We Were Just Talking About the Samsung Galaxy Note 7

Just the other day.  Today, the US Department of Transportation banned the phones from air travel.  No one will be allowed on a commercial air flight with a Note 7 as of Noon Eastern time today, October 15.

The phone will not be allowed on the plane in any form; passengers cannot have it in carry-on luggage or checked baggage on any flight that goes to or from the United States.

Airlines have not allowed passengers to operate or charge their Note 7 phones for weeks, as many of the smartphone's users reported that the devices were catching fire and, in some cases, exploding. A smoking Galaxy Note 7 forced a Southwest Airlines flight to evacuate earlier this month. A formal recall followed, and Samsung has since discontinued the phone and offered full refunds or exchanges to anyone who still has the Note 7.

Does this make sense?  I don't think it makes much sense.  Here's why:

To begin with, the number I quoted Wednesday of .01% defect rate is based on the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's data (92 bad phones) mixed with some data from around the world (another 20).  That's dated 9/15, a full month ago, and I don't know that anyone really knows the total number.  Additionally, as a comment from reader Able said, other phones might catch fire, too, at an unknown rate.  Every manufacturer uses these lithium-polymer batteries, and every manufacturer is trying to get every minute of battery life out of them they can.  To quote another comment from reader Arthur, "Is Lithium, is not safe". 

I think we can assume an upper limit for how dangerous these phones are by taking the highest number we can assign for the failure rate and multiplying by 10 to 0.1% defect rate.  With 1 million phones out there (CPSC data), that would turn into 1000 bad phones out there somewhere.  How many of those 1000 are likely to be flying on any given day?  One?  Ten?   Wouldn't it be just as practical to find anyone flying with a Note 7 and issue them one of these for the flight?  Those would be pretty good way to contain a phone that's got a battery catching fire.

In the commercial avionics world, boxes are supposed to have lower failure rates than 0.1%, and there are special requirements for non-flammability, non-propagation of a fire, and other things.  Passengers' phones and other electronics aren't commercial avionics and can't be expected to meet those standards.  The same goes for every other phone or item of personal electronics someone takes on a plane.  A 30 cal ammo can is cheap insurance and making it temporarily standard on passenger flights sure makes sense to me.  Several users have posted pictures and video of the supposedly fireproof boxes Samsung is sending out.  It's just four layers of cardboard.  A 30 cal ammo can has got to be better than that. 

New Book Alert

Most of you know of Cody Wilson, the guy who created the Liberator in 2013, the world's first open source gun.  The Liberator and other work in the field has been covered here often.  Defense Distributed, Cody's company, released the Ghost Gunner, a totally open source small CNC machine introduced with the idea of producing open source hardware and software guns.  Like it or not, conventional machining (subtractive manufacturing) with a small metal-cutting mill has an enormous advantage in the materials it can use versus 3D printing (additive manufacturing). The first home-class 3D printer that can print metals like the big boys can will be a global game changer.  Right now, there aren't even any moderate strength alloys available coming out of 3D printers that are priced for the "home user" segment.

I wanted to pass on that Cody has a new book out, "Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free".  There might have been announcements or a coordinated book buy, but I missed all that.  I caught Cody on Dana Loesch's show on the Blaze, and bought the book Tuesday.  I've only cracked the cover and read the preface, which is on the Amazon page.  An excerpt from that:

...At one of these twilight salons sat Chris Hancock, an old classmate of mine, his tangled black hair brushed from his face. He had brought a friend.

“You remember WikiLeaks!” I insisted to them both. “Do you recall the insurance files?”

“WikiLeaks sends everything they’ve got out to the public in advance. It’s all published and torrented but protected from reading by some long password, right?” Chris answered.

“Exactly,” I said, losing the word on my breath. “And in the event the states move in for some final shutdown, only then do they release the password. The copies were already distributed. The damage sits waiting to be done. Maybe the files had been seeded for months, maybe years. You can’t pull them all down. The threat is credible because everyone has a computer. Every computer is always already on the Internet.”

“Peer-to-peer technology gives you leverage, sure. So, what are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is you can leak more than emails and cables. There are new machines—networked, material printers. They use complex and evolving materials. Into this budding universe of digital production . . . you leak a gun.”

I liked to watch the realization come to people in stages. It had been no different with Chris. Except on this night he made a conceptual leap.

“A Wiki Weapon,” he mused, looking down at the square candle on our table.

And I admit I was a little stunned by the words. Alarmed, even, that the clever coinage was a sign I still didn’t understand the significance of the proposition after these months. They made me jealous too.

Chris’s friend looked at both of us then, his face flushed with the chill of true and unwelcome surprise. And I whispered it:

“We are the heartworms of history.”

The eminent science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Although 3D printing may seem like magic, it came from very practical beginnings. 

The book goes through the trials Cody has been put through by our anti-freedom government.  The Feds, with their infinite checkbook, have run Cody and Defense Distributed through as much hardship as they could generate, costing him over a million dollars.  The book appears to be an attempt to defray some of those costs.  It details the lengthy battles, invoking ITAR laws to tie their hands behind their backs, and trying to stop them in every way.  I bought the hardback version on the chance that it might be revoked some day and rounding up every copy will be harder than revoking an e-book.  Plus the hard copy has redacted text blacked out, as ordered by the Fed.gov.  It adds a certain ... je ne sais quoi ... odor of tyranny to emphasize their actions. 

Americans' Biggest Fears

Chapman University is out with their survey of the things Americans fear most.  It makes an interesting read or skim, especially in light of the election.  All the data are here.

Head and shoulders above all the other fears in the list is corruption of government officials.  It gathered almost 50% more responses than the number two, while from number two through 10, it's only a 15% difference.   Government corruption was number 1 last year as well.  With the possible exception of the number three fear, not having enough funds for the future, it's easily arguable that the top five fears are all fear of the government mismanaging the country.  I would say that all five of the top five fears are in the government's lap because if they weren't constantly messing with the economy through the horrible deficit spending and the execrable central banks, it would be much easier to plan for having enough money for the future.  A terrorist attack (numbers two and four) are in the category of defense.  In fact, out of the top ten there are only three that aren't in the government's lap: fear of loved ones dying or getting seriously ill (five and nine) and fear of identity theft. 

So tell me again why voters shouldn't be lining up around the block to dump the establishment?  While you're at it, tell me why the establishment candidate is doing so well in the polls.  Instead of wondering why she's not 50 points ahead, she should be wondering why she's not 50 points behind. 

Why Does The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Catch Fire?

The problems with Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones, among the most feature-rich phones on the market, spontaneously catching fire have made a lot of news.  The problems first hit the news in August, not long after the phone first hit the market, and my reaction was that it must be some defective batteries or a problem with the charging circuit.   Samsung announced a global recall, so I figured they were on top of the issue.

