How Come Nobody Told Me...

that there's a whole genre on YouTube of people making Laurel and Hardy dance to music recorded years and years after their movies were filmed?  I feel like I live such a sheltered life!



Hey - it's Friday.  It's a week until Christmas.  The universe will keep unfolding as it will, whether we fret about or not. 

Go to the YouTube page and check out the different songs people put this scene to.

I Think I'm On The Wrong Planet

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't get a "WTF???" reaction when I read the news.  This isn't where I grew up.  This isn't the country I knew as a kid.  This isn't even the planet I grew up on.

Did I fall into some sort of wormhole, and I'm really on some obscure planet around Tau Ceti or Wolf 359?  I keep expecting to look up and see Worf, or Quark, or a shape shifter from the Delta quadrant like Odo.  There ought to be a babe with a funny looking nose any second now... 

Where I grew up, the garbage cans didn't spy on you.

Where I grew up, we put mufflers on cars to make them quieter, we didn't try to make them noisier.  (Confidential to the morons in Congress: did you know that the noise from an internal combustion engines is one of its inefficiencies?  If it was perfectly efficient, there would be no noise, and the exhaust would come out colder than liquid nitrogen).

I remember, in the 1980s, when liberals were making fun of Reagan and his folks for saying nuclear war was survivable.  They wanted to die in neat little piles.  Now the democrats are talking about how survivable nuclear war is. Did that happen recently?  This fall?  Huh. 

When did the world turn upside down?  As Instapundit says (as if he needs a link from me!)

They told me if I voted Republican, we’d be plunged deep into a scary 1950s-style pre-nuclear-war “duck and cover” posture. And they were right!

One thing that is constant is that we did do duck and cover drills under our school desks.  So maybe this is home....

but, no, where I grew up, we didn't think we could cure bankruptcy by borrowing more money.  No, people started businesses and worked hard to provide for themselves and their families, not expecting handouts. 

When did they start making laws so complicated and so big that congress not only can't read them, but thinks it's a waste of time to read them?  Why is an obscure weapons treaty so incredibly important that it has to be rushed through a lame duck, over the Holiday session, and signed without reading it, either? Are they trying to weaken the US?

Gort, are you out there?  Gort?  Klaatu barada nikto. 



 

That Slippery Slope Keeps On Tilting

Ambrose Evans Pritchard at the Telegraph (UK) had an article over the weekend that is unique in its honesty.  It's titled "The Eurozone is in Bad Need of an Undertaker" and lays out the brutal truth that the Euro is in dire trouble.  Simply put:

"The EU’s Franco-German "Directoire" and the European Central Bank have between them ruled out all plausible solutions to the eurozone’s debt crisis", explains the article heading.  (emphasis added - GB)

Farther down it contains this gem:

“If the Eurozone follows this path, either all of the sovereign debts become German public debt, or the Euro will collapse,” ... says " Stefano Micossi from the College of Europe, the sanctum sanctorum of the European Project".

An earlier article (12/8) in the Mail exclaimed, "It's not IF the euro collapses... but WHEN"

As Angela Merkel herself has said, if the Euro collapses, the European Union collapses.  When you remember the Fed "loaned" trillions to EU banks, do you think the dollar survives?

The problem, quite simply, is that there is not enough money in the EU for all of the debt that has been accrued.  The Euro is essentially funded by Germany first, then France and the UK.  In essence, to bail out the countries in trouble, if it's even possible, the upper income taxpayers in those three countries must have their lives confiscated.  It's punishing good taxpayers in some nations for problems other nations have created.  How long can that go on? 

In London they're doing this over having to pay college tuition.  What happens when you ask them to pay someone else's tuition?  Someone in a different country? 

News From The Southern Front

This may not have made news where you live, but I notice that Hugo Chavez has made a deal with Iran's AhmInAJihad to place Iranian Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles in Venezuela.  Missiles with this sort of range could hit much of South America and the Caribbean, and even reach the southern US.  More details at Babalu and Fausta.  Caroline Glick's column (first link) has great coverage of more of the nuances of why this is going on. 

