Posted 3:41 PM by Floyd

Sometimes you just have to admire the sheer idiocy of spam. Take this email I got this morning:

Greetings!


New amazing anti-aging water. Nothing ever came close to like this water has been offered before. It contains all 34 mineral wave forms in their correct non-metallic states as needed by the body to repair and sustain itself.

One of my prized possessions is a 1959 Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, won by my father as a prize. It has his name (and mine) stamped on the cover.

Let's see, 34 mineral wave forms ... Table of the Isotopes ... Physical Constants of Inorganic Compounds ... Physical Constants of Organic Compounds ... Composition of Physical Properties of Alloys. Nothing about the 34 mineral wave forms. Scientific progress is remarkable.

It's a miracle water and has produced miracle
results. This will be huge. Prelaunch starting next week.

Let's not turn this into an internet startup, please. You still have some credibility.

Non-flushing binary comp plan up front. Unilevel plan on autoships.

How silly of me not to have kept up with MLM spam lingo.

Limited Founder positions still available.

As a Founder, you will be grandfathered into mid-level position
in unilevel and placed 2 personal signups underneath you to
qualify you for binary commissions.

What is this "limited founder" stuff? Can I still be a founder of Oracle?

Posted 2:13 PM by Floyd

No one mines Antarctica

Gregg Easterbrook and Nathan Myhrvold have been debating the future of the space program on Slate. Easterbrook claimed that there was little practical benefit to lunar or Mars missions and made the following point:

And please don't tell me we would mine the Moon's resources. Almost all primary commodities are already in oversupply on Earth, while no one mines Antarctica, possible at a minute fraction of the cost of Moon mining.

This point can be extended to settlement as well. After the Columbia disaster someone, maybe Instapundit, made the stirring point that it was important to continue with space exploration so that his daughter could see a Martian sunset before she went to bed. I doubt this will really happen; Mars is airless, waterless, devoid of higher life, and cold.

Antarctica is more hospitable than Mars in that its air is breathable and at normal pressure, and water is easily generated. Antarctica is a wild frontier. But no one wants to live there. There are no pioneers who want to carve out a new world, no political idealists seeking to start a new society.

Or if Antarctica is too extreme, what about Svarlbard? This sizable island contains the northernmost inhabited settlements (at 78 degrees latitude). The island is warmed by the tail end of the jetstream and reaches 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, comparable to the best Martian weather. Yet Svalbard contains a few thousand people, most of whom are there to mine coal.

Posted 1:55 PM by Floyd

Via Jon Jay Ray I found this BBC educational slideshow on the settlement of Britain by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

The narrative is illustrated by a young woman drawn in the traditional Anglo-Saxon manner, with long braided blonde hair. (She says things like "Each boatload of people formed a settlement with its own leader.", which is perhaps less realistic than "Ja, now the men are hacking Celtic villagers to pieces.")

I was puzzled by the path taken by the three German tribes. How did the Jutes wind up all the way in Wessex? It looks like a football play: "Saxons, you go straight and short to the eastern fens. Anglians, fade deep into Northumbria. Jutes, run a post into Wessex."

This reminds me of one of my favorite boardgames, Brittania. In this four-player game you control four or five of the 17 tribes, some of which are on the board in the beginning of the game and some of which enter later. You try to control various areas to gain victory points for your tribes. There are 16 turns, the first being the Roman invasion and the last being the Norman Conquest.

Posted 6:48 PM by Floyd

M. Simon is a well-known commenter at fine blogs such as Little Green Footballs. He emailed me a piece that he had written on drug addiction, in which he takes what one might call a Szaszian position:

You might be interested in what the nation's largest group of addiction councilors has to say about addiction: there ain't no such animal. Here is an article I wrote on the subject. BTW the series originally appeared in the Sierra Times. Here is a link to one of the articles in the series:

====================================================


The Politics of Pain


There is no such thing as addiction. What we call addiction is just self medication for undiagnosed pain. PTSD etc. I have written extensively on this subject. You can find a lot of it here:

The above goes into the science of my statements on the nature of addiction. What I would like to discuss are some of the policy implications.


I have been corresponding with John Avery, the Director of Government Relations for NAADAC, National Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counsellors, the nation's largest organization of drug abuse and alcohol addiction counselors in America. In addition this organization is recommended by the UK government for those in need of addiction counseling as shown here:

This organization is looking at addiction in a whole new way. It sees the problem the same way I do. Addiction is a response to pain. Mr. Avery decries the fact that the general population and the government have yet to understand the change in understanding that is sweeping the addiction counseling industry.


What does this mean for politics? I think it means that the first political party to champion this new understanding is going to reap vast amounts of political credit because the American people are a compassionate people and will not tolerate the persecution of the sick and pain wracked. We know this from the fact that 80% of all Americans support medical marijuana despite the fact that the government is dead set against it. The fact that medical marijuana is promoted for pain relief and not cures underscores my position.