The thing is, lithium ion batteries catching fire or exploding isn't that unusual.  Li-ion batteries have major advantages over other battery chemistries, so they're literally found in everything.  If it's a run of bad batteries, why aren't other company's phones catching fire?  That implies that it's not really a battery problem, it's a system problem.  Which is to say it's a Samsung problem.

The story is hard to pin down, so I've been bouncing back and forth between engineering sites like EE Times, business sites and those for the technically-inclined consumers, like C/NET.  Samsung, like most companies in this situation, is trying to balance being 100% open and responsive to customers, while not saying things that would discourage new customers and all the while realizing there's nothing they can do to please some customers.  At first, they thought the batteries were being pinched too hard in the slim case of the Note 7, as seen in the bottom video at the C/NET link, (originally posted in mid-September) but that cause seems to have lost some of the blamestorming it was subject to.

The company replaced the returned phones with units thought to be fixed in some way, but as of a couple of days ago, it has been reported that some of these supposedly known-safe units have already caught fire.  Today, the company warned users not to use any phones, even these replacements, and said they were shipping fire resistant glass shipping containers to return the phones.

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer I can give you as to why these particular phones are an issue.  It's being reported that the relevant Samsung engineers are virtually locked into the building until they solve this, and have been unable to reproduce the problem.  Each phone that catches fire tends to gather news coverage, but there really haven't been many.  C/NET says they can account for 112 phones catching fire.  That's less than .01 % of the phones sold.   

I've got to tell you this is a hard kind of problem to fix.  I can also guarantee that the first thing that's going to be found is actually not the cause but a dead end.  The problem is only going to happen once (after that, the phone is destroyed); they'll need to simultaneously test a lot of phones because it only happens to a small percentage of the product, and it doesn't happen immediately.  It's not new phones on their first charging cycle, and the phones were only out a few days before the first fires were reported, so it's not old, worn out batteries.  While one might expect the problem to show up during charging, there are several reports of the phone just catching fire while sitting on a table or desk or something.  I would say it's going to take time to get this resolved.  The best thing they could do would be to find a way to make an infrequent, rare, disastrous failure happen more often. 

EE Times relayed an interesting idea: 

Attributing an unnamed source who has spoken to Samsung chiefs, the Financial Times reported, “Problems with the phone appeared to have arisen from tweaks to the processor to speed up the rate at which the phone could be charged.”
...
Samsung's Note 7 comes in two versions, with one using Samsung's own Exynos 8893 processor and another based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor.

That makes me wonder if the way the code executes in those two processors isn't different somehow.  Since Samsung decided to cancel all production of the Note 7; if not killing off the latest model phone then putting it into a medically induced coma, that seems to indicate Samsung is relatively sure the problem isn't simply defective batteries.  It seems that the Korean giant realizes it must look elsewhere — other than batteries — to explain the alarming phenomenon of its smartphones bursting into flames.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 taken apart with the battery being lifted out of its normal position. From IFixit.

Bits and Pieces

Just a couple of little things, none of them big enough to warrant a post.

Ever drop something, or misplace something, search like crazy and give up only to find that days or weeks later you find it exactly where you were looking?  I've come to think that the act of dropping something somehow creates superposed quantum states or superluminal motion.  I think what's happening is that the dropped object moves forward in time or into a parallel universe and we have to wait for the universe to catch up with it before we can see it.  I don't know why. 

I had a really great example of this, while putting one of my antennas back up after the storm.  This is a dual band vertical antenna by Cushcraft called the MA8040, for the 80 and 40 meter amateur bands.  Much like the electrical design of the antenna, I had planned a simple way to raise and lower the antenna for storms, and Cushcraft offered it as an option.  Imagine two pieces of angle aluminum about 1 1/2 inches on a side on either side of the antenna and a clamp between them to surround a short piece of antenna mounting pole.  Now add a bolt to pivot around at the bottom and another six inches above to lock it in place.  Both of these are stainless bolts 3/8 or 1/2", with insulating spacers on either side to keep the antenna centered.  Pull off the wingnut on the top and the antenna is free to pivot around the bottom bolt and lie down.

I can't recall the last time I took the antenna down, but we didn't have it for the big storms in '04.  When I was putting it back up, one of the wing nuts fell into the dirt immediately below the antenna.  A search followed, but I could never find that wingnut.  Yesterday, while raising the antenna, I looked down and there it was, exactly where it should have been, under the spot it was dropped from, which is the first place I looked.  Back then, I replaced it with a plain galvanized nut, but galvanized on stainless will rust away first and it was already corroded, so I replaced the nut with the one that had been designed for that spot.  It could be the nut went only a matter of hours into the future or it could have been in a parallel universe for years; I'll never know.  I've worked around that spot many times and never seen it.

---

On Friday morning, while the internet was down and we were waiting for the rain to let up, I spent time working on the details of how to build the back panel and breakout board mounting bracket for the CNC controller box.  Today, I cut one of the new cutouts, then tried to set up to do the next one but failed.  The Sherline just isn't big enough to handle the 16" back panel the way I planned.  While staring at the drawing and trying to figure out another way, I think I see how.  I wasn't able to try it, but I put together a CNC file to cut it.  Tomorrow, I'll continue and see if I can get the back panel finished.

The cutout for the breakout board interconnect. 

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Batteries. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Almost two years ago, I mentioned we'd gotten a deal on one of those very portable car jump starters / battery banks.  Several months ago, I realized I had been leaving it in the car far too often and the Florida heat just isn't a good thing for batteries.  I found that it appears to be rather low in capacity.  Just running the battery down with the builtin flashlight and recharging hasn't helped, so I'm going to go for more desperate measures, and try to hit it with big current surges.  Regularly cycling your storage batteries is a good thing.  I'm also currently doing the same thing to the only NiCd pack I still have around here.    Rechargeable batteries require care and cycling techniques that depend on what kind of batteries they are. 

Financial Hurricanes Are Far Worse Than Matthew

I've always thought that hurricanes were a kind of disaster that's easy to live with.  Every place has its natural disasters, and hurricane country seems to me to be a better place to live than tornado alley or earthquake country.  I'm sure there are exceptions, but I've never experienced one, to the idea that hurricanes always give you tons of warning.  I was watching Matthew for at least a week before we had to prepare.  We could have picked up any needed supplies at least that far in advance.  We could have put up our shutters last weekend if we wanted.  By contrast, you know there's a tornado season if you live in tornado country, but you may get five minutes warning.  With earthquakes, you know you're going to get one when things start moving.  With a hurricane, there's no reason to play that common, last minute rush game.  There's no reason to wait until the warning flags are up to go line up for plywood at Home Despot or wait for water at the grocery store; buy that stuff before hurricane season and put it aside.  It's the lazy man's disaster in the sense that there's nothing that absolutely needs to be done by the time they post warnings.  Everything can be done at your leisure in advance. 