Just about a half century ago, 1962, the Russians did the same thing in Cuba, and the Cuban Missile Crisis ensued.  President Jack Kennedy, for perhaps the only time, showed he had some balls and stood up to Khrushchev, enforcing a naval blockade of the island.  The period is remembered by locals who lived through it here on the Space Coast; there are stories of highway A1A being closed by military transports, and massive movements of troops.  Me?  I was a snot-nosed grade school kid in Miami.  I knew something important was going on, but didn't grasp the "adult situation".

Do we expect Obama to live up to this example?  Not hardly.  Not with the Boy King.  As James Carville recently said, “If Hillary gave him one of her balls, they'd both have two”. 

Iran's Shahab 3, said to be one of the missiles in deployment in Venezuela. 

When Will Really Bad Inflation Hit?

It's a tough question, but one heavy on my mind as we come to the end of the year.  If I'm going to get most of my 401k emptied and into inflation hedges, this would be the time to do it, I think.

The National Inflation Association published an article a few weeks ago answering questions about when they think we'll see their food price predictions, "There is a very good chance of our projections being reached by the end of calendar year 2015 and a slight chance that they will be reached as soon as the 2012 elections."   John Williams, of Shadowstats.com, says in this interview (from 12/8) thinks it could be much sooner; that it could be as soon as this spring. 

The Bernank is 100% sure he can handle inflation.  (I'm not sure he'd know what it was if it bit him on the ass.)  But bear in mind that if he did raise interest rates, it would collapse the US economy into a deep black hole.  Shadowstats says the real inflation rate is running around 8% per year; if the Fed's Discount Rate were to be raised from zero to that, yes, it would stop inflation -- as well as everything.  It would help Treasury Bond Sales, which are currently crapping out (as anyone with even a nano-particle of sense realizes we're in trouble and they want more "yield" to make up for the risk of buying our bonds), but that's the only thing that might be considered help.

Collapsing the US economy might not necessarily be a bad thing - sometimes, when you're really sick, you need very strong medicine.  Think chemotherapy.  Maybe a reset pulse is what we need; a chance to demolish the welfare state, tear up 2/3 of the CFR.  There's good that could come out of it.  But whoever allowed it to happen would not survive.  Politically, and possibly, well, maybe not survive at all.  And it's entirely possible that during the chaos, the state could be taken over by communists, or other morons.  

So when will it get really bad?  I can't answer that.  But I can't stay here long; need to go buy some more silver and gold.  The brass, copper and lead got ordered last night. 

a little depression-era humor... 

Now is The Winter of Our Discontent*

This is a winter of severe disruption around the world, as the old order edges further down the slippery slope, and chaos beckons.  Europe is burning, and I wonder how long until it hits our shores.

(from the Daily Mail, 12/10)

Today's college students in the UK grew up hearing stories from their parents about attending college for free, but that ended under John Major's administration in  the 1990s - when these students were children or before they were born.  These riots are supposedly the result of increasing college costs from 3000 to 9000 pounds (roughly $14,000) maximum.  It's also possible that the increase is justification for riots the left has been looking for an excuse to hold.

There is no doubt that there are groups trying to cause chaos and governmental collapse.  One of the hackers defending Wikileaks, for example, goes by the name of "Cold Blood" and says,

"We will fire at anything that tries to censor WikiLeaks." Really? Adding that the group wanted to be a, quote, "force for chaotic good."

"Chaotic Good"??  There is only one force at large in this world who thinks chaos is good.  I don't know what the kids call him these days, but he's known for throwing Jews into gas chambers, sowing killing fields in Cambodia, China and Siberia, shooting abortionists, and pretty much any instance you can name of coming to "steal, kill and destroy".  Does it not look like we are re-living this haunting work?

The Gods of the Copy Book Headings - Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! 


* confidential to any dweebs who studied Shakespeare or Literary Criticism in general: yeah, I understand that's not what the famous quote is really saying.  It was saying the bad winter was over, not starting: "Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this son of York".  

A Look At An Unseen World

Mrs. Graybeard and I have our first Christmas get together of the year tonight, so just a short post pointing out something most people don't see everyday.  A video showing how air traffic on the European continent responded to the Icelandic volcano last April...



Similarly, Flight Aware, a free site where you can track any reported flight in the US, has this video showing the flow of traffic across the US in a 24 hour period.  You can watch the ebb and flow, watch it move coast to coast, and see how the transoceanic flows mostly come in, then go back out.  In the morning, the US East Coast is lit up with activity.  It shifts west as the day goes on, and then drops in activity level to the middle-of-the-night "red-eye" flights, only to start up again the following sunrise. 

