Space - It's Genuinely Scary Out There

On many of the sites aimed at those trying to be more self reliant and self sufficient, people talk about solar flares causing global catastrophes.  It's a topic I've written about several times, because I believe that while the danger is real - in the sense that flares are real and really big ones are capable of causing damage here on the Earth - the media and (strangely)  NASA itself over hypes them. 

The granddaddy solar flare of all time has, until very recently, been regarded as the Carrington Event in 1859, the dawn of the telegraph age. The event was witnessed in real time by British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington.

"Two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out," he later wrote. Carrington puzzled over the flashes. "My first impression was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the screen attached to the object-glass," he explained, given that "the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sun-light."

Note that these flashes were so much brighter than the projected image of the sun in his dark room that he thought daylight was somehow getting into the room.  The story itself is amazing.  That evening, when the Coronal Mass Ejection hit, telegraph operators were able to run without batteries; the flare-induced voltages on their wires working better than batteries.  The aurora display was global, even in the deep tropics.

If such a flare were to happen today, I believe it would take out the power grid on at least the hemisphere facing the sun when the CME hit.  What we have in our favor is that our modern monitoring systems would allow grid operators to shut down some to all of their gear: force the world into a black out, so that the equipment could be reconnected when the storm was over. 

Now comes a story that there appears to have been a flare that could have been 20 times stronger than the Carrington event. 

Everybody loves a good “whodunit?” How else could you explain the number of television shows with the prefix “CSI”? So when a study in Nature identified a previously unknown (and very large) spike in carbon-14 around the year 774 AD, it raised a lot of eyebrows. This radioactive isotope of carbon is created when energetic particles from beyond the Earth transform atmospheric nitrogen to a form of carbon with two neutrons more than the most common isotope.

There are a couple of known mechanisms for creating C14 in the atmosphere, one is a massive solar flare.  774 AD was 600 years or so before the first telescopes were used, so there was no Carrington to be watching.

So when a college student from UC-SD found a record of a “red crucifix” in the skies over Britain in that year, Nature published his note.

The story diverges a bit here, because the original group who tried to calculate how big a flare would have to be to cause the measured amount of carbon-14 in tree rings made a mistake and ended up with a preposterous result, 1000 times bigger than Carrington's granddaddy flare. 

A pair of researchers from Washburn University and the University of Kansas published a comment in Nature pointing out that the solar flare calculations included a rather fundamental error. Working backwards from the intensity required to produce the right amount of carbon-14 in Earth’s atmosphere, they mistakenly calculated the total size of the event as if the flare was emitted in all directions from the Sun, forming an expanding bubble of charged particles.

CMEs, are fairly localized, so the amount of spread would be much less than calculated and a powerful enough flare much smaller than the original calculations.  These researchers derive a number closer to 20x the size of Carrington's flare. 

A flare this size is genuinely scary; I don't know how much bigger it would be than the one pictured here, from November 2003, the largest flare observed since the space age began, but it would fry an entire hemisphere's grids, and if the grids are connected better than I think, would plunge the entire world into darkness.  I don't know if anyone on the Space Station could survive that. 

You can put together an entire catalog of potential TEOTWAKI disasters: a flare like this, a super volcano like Toba or Yellowstone, a nearby supernova, and more.   Something like any of those things or these mega flares is highly unlikely (yeah, I disagree strongly with this and briefly explained why here). 

But you know how a bunch of those UN Agenda 21 freaks want to kill off 95% of the humans on earth?   This just might do it.

Maybe I Shoulda Copyrighted This

John Stossel entitles his post "It's the Spending, Stupid!"

You can search for that term here on this blog, using the little box in the upper left of the page. I've only used it eleventy seven times. 

Note to the anal retentive: "eleventy seven" is an arbitrary number meaning "I swear it was a bunch, but I don't remember how many and don't feel like counting 'em".

Cliff, Schmiff, We're Freaking Doomed

While web-wandering today, I came across an article by Professor of Economics, Walter E. Williams that puts the haggling over "taxing the rich" and "we just need them to pay their fare share" in perspective.  It was embedded in an interesting little piece, "The 20 Most Devastating Stats of 2012 in Quotes" by John Hawkins.

To set this up, two former congressman, Chris Cox and Bill Archer, have done an analysis that says,  “When the accrued expenses of the government’s entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the annual cash deficit.”  I've often spoken of what they call the annual cash deficit of about $1.4 Trillion, but have never rolled up the costs of the major "unfunded liabilities".

Got that?  Now, let this quote sink in for a few seconds.  Make sure guns, knifes, and other possible implements of suicide or homicide are out of reach:

Washington would have to collect $8 trillion in tax revenue, not to pay off our national debt and have reserves against unfunded liabilities, but just to avoid accumulating more debt. Recent IRS data show that individuals earning $66,000 and more a year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2011, corporate profit came to $1.6 trillion. That means if Congress simply confiscated the entire earnings of taxpayers earning more than $66,000 and all corporate profits, it wouldn’t be enough to cover the $8 trillion per year growth of U.S. liabilities. (emphasis added - SiG)

Now, people making $66,000/year are not "the rich" the progressives always talk about punishing; they're just above the bottom of the fourth quintile of income, so in the upper 40% of incomes

Likewise, Williams tells you just how long you could run the US based on complete confiscation of the income of various levels of "the rich".

The talks coming out of DC today focus on John Boehner's cave to Obama, "Plan B", which would increase revenues by $1 Trillion over 10 years.  The White House promptly rejected it, because it didn't punish the top 1% enough - it just raises taxes on those making over $1 Million per year.  It's just another sign that no one up there considers our debt as a real problem.

There's no sign of any attempt to balance the budget and no way to balance the budget without cutting spending.  As I've said many times, "it's the spending, stupid" (summary at the top).

The talks about the Fiscal Cliff are meaningless.  Yes, they may well cause us more pain and a collapse into a deeper recession within this recession, but it doesn't change the bigger picture.  We are going down. 

Keep An Eye on the Other Hand

Yes, the attacks are mounting on our 2A rights.  But don't forget they're getting ready to steal your wallet while they're taking your guns.

They're doing their best to ruin us, one way or another. 

Contact your congress critters or other elected co-conspirators as appropriate. 

A Little Advanced Electronics

I had a good question in the email this weekend, from a friend reading about EMP protection.  He wanted to know if the advice he'd seen online made sense.  It centered on grounding a box.  I thought this might be something other people would find interesting.  

Every circuit has a return terminal, ground or "earth" as they call it in the UK.  It's pretty common to come across people talking about the importance of a good ground, but what makes a "good ground"?  The National Electric Code, here in the US, calls out a ground rod where the AC feeds come into your house; I think typically 8' long, and they specify wire size.  As it says over on the sidebar there, I design radio systems for a living - systems that go on commercial aircraft.  Kind of hard to sink an eight foot ground on a moving airplane, but we depend on good grounds in all of our stuff.  How can that be?