The fact is we're not going to get any more warnings than we've already gotten that the western economies are in the path of an approaching financial hurricane.  Metaphorically, the hurricane warning flags are already flying.  There will be no warning siren five minutes before the banks close, you'll just go to use your ATM card to buy gas or groceries and the store won't accept it or it will bounce when they try to process the transaction.  Lots of us have had the experience of going to the gas station and finding we can't use the credit or debit card because "the machines are down".  Ordinarily, you go to the next gas station down the road or wait until the machines start working.  What happens when all of the networks go down; all of the machines go down?  Nothing is available unless you have cash, and then sellers will ask whatever they want to ask.  It will be the start of panic.

Two days before Matthew, people who live along the beach were told there was a mandatory evacuation coming the next day.  Some people left early.  I've heard of ATMs being out of money.  What will happen if everyone hits their bank and they run out of cash?  

You've probably heard a lot about the troubles at Deutsche Bank (example), but they're not the only big bank in trouble.  When the next financial crisis occurs, it will be suddenly and without warning.  It will almost certainly follow the collapse of a big bank like Deutsche Bank, which will be followed by a stock market dive.  Almost no one would understand what caused it. Almost no one would be prepared for it.  No one would know how long it will last.  No one will know what the world will be like when it's over.  It will be worldwide and inescapable.

Janet Yellen and her fellow central bankers would try to reassure us they understand everything, but they don't.  The central banks have blown trillions of dollars into an equity bubble on Wall Street.  Estimates go upwards from $30 Trillion dollars disappearing in a short period, like one week.  But that's not the worst case possibility; if the bond market collapses it could take another $70 trillion with it.  Sure, they can throw a few hundred billion dollars at that, but are they really crazy enough to try to digitize $30 Trillion?  $70 Trillion? It has been speculated that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be the only group left in the world with any money: their Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)  The problem is that SDRs aren't really money: they're more like a promissory note.  They're a claim to currency held by an IMF member nation.  What if they need more money than they can get?  What if they need more money than the GDP of the planet? 

I've beaten this horse for years here: the market is not fine, the economy is not fine, inflation is not the 2% the Fed claims and essentially every statistic you commonly come across is bogus.  The Fed blew the bubble in the stock market and it is going to burst, like all bubbles do.  Nothing has been done to fix the root cause of too much debt in the system, and we're reaching the point where the storm is getting ready to hit. 

The Perils of SDR&R Ain't Nothing

That is: sex, drugs and rock and roll ain't nothing compared to living with Hillary.  From the emails.

Then again, maybe it's not Hillary.  Maybe Bill has tertiary syphilis.  Or maybe it's that vegan diet he's on.   

Keep an Eye on Italy

For the remainder of this year and into the start of next, keep your eye on Italy as a potential origin for "financial contagion", more likely to be the catalyst for the final breakup of the European Union.

A little background is in order.  Italy has been a focus of efforts to stabilize the EU since the last fiscal crisis.  You remember the term PIIGS, right?  That was the term for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain, the most financially troubled countries in the EU.  My earliest reference to the term was the first actual post on this blog, so it goes back before February of 2010.

Like most of the Western world, Italy is going through a period of anger with their elected leaders, thinking them a corrupt, venal, criminal ruling class interested only in their own betterment at the expense of taxpayers.  In 2007, Beppe Grillo, an Italian actor and comedian, launched Vaffanculo Day to register that disgust with politics.  Those of us not from areas where Italian is spoken every day are probably not aware that “vaffanculo” is Italian for “f*** you” (you'll also see that interpreted as “f*** off”).

What began as a joke morphed into a political party which took the more publicly acceptable name of the 5 Star Movement or M5S.  M5S then morphed into one of the most popular parties in Italy, winning mayoral elections in Rome and Turin earlier this year.  Italy has had virtually no productive growth since it joined the euro in 1999.  M5S blames Italy’s chronic lack of growth on the euro and it appears a large plurality of Italians agree.

M5S has promised to hold a vote to leave the euro and return to Italy’s old currency, the lira, as soon as they’re in power. Under these circumstances it would probably pass.

Meanwhile, the current pro-EU Italian government of Matteo Renzi is holding a referendum on changing the Italian constitution later this year.

Remember Brexit?  How about calling this iExit?  Leaving the EU and government reform have become the central theme of a referendum coming on December 4th, which CITI bank is calling a bigger risk to the EU than Brexit.  Renzi has offered to take power from the senate because Italians think the senate is a useless, obstructionist debating club.  (Sound familiar?)  Renzi's proposal doesn't seem to be widely popular because Italians also don't seem to trust transferring the power to the Prime Minister.  They have a well-kept memory of a too-powerful executive (can you say Benito Mussolini?). 

If Renzi's constitutional change fails, he has said he'll resign, and this opens the path to Italy leaving the EU. Voting against the current government, though, seems like it's giving them the finger, a real Vaffanculo Day. 

There's more at stake here than just populist politicians and an angry population wanting to tell their leaders to “f*** off ”.  Italy's economy has brought the concept of bank bail-ins back to the population.

Last year, four small Italian banks became insolvent and immediately needed capital. They turned to a bail-in.  

A pair of retirees living off their savings in those banks responded by committing suicide.  The news rocked the nation.  The level of anger at the banks and the government is reaching a boiling point.  (Again, sound familiar?)  It’s hard to imagine that the frustrated Italian populace won’t vote to give the establishment the finger in the referendum and humiliate the pro-EU government.  By that time, our election should be over (barring another Florida-style perpetual recount).  It seems like it has the potential to be a pretty ... interesting couple of months.

Beppe Grillo; originator of V-Day and the M5S party.  Getty Images.

Now That That's Over With

It has been a long day for us.  I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night, after setting an early alarm the day before to get the final preparations done.

The hurricane story in a nutshell is that when I last posted, the forecast was for the storm to come ashore very close to the city I live in, Melbourne, while packing winds of a high Category 3 to Category 4.  I even heard the normally-rational Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather saying (going from memory), "The last measured central pressure in Matthew was 936 millibars.  The definition of a Category 5 hurricane is 926, and the storm is intensifying, so we could be looking at a Category 5 storm at landfall".   None of this is within a light year of being "good news".  All of it was wrong.

On the other hand, there were encouraging words to be found.  The storm seemed to be starting an eyewall replacement cycle, and had two eyewalls; one about 8 miles in diameter and the other closer to 60.  With the center less than 15 hours from the coast, that could lead to a period of weakness that never gets followed by intensification because there just isn't enough time.  There were infrared satellite photos showing the storm had been sucking in dry air, a sure hurricane killer.  Then there was word that the storm was tracking east of the predicted path, putting the worst winds farther offshore.  This comment in the Central Florida Hurricane Center, was posted by a retired professional meteorologist and former Chief Meteorologist for Boeing.