So I would say to all you political activists out there who understand and wish to champion this new idea: take it to your party and push it hard before your opposition clobbers you with it.

(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved.

Posted 1:15 PM by Floyd

The anti-war movement is intellectually bereft. Its leaders lie continuously, and furthermore they apply the same discredited lies to each new situations. Its followers are out of touch with reality, so the question of truth becomes moot. Witness these letters in today's Mercury News:

THE drums of war are beating louder and louder every day. Why are we going to attack a country that hasn't attacked us? We do not have incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and even if we did, wouldn't an attack on him make him more likely to use them? The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace feels that the U.S. goal of preventing an attack by Iraq has already been achieved. Saddam is being watched so closely by the inspectors and by the world in general that any aggression would result in immediate devastation.

Let the inspections work. Let's not send our young men and women to kill and be killed.

Lynda Sayre
Big Sur

First off, I get a point for finding a "drums of war" reference.

I note that Sayre is presented with two choices: Invade, cause a few causalties, and rescue Iraq from Saddam and America from fear of an Iraqi-sponsored terrorist attack. Choice two is to sit on our asses and if attacked by Saddam, retaliate with hydrogen bombs.

Does the Carnegie Endowment approve of Sayre's choice? Maybe they should send her a leaflet.

GEORGE Bush's State of the Union claim that ``we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations'' is surely a leading contender for whopper of the millennium, but Colin Powell's statement Wednesday that ``no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein's Iraq'' is certainly in contention.

Has Powell forgotten about the massive American use of Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam? Or the thousands of tons of depleted uranium weapons dropped on Iraq and Yugoslavia? If you're looking for the leading users of chemical weapons in the world today you need look no farther than Washington.

Steven Patt
Cupertino

Napalm is jelled gasoline; it is used to burn things. Agent Orange is a chemical weapon -- against plants. Depleted uranium is used for its physical properties and is not very radioactive (the non-plants amongst you would have guessed that from the "depleted" part).

I guess you could call all of these chemical weapons, as they involve chemistry. Of course so do gunpowder or cordite. In fact, this blog is a chemical weapon!

Posted 12:55 PM by Floyd

I went to the corner store to get a sandwich. Up here in Sky Londa, we get all kinds: rock stars, gorillas who know sign language, an early computing pioneer and his 109-year-old composer father. But this was the first time I had seen a Nazi.

Ordering lunch ahead of me were two guys in their twenties, presumably working on some construction project. One of them was bare-chested -- it's 50 degrees outside -- and had the twin lightning bolts of the SS tattooed on his muscular shoulder.

Posted 1:16 PM by Floyd

I have not done any bridgeblogging from the San Bernardino regional I attended last week. Here are two hands that feature squeezes.

The first hand was played by my partner, Hamish Bennett, in the semifinal of the second knockout we played. At all vul he held

AQTxxx A2 Qxx Jxx

He opened 1. I responded 1N (forcing) and he rebid 2. I raised to 4 and all passed.

LHO led a trump and this dummy came down:

KJ9 Jxxx AJxx Tx

My raise to game was aggressive, but correct with a 3-card limit raise when partner shows an extra trump. (Wayne Stuart taught me this.)

Hamish won in dummy and led a diamond to the queen. LHO won the king and played a second trump, on which RHO showed out. This meant that a club ruff was unlikely.

Hamish led a club down and RHO popped ace. He led another club and LHO won the king and played a third trump.

Hamish overtook this and played three more trumps, throwing hearts from dummy. RHO threw one diamond; LHO did not pitch a diamond.

Now Hamish tested the diamonds. Both defenders followed to the ace, then RHO pitched a heart on the jack.

LHO had kept a diamond, and RHO the queen of clubs. Both defenders had one heart, so when Hamish led a heart, the king and queen dropped and Hamish took the game-going trick with the deuce of hearts!

(Note that RHO could have broken up the squeeze by playing a heart when in with the ace of clubs. At the other table my hand chose a single raise and the opponents rested in a part-score, so we won 10 imps.)

**************************

The second hand is from the knockout final. In first chair, none vul, I held

AT8x xx KJTx 9xx

I passed. Hamish opened 1, I responded 1, and Hamish raised to 2. All passed and LHO led a trump.

Dummy was:

Q9x AKJxx xxx Kx

I played low from dummy and won RHO's jack with my ace. I then played a spade; LHO won the king and I unblocked the queen.

LHO cashed A, on which RHO discouraged. Then he led the J; I played the king and it lost to the ace. RHO returned a diamond, I played J, and LHO won Q. Now LHO led T; RHO gave this a look and played small. LHO then led a heart.