Here's the problem: as frequency goes up into the radio spectrum, you begin to find that ground doesn't really exist - in that sense.  Radio frequencies have a wavelength associated with them, and to figure out how to ground them, you need to know the wavelength.  Back when I taught Novice ham radio classes, it was pretty common for people to be confused about the way hams refer to some bands by their wavelength ("80 meters", "2 meters") and others by their frequency ("440 MHz", "10 GHz").  The wavelength is important because wires behave very differently when they're electrically very short or long.  A very short wire, under 1/20 of wave long, behaves just like you think: it's just a connection.  If that wire is quarter wavelength long and you ground the "far" end, it's not shorted to ground for that frequency, it's an open circuit - but it's still shorted to ground for DC.  You can't put that radio frequency energy into that wire.  This effect doesn't happen all at once, it gets progressively harder to achieve ground for the frequency you're working with as the distance to ground gets longer.  My usual rule of thumb is that effective grounds have to be less than 1/10 of a wavelength away.  Some folks will say you really need keep them under 1/20 wave.

What that means to your ham shack or radio comms is that the ground rod won't get any RF ("Radio Frequency") into it if it's more than a one or two feet from the radio.  The amateur "10 meter" band (28 to 29.8 MHz) requires grounds shorter than one meter (one yard for 'mercans).  While my system is well grounded at 3.5 MHz (80 meters), that ground rod is about 2 or 3 meters from my station, so it isn't grounded well at frequencies higher (shorter wavelengths) than 20 meters.  

Rules of thumb are handy to work with.  For a frequency, call it f, in MHz, 1/10 wave is just about 93/f.  The answer will be in feet.  So 1/10 wave at 93 MHz is one foot.  Approximately.

So how do you get a ground at 144 MHz or higher?  How do you get it in a moving car?  The chassis, the body is ground.  In radios with a metal chassis, the chassis is grounded.  In handheld radios, like FRS radios and amateur VHF/UHF radios, you become the ground that the antenna uses. (You are a bag of saltwater, you know...)

Getting back to the original question about grounding a box for EMP protection, what's the wavelength of EMP?  It is very broad spectrum, with energy from low frequency up to a few hundred MHz.  A ground wire can only help with part of that spectrum - the rest of the spectrum is unaffected by the ground wire.  Yes, you will shunt some energy away, and that can't hurt. 

What do I do?  I have my emergency back up 2m/440 radio in a metal ammo can, just sitting on my desk.  The desk is steel and grounded to my ground system, but that's not worth much as low in frequency as 20 meters.  A microwave oven should work as well as an ammo can.  Just wrapping it well in aluminum foil is probably just as good.  The most important point is to disconnect the antennas and power lines, to minimize pickup area - minimize signals to carry into the radio.  The power lines are where the majority of pickup from an EMP will come.

This plot of EMP voltage fields vs frequency shows that most of the voltage below 10 MHz, where a ground rod might do you some good. 

Catching Up

I've been remiss in wishing my Jewish visitors a Happy Chanukah this year, and here we are on the last day.  Please accept my warmest, while rather late, wishes for you and yours.

I could do no better than Rabbi Judah Freeman at JPFO, who writes:

Let us remember this Chanukah the lessons that the Maccabees taught us -- that we must be strict and stringent not just with regard to ritual observances like Chanukah candles but with regard to the protecting of the life of the innocent. The Maccabees waged a fierce battle against Greek incursion on Jewish sovereignty and taught the Jewish people that defense of life overrides Sabbath prohibitions. May we too remember that life is sacrosanct, that it is worth protecting, and that we must maintain the tools and ability to do so.

In modern times, here in the United States, that means that we must protect and preserve our Second Amendment rights -- the right to keep and bear arms in defense of self, in defense of family, in defense of property, and in defense of our religious and personal freedom. May we never see the day when we must take up our arms as did the Maccabees in defense of our religious way, and may we never see a time when we give up or lose the ability to do so.

The Israeli Method

With major props to Gun Free Zone, this is too good not to share. 

And Miguel also links to Massad Ayoob with an excellent piece, calling for just this. 

The ruling class elites, almost 100% of them, are atheists.  Strongly anti-faith, anti-religion.  Because of this, the vast majority of them have a problem with the idea of evil and good really existing.  In their eyes, people aren't evil, they made "bad choices", or have "chemical imbalances".  That's why, for every call to fix the culture you'll hear this weekend, you'll hear a thousand saying to restrict guns, or standard capacity magazines.  For every reference to too much violence in movies and on TV, you'll hear a thousand screams against "gun violence". 

There is no such thing as gun violence.  Guns are simple mechanisms incapable of violence.  Michael Bane talked about being in a meeting with major media people after another big shooting, and after listening to their prattling about "gun violence", he said (I'm probably butchering the quote):  "I pulled my gun out of my holster and put it on the table.  This was a fully loaded gun with one in the chamber.  Then I took a stick and tried to poke it enough to make it get mad and shoot someone.  You know, that thing never did."   

With every school protected by armed staff, and vast numbers of citizens walking around with rifles, it's no wonder the Palestinians have essentially given up on trying mass shootings in Israel and gone over to suicide bombers and throwing unguided missiles.  Just like their approach to airline safety, we could use to model the Israeli approach to safety in a civil society. 

Connecticut Tragedy

Like all of you, I'm saddened almost to the point of sickness at the Newton, CT school shooting today.  At this distance, I can only offer prayers for strength and peace for the parents and families - and the responders who see things that must weigh heavily on anyone's heart and soul.

I have to say that Borepatch has probably summed up much of what I'm feeling and that I think most of us are.  Because along with sadness comes real, deep anger.  You should go read, but Borepatch is dispensing lots of anger at the "Look at me, I'm so sensitive" shows we're going to see in the next week.  For example, I'll lift one for here:

The Usual Suspects - I'm looking at you, Piers Morgan - are blathering idiocy about too many guns and the typical hand wringing.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey Piers Morgan, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.

I'm most angry at the shooters, of course.  All of these pathetic losers who think that because they're feeling pain, they have the right to commit such atrocities.  