If I Got To Dismantle The Fed.Gov

Yesterday, there was a post on The Smallest Minority, along the lines of "What's Wrong With A Little Socialism?", and commenter Jeff C. posted one of those stupid liberal things you see: a list of government programs that they obviously think are just fantastic and challenge you to say you don't want to use them.  (Most liberal philosophy is on the intellectual level of a bumper sticker; this is too long to fit on a bumper sticker, but at that same level).  Like Obama challenging the idea of faith guiding our daily decisions by quoting Leviticus (I think it was...).

But it got me thinking, despite the "tax the rich" crap we've heard so much it sickens us, we know that it's the spending.  We know, thanks to Dr. Hauser, that tax incomes remain around the same as percent of GDP regardless of tax rates - tax rates determine if the economy grows and creates opportunity for more people to improve their standard of living.  We all know that deep cuts in spending from both discretionary and the entitlement budgets have to be cut if we're going to turn this ship around.   So it got me thinking, if I were king of the forest, what would I cut? 

Some of it is easy, and you've heard it all before.  The Department of Education has not educated a single person, and needs to go.  The Department of Energy was founded to help us get independent of foreign oil, and we have become more dependent on foreign oil.  BATFE is a useless black hole of suck, and needs to go.  The tax code needs to go, and the IRS sent home. 

But here's a couple that will surprise you.  I deal with a couple of "big name" agencies that have undeserved good reputations, the FCC and the FAA.  Both of these were useful at some point, but have long outlived it.  The FCC needs to be cut back to a bare bones couple of geeks who help keep services from stepping on each other, maybe monitoring the spectrum to find violators.  Originally, they provided technical direction for the development of radio and television, and helped get broadcasting started.  Now their technical side is routinely stepped on by stupid political hacks with unimaginably stupid ideas like Broadband over Powerlines while the political appointees advance insipid attempts to regulate the content of news and programming, including whether you have the required number of women and minorities.  The FCC probably hasn't done anything useful since the mid 1960s and needs to go.  Upset you saw Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction?  Complain to the network and the advertisers.  

The FAA is likewise just about useless.  When it comes to the systems that keep airplanes communicating and not flying into each other in mid-air, they leave all the technical decisions to the industry committees who define the systems, and just have you verify you meet the industry standards.  There's no reason we couldn't just report to the industry committees, with minimal changes.  Did you know that the FAA has us certify radios repeatedly, for every different aircraft they might get mounted on, and the cost to put a newer design radio on an old aircraft is so high that airlines just won't do it?  Why have standards-based acceptance if you then have to certify on each aircraft?  Why not just go to the airframe maker and prove you work on their plane?  It's needless duplication of efforts. 

NASA needs to go.  This pains me for many reasons.  I grew up in the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo days and idolized them.  I've worked on a NASA satellite, for the JPL, with people who put satellites out at Jupiter.  But events this year have proven that they lost their recipe sometime long ago.  Then, of course, there's this abomination.  Buh-bye.

And don't get me started on the government takeover of student loans.  Or Amtrack.  I could do weeks on this topic.

Headline of the Day

I've never had a headline of the day, but Junior Deputy Accountant wins the Interwebs with "Bernanke on 60 Minutes: I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Free Money",  wherein we learn that Ben is 100% confident that he can prevent runaway inflation.  He insists that the economy is in bigger danger of deflation and that inflation is under 2%. 

Srsly.  You just have to wonder about a guy who reads his econometric data and doesn't cross check it with the real world.  Inflation is here.  Ben - go grocery shopping.  Buy your own gasoline.  Pay a bill.  Inflation is here now.  I've written on this many times, as have many others. 

"The Bernank" and the other central bankers around the world have failed at every step of the way because they're using bad theory.  Dumping money into a broken system just makes it a broken system with lots of money in it.  It is already causing inflation, and exporting inflation to China - which isn't going over well.  Governments can't resist the lure of money that doesn't have to be limited by some scarce commodity (think gold).  They always want more money: to buy votes, or to go on foreign adventures.  If you're limited to a standard, you have to be disciplined. 

