transponder people keep telling us, the technology exists to bill people for their use of roads, with almost zero cost.

Therefore: roads are neither non-rivaled and non-excludable.

That is to say: roads are not public goods.

Privatize the roads!

Jimmy Wales broke numerous Wikipedia rules while acting to suppress information of kidnapping of David Rohde, and this has resulted in people writing Wikipedia articles on the censorship.

And, of course, every time someone makes a reference to the fact that the editors broke the sockpuppet / meat puppet rule or the three revert rule , the editors respond by reverting as many times as necessary to cover their asses, and/or use meat puppets to suppress the information.

E.g:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?titl…

old text:

(See also

• Wikipedia’s policy against sock puppets: “Wikipedians prize their use of consensus to determine issues … Sock puppets are used to counter these prized features by creating the illusion of greater support for a viewpoint and evading sanctions. All such sock puppet uses are forbidden”.
• meat puppet
• Wikipedia’s “bright line” three revert rule

)

new text:

In response to criticism over the actions taken, Wales stated that no rules of Wikipedia were broken or bent and that relevant processes were followed. … Wales responded that Wikipedia’s editorial processes were followed 100 percent and this was handled in a fairly routine way. “No Wikipedia rules were bent or broken in any way,” he added.

In short:

The old version linked to a bunch of Wikipedia rules that interested parties could read and then make up their own minds.

The new version removes the links to the rules, and replaces them with a statement by the alleged rule breaker claiming that no rules were broken.

Wow. That seems like a fair and balanced way to do it.

Wikipedia is a great resource, but the Wikipedia editors are a nasty hot-house little clique filled with back scratching, secret mailing lists, two sets of rules (one for insiders, one for the little people, etc.). They remind me of why I’ve stayed away from SF fandom and lots of other geek activities. Well, for my sanity, I’ll back away and treat the corrupt little Wikipedia editors the same way I treat most other toxicly self-satisfied minor geek luminaries.

This is quite interesting, with potential long term implications for anarchocapitalist self-organization: an assurance contract seen in the wild:

Indy filmmaker is raising a quarter mill to make a film, will give all donations back if the target isn’t reached.

By the way, who was that insightful anarchocapitalist who created this Wikipedia page on assurance contracts back in 2005 ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02n…

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition…

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

“reinterpreted their calling for the modern world” often means “embraced syncretism, hard-line leftism, and/or lesbianism in their ranks”.

No, that’s not just my fevered imagination (my imagination spends very little think thinking about nuns), but a report from an ex-nun that I know, corroborated by dozens of reports I’ve read.

…many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations…

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

Oh noz! Brides of Christ are expected to work with in the Church, instead of receiving paychecks to “work in academia and do political advocacy and grass roots organizing” !?!?!

How regressive and Medieval the Church is being!

Given this backdrop, Sister Schneiders, the professor in Berkeley, urged her fellow sisters not to cooperate with the visitation, saying the investigators should be treated as “uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house.”

A delegation sent from the Vatican to inspect Church organs is “an uninvited guest”.

That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the nun from Berkeley.

Each congregation of nuns will be evaluated based on how well they are “living in fidelity” both to their congregation’s own internal norms and constitution, and to the church’s guidelines for religious life, Mother Clare said. For instance, if a congregation’s stated mission is to serve youth, are the nuns doing that? If they do not live in a convent, are they attending Mass and keeping the sacraments?

Wow. That seems just so insane!

Sister Janice Farnham, a part-time professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, said, “Why are the U.S. sisters being singled out, when women religious in other countries are struggling with many issues about the quality of their lives, in the Church and in their societies?”

Mmmm….because there haven’t been hundreds of reports of syncretism, heresy, sexual amorality, environmentalism, and communism among the nuns of Iceland?

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.

The letter goes on to say that, “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses” at assemblies the Leadership Conference has held in recent years, the problem has not been fixed.

“Failure to promote” basically means “acting entirely heretically”.

…to knock down the two government run HUD slums at Alewife, pushing the first into the second like dominos, isn’t as implausible as I’ve always assumed.

http://www.archdaily.com/27245/building-…

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/arch…

Felix Salmon notes who California feels is important enough to pay in cash. Legislators yes, blind and disabled people, no. Natch.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/…

A new study, Tax Burden and Individual Rights in the OECD: An International Comparison, ranks the U.S. 12th among 30 OECD countries in its “tax oppression index”:

The tax oppression index is based on 18 representative criteria measuring fiscal attractiveness, public governance and financial privacy…

1. Italy
2. Turkey*
3. Poland*
4. Mexico*
5. Germany*
6. Netherla*nds
7. Belgium*
8. Hungary*
9. France*
10. Greece*
11. United *Kingdon
12. United States*

Turkey is 10 places higher than us.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/…

As we near the end of June, which is supposed to be one of the four biggest months for federal tax collections (January, April, and September are the others), it is clear that the serious receipts shortfalls are not only continuing, but have caused the March 20 projections of the administration and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) outdated.

Some stats, June 2009 vs June 2008:

• Employment tax revenue: -9.8%
• Corporate income tax revenue: -35%
• Total dollars collected: -25.0%

This seems relatively dire, and when people start looking at these numbers, I think we’re going to have another round of contraction of consumer confidence and consumer spending.

I’d like to call the current period a dead cat bounce, but I’m not sure that I’m seeing enough positive data to suggest the corpse even rebounded off the cement…

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q…

From a reader:

Jonah:

I have written you several times over the years. We are “friends” on Facebook and I loved Liberal Fascism.

I was born in Honduras and my maternal relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins) all live there.

The country is bewildered that the world, especially the United States, is not on their side. Zelaya was confident of his plans to convert Honduras into a Venezuelan satellite. The Honduran people are proud of their constitution and are proud to have a functioning democratic system. Zelaya was replaced by a member of his own party who vows to see that this November’s presidential election takes place. What happened was not a “coup” but a bipartisan effort to save the nation.

It is heartbreaking for me to see President Obama throw Honduras under the bus. He did not speak out when Zelaya was attempting to stage a sham “constitutional referendum” with ballots printed in Venezuela.

My mother immigrated from Honduras and is a registered Republican because she remembers how the GOP stood up to communists when her countrymen were afraid of Fidel Castro. Now, Hugo Chavez is threatening to invade her beloved homeland and an American president is not standing up for a free and democratic Honduras.

Bewildered NR devotee,

Maybe the difference is that JFK was against Latin American communists, while Obama … well, where does Obama stand on Latin American communists?