It's not like we don't have history on this.  There have been mass shootings attempted in places where people had guns and could fight back.  In those cases, even if the ones fighting back were unarmed, fewer innocents were harmed.  The answer here is obvious - the complete opposite of what you're going to hear in the coming days: more guns, not less.  As the Oath Keepers put it:

This shooting is yet another tragic example of the failed, grotesque insistence on helpless victim zones where any crazed gunman can be assured of a large number of disarmed, undefended, helpless victims, all crammed into one place, where he can kill many children before an armed defender arrives from elsewhere.  It is disturbing and sick that the federal government so hates the right of the American people to bear arms, and so hates their natural right to self defense, that the government insists on making them helpless, disarmed victims for anyone who cares to kill them.   And in this case, all of the teachers and staff were willfully disarmed by the Federal Government, by force of law and threat of prison, to ensure that they would be disarmed and incapable of saving the lives of the children entrusted to their care.

Perhaps the most important thing to tell friends is that while this may be a bad year (I honestly don't know), the data says we don't have a mass shooting problem.  In fact violent crime has been going down since a peak in about 1993, while gun ownership has been increasing - if not outright skyrocketing.  While it may not conclusively prove the "More Guns = Less Crime" hypothesis, it certainly disproves the "More Guns = More Crime" alternative that we'll hear from the usual idiots.

(source) 
Off the top of my head, I recall about 60 victims of mass shootings this year: the Aurora, Colorado theater, the Sikh temple incident and this.  If that's the number, you can see from this plot that it ends up being a fairly low total year. 

The source of that graph, Boston.com "Crime and Punishment" columnist James Alan Fox writes today, about the Newton shooting:

As the tragedy was unfolding and before any perpetrator or motive was identified, scores of journalists, from all forms of media and from here and abroad were phoning to ask whether this was the worst school shooting in history. It didn't matter that deadlier episodes had happened overseas (the 2004 school siege in Russia), at a college setting (Virginia Tech in 2007) or involving means other than gunfire (the 1927 school explosion in Bath, Michigan), reporters were eager to declare the Sandy Hook massacre as some type a new record.

Mass murder is horrible enough without the hype. We need less hype, more healing and more perspective. 

2013 Is Looking Pretty Shaky

WRSA links to this post by Amity Shlaes on the parallels between what we see for 2013 and 1937 under FDR.  1937 was the Depression Within The Depression, part of the reason the US calls it The Great Depression and the rest of the world just thinks of it as The Depression. (Her home on the web)

I've read her book "The Forgotten Man", called the "finest history of the Great Depression ever written" by Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute.  Naturally, Paul Krugman hates it because she presents evidence that FDR's policies didn't end the depression.  Amity is one of a few genuine experts on the Depression.  If she's talking about things in that period, I'm listening. 

There's that whole theatrical song and dance going on in DC about the "Fiscal Cliff".  Not to say there's not going to be effects from it, but it currently appears to be all about politics.  I'm inclined to agree with the viewpoint that the administration would be perfectly happy to go over the cliff as long as they can get it all blamed on the Stupid party.  Think of it this way, they've arranged a no-lose scenario; if the Stupid party caves on tax increases, it's like George H.W. Bush's famous "read my lips" cave, "OK, we'll raise taxes now and come back later to cut spending" which never happened.  The ability to run on a promise to cut taxes gets severely compromised.  And if the Stupids don't cave and everything goes "over the cliff", the Evils first blame everything on the Stupids, then pass "Middle class tax reform" in the spring, with their solid majorities.  Win-win-win for the Evils. 

(Eric Allie at Townhall)
Taxes are going up, no matter who you are.  Obamacare is just getting started.

Back when that stupid story about "Warren Buffet pays less tax than his secretary" was in the news, I said,

"...if it's wrong that Buffet pays 15% on capital gains while his secretary pays 35% on ordinary income, let's drop her tax rate to 15%, too. "

DC to the rescue.  They not only didn't cut her taxes to the 15% dividend rate, they raised dividend taxes to 43% (for the top brackets - like Warren is in)!  

It's so crazy, that the Bernank all but announces QE4 and nobody says anything about it!   Remember the announcement, just a few months ago, that they would buy $40 Billion in bonds per month, ad infinitum?  They increased that to $85 billion/month at today's meeting.  And nobody says a word...

At this point, it's impossible to know what the big picture will look like for next year.  I expect a more serious recession.  I only know one thing: I sure don't see any signs that we're moving in any directions to avert fiscal collapse. 

Cataloging Signs of the Apocalypse

I think I'm going to take on a new hobby and start cataloging signs of the coming apocalypse.  It's really easy because they're everywhere.  I don't believe the 12/21/12 Mayan stuff, but it's looking pretty darned crazy out there.

How about parents trying to stay single and to keep their offspring stupid - just because it's more profitable? (H/T Bayou Renaissance Man)

THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.

You can feel the pain in this NY Times reporter when he says:

This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. 

Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households. 

There's a very strong case that the key to living a decent upwardly mobile, middle class life in America depends on a few simple, old truths: don't drop out of high school, don't get married until you're out of school, don't have children until you're married.  The simple act of just getting married and then having children reduces the rate of poverty by 82%

One of the most stunning facts in the culture of dependency is how out of wedlock births changed over time from the world I grew up in.  Anyone remember the lyrics to "Love Child" by the Supremes?  "No child of mine will be bearing, the name of shame I've been wearing"?  It was not something to be proud of.  In today's decadent culture, it's different: by percentages, out of wedlock births account for more than half of the births in the black and Hispanic communities.  Try using the phrase "shotgun wedding" around someone under about 25, see if they know what it is. 

I come from the past, it's a different planet. 

As sad as that story in the NY Times is, at least it's about an attempt to end the cycle of poverty.  Unlike this story out of the UK, (H/T Barking Moonbat Early Warning System).  The story concerns Ms. Leanna Broderick, and concerns how she saved for Christmas for her children.  What's wrong with that?

* Leanna Broderick plans to give children designer outfits, iPads and jewellery

* The 20-year-old has never worked and claims nearly £15,500 a year ( $24,974.00 )

* Claims she is better off on benefits and last year saved £2,500 ( just a bit over $4,000.00 )

* Said there was ‘no point’ getting minimum wage job and paying for childcare

That's right, she's on the public dole.  While I applaud how she managed to save £2500, it apparently never occurs to her who actually own the money she is saving.  But why should it?  The state has promised her that all would be well.  She became a mother while still almost a kid herself.  What are the chances her two “accidents” won’t follow the same path? Poverty follows out of wedlock childbirths - especially when it's encouraged by the state!

“The people at the Job Centre have actually told me I’m better off on benefits than in a minimum-wage job. It’s the system’s fault. My kids would suffer if I worked. This way, taxpayers know I’m raising two well-brought-up kids.” 

Of course, we do the same things here in the US and actively discourage people from trying to get out of poverty.  I've written before about the awful situation where people experience real drops in their usable income if they work harder and make more money:

This underscores the most serious problem with reforming welfare laws.  Note that more than doubling pretax income from $14,500 to $30,000 results in a loss of 28% of their net income.