Well I'm thinking no landfall at all. When I briefed EM yesterday I felt that it would stay about 30 miles offshore. I've been plotting all of the recon center fixes since 09Z and they have all been about 15 miles to the east of the forecast track that I used in the briefing - so I sure hope that the trend continues. That would put Matthew about 45 miles offshore east of Melbourne at about 07/1130Z.  [I believe EM here is Emergency Management - SiG] 

Amid all that, I noted the Thursday night forecast from the Melbourne NOAA weather forecast website - the local guys - and made fun of them.  I mailed this to my Daughter in Law (who had been pestering me to evacuate).

Tonight
Hurricane conditions expected. Showers and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce heavy rain. Low around 80. North wind 25 to 30 mph increasing to 45 to 65 mph. Winds could gust as high as 80 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%.

Friday
Hurricane conditions expected. Periods of showers and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds and heavy rain. High near 83. West southwest wind 45 to 65 mph decreasing to 35 to 40 mph. Winds could gust as high as 80 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%.

"Hurricane conditions expected... Some of the storms could produce heavy rain."  or  "...could produce gusty winds and heavy rain".   Gee... do ya think? 

More to the point of this post, the highest winds they forecast were 65mph, which "could gust as high as 80".  That's not even a category 1 hurricane; gusts don't count.

The local guys and that one comment were right.   I grabbed this screen capture of the Melbourne radar loop at 5 this morning.  This is the closest Matthew came to us.  I could believe that eye center is 45 miles from the coast, about 2 1/2 hours ahead of that 07/1130Z estimate.

I was awakened by intermittent power outages about 2:45 this morning.  I immediately noticed the wind was the worst it had been in the storm, but also noticed it didn't sound remotely as strong as the Category 3 hurricanes we had in '04.  I never really got back to sleep except for a few minutes at a time and got up for good around 4:15.  By that time the power had been out for some time and my backup generator was running outside.  The cable/internet went out around 7AM.  Both regular power and the cable came back around 4:30 this afternoon.  We got outside and started the cleanup process around 2, and except for a couple of small squalls moving through were able to work outside for a couple of hours and get the cleanup accomplished.  Most of the cleanup.  

Hurricanes are a messy pain in the ass.

While I don't think we had any damage whatsoever from the storm, some of my neighbors were not so lucky.  Going either direction out of my front door, there are two trees down within three doors.  In one case, it blew away from the house; in the other it fell across part of the garage.  The local fish wrapper newspaper has plenty of pictures of people (places) that didn't do as well as we did. 

Out of Our Hands, Now

Well, the shutters are up, the antennas are down, and everything that can be made safe has been.  We're going to lose our freshly planted tomatoes and winter veggies, but there just isn't much we can do about that.  The hurricane forecasts have had Matthew on top of us since late Tuesday.  We've had occasional hours of good news, from the standpoint of weakening the storm, but the chances of it staying well offshore are long gone. 

I hope it was clear when I said, "I'll decide if I'm putting the shutters up and taking the antennas down in the morning.  That will depend on how stable the track is looking.", that the decision to not put up shutters would be if the track moved away from us.  If the track stayed where it was or ventured closer, the shutters were going up.  Here's a comparison where I tacked the Tuesday night track next to the one they just put up:

That "8AM Fri" location on the bigger plot looks to be directly over my house, as accurately as one can read those things.  As you can see, the Tuesday track kept it offshore for the entire forecast period, while today's map (and, really, Wednesday morning's) show it riding up the coast from here.  The only things that would improve our chances are if it goes very far offshore, which isn't likely, or if it should come ashore earlier and either ride the coast longer, or better yet, move farther inland.  Both of those would serve to weaken the storm.  The morning forecast showed it hugging the coast more, but that went away a few hours later.  Also note that they now think the storm will weaken and loop back for another run at south Florida.  We could conceivably get it twice

Depending on how the next 30 hours progress, it might get spotty around here.  Like I said before, the last time we had hurricanes ('04) our power wasn't out more than 36 hours.  Our power was back on while neighbors literally across the street behind us didn't get theirs back for another day.  Some places were out for weeks.  Those were two category 3 storms, which this might become, if we're lucky.

So wish us luck or send your prayers.
 

I'm A Little Scattered

A close approximation of my worst case ramblings about Hurricane Matthew appears to be playing out.  We're under hurricane watch with warnings expected in the morning.  I've been hanging back and not doing much in the way of preparing until tomorrow.  I'll decide if I'm putting the shutters up and taking the antennas down in the morning.  That will depend on how stable the track is looking. 

The current forecast has us well covered by the "cone of uncertainty"; we've been covered since the 5PM forecast yesterday.  This is the 10/5 @ 0000 UTC forecast map.  We're now in the white part of the forecast cone, the first 3 days.  Of course the forecast gets more accurate the less they go into the future.  ("It's 8 PM and the storm is right there.  At 8:05 it will be in the same freaking place.")

The bump on the east coast of Florida is Cape Canaveral; I'm south of the tip of the Cape by about 20 miles and about 4 miles from the Atlantic, on the mainland, not the beach island. 

A direct hit from a Category 4 hurricane is scary, especially since almost everything we have that's "hurricane rated" is for 150 MPH winds.  On the other hand, the most likely scenario is that it stays about 50 miles off the coast, and the forecast strength is down a little from the current 140 MPH winds.  If it follows the track in that plot, we should get winds around the definition of hurricane: 75 MPH.

So since I'm waiting around, I've been in the shop!  (What else?)  I ran a test of the DB-9 file I was talking about last night and it still came out bigger than I thought looked good.  It seems my connector is smaller than the size I had the drawing for.  So I reduced the size and tried it again.  Came out fine.  This is it with the too large pattern, and the connector mounted in the right sized cutout.  It's another piece of scrap I had with a few extra holes, but plenty of room to put in the DB-9.  The connector, BTW, comes with different hardware, so these #4 screws are just to test the hole placement.  And hold it for the picture. 

With the connector cutout refined and ready, I went ahead and modified things to put the panel on my Sherline.  I located every connector with a ruler and square, but then went back and moved them to a common spacing.  Since the first two were 2.6" apart, I made them all 2.6" apart (scientific, huh?).  I'd cut one, change to the drill bit to drill out the holes, then "G00 X2.600" (do a rapid movement 2.6" to the right), change the X/Y coordinates to 0,0 and run the file again.  It went pretty rapidly, once I had the steps clear in my mind; each cutout took about four minutes.  And wah-lah:

There's a little glitch in the upper right corner of the left two cutouts.  I missed a a line when I corrected the file to make the cutout smaller.  I fixed it for the right two. 

Depending on how the next few days progress, it might get spotty around here.  Miguel, who is about 200 miles south of me, has checked out already.  Last time we had hurricanes ('04) our power wasn't out more than 36 hours.  Our power was back on while neighbors literally across the street behind us didn't get theirs back for another day.  No guarantees, but we're apparently more prepared than many. I can't understand why anyone would want to spend the day before the storm rushing out to buy lumber, bottled water, or any "storm supplies". 