I have lost two diamonds, two clubs, and a spade, so I need the rest of the tricks for my contract. Here is the position:

9 AKJxx x -

T8 xx Tx 9

A club ruff would be nice but it would be difficult to get to hand, take the ruff, then get to hand again to pull trumps. Also
this line required trumps 3-3.

Was the heart hook on? LHO had shown K, AQ, J; that's 10 points and a queen makes 12. As he was a passed hand the heart finesse did not appear likely.

Qx with RHO was still a possibility. Also, my 9 was the second-best card in the suit, and RHO held the queen. If diamonds were 3-3 RHO would be squeezed in clubs and hearts.

I won A and played a spade to my hand. RHO pitched on this card. I pulled LHO's last trump (pitching a heart from the table) and RHO pitched again.

I played T and everyone followed. I cashed my last diamond, pitching another heart off dummy, and RHO was in trouble. He had Qx Q and had to unguard one suit. He did his best by pitching his club, but I played my 9 and took the high heart at the end. Making 2 and win 6 imps (I'm not sure what happened at the other table).

(Again, the defenders went wrong. LHO isolated his partner's club guard by cashing the ten; if he comes back with a heart I have no chance.)

Posted 11:02 PM by Floyd

Ken Layne linked to me and said I was funny. This is like Brad Pitt saying I am good looking. Now I can quit the blog and spend all my time playing Civilization III, because there is nothing more for me to accomplish.

I've already blogrolled Ken, so I cannot return the favor. (If you don't read his site regularly, strike yourself with a ball-peen hammer. Why are people always struck with ball-peen hammers, rather than claw hammers or jack hammers? I don't know, and because I read Ken religiously, I don't have to worry about it.) But I will say something nice about his home town.

I don't get down south much; last week when I was in San Bernardino I visited friends in Pasadena and Huntington Beach. LA struck me as a fun place, without an annoying attitude. People in the SF Bay Area have a hardon for how smart and diverse and cultured they are, which manifests itself as a horrible earnestness. Occasionally you will read hometown boosterism in a local newspaper and it sounds like some deeply depressed person trying to convince himself that he is happy because he has an average of 1.7 dates per week and 2.3 same-gender social occasions per month.

For example: I saw freeway signs advertising Farmer Boys, which apparently is some restaurant chain. There would be a picture of a hick doing something ridiculous like holding a 400-pound egg. You could never do this in the Bay Area; people would break out in hives at the very sight.

Posted 9:46 PM by Floyd

Any time I object to the cost and ineffectiveness of our government, and declare a desire to toss it down the garbage disposal, some caring liberal will tell me that we need to have a government to protect the weak from rapacious corporations. Anyone who holds this belief, give yourself a pat on the back; your compatriots in Menlo Park are doing a fine job protecting Kesh Patel from the Southland Corporation, which wants to make him its serf.

Patel is the franchise owner of a 7-11 in Menlo Park on Alma Street. It burned to the ground last June. Patel, who is presumably brainwashed, wants to be re-colonialized and oppressed by Southland and has been waiting for Menlo Park to authorize the reconstruction of his store.

But the good city officials of Menlo Park don't get paid just to sit on their asses, fuck with streets until they resemble a PacMan maze, and congratulate themselves on their reasonableness and piety. No, the good city officials of Menlo Park get paid to do all that and to make Patel sit on his ass for months and go broke. As reported in today's Almanac:

Though members of the new council majority have spoken in recent months about their desire to streamline the city's various permitting processes, Mayor Nicholas Jellins said that he didn't find Mr. Patel's case germane to such comments.

Well, it's not like Jellins' paychecks have been interrupted. Here's what the modern diverse caring protecting Left has to say through the mouth of Mr. Jellins: I got mine.

Posted 9:34 PM by Floyd

People react to tragedy in different ways. Some shrug their shoulders and say, sometimes life is shit. Some compose elegant eulogies to the fallen.

Then there are the assholes:

WE are shocked that you would choose to print a photo of a cross marking the spot where human remains from a member of the space shuttle were found (Page 16A, Feb. 3). As there were at least two members of the crew who were not Christian, this means that there is close to a 30 percent chance that the remains marked by the cross belonged to a Hindu or a Jew. Placing a cross on these unknown remains dishonors the beliefs of any crew member who was not Christian. An American flag would have been a much more appropriate marker.

Andrea Levin and Howard Parnes
San Jose

Fortunately there is only a 0.00022 percent chance that someone who lives in San Jose is a flaming fucking retard.

Posted 9:27 PM by Floyd

So Josh Chafetz of OxBlog went above and beyond the call of duty by going to see Gary Hart speak. (At Oxford, whence OxBlog. It's not like Chafetz is yoked to a plow.)