If you're a poverty pimp and make your living by keeping people in poverty, it simply makes sense.  Makes even more sense if you're deliberately trying to collapse the system.  

This Month, I "Graduate"

Just over two years ago, by a week or two, the lovely and musically-more-trained-than-I Mrs. Graybeard was reading something - Survivalblog, I think - and turned to talk to me.  She told me about the article saying that after the collapse, life was going to be harder ("sure", I replied); we will work harder all day, and may well find ourselves with no TV or cable entertainment in the evenings ("I've thought of that").  Whomever was writing the piece brought up images of homes in the 1800s gathering around by candlelight to play a little music together, and said we will probably go back to that.  I replied something to the effect of "no problem; I know how to play guitar and we have one in the other room". Plus, she still has a flute and could pick that up. 

I did have a guitar in the other room, but it turns out I only thought I knew how to play. 

I think I've only written about this at any length once about 15 months ago.  I had learned to play casually as a kid.  I think I was 13.  Within a year I was playing in garage bands, like millions of other kids.  I played at it mostly through high school, eventually getting an El-cheapo electric guitar and playing with friends.  My favorite instrument, though, was classical guitar and I received one of those as a gift in my 9th grade year.  I had the instrument 8 or 10 years - until the late 1970s.  Strangely, I don't recall what happened to it, although I hadn't played it in years at that point.  In 1988, I got another one and started taking classical guitar lessons, although I dropped out after about six months.  That was the one in the closet.  So out it came, on went some new strings, and I started trying to remember things. 

See, the funny part is that it had been longer since I played than all the years that I played put together.  To say I sucked is a vicious understatement.  The bigger issue was that I wanted the steel string sound, which the classical just won't give.  Shortening the story, I don't want to put you to sleep, by a little after Christmas two years ago, I had one of these:

That's a Yamaha APX-700, acoustic electric - if you're not familiar with the term, they're fully playable either way.  Don't want to be stuck with an electric guitar if there's no power.  And as I pointed out in that prior article, within another few weeks, I had started on the Learn & Master Guitar DVD course.  And as the sidebar says, yeah, I've got a couple of instruments in the stable.

There are 20 lessons in L&M.  This month I'm doing the last lesson - I will finish in two years.  The lesson is on chord inversions and more advanced chords - if you know the instrument you know there are always more chords to learn.  Several lessons ago the course had changed from "let's make you a guitarist" to "now that you are a guitarist, here are some cool tricks that will help".  This lesson continues that. 

So what does two years of DVD lessons get you?  Let me tell you, Walter Becker I ain't.  If he's more your speed, Slash I ain't.  Joe Walsh and Mark Knopfler have nothing to fear.  What I am is light years better than I was with about an encyclopedia's more knowledge than I had.  I went from playing pretty much only in the first position (that means my left hand out there on the far right end of the neck in this picture) to playing the entire neck.  I went from reading chord names to reading music, although not as well as I'd like.  It takes us, what? 8-10 years?, to read English really well, why should we think it would take a few months to read another language (music) just as well?  One of the longest units was to know every note on every fret on the neck, and I worked on that from the start of August until mid-November.  Can I sight read and play something like the riff from "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Hotel California"?  Not quickly, no.  I would muddle it out eventually. 

What's next?  Well, I think it's just as reasonable a way to learn to study some songs individually and build up a repertoire.  I think that's next, alternating with some more study.  Music is one of those things you can learn relatively quickly but work on for the rest of your life, you know. 

We now return you to your regular blog wandering...

A Sobering Story

Miguel over at Gun Free Zone posts the sobering story of an Arizona man who was dragged through the legal system after being involved in a "disparity of force" situation (two women and a man punching him) where he drew his weapon and fired. 

I'll echo Miguel and say that if you've been involved in self defense training, you've probably heard of James Yeager who operates a training company out of Tennessee.  I know I've watched some of his many YouTube videos demonstrating his tactics and he is known for doing things many consider unsafe, or just plain over the top.  For example, he will crouch between targets on his shooting range taking photographs of the students while they're shooting.  I'm sure he'd argue that if he's in any real danger, they don't deserve to be carrying, but the fact remains that they're students and not trained operators. His latest antic is to issue a challenge to pay for airfare to his training center to duel or fight anyone that says negative things about him. 

Miguel's point is that there is much more to learn about carrying a firearm than "just the bang bang part", and that your choice of instructor may have a major impact on the aftermath of a defensive shooting incident.  The bang bang part is relatively easy to teach; the parts about just when you're justified are definitely more subtle and less well-defined.  The vast majority of us will never face a bunch of AK-wielding Jihadis shouting "Allahu Akbar", but far more of us will face the prospect of being robbed at gunpoint or even carjacked.  It's not always completely clear what you do in the face of the robber.  Sure they're pointing a gun at you, but assume if you're out in public, it quickly turns into a one-way trip deep into the legal system. 

To quote from the pdf that Miguel posts, Hickey is the defendant, and Nicolini is the prosecutor who tried to convict him based on taking classes from and teaching for Yeager :

Initially, Nicolini grilled Hickey about the concepts and principles Yeager taught him, using notes and handouts from classes, and later he went over the same material with the instructor himself, discussing avoidance, de-escalation, gunfight tactics and many of Yeager’s similes, acronyms and catchy phrases – tools that the instructor used to help students remember important principles.

Alarmingly, out of context advice from instructors to “always cheat; always win,” and the axiom that one should treat every one else in a polite manner while simultaneously having a plan to kill them painted an inaccurate picture about Hickey’s outlook on life. Nicolini harvested these quotes from the training notes and handouts, and made much hay with them, especially during his closing arguments in which he described Hickey in highly inflammatory terms.

Almost all of us have used those sayings, either seriously or as a joke. The prosecutor used them to try to construct an image of Hickey as a lunatic who just wanted to kill someone.  He even tried to sell the jury that anyone who would carry a gun in anticipation of needing it was "out of whack with society".  Hickey wasn't on trial: you and I and anyone else who carries was on trial. 

Go read. 

(Oleg, of course)

Sometimes A Little Distance is Good

A little distance can bring perspective.  Western Rifle Shooters Association links to Sarah Hoyt, again, at Ungovernable.  Sarah grew up in Portugal when they went communist and talks about how fundamentally different Americans are than Europeans.  Americans fundamentally don't accept "that's just the way it is" as an explanation very well. 

It’s hard to explain how different that makes us.  To most Americans it seems logical behavior (it is) and I only get the difference because I remember being brand new here and how ALIEN it was.  And I remember living in Portugal without the constant “oh, for heavens’ sake, just do it” moments I have when I go back now.  (I should possibly point out that most Europeans find most middle aged American women bossy, interfering and a bit terrifying.)