Shop Update - Drilling Holes, Cutting Panels

In the last week, I made some more progress on the CNC controller box.  The bottom is done and I've been testing cuts that go on the back panel with available scrap.  First the bottom:

The only major part missing when I snapped this is the breakout board, which will go closest to the back (viewer) on the right.  I left a gap in the motor controllers to verify how the fourth will fit when I add it.  I later moved one over so that the empty slot is on the right.  The power supply (shiny box on the left) is held down with #6 hardware through the bottom.  Screw, lock washer and nut.  The three motor controllers are held down with #4 hardware into tapped holes in the bottom.  That was just because of the hardware I had on hand.

The back panel cutouts are hanging on the DB-9 connectors now.  I found a CNC file online that's very easy to use and did a couple of runs of it.  I had to modify it to cut in two passes and slow down the feed rates because of the light duty nature of the Sherline, but it ran with no issues.  The DB-9 outlines came out too big, though.  Here are two cutouts on a piece of scrap aluminum I had lying around.  Turns out they're over 1/8" larger than the connector.  You'd want some room around the connector shell but not that much.  (Ignore the three large round holes.  They're not part of this experiment).  This is also low grade aluminum; soft and gummy.  The chips cling to the edges of the cut and have to be filed away.  I think that's part of why the cutouts look kind of raggedy, too.

I realized that the reason the holes were too large was because the file was using cutter compensation and I hadn't set that up in the software (Mach3).  Cutter compensation is supposed to automatically move the cutter a programmed value (the radius of the cut) inside the cut line and since no entry is interpreted as "0.000", the center of the cutter ran along the lines, not its outer edge.  Which made the cutout too big.  When I added the value, the software gave me an error and wouldn't run.  I reloaded the original file (without my changes) and got the same error, which means the original file is the problem, not my edits.

This led me to decide to just code one up myself. I used a 1/4" EM instead of 1/8" and don't sweep the cutter in arcs in the corners. I just move the cutter from corner to corner and the radius of the cutter creates the curves in the corners.  At least that's the plan.  Do to other goings on around here, I didn't get to try out the code.  I'll run that tomorrow.  I do have to change cutters to drill the 1/8" holes on the ends, but that doesn't really require CNC.  Just change the bit once the work is located. 

As I say every time I post about the project, I work on this some amount virtually every day.  Always trying to learn new things and solve a new puzzle. 

The Convention of States

H/T to Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man for getting me thinking of this today, with his mention of Angelo Codevilla's superb piece at Claremont, "After the Republic".  Angelo is the originator of the intellectual argument that America has devolved into a self-aware ruling class that detests the people they rule over (that would be you and me), whom he called the country class.  The original article is gone from American Spectator, but my article about it is here.

The piece at Claremont is really well-conceived and worth your time to read the whole thing.  Or go back to BRM's place (first link above) and read the excerpts there.  To borrow one paragraph that summarizes some of the problem:

In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like so long as the bureaucracy obeys and one third plus one of the Senate protects him from impeachment. If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers’ support. These cronies’ shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class's chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.

Like many of us, I had heard of the idea of an Article V Convention of the States many years ago.  I didn't like the idea at first, under the influence of someone I read who was of the opinion that once the constitution is opened, it will be destroyed.  Who has the time to take off months or a year to go wherever the convention is held and try to ride herd over it, other than the professional protestors we see everywhere?  The hard-left, George Soros minions who show up anywhere to protest and disrupt things for a few bucks and a box lunch would show up and capture the convention.  I've come to believe that outcome can be guarded against.  I think the bar is too high for anything they propose to be a guaranteed pass, for reasons I 'll get to soon.   

This Wednesday, while I was in the shop working on my CNC controller box, I listened to an hour interview with Mark Meckler, a national leader for the Convention of States, on The Glenn Beck Program.  (A radio hour, which comes down to under 30 minutes).  You may read about it and listen to the interview here (or on YouTube, if you prefer).

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

- Article V, U.S. Constitution

The constitution states that 2/3 of the states may call a convention of the states, but only for the same amendment.  Let's say a third of the states call for a convention to ban guns, but another third call for a convention to limit Federal powers.  Since those would be different amendments, that fails the 2/3 count.  If 2/3 of the states called for a convention to replace the IRS with a flat tax and another amendment or two to throttle back the Federal ruling class, the congress is powerless to stop it.   Now 2/3 of the states have to agree with each other on the topics to be discussed, and if they come up with an amendment they agree on, 3/4 of the states need to ratify it!  That's a very high bar. 

A mock or practice convention was held last weekend in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Representatives from all 50 states were there, including 115 sitting state legislators and 22 others, such as retired, former state representatives, and others involved in this process.

The Convention delegates passed amendment proposals on the following six ideas:

1. Requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt
2. Term limits on Congress
3. Limiting federal overreach by returning the Commerce Clause to its original meaning
4. Limiting the power of federal regulations by giving an easy congressional override
5. Require a super majority for federal taxes and repeal the 16th Amendment
6. Give the states (by a 3/5ths vote) the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation or executive order.

Over 80% of Americans support term limits on congress.  Over 70% of the American population thinks the government is too big and gets involved in too many things.  Over 50% think the Federal Government is illegitimate!  This is the escape clause written into the constitution for a time when the Federal Government is usurping too much power.

There's a long way to go.  Only eight states have agreed to a Convention of States so far, so 26 more are needed.  38 states are going to consider it in the coming year, which means 68% of those states need to pass a resolution before it can happen.

The way I see it, this is the only option in front of us that has the potential to restore the Republic in a peaceful transition.  I see really only two options: this road, and some sort of massive reset, probably involving millions of casualties.   There are many problems with that path, not the least of which is that we have no idea what we'll end up with.  If history is any guide, the most likely scenario would be a totalitarian dictator or strongman of some sort.  Only once in history has a revolution led to more freedoms for more people. 

EDITED 10/5/16 to Add:  Commenter Jim did the research and found Codevilla's original article, still at American Spectator,  America's Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution.  I highly recommend reading both Codevilla pieces on the ruling class, as well as the other background information I referenced.

While I'm here, let me correct this paragraph.  I jumbled up what I was trying to say in this paragraph so badly it came out factually wrong. 

The constitution states that 2/3 of the states may call a convention of the states, but only for the same amendment.  Let's say a third of the states call for a convention to ban guns, but another third call for a convention to limit Federal powers.  Since those would be different amendments, that fails the 2/3 count.  If 2/3 of the states called for a convention to replace the IRS with a flat tax and another amendment or two to throttle back the Federal ruling class, the congress is powerless to stop it.   Now 2/3 of the states have to agree with each other on the topics to be discussed, and if they come up with an amendment they agree on, 3/4 of the states need to ratify it!  That's a very high bar. 

The states do not have to agree on what the convention will discuss prior to calling it.   However, it is still the case that 2/3 of the states have to agree on an amendment before it can be submitted, and then it has to be passed by 3/4 of the states.  It is still true that if the convention agrees on changes to the constitution, congress is powerless to stop it . 