Oh, and they're not "printing money".  They're not going to affect the monetary supply.  They're just buying Treasuries with their own money, that's all. Must see TV:




Now let me go off into my own wild, crazy idea.  I believe that Ben, at the behest of Fed.gov, is deliberately crashing the dollar - to correct our trade imbalance with China.  We have pestered China to not peg their currency to ours and let it float up in value, as it should.  They have told us where to stick that.  So if we can't raise their currency, we can crash ours.  Sort of a giant game of chicken to see who gives up first. 

In Case You Forgot - Why Politics and Politicians Suck

So The One has signed a deal to not increase tax rates on everyone for the next two years.  Someone had to get the credit and it might as well be him, right? Almost as if it was planned that way, and this was all theater.  Do you think?....

It helps to remember some things.  First off, this question could have been handled at almost any time up to now, and certainly could have been settled before the election.  The rates have been in effect for 10 years, and everyone knew when they were going to expire.  Only to get the maximum political theater, they waited until the last possible minute. 

The same goes for unemployment benefits.  Why did the bill have to come up now?  Again, everyone knew from the day the last bill was passed, giving essentially two years - two years - of unemployment benefits, that it was going to expire this month.  Clearly if they wanted to, they could have addressed that months ago.  The whole purpose of letting it sit until now was to allow those arrogant, pompous buttheads to get photo ops for commercials that will air two years from now.  "How could they be so cruel to cut benefits at Christmas?? "

Never forget - you're being played.  Always look for the other hand.  Always ask why they're putting on a show.  Never accept at face value. 

Ahh Geek Out

The last couple of days have been taken up with getting my system to be a successful Linux Ubuntu system.  I've been running XP Home on a three year old Dell desktop since I got it, and the rest of our home network is on XP.  I've been telling myself that I was going to break with the Micro$oft empire, and finally got around to it.  It has been straightforward, and I'm blogging from Ubuntu now.

Ubuntu seems to be generally regarded as a pretty simple distribution of Linux to get up and running (Ubuntu, by the way, is the Swahili word for "self-impressed", or smug).  Sure enough, I ran off the CD in live demo to make sure most of my internet apps got up and running easily, and once I saw that, I installed it as a dual boot option.  That way, when the computer wakes up, it presents a boot option screen of Linux-Ubuntu or XP.  Ironically, I've done this partly because of system security guys like Borepatch recommend doing your online banking with Linux simply because of fewer attacks being possible, but my main financial/checkbook software won't run under Linux and requires me to use my Windoze partition. And a hat tip to another engineer I know who helped with some demonstrations for me. 

Being an old guy (Graybeard is a description, not an honorific), my first home computer was actually an S-100 bus computer with a tape recorder for program storage.  Kids, S-100 was the standard before the Commodore 64 and IBM PC were invented.  I got my first PC"compatible" (not "clone") in 1986, and have had an XT, 386, 486, Pentium, now a Dual Core.  I worked on DEC computers with octal programming switches that turned into very large, heavy paperweights if the program crashed.  I used command line Unix at Major Southeastern Aerospace Contractor but not a WIMP-interfaced version (WIMP = Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer), so I have my home computer chops.

A little learning curve must be climbed, but nothing wrong with that. 

But you shouldn't have to be this guy...

Button Up Your Overcoat

Button up your overcoat,
When the wind is free,
Take good care of yourself,
You belong to me!

(c) 1929,Henderson, DeSylva & Brown


The news is reporting that "At least 60 people (source of image) have died across Europe during the current cold snap, as snow plagued transport in Britain on Friday and serious flooding prompted mass evacuations in the Balkans."

My first reaction was, "What's with the freakin' Europeans??  They die when it gets hot.  They die when it gets cold.  It gets really cold up there.  Think of those Currier and Ives images of ice skating on the Thames, and those images of fighting in the snows during the Battle of the Bulge.  It gets cold up there."

Then I read this stunner:

Police in Newcastle in the northeast of England reminded locals to wear a coat when they hit the pubs this weekend. 

I guess that's what you get when you become so dependent on the nanny state: people so sheep-like they don't even think to put on a coat when it's dangerously cold outside. "You belong to me" indeed.