Yes, I know some of you are going to tell me that spirit is now lost.

I work with a really bright engineer from Romania, who grew up under Ceausescu and the communists, and got out of the country when it became possible.  He spent some time living in Canada, then came to our place a few years ago.  As you might imagine, being from behind the iron curtain, he's about as anti-communist as you get, like most of the Cubans I grew up with. 

So when I complain about how it is here, he says it's not as good as it was, but we have so far to go that I can't possibly understand. I don't have enough distance perspective.  He's concerned about the direction, of course, and despises The One, but knows we're not there yet. He says we're still a free country; still more free than even Canada.

I bet you don't feel like that do you - as the developing police/security state unfolds around us, do you?  That's because of your American DNA, "baked in the cake of a people who came here to escape the top-down spirit of other places", as Hoyt puts it. She believes Americans just won't put up with much of what the rest of world will. 

A week or so after the election I asked him if he was considering going back, and he said he was.  When I asked him which was more free, Canada or Romania, he said Romania. That may not surprise you - you're probably aware of the Canadian health system and gun restrictions, just for two easy examples of how Canada is closer to the Euro-Socialist model than we are (at least for the next few months).  He says Canada is a more modern country, with better infrastructure, but Romania is more free.  Fewer highways, fewer open spaces, less infrastructure - let's just call it third world - but you can more easily do what you want. 

You Know I'm Not Big on the Stock Market, But...

if we had bought some stock in Ruger (RGR) and Smith and Wesson (SWHC) last year at this time,  we might have different opinions.

From Investors Business daily, at 6:48 PM Eastern tonight, SWHC announced quarterly results:

Smith & Wesson (SWHC), the gun maker, had 24-cent fiscal Q2 EPS, in line with views vs. a year ago's 4-cent loss. Sales climbed 48% to $136.6 mil, topping. Shares rose 2.7% to 11.14.

SWHC closed at $10.85 today, slightly below its high over the last year of $11.24

Sturm Ruger has also had a good year, fueled (of course) by the current trends driving gun sales to new records, and by the introduction of well-received new products, like the 10/22 Takedown.   RGR closed today at $53.44.  I can't find anything saying they've reported earnings for this quarter.   Just for grins, here's RGR for the last three full years:

Not too many bad periods in there, especially if you bought and held. 

I think I've said before that I don't believe in the old advice of buying the S&P 500 or a DJIA indexed fund any more, but there is money to be made in any sort of market if you pick well managed companies and understand them and their business well enough.

Keeping an Eye on Big Picture Trends

As we teeter toward the end of the year, it's an interesting time to look at some of the long term trends in finance and the big picture.  To go with what follows, I highly recommend you read "Preparing for the Long Rains" at According to Hoyt.  She does a great job of describing the way that everyone just sort of knows that bad times are coming. 

And then periodically I get together with a friend, or sit down with an old acquaintance and I hear how much more seriously they’re preparing.  It’s all guns and canned food, and why am I still living in an urban area, have I gone nuts?  And don’t I realize it’s time to set aside the writing/publishing thing and worry about preparing to survive the collapse.

In The Silver Market Update, analyst Clive Maund looks at the performance of the silver market over several time scales, from the last several months, back through the beginning of the bull market around 2000.  Look at this chart (extrapolations in blue at the right end)

 His lines show that the silver market has stayed in pretty linear channel since the crash of '08, and pretty closely since '04.  He points out the top of that channel is $90/oz by this time next year. Perhaps that's optimistic, it could end up at the bottom of that channel, too, but the mid point is around $70/oz, and even the bottom at $50 is a nice return on $32/oz silver today.  In any event, the upturn of the black line in the last few months is unmistakable, and could well be signalling that silver has resumed its upward price leg.

A personal observation is that the last couple of years, silver has been soft at the end of the calendar year, dropping a bit from prices in early December.  I'm not very good at hitting market lows, and how markets will react to the DC theatrics is impossible to predict.  Any day between now and the end of the year could be a good time to buy Silver. 

Similarly, analysts Mary Ellen and Pamela Aden talk about gold's bull market crossing the 12 year mark and looking very healthy.

HSBC says central banks created $9 trillion during the crisis, which is the equivalent to the value of all the gold that has ever been mined.

The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of U.S. government debt.  It owns one dollar in six of the national debt, which is the largest percent of GDP in history.  And it’s not just the Fed... the major central banks are also busy creating money.

Clearly history is in the making and we don’t know how it’s all going to end.  It’s bigger than any presidential election, and all we can do is protect ourselves against the wild printing of money.

They believe gold is completing a bullish adjustment pattern and due to return to rising prices, too.  Zerohedge reported that the American Gold Eagle coins were selling at the highest rate since 1999 and going to "HNWs" - short for "the rich". 

Let's see - I'll add in that the ASEAN group has essentially begun the post-dollar/post-USA world with the meeting in Phnom Penh in November - a meeting that treated Obama graciously and politely, but completely ignored him (as they would treat an insane uncle). 

Oh, yeah, and since the election, the highest rank search term on Google has been "bulk ammo". 

Interesting times we live in, no?

Leftovers Monday

A couple of items leftover from the weekend.  First off, this little gem:

That's about an eight pound pork butt just out of the smoker, the first experiment with a new toy, picked up last week on a pretty good sale at Cabela's.  I wasn't sure that you could get that good of a "bark" on the roast (as the barbecue wizards call it) with an electric smoker.  I have gotten one with a wood fired smoker, but the type I have sucks an enormous amount of fuel and requires much more attention. 

After 10 hours in the smoker, the internal temperature wasn't perfect, but it started to rain, and this being an electric smoker, the cooking was pronounced Done.  The bone pulled right out by hand, just grabbing and pulling a little - that's always a good sign.  It pulled apart easily with a pair of forks yielding many pounds of pulled pork (didn't weigh it), so the temperature isn't all-important.  We also had a couple of turkey thighs in the smoker, which came out an hour earlier and were dinner.  At upper left, a sauce pan of low carb barbecue sauce from Blood Sugar 101.  Lunch today, dinner tonight and lots of leftovers. 

Another leftover is this excellent piece by Mark Steyn, "America Not Paying Its Fair Share".  Not nearly as tasty, but worth the read as Steyn always is.  H/T to Western Rifle Shooters Association.

The final leftover:  did you see Obama's "compromise" position?