Dude, You Hung the Sign Around Your Own Neck

FBI Director Comey:

You remember.  The guy who made the FBI a laughing stock to so much of America said they weren't weasels; they were honest and fair.

"You can call us wrong, but don't call us weasels," he told the House Judiciary Committee. "We are not weasels, we are honest people and we did this in that way."

He added that the investigation was carried out without giving Clinton special treatment, with the bureau adhering to strict policies while conducting the probe.

"We do not carry water for one side or the other. That's hard for people to see because so much of our country we see things through sides," he said. "We are not on anybody's side. This was done exactly the way you would want it to be done. That said, questions are fair, feedback is fair."

You don't carry water for anyone?  Listen, Director Weasel, I've had those clearances and I don't believe for a nanosecond that I would have been treated like Hillary.  I don't know anyone who has had those clearances who feels they would have been treated that way. 

In your own statement you said "To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions."  If that isn't the definition of unfair, what is? 

You hung the weasel name tag around your own neck.  Don't get mad at us for using it.

I know several people who stop by here have commented that they have or had access to kinds of classified materials that were mishandled. Do you think you would have been treated like Hillary if it had been you? Comments please. I'm already on record here saying I've had such access in the past, and I firmly believe I would not have been treated that gently.

Keeping an Eye On Matthew

As I've mentioned before, keeping track of what goes on in the tropical weather is a late summer activity around here.  Not quite a hobby, but it gets looked at on regular basis during storm season.  I'm sure most of you have heard about hurricane Matthew, which underwent an impressive intensification today up to a Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds.  The current official National Hurricane Center prediction for the next 5 days, looks like this:

This is an unusual situation, with the fairly hard turn to the north.  The various models have been predicting this turn for a few days, and the system has been behaving like the models.  It looks like the eastern tip of Jamaica is likely to get hit with Matthew at this sort of wind speed.  At this point, it's hard to tell just where it's going to hit, but it's looking like Kingston area will be spared the worst of it, and Port Morant and the relatively lightly-inhabited east end of the island will get the worst.

That's IF the models don't break down.  There are some unsettling things going on with this storm.  The models seem to have diverged into two sets.  Each set is generally considered a good quality set, but the two of them don't really match.

I clipped this graphic from the Central Florida Hurricane Center, an independent place (that is, not affiliated with any of the major weather companies or services) where a group of weather geeks hang out to get updates and discuss the storms.  This link goes to the Hurricane Matthew lounge - a discussion forum.  Getting back to the two plots, notice how much wider the "hairball" of predicted tracks is on the left plot than the right?  The left group is the ensemble of models from the ECMWF,  the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts;  the right group is from the GFS, the Global Forecast System, which is US-based, not European.  Just pay attention to the area bounded in yellow; the other tracks and loops are from systems that may or may not even be out there, yet.  The GFS is tightly packed, keeping the storm off Florida and pushing it north, where it could conceivably hit the Atlantic states from North Carolina all the way through Maine.

Why so different?  Is one set of models better?  In general, no.  They're both well-trusted models and neither one is "slam dunk better" than the other.  This raises the possibility that there's something wrong with one of them.  When other evidence is considered that includes the big picture weather fronts and systems, the more scattered ECMWF forecast may be a better model run.  The tight clustering of the GFS ensembles a few days out could actually be an indication of a systemic error in that model.  Something about the way the weather develops causes the models to break down.  Since a healthy percentage of those ECMWF tracks put a major hurricane on my head within a week, I can't say I like that idea!

Hurricanes, monsters though they might be, are driven by the weather systems around them.  It's like two dissimilar fluids in the same container.  Think of a lava lamp.  The moving lighter colored fluid moves the darker fluid around.  Thinking of it that way, what would make the storm do a right turn like that?  When a large system rotating counterclockwise gets in its way and the winds push the storm north.  The other word for "large system rotating counterclockwise" is a low pressure system, and there currently is such a system over the southeast US.  Just offshore the east coast is a high pressure system, which rotates the other way.  Somewhere around midway between both systems, the counterclockwise winds from the Low and the clockwise winds from the High combine to form a highway to carry Matthew somewhere north of where it is now.

The difference between these models could be how accurately they predict what that high pressure and low pressure system do.  One of the forum members posted this prediction of the way the steering currents look tomorrow morning. 

If you look between Florida and around Bermuda, you can see a low pressure system centered over Kentucky and what I'll call the Bermuda High (it's a semi-permanent high in the vicinity of Bermuda).  They show a clear, narrow path up over the Carolinas, then the Chesapeake/Delmarva area possibly into New York.  Of course everything on that map is going to move long before that, but notice that Matthew's path into that "conveyor belt" north is being blocked by winds pushing it to the south and southwest.  It may not be picked up at all, or not for several days.  That would be more in keeping with the ECMWF models than the GFS. 

That implies the National Hurricane Center is wildly off in their forecast.  It happens, but it's safe not to bet your lunch money on it.  At this point, all we can do is watch and see what happens.  This is where you smash your fondest theories against reality and see if you're able to predict what's going to happen.  There's hardly anything more fun than that.

The Florida NAACP Is Trying to Kill A Program to Help Poor Students

Courtesy of Daily Signal, we get one of those stories that makes you shake your head.  The somewhat-long-titled article is, "I’m a Black Woman Whose Relatives Fought for Civil Rights. I’m Disappointed in NAACP’s War on School Choice."  If you listen closely, you can hear MLK and some of the civil rights leaders of the 60s spinning in their graves.

Last week, the Florida Education Association—the state’s largest teachers’ union—along with the Florida NAACP and other plaintiffs made a third attempt to challenge Florida’s tuition tax credit scholarship program, which allows individuals and companies to receive tax credits if they donate to a scholarship fund that helps low-income students attend the school of their choice. [Emphasis added: SiG]

I added the bold specifically to bring your attention to that this is their third attempt to block this tuition tax credit scholarship program.  Obviously, they really, really don't want this to pass.  I can understand the Florida Education Association fighting this: they're a teachers' union and chances are if the students are going to schools where they need scholarships they're (1) private schools, (2) non-union schools and (3) better schools than the ones the FEA members teach in.  They have a vested interest in mediocrity, as a casual glance at public K-12 education in the country reveals.

A little poking around added the other names that are trying to stop these scholarships: the Florida School Boards Association, the Florida PTA, the Florida Association of School Administrators, and the League of Women Voters of Florida.  The opposition to this group appears to be school choice advocates including pastors and loosely-organized parents.  It's likely that some of the pastors may benefit from the addition of students who receive these scholarships.

Thanks to a lawsuit, over 92,000 kids, many of them children of color, from low-income families are at risk to lose their privately funded scholarships to attend the private schools of their choice.
...
After losing in trial court and then again in the 1st District Court of Appeals, the Florida Education Association and NAACP, along with other parties, appealed to the state Supreme Court on Sept. 14. Their lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the 15-year-old education choice program.