Josh was no more impressed with Hart than I was after I read a transcript of an earlier speech. He criticized Hart for repeating a lot of leftist cliches, and for mouthing vague facts and pieties. I was also surprised to see that, just like Hart used to enjoy a little extramarital action when away from home, he enjoys a knock or two against his country when on foreign soil:

He closed with a final note of partisan hyperbole, pandering to the worst impressions of Europeans about America. He claimed that civil rights abuses were imminent, and that "right now, Arab-Americans are walking the streets looking over their shoulders," fearing a repeat of the World War II Japanese-American internments. Hogwash. Outside of the Ann Coulter circle, no one has proposed anything of the sort, and no one will. But that didn't stop Hart from pandering to his audience and scoring cheap partisan points.

Posted 9:12 PM by Floyd

"Sweet Christ, I'm crying, I'm actually weeping with borrowed shame as I type this."

I love Jim Treacher. I hadn't read him in awhile, but in a comment on Ken Layne's blog he declared that he was waiting for Ted Rall's inevitable "Shuttle Widows" post.

I stepped over to his blog and was soon cackling over his vicious disembowelling of Jimmy Kimmel live.

Posted 6:17 PM by Floyd

I haven't said much about the shuttle. On Sunday Rand Simberg said he was surprised that Andrew Sullivan hadn't said anything about the Columbia tragedy; Sullivan replied that he couldn't think of anything to say. I concur; unlike Simberg I have no special knowledge, and once you utter the obligatory "that sucks", what else is there to say?

I remember the day 17 years ago when the Challenger exploded. I was in my dorm (Owen Hall, at Purdue; I was a freshman) and Todd from two doors down said "The shuttle exploded!" I said, "Shut up, it did not." Then I found out he wasn't joking.

It took NASA two and a half years to launch another shuttle. In the interim I had gone to work for NASA, as an intern at the Langley Research Center near Hampton, Virginia. During my third work term, in September 1988, the shuttle went up and all NASA took time out to follow the launch live.

I can't really get into the stirring calls for continuing the shuttle program, a la Instapundit: "82% said the U.S. should continue manned space flights. 71% expected that an accident such as the one that occurred Saturday would happen sooner or later. Count me "yes" in both categories." The space shuttle is a vehicle for shovelling money to aerospace companies, and the sooner it is grounded the better. Of course whatever replaces it will probably be just as bad.

My most interesting project at NASA was when I wrote a Turbo Pascal program on a XT to drive a laser disc player and touchscreen. This was to be a reference to teach space station denizens how to perform simple maintenance tasks. Nearly 15 years later the station -- another hideous money hole -- is still being constructed. I wonder if my contribution ever made it into orbit.

Posted 5:58 PM by Floyd

Sorry about the lack of posts. For some reason I have been lethargic and depressed since my San Bernardino trip, even though it was very successful and fun. Yesterday I played at the club and what started out with six tops turned into a 52% game. We both screwed up; my contributions were a thoughtless rebid which partner took seriously, a too-aggressive double, and failing to check a +420 which was recorded as +170. Without these mistakes we would have had around 58%, which is usually enough to win an afternoon club game. I spent a few hours beating myself up for my errors before I came to my senses.

I am also ready to have a job; trouble is, no one seems to be ready to hire me.

Posted 6:54 PM by Floyd

A classic James Donald post, which he just reposted to Usenet: Why Socialism Requires Killing Fields.

Posted 11:55 AM by Floyd

How has the world changed since 9/11/2001? Here's one item of comparison: I didn't see any Palestinians dancing in the streets after the shuttle disintegrated.

Posted 11:53 AM by Floyd

I notice, via Drudge, that Iraqis Call Shuttle Disaster God's Vengeance. This highlights one difference between the civilized West and the savages we are struggling against: You will never hear anyone in America pray for the destruction of our enemies. When soldiers go off to war, the prayers on their behalf are very vague and non-threatening, usually asking for their safe return. No one goes into a pulpit in Jacksonville or Norfolk or San Diego and asks God to make the thermobaric munitions especially potent.

Contrast with the Islamic world; see your local Little Green Footballs for details. (Awhile back I posted an article about a mullah who said that Islam had a duty to develop nuclear weapons.)

I am an atheist, but if I did believe in God, I would be upset by the quote from the Iraqi government employee who said "God is avenging us". Not only is such a statement immoral, but it bespeaks a belief in an amazingly impotent deity. There are 300 million people in America, and Allah managed to wipe out six of them? There have been dozens of shuttle missions since the first Iraq war, and Allah finally managed to swat one on return? (Orbital velocity's a bitch, Lord -- gotta lead your target!) Ilan Ramon wipes out a nuclear reactor in 1981, and it takes 22 years for the wrath of God to catch up? How pathetic.