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

Even NPR thought this was a funny bit - Cokie Roberts explaining "well, it's a starting position".  They don't expect to get this.  It's like asking for a million dollars on a $50,000 car - show 'em you're a tough (if not clinically insane) negotiator.  To borrow a line from AJC Editorialist Kyle Wingfield:

What would be a GOP equivalent to this kind of unserious nonsense? Reason’s Peter Suderman took a pretty good stab at it on Twitter:

Republicans hear Obama’s opening bid, counter with: Eliminate the federal government, except for defense.

(Robert Ariail - TownHall.com - Saturday)  Or maybe better:

(Ramirez 11/29)

So tell me:  where else do you get a smoked Boston butt and a talking DC butthole in the same post?

The Federal Reserve's Bottomless Pit of Money

Our friends at Demonocracy.info, - who were formerly known as kleptocracy.us, have come out with a new infographic covering the Federal Reserve's Quantitative Easing, or money creation, called "The Federal Reserve's Money Printing Failure ".  You should go read.  As always, it's full of stunning visualizations of the amount of money involved, depicted as stacks of $100 bills.  One picture from it, depicting the money to be printed in 2013 alone. 

For scale, see that tiny stuff in the lower left front?  The tiny cube is $100 million dollars in $100 bills.  The dot just to right of it is simply one million dollars.  The sort of reddish dot (again, lower left) is a graphic of a woman sitting on a "sofa" made of stacks of $100 bills - it "only" amounts to just under $47 million dollars.  Each pallet in the grid is one of those $100 million dollar stacks.  The Fed's machinations will account for nearly one half of the US budget deficit in 2013 - compare to the Fed buying 61% of US debt this year. 

By the end of FY 2013, the Fed's money creation will look like this:

Quoting from them:

Each economic boost through money printing (QE1, QE2, QE3) has diminishing effects, that appear to follow the Fibonacci equation. This implies that the Federal Reserve is now caught in a perpetual cycle where it has to print near exponentially more money just to maintain same stock market performance level, not mentioning inflation.

The money printed by the Federal Reserve does not end up the hands of the people, but goes directly to the banks, though whom it ends up in the stock market in order to inflate asset values. This pushes the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P higher, but does NOT increase hiring and above all consumer spending, which is one of the main drivers of the US economy.

This ends, of course - this implies a need to create infinite amounts of money.  It ends, but it doesn't end well.  I sincerely wish I knew how far out it will be, but I think the Congressional Budget Office saying 2027 is wildly optimistic.  I think 2020 plus or minus 10 years is as closely as it can be predicted.  

Rig for collision.  

Over the Transom

In yesterday's emails at work.  Maybe it only appeals to home shop guys, but everyone I know laughed at it.

Same Planet, Different Worlds

I have two stories open in my browser now that are such a contrast that I just thought I'd present them together.  It's like the good news/bad news jokes that used to go around. 

First, we have the good news story.  Machine Design magazine reports on a company that has developed a mushroom-based replacement for a lot of packaging foam uses.  The company, Ecovative Design, (I assume that's a combination of "ecology" and "innovative") calls their product Ecocradle:

...the material replaces synthetic, petroleum-based foams such as expanded polypropylene (EPP), expanded polyethylene (EPE), and expanded polystyrene (EPS). Containing fungus rather than petroleum, EcoCradle isn’t so much manufactured as it is grown.

The article describes how the fungus is grown and processed into the packaging material.

EcoCradle begins as a combination of living fungi and agriculture waste. The fungi — called mycelium, or mushroom roots — is mixed with inedible and unusable agricultural by-products such as seed hulls or seed husks from staples like rice or oats.

Sounds like an interesting idea.  Around here, I've gotten several things shipped in those water-soluble packing peanuts made from starch.  This is a similar idea, but not exactly a competitor to the Ecocradle foam.  Here's a test product made from the fungus-based foam:

Now for the other end of the spectrum, the bad news story.  It seems in the UK, the "Liverpool Pathway", the name for a system the NHS has been using to kill off old patients, is also being used to kill off the very young - babies. To quote the Mail (UK)

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’.

Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.

But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.  

Is anyone surprised?  Just a month ago, we found that the NHS was paying incentives to kill off patients (I hear the Mafia does that, too.  Just sayin'...), and there have been many stories of complaints by relatives of how awfully their parents were treated. It's a system that a prominent oncologist called "immoral medicine" and "the most corrupt practice in British Medicine". 

Does this remind you of anything?  The pattern of killing off - excuse me, providing less extreme measures - for the very young and the elderly?  Why, it's the complete lives system (link to pdf) which is embedded into Obamacare!  Just look at the graph from the paper on the complete lives system; it clearly shows babies and elderly won't get care. But that's only when resources are limited, which is always.  The British NHS took generations to get to where they're actively getting rid of the young and the old; with Obamacare it's designed in from the start. 

When I look at the contrast of these stories, I see the contrast of the private sector entrepreneurs and the bureaucrats of the NHS.  I see problem solvers, engineers, and scientists on one side versus problem avoiders, paper shufflers and, well, bureaucrats.  I see everything that's good in our modern world and everything that's wrong.

We need more of the problem solvers and less of the bureaucrats. 

Obamacare Rolls Into My Life

It's no secret I'm an old guy - Graybeard is a description, not something I made up.  For those of you who don't know, the protocol for prescribing statins for control of cholesterol make it virtually automatic that every guy over 50 is going to get them.  Why?  You get them if you have two risk factors: you get one risk factor for being male and another for being over 50.  Therefore, if you cross 50 and get set up for a cholesterol test, you'll get put on statins.  Now, if you have a cholesterol "issue" of some kind and you're 40, you get put on them: one risk factor for the test, the other for being a dude. 

Let me pause here for a quick point: if you think that it's unanimously agreed that high cholesterol is a problem, or that the usefulness of cholesterol-lowering drugs has been absolutely proven, or that there is no controversy at all associated with this, you need to read more.  It's a side point here, but you can start at THINCS.  You need to read Dr. Duane Graveline, MD, former NASA astronaut, or Track Your Plaque.  Yeah, you're going to find the typical internet sniping, with everyone calling each other idiots, but that's my point: there is real controversy here. 

I've been on statins, with short breaks, since I was 40 and I'm starting to show liver damage.  Not enough for my doc to say get off them, but enough that we're looking closely at it.  There's a pair of liver enzymes they measure and mine are running at about 2x normal and have been for a couple of years now.  I figure if I burn out my liver and need a transplant in 10 years, the Glorious Peoples' Ministry of Health will deny it and offer me a juicer instead of a transplant, so I'd prefer to get off the statins.  Yesterday I went to the doc, talked about some extra tests to run along with other options and agreed on some things to do.  He tells me, "there is no perfect option here". 