Simple Investments for Inflationary Times

I've been beating the drum on the coming inflationary times, and commenting on where you can see it right now.  In the last few weeks, the story has been breaking that JC Penney, the GAP and some other clothing stores expect cotton prices to be up drastically - perhaps 30% - by the spring - just three months away.  That doesn't necessarily mean clothing prices will be up 30%, but the amount of increase in materials pricing the clothing companies can absorb isn't that great.  It's entirely possible the price we pay may be up 25% or more by April. 

With Christmas coming, and Hanukkah in full swing, clothes may be appreciated as gifts; it's hard to get more practical.  If you're going to need to replace some of your clothes soon, make it sooner rather than after the price increases. 

Another practical item is always food. With food prices going up now, and worse inflation to come, any food that you can put away is worth grabbing when you can.  Every store runs specials: when they have a "buy one, get one" or some such offer, take advantage of it. 

Don't overlook coins.  This isn't a very well kept secret, but the US nickle is currently worth over 6 cents in melt value.  That means if you had 5 nickles, they're worth over 30 cents, not 25, and you can see that the more you have the better off you could be.  US coins have been devalued many times over the years; in 1965, they stopped minting silver quarters, dimes and half dollars, and changed to a sandwich of copper and nickle.  The penny became copper clad zinc in 1983.  1982 and earlier pennies made of solid copper are worth 2.6 cents in melt value, and are still out there in circulation.  With nickles at 125% of face value, they can't make them the same way for too much longer, especially with inflation being designed into the system.  Will they try to remove the old nickles from circulation, like they did with the silver certificate dollars in the 1960s, or just substitute cheaper versions, like they did with the pennies in 1983?  I don't know. 

It couldn't hurt to keep nickles and copper pennies you get.  Even if they don't buy them back, there may be opportunities to sell them at the real melt value. 

Words Fail Me

Sometimes, there just are no words.  Like when a member of the board of the Federal Reserve says more Quantitative Easing (QE3) may be required.  Thanks to Zero Hedge again, who is really on a roll. 

"If the economy grows more quickly than I currently anticipate, the purchase program will need to be reconsidered and perhaps curtailed before the full $600 billion in purchases is completed. On the other hand, if serious risks of deflation or deflationary expectations emerge, then we would need to consider whether expanded asset purchases should be used to address these risks."  (Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank).

I note the Chinese haven't gone insane.  Bloomberg reports their gold imports soared as they dump dollars and turn them into something with value.  They clearly see that the Fed intends to destroy the dollar. 

China’s gold imports jumped almost fivefold in the first 10 months from the entire amount shipped in last year as concern about rising inflation increased its appeal as a store of value, said the Shanghai Gold Exchange.(emphasis added -GB)

Got gold and silver?  If the Chinese government is getting rid of our dollars, buying fewer bonds, and buying hard commodities, does that tell you anything? 

An Interesting Moment At Work, Today

We have a weekly staff meeting at work, every Wednesday at 11 AM.  My boss, thankfully, wants this meeting about as much as we do, but holds it because his boss told him to, which means all of us are there because our boss told us to be there.  Anyway, our boss was late to the meeting, and the group of seven engineers (most of us "higher pay grade" engineers, which is to say older guys), started talking about the economic situation.  We're a group with diverse backgrounds; three of us not even born in the US, and of the seven, six believed the Euro can't survive; the seventh didn't seem to be following any of this.  The consensus seems to be that it will definitely be gone by this time next year, and summer to early fall seems to be what the guys are thinking.  A guy whom I shared an office with 10 years ago, and who was very financially savvy, said that he had recently gotten out of stocks and into bonds for safety for a while.  I've said before that I've positioned myself with as little exposure to the broad stock market as I can manage.

I have a couple of points here.  The first is that the I'm often concerned that the population at large isn't really aware of what's coming, and it's nice to know that we're not alone in thinking of this.  Tyler Durden, over at Zero Hedge reports that there have been 30 consecutive weeks of equity fund out-flows from the market.  It's encouraging to see people doing this to protect themselves from too much exposure to stocks.  Individual investors are shifting away from stocks. (chart from Zero Hedge)

The second point is that the guys at the meeting never broached the subject of the role of the US dollar in all the life and death of the Euro.  CNBC reported a little while ago that the US is going to give more money to bail out the EU.  We have been bailing out the EU since 2008.  Again, thanks to Tyler at Zero Hedge:

One may be forgiven to believe that via its FX liquidity swap lines the Fed only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP.  Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding.  In other words, between October 27, 2008 and August 6, 2009, the Fed spent $350 billion in taxpayer funds to save 35 foreign banks. And here people are wondering if the Fed will ever allow stocks to drop: it is now more than obvious that with all banks leveraging the equity exposure to the point where a market decline would likely start a Lehman-type domino, there is no way that the Brian Sack-led team of traders will allow stocks to drop ever... Until such time nature reasserts itself, the market collapses without GETCO or the PPT being able to catch it, and the Fed is finally wiped out in one way or another.