The author, Virginia Walden Ford, goes on to give examples of how important getting a good K-12 education was for her and others she knew, both as an end in itself and as a preparation for a college education.  She acknowledges the helpful role the NAACP played in those days, but criticizes them for this move, rightly IMO.

The NAACP, which was started to support the rights of black people, is now taking a position that, in my opinion, only hurts black children and other children of color’s chance of getting a quality education in this country through access to school choice. Involving itself in lawsuits against the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program seems counter to their mission.

I have been involved in advocating for school choice for the last 20 years and I still don’t understand why anyone, especially the NAACP, would oppose families having a choice in education.

Why, indeed.  Here's a clue: unions and politics, mostly Democratic politics.  The NAACP is following Black Lives Matter on this, as BLM has recently called for a moratorium on charter schools, arguing that what they call corporate control of schools leads to “unhealthy learning environments.”.   This led St. Paul, MN BLM leader Rashad Anthony Turner, who has been a school choice advocate in Minnesota and anti-police BLM protest leader, to leave the group.  Turner said his support for charter schools and education reform put him at odds with the group.  Look at that list of organizations suing to stop the scholarship program.  Not a conservative in the bunch.

(Stock photo from the Daily Signal article)

Monetary Policy Has Failed... Now What?

Bill Bonner reports seeing the Financial Times on Monday, and being shocked to see the admission that all of the central bank legerdemain of the last decade has failed.

Meanwhile, we were shocked to see in the Financial Times – yes, the “pink paper,” no less! – a sensible article on current central bank policies.

Our heart raced. Our pulse sped up. A light sweat gathered on our forehead.

What is going on? we wondered.

The Financial Times is the mouthpiece of the international Deep State. It is solidly behind Hillary… NATO… the EU… QE… ZIRP… NIRP… the phony credit dollar… and just about every other cockamamie perversion of civilized life.

And yet… there it was… in Monday’s edition. William White, head of the OECD’s economic development review committee:

The monetary stimulus provided repeatedly over the past eight years has failed […] Debt levels have risen […] Consumers have had to save more, not less, to ensure adequate income in retirement.

At the same time, easy money threatens two sets of undesirable side effects. First, current policies foster financial instability… and many asset prices bid up to dangerously high levels. Second, current policies threaten future growth. Resources misallocated before the crisis have been locked in through zombie banks supporting zombie companies.

On the demand side, accumulating debt creates headwinds, leading to more monetary expansion and more debt […] On the supply side, misallocations slow growth, which again leads to monetary easing, more misallocation and still less growth.

Regular readers here will recognize this analysis. It's more or less what I've been pounding on in this space for the life of this blog (minus my constant whining about the need to return to a gold or gold-based standard for our money).  Here, I'm even more shocked than Bonner.  The Financial Times is singing my tune?

So what does the celebrated FT want?

Wait for it...

More monetary policy!  More government spending!  More of exactly what they just finished saying wasn't working.  “No matter what we do, it's not working, so we just need to do it harder!”

This isn't out of character for the Financial Times, it's just quite a juxtaposition to see them explain the failures of what's been done for almost the last 16 years, and decide we need to do more of it.

Look, the central banks of the world have increased their purchases of the world’s assets to the point that they now own the equivalent of almost 40% of global GDP.  At their current rate (ignoring the FT's demand for “moar spending!”), they'll own half of the world's GDP in two more years! 

In Japan, the BoJ is buying up company stocks, but through Exchange Traded Funds, so it doesn't look quite so much like the bank is buying up all Japanese companies.  It's gotten to the point that the latest white collar crime in Japan is to create a fraudulent company and get some of that BoJ money. 

Think about it a minute.  The governments through the central banks own all the public companies (and a lot of the private ones, too, as owners realize it's easier to sell out to the Feds at a profit than to try to beat them in competition).  Add in the drive to eliminate the $100 bill and we find government controls all major sources of credit, money, jobs, incomes, investment returns – everything. All we have is small bills… and not much of that. We can’t “store” wealth easily – the feds own most of the investments. And we’re not allowed to hold cash, except in the government’s banking utilities. Most likely, gold has been outlawed, too.

What kind of world is that? I think I remember hearing about something like that before... Of course! It's the way the Soviet Union was!  It's a nightmare.  And yet it seems to be the destination that every major force in society is pushing us.

Shop Update - Modeling Again

Since I can't find anything in the tech news worthy of writing about, back to my modeling of the parts of my motor driver box. 

I had to move things around, as has always been the case.  This results in the back panel looking like this:

The DB-9 connectors, which carry the motor drive signals, are now in row of four at the top, instead of a 2x2 array between the holes for the fan and that square cutout.  That cutout (for the DB-25) at the right has moved a bit, as I changed the way the breakout board will mount.   You probably already figured the array of holes is for the cooling fan, and that's right.   It might help to compare this to the last picture here. 

I've located every hole that I need to make, and will use a combination of my Sherline CNC and old skool layout with squares, rulers, and pointy scribes.  This is the bottom.  The front is very easy. 

You might notice that the bottom drawing here includes ordered pairs of the center of each of the holes.  Makes it easy to enter into Mach3 to drill the holes (G00 X4.54 Y4.15).

The odd part to this story is that I haven't actually drilled any holes yet.  I've had a few distractions.  Nothing bad, but one of my intents when I retired was to fish more.  Between my rude introduction to gout in April and my emergency surgery in June, it was a very inactive year and we haven't had the boat out at all since I retired!  We fixed that Monday by taking a few hours to go chasing the elusive fish, and then a few hours to clean up.  You'll note that I said "chasing", not "catching".  I've also had to adult a bit. 

The next few days look good, though.

A Collection of Spy Satellite Mission Patches

It's a weird place where top secret spy satellites meet publicly released images.  Living within eyeshot of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center, I'm pretty used to the idea of classified launches.  There are many classified launches, but as we say, once they light the engines, the launch isn't secret any more.  They tend to classify the launch time, but publish a launch window.  Everyone knows that, in general, mission planners prefer to launch at the start of the launch window.  If something goes wrong, that gives them the rest of the window to work on fixing the issue.

Still, the people who work on these missions may have extraordinary skills, but they're ordinary people who take pride in their work.  Since virtually all space missions have mission patches, perhaps it's easier to understand that Top Secret satellites might have mission patches, too.  Popular Mechanics does one of their series of image collections on their website, this one, "17 Sinister Spy Satellite Mission Patches". 

It's a fun collection to look at. 

The mission patch from NROL-39.  I always thought this was a little tone deaf because the octopus evokes thoughts of Cthulhu and the launch was close to the peak of the public talk about the NSA monitoring everything (not that the NRO and NSA are technically the same organization). 