Then he started talking to me about what's coming after the first of the year.  He said he hired some advisers to consult on his practice, and they told him that with his current business model and the coming Obamacare changes, he goes bankrupt within a year.  No way out.  Because of this, he's dropping his practice and going into the new field of Concierge Medicine.  Under this model, I pay him a flat fee of about $1500 for the year and get whatever care I want.  While they'll continue to take insurance, and I still need it (as it was originally intended - for unexpected things), I'm supposed to get anything I need from him for that one price.   

Unfortunately, with the coming of Obamacare, this is the new thing.  According to one of the providers in this arena, around 85% of practicing doctors are looking into getting out of the vise that Obamacare puts them into.  In rough numbers, my doctors has 4000 patients and will cut that down to 400.  That means 3600 people have to find a new doctor - which he'll help with, but if that's widespread around the area, there's an instant and severe shortage of doctors.  He becomes a contractor to - not employee of - a new company that provides these services around the country.  Cue Tom Baugh about starving monkeys.  Most doctors doing this say they make a little less, but have much less stress and get to work with patients more - which is why they went into Health care in the first place:  they care.  He says under their plan you get 30 minutes of his time per visit.  Current medical economics says 7 1/2 minutes.  Sounds like he'll have a ton of more time with 400 patients over the course of a year.

So the brave new world of Obamacare is here in smaller town America.  My doc agrees with my assessment of what is coming should I need a liver, and maintains medical care in the country has just been killed off.  Personally, I don't think this model of care will survive either, because the whiners are already talking about how "the rich" get this fancy care on demand and everyone else has to sit in a DMV-style line.  Fact is, it's already the case in virtually every country with a national health service that the well-off get what they want, even if they have to leave the country to get it.  That's as predictable - and unavoidable - as our summer rains.

(DBD)

It's Time To Talk About the "C" Word

A re-post of something I first posted two years ago.  Edited for improved clarity - (original here if you're really anal retentive)


I love Christmas.  I mean, I've run across people in my life who decorate for Christmas way more than I do, and I've known people who plan their Christmas six months in advance, way before I do.  I know a guy whose house decorations for Christmas put the local shopping centers to shame, and focused his whole year around Christmas.  Maybe if you saw me, or saw my barely decorated little house, you wouldn't think so, but I love Christmas.

Christmas is unique among holidays in America.  It has a very strong Christian tradition (well, duh!) as well as a very strong secular tradition, and I love them both.  I love giving gifts to loved ones - and even total strangers.  People in retail will tell you that Christmas often determines whether or not they stay in business.  I'm sure you've noticed that news outlets report sales from the Friday after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) as if they're reporting scores from a bowl game.  Another part of the holiday is the annual struggle to "keep Christ in Christmas" and not overlook the spiritual side of the holiday.  Did you know there is actually a court ruling that tells you how many reindeer (three) a holiday display must have to remain "sufficiently secular" to be legal to display on public property?  If I have three reindeer on display, it's secular, but if it's only two and package of reindeer sausage, I'm obviously trying to convert you!

A 2006 Zogby poll showed that 95 percent of folks are NOT offended when they hear the words “Merry Christmas.”  The real kicker is that 1 in 3 are actually very offended when the words “Happy Holidays” push out the phrase “Merry Christmas.”  This should not come as a big surprise because another poll by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics showed that 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. 

Some time ago, I must have filled out a survey or signed some stupid online petition or something, because I get junk mail from the American Family Association.  I recently got an email asking me to boycott Dick's Sporting Goods because they won't prominently display "Merry Christmas".  I'm not really offended by a store not having prominent "Merry Christmas" displays.  People shouldn't go to stores for spiritual displays. 

See, the reason I would go to Dick's is if they happen to have something I'm looking for as a gift and it's a great price.  This is purely the secular celebration of Christmas; I'm not going there for spiritual reasons.  I would prefer they used the phrase Merry Christmas, but I'm not offended by their not saying it.  If they told me to "eat sh*t and die", you can bet I wouldn't go back, but if they're neutral about "Merry Christmas", I'm OK with that. 

Here's where it gets a little dicey.  If there was a Bass Pro or Cabela's in town (both of whom got an "A+" rating from the AFA for saying Merry Christmas a lot) and a Dick's Sporting Goods, I would go to the first two because I'd prefer to go to someone with comparable merchandise and comparable price that was friendlier to my spiritual side.  It creates a more cozy environment and a smart retailer doesn't run off customers.  But life in 21st century America is plenty hostile to Christianity and a "happy holidays" from a store just isn't worth getting all worked up over.

By the way, a mere five hours after the AFA email asking me to boycott Dick's, I got a second email canceling the boycott.  They swear they're going to say Merry Christmas all the time. 



As we plunge further into the Christmas season, take time to enjoy it and your loved ones.  If you feel a need to get some perfunctory gift for folks you'd rather not give to, I say don't.  That's some sort of bizarre social ritual, not Christmas.  Don't put yourself in debt for Christmas; even if it means the kids get a "meager" holiday.  It won't hurt them and may just help them.  If you're one of the 45% who recently said they'd just as soon skip the whole thing - I say skip it.  It's still a federal holiday, so you have that going for you. 

Just What Are They Regulating, Anyway?

On July 21, 2010, the president signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, usually just referred to as Dodd-Frank, after these two clowns, I mean, respectable former statesmen.

Although it's not completely clear what effects it will have - the regulations that it requires haven't been fully implemented, or (as I've heard) haven't even all been written yet - we are beginning to see some of its effects.  This week, John Stossel reports that the Federal Government sued to stop Intrade, the innovative prediction company, for being an illegal "commodity options seller".  Intrade responded by closing access to US-based account holders and telling them to get out. 

"We are sorry to announce that due to legal and regulatory pressures, Intrade can no longer allow U.S. residents to participate in our real-money prediction markets," the company said in a statement Monday evening.

Intrade said it is "strongly" urging U.S. residents to "immediately" start to close down their accounts. The company said U.S. investors must close out all open predictions before 3 a.m. ET on December 23.

If U.S. residents don't close out their positions before the deadline, Intrade said it will do so at what the company deems fair value as of the daily session close that day.

Not familiar with Intrade?  Intrade, (who echoes Flounder in Animal House by saying "Nothing is Over Until We Decide It is"), is a company based in Dublin, Ireland operating on a model developed by DARPA.  The model is that investors betting real money on various future outcomes will be better predictors of future events than pundits, and other "experts".  Account holders literally bet on future events, such as elections, the US going to war with Iran (Before Dec. 31, 2013 - 35% at the moment) or that Any Country Using the Euro will drop it Before Dec. 31, 2013 - 34.1% at the moment,

As Stossel says:

In English: the government says that many of the things Intrade allows people to predict - everything from what the price of gold will be in the future to whether the U.S. will go to war soon - are legally considered "commodity options," and that Intrade broke the law because it isn't licensed to trade those. The penalty is $140,000 per violation.