I realize a lot of people view Glenn Beck as more clown than news source, and I originally subscribed to his online site because I find him to be rather funny, but he has been telling a story for quite a while that the world's economies were linked in the 1960s as a form of Mutually Assured Economic Destruction.  The Euro and the dollar are so linked that if the collapse of the Euro doesn't bring the collapse of the dollar, it will weaken it so badly, almost anything will knock it the rest of the way over.  Ironically, the people who linked the economies said their plan was resistant to almost anything, except for a group of non-state actors, who wouldn't really be affected by the chaos and have nothing to lose. 


Finally, on how well known this all is, the Lovely Secretary of the Homeland, Mrs. Graybeard recently placed an online order with one of the providers of long term storage food items, and got this response (in part):

With the announcement of QE2 on November 3rd, many of our customers became concerned about inflation in commodities prices, in particular food. As a result, we have experienced an unprecedented increase in sales that has continued until now. Because of this, many of our vendors have had a difficult time keeping up with the industry wide demand, especially for canned food storage.

So, yes, a lot of our neighbors seem to be waking up and bracing themselves for the storm that is coming onshore. 

Sometimes I Just Can't Resist Playing

Like many of you, I suppose, I'm on a bunch of outdoors/gun related mailing lists.  Today's email has a come-on by outdoors clothes maker Buck Wear.  The idea is a play on the always popular "Elf Yourself" site, called "Redneck Yourself".

"For those awkward moments when your lack of "rural credibility" causes discomfort or embarrassment, we present Redneck Yourself."

For reasons probably best commented on by Dr. Sanity, or other qualified professionals, my first thought was to play with a picture of Mojo.  If you just found this place, Mojo is my white cat who displays "an excess of personality" (to butcher a line from Jurassic Park about Malcolm the mathematician).  I give you Redneck Moe.

I didn't realize how much Mo looks like one them Zeta Reticulans from the alien stories.  Maybe I'd better keep an eye out for circles in the back yard. 

Two Headlines Over the Weekend

One was that several people were injured in Black Friday sales.  The other was that online shopping was up 16%.  What a surprise.

I mean, which would you rather do - get trampled or possibly stabbed, or sit around in your bunny slippers,  one-click buying? 

Finishing Touches

The engraving step for my home-built AR is complete.  The logo I came up with:

and an overall shot of the finished rifle:

Why a cartoon cat?  All of the major parts in my homebrew AR, except for the lower receiver that I finished, are DPMS parts.  That is, the finished upper, and the parts kit in the lower are DPMS; the stock is a generic multi-position stock.  DPMS has a fierce-looking panther as its logo, so I figured a not-so-fierce looking version of Mojo, our white cat, would be a nice touch.  I originally was going to go with a name like "Moe's Firearms", but that takes up room and there's just not a lot of room there.  

To create the logo, I found a cartoon called "how to draw a cat" and used the cat.  Opened the .gif in my CAD program, traced it, saved it as a 2D .dxf file, imported that into the CAM program DeskCNC, created g-code and after a test on a piece of scrap brass, did the rifle lower.  Took about 15 minutes at the overly cautious rate of 1/2 inch per minute engraving speed.  As the French say, "wah-lah". 

Yesterday, I found a pretty good deal on a Nikon Monarch rifle scope - at Overstock.com, of all places - so I will soon have a nice Nikon on it. 

And How Was Your Black Friday/Weekend?

Junior Deputy Accountant, whom I respect a lot, wrote a piece celebrating Buy Nothing Day.  I think this is a good "money quote", if you'll pardon the pun:

As many of you already know, today is Black Friday which means stampedes, possible death, fistfights over the last $99  50" LCD TV (sorry, there were only 2 in stock anyway) and waiting in line just to get your grubby little paws on a 75% off bedroom set.