New to this? NROL stands for NRO Launch and NRO for the National Reconnaissance Office.  The NRO is an agency that was once so secret, its existence couldn't be talked about.  Among the blackest of the "black agencies" (top secret), NRO is responsible for planning and deploying the nation's spy satellites.  The existence of the NRO was first revealed in a congressional leak in 1973, but they still weren't spoken of until the SALT treaty between the US and USSR, when reconnaissance satellites were referred to as the "National Technical Means".  Today, while the NRO's existence is known, everything else about it is still classified: its missions, its org. chart and even large chunks of its budget.  An excellent overview is contained in a 1986 book called Deep Black (Amazon's link reveals it's out of print, and only available as a used paperback).  The book also discusses the "No Such Agency", CIA and other aspects of the spy satellite programs. 

My Platform

I have never heard a single candidate say this, but Donald Trump has come the closest.  It's a simple two step approach to deregulation:  (1) all new laws are given an expiration date and (2) the CFR is to be gone through and laws eliminated. 

This will make liberals scream in agony.  I can hear the tired cliche's now: "Do you want to throw out food safety laws?  Do you want to poison people?"  With a CFR that numbers into the hundreds of thousands of pages, you can bet there are laws that are useless, or only used to entrap people who do minor things wrong.  I'm sure the CFR is like the states in that there still crazy laws on the books like that in Florida, it's illegal to have sex with a porcupine, and that in Alabama, it's illegal to keep an ice cream cone in your back pocket.

I've been harping on this idea for almost as long as I've been running this blog.  My most popular piece from the early days (2010) concerned how regulations are growing like weeds, how "Regulation and litigation are sand in the gears of society", and the costs of those regulations on businesses.  I repeatedly call for throwing out 2/3 or 3/4 of the Code of Federal Regulations.  Plus I've posted my "Tales from the Over Regulated State" series on an irregular basis 22 times, now.  Unfortunately, I didn't start numbering them until recently, so the numbers start with 18. 

Trump has actually called for deregulation and talks about it fairly regularly.  I haven't heard him talk about throwing out "yuuge" chunks of the CFR, but from my standpoint, they might have to spend the next eight years undoing what was passed in the last eight.

This is actually the project I was working on yesterday.  I wanted to draw the scene, but my "first-grade level" art skills couldn't close to being this good.  Instead, I found this as Free Clip Art.  I'd be honored if other people agreed and spread this around.

I Ain't Got Much

I had a project I was working on for your edification, but didn't get finished.  So a cartoon from the great Michael Ramirez.

Feminists Dissing and Insulting Women - As Usual

Tyler O'Neil writes for PJ Media about a study by University of North Dakota's Laura Parson that essentially says women are having a hard time in STEM classes, so science itself must be misogynist. Because it deals in objective truth and women just don't think that way.  <blink>  <blink>

While Parson admits that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) syllabi do not have "overt references to gender," their language "reflects institutionalized STEM teaching practices and views about knowledge that are inherently discriminatory to women and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging."

No, Ms. Parson, you don't understand.  Knowledge is changing, it's just that the things covered in the undergraduate syllabi you were reviewing are so generally well-known and well-accepted that the risk of them being disproved is quite low.  Graduate classes are more volatile, but still likely to be transferring knowledge that won't be disproved in that academic term.  That's why an undergraduate program can be quit and restarted many years later without losing credits, while a graduate program must be started over after four years out of school.  A syllabus is by nature a road map for a certain class.  It explains what will be covered in the class and what the students are expected to know to pass the class.  In essence; you're looking at a snapshot and criticizing it for not being a movie. 

The problem is that she doesn't stop there.  She goes and invokes the relativism argument.

...[T]he STEM syllabi explored in this study demonstrated a view of knowledge that was to be acquired by the student, which promotes a view of knowledge as unchanging. This is further reinforced by the use of adverbs to imply certainty such as "actually" and "in fact" which are used in syllabi to identify information as factual and beyond dispute (Biber, 2006a; 2006b). For example, "draw accurate conclusions from scientific data presented in different formats" (Lower level math). Instead of promoting the idea that knowledge is constructed by the student and dynamic, subject to change as it would in a more feminist view of knowledge, the syllabi reinforce the larger male-dominant view of knowledge as one that students acquire and use make (sic) the correct decision.

The problem is that in STEM fields, knowledge is not "constructed by the student and dynamic, subject to change as it would in a more feminist view of knowledge", it is obtained by experiment, and very often hard won.  In fact, a lot of truth was won by the blood of innocent victims of deficient designs - because no one knew any better.  See, for example, our little story about the DeHavilland Comet just a few days ago.  As Richard Feynman said, “It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong”.  I'm sorry if that offends your feminist studies mindset, but there is objective truth.  What you're saying, Ms. Parson, is that if someone properly "constructed" the argument that they could walk on air and were convinced it was true, they could walk off the observation deck of Empire State Building and not immediately plunge to their death.  

That there are no inviolable truths is a hard line communist viewpoint and is one thing that crippled the Soviet Union.  If the party says something it must be true because the party is never wrong, and this led to problems.

Again, the problem is she doesn't stop there.  In saying there's no truth behind what STEM fields are teaching, she's saying engineering, science and math are bad.

How could something so manifestly beneficial to all as engineering be deconstructed as inherently sexist, racist, or homophobic? Well, Parson shows us how, and demonstrates that no field of knowledge is truly safe from the Social Justice Warriors of the mind.

Parson's paper attacks even mundane things like stylistic choices — command words like "will" and "must" — as inherently masculine and anti-woman. She examines syllabi, and voila! — they have these "sexist" words. Yes, that's because a syllabus is by nature a set of instructions about a certain class. As Reason.com's Robby Soave put it, "a syllabus is not a negotiation," it's a roadmap. Does Parson attack Google Maps as sexist because it orders the user to "turn here" or "make a U-turn"? Please.

Nevertheless, this "feminist" attacks such language for creating "a competitive, difficult, chilly climate" which "marginalizes women." Does that mean women aren't able to compete in a difficult climate? Imagine what Hillary Clinton would do to Donald Trump if he made this argument with a straight face.

Or, to borrow a quote from Reason's Robby Soave again,

According to Parson, such language reinforces "a competitive, difficult, chilly climate." This climate "marginalizes women." Why? Because they're delicate snowflakes who couldn't possibly handle a little competition and difficulty—implicitly, that's what Parson is saying.

The reality, of course, is that Parson is insulting and dissing women because she, personally, can't do those things and she can't understand the mindset of hard science.  How can she possibly suggest women can't be scientists, surgeons, engineers, physicians and so many other careers that women are currently working in?   

Final quote to Tyler O'Neil:

Parson has the nerve to call herself a "feminist" when her argument boils down to "women can't compete in math and science because the very idea of objective truth is sexist." We live in a truly fascinating and terrifying era where the worst excesses of the old racism and misogyny are being reintroduced in the name of equality and civil rights. Black students fight against integration, against the idea of having white roommates. Colleges host openly racist RA trainings. "Feminists" argue that women can't do science.