In a press release, the CFTC's chief enforcer went out of his way to target "prediction markets":

"It is against the law to solicit U.S. persons to buy and sell commodity options, even if they are called ‘prediction' contracts, unless they are... traded on a CFTC-registered exchange... Today's action should make it clear that we will intervene in the ‘prediction' markets, wherever they may be based."

Why doesn't Intrade just get a license to be an exchange?  They tried and the government won't give it to them!  Similarly, when a large, established American company applied to get into that market, the fed.gov refused them, too.  Stossel, again:

The pompous CFTC enforcer claims that the regulation "is important for a number of reasons, including that it enables the CFTC to police market activity."

Please. These regulations don't help police market activity. When people make money on Intrade, Intrade sends them the money. There are no allegations of fraud. Customers are happy with Intrade, judging by increased activity on the site (over $50 million was bet about whether Obama or Romney would win.)

So while Dodd-Frank may have nothing to do with preventing the coming derivatives apocalypse, we can see that they're hard at work stopping less threatening markets. Sorta like their weird raw milk fetish. 

When You Need an Envelope

A friend introduced me to the world of the TAILS distribution of Linux and secure, anonymous internet usage under the TOR Project.  I took a vacation day today (if one short week is good, two short weeks are better!) and played around with for a few hours.  You could spend a lot of time at the TOR project, and all of it would be well spent.

Here's the deal.  That TAILS link (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) leads you to a distribution of TAILS, currently, 0.14.  That page is complete information for getting started, and the download itself is an .iso file, the kind used for either creation of a CD or DVD (from Windoze, as most are, use something like ImgBrn to burn the image) or to write to a USB drive that's at least 2 GB.  The TAILS link has instructions and link to a method of transferring the .iso file to a USB memory stick.  My Staples had these 4 gig sticks for $4 in bucket by the door a couple of months ago.  I can literally lose these in a shirt pocket.

Why you want a memory stick, especially today's tiny ones like this, is that you can stick it in your pocket and always have a secure computer to work from, if you can reboot.  The computer, of course, has to be where you have to access to reboot it and force it into setup or show other Boot Options.  On your PC, probably where you'll use this the most for now, you'll want to ensure you can boot from a USB drive - on a Dell, usually pressing F12 or F2 when prompted will allow you to choose your boot device.  This table can help you find what you need to press for your PC, if you've forgotten.  If you can't boot from a USB stick, but can boot from a DVD, there's nothing wrong with booting from that.  I recommend the USB stick, though, because everything you are running starts on that device, and the USB stick is simply much, much faster than a DVD, and a DVD won't fit in your pocket! 

So what do you get?  TAILS boots into a Debian based Linux that looks remarkably like Windows - it's the Gnome interface to Linux that Ubuntu used to use a few years ago.  There's even a "look like XP camouflage" option for internet cafes and places where you want to blend in like everyone else.  You don't have to choose a password while booting but I recommend you do - you're assigning yourself as Super User or Administrator in Windows-speak and giving yourself permission to access your full Windows hard drive and any other file shares under Windows (I haven't tried to connect to my network with it).  When you're booting into TAILS, it asks you if you want further options; Yes prompts you for a password.  It doesn't have to be any password you use anywhere else on the PC - it's for the OS only.  You'll have a browser (Ice Weasel = Fire Fox clone), an email client (CLAWS = Thunderbird), a communicator (Pidgin), and you'll have several "Best of Linux" programs installed - GIMP, Open Office, and a fully functioning system.

All of your actions - web use, emails, anything, is run through anonymizers.  Web searches go through Startpage.  Your address is blocked.  Security is built in from the ground up.  All to keep you anonymous. The "Amnesic" part in TAILS is because the system forgets everything you've done when you shut it down.  Pull that USB drive and it's deaf, dumb and blind.  What you sacrifice for this security is speed - TOR works by bouncing your packets around between different relays, and this slows things.  Without running speed test web sites, I'd estimate that loading this blog took about 10x longer than when I'm using Windows - or my FireHD from across the house.  Of course, let's never forget that it's easier to crack the user than crack the encryption, as XKCD so brilliantly put it:

It might be worth your time to read, or re-read, this.  Should you find yourself in some sort of dystopian banana republic and need to get anonymous messages to friends and co-workers, this could well be your ticket. 

Speaking of Fixing Junk

I spent today catching up on some things I wanted to do on the holiday weekend.  It seems I never get everything done I want to do on any holiday, but I mixed this "work" with some goofing off and sleeping late, so I can live with not getting everything done. 

One of the things I wanted to do was take a look at a pair of cheapo iPhone chargers that have died on me.  Has everyone seen Dilbert's take?

As always, Dilbert is pretty much a documentary.  Both of these chargers plug into the car's 12V system (which is nominally 13.6V) and convert it to 5V DC at 1A - the USB charging "standard".  Both of them died while in my car, keeping my iPhone 4s topped up on the 3 hour trip over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house.  (I was using streaming radio, so the phone by itself may not last that long on its batteries).  Both died about halfway.  Not even two hours of operation.  Both gave off a tell-tale smell that all technicians know - burnt electronics.

Since we're talking about fixing things, I thought I'd share a look inside them.  They are typical of the unrepairable items you're surrounded by.  They are similar in design and use a single integrated power supply controller circuit.  Here's the iCrap charger with an obvious indication of being blown:

and here's a close up of the blown component:

Yes, that's a seriously overheated spot on the side of the IC. Pretty foregone conclusion that the part is toast. 

And that's the problem.  If the system is down, that's unrepairable.  If the infrastructure is still in place, I might be able to buy one of those parts.  Yeah, I'm guessing it would still be cheaper to buy a new charger.  If this design was made with discrete transistors, or older technology that's more widely available than these one-chip wonders, it would be easier to fix.  But then it would be more expensive to produce, and would be harder to fit in the nice little lighter plug package it's in.  They don't use these parts to be perverse, they do it to hit a price point people like. 

In this magnified view, you can read the part number for the IC: it's RT8250.  I've never heard of a company that uses RT in its numbers, but searching the web for that part number brings me to a free archive of datasheets and I have the datasheet downloaded.  Turns out RT is "Richtek Technology Corporation" - whoever that is.  Likewise, the other one was an RT part, and RT34063A.  The second one uses fewer parts but is otherwise very similar. 

Unrepairable?  How much of a scrounger are you?  While I couldn't make this work with the existing design, I could put in a different regulator and take advantage of the form factor that includes the USB plug and car lighter plug.  At this point, I'm probably just going to toss them , but it is worth thinking about what to do if there are no cheap/widely available replacements and how I'd generate something to do the same function.