To borrow a really different quote, "Homey don't play that".  I have never gotten up at oh-dark-thirty to be in line at any store long before they open, so that I can bolt inside like I'm dragging up the rear at the Running of the Bulls in Pamploma.  There ain't enough money in the world.

But the folks at Buy Nothing Day, and the folks who want to make buying nothing longer, or permanent, bother me.  I don't have any problems with commerce or capitalism, and they seem to have plenty of problems with both. If you don't feel like going shopping, wonderful; if you're the kind of person who feels you have to show that you're superior to people who are shopping, not so wonderful.  If their sense of self-worth comes from cutting other people down, that's pretty pathological.

In my case, I didn't go near a mall or physical store, but I took advantage of some online sales to buy some odds and ends I'd been watching for, anyway.  No sense paying full price if it's on sale for a few days, right?  Plus I like being able to shop sitting around in gym shorts and socks (I know - too much information). 

Due to "adult situations" wildly beyond our control, we have not had anything like our traditional Thanksgiving this year.  Tomorrow we'll roast a Turkey, while we watch the other turkeys play football. 

A Modest Proposal About Energy

Energy is the universal currency of human transactions.  All transactions between people and their societal structures reduce at their lowest level to transactions about energy.  Think about it: what's the most fundamental of your needs?  Food and shelter.  What is food other than energy to run you?  How do you build your home?  If you pay for anything, the transaction reduces to food, shelter and necessities for the other party.  What does your house run on?  Your car?  You have an electric car?  Nowadays, it's best to think of your Volt or Leaf as a coal-fired car, because if you're in the Luddite States of America, your power comes from a coal-fired power plant.  That electricity to charge it has to come from somewhere, you know?

The Nissan Leaf, the most popular totally coal-fired car in America. Zero emission?  Maybe from the car, but that's because they don't carry their primary power source, which has plenty of emissions.

Today, Western Rifle Shooters Association has a link to a story on the coming energy shortages as we go past peak oil.  As I said some time ago, "If there was a free market in oil, I'd say, "peak oil, schmeak oil - I don't care", because all that means is that as oil gets more expensive, other sources of energy will replace it; and it's not like oil hasn't been getting more expensive for the last 40 years, anyway."  Allow me to make a modest proposal. 

The US Navy has powered large surface vessels with nuclear power for around 50 years.  There has never been a major failure of a Navy reactor.  We power ten aircraft carriers, and many submarines.  The latest and largest model reactor in an aircraft carrier appears to be the A4W, capable of 104 MW each; two of these powerplants go into a Nimitz-class "supercarrier".  These nuclear reactors are specified as a product, not as a custom assembly; that is, A4W is a catalog designation in the military stock system that they order to buy these. A designates a surface vessel, 4 is the fourth generation reactor design, and W is the prime contractor who builds them, in this case, Westinghouse.  It is important to know that every nuclear-powered vessel has a crew of young adults who run them and keep them trouble free.  There has never been a serious issue with a reactor on a US Navy vessel.  No reactor meltdowns, no vessels being sunk by their reactors.  It is possible that was the root cause in the loss of the submarine USS Thresher in the 1960s, but we don't know that, and it obviously used an old, long-ago replaced design.  It's also possible it sank due to pressure failure of its hull.

How much power is 104 MW?  A typically sized American house probably consumes, at peak, in the vicinity of 20 kW.  104,000/20 is 5200 homes, which says a residential town of around 15,000 people could be powered by one of these reactors.  In reality, you rarely run your house at full capacity, so more houses could run on one of these reactors. Two of these reactors, the complement on a Nimitz, could power a town of 10,000 homes. 

What if we covered the country with these reactors?  Instead of giant, centralized power plants, what if we had a distributed network of thousands of these reactors?

Although there are undoubtedly restrictions on the ability to buy them, let's assume the legislation to allow them to be sold to private concerns could be passed.  The only thing that would prevent wide scale construction and distribution of these reactors is the public's irrational fear of nuclear power.  The expertise to manage them is widespread, with many Navy veterans having run them successfully.  More can be trained with the existing Navy training materials and classes. 

We can either mope and complain about energy getting more expensive, and gripe about losing our quality of life, or we can face the problem head on, and maybe get a jump on our troubles - for once.  As Alvie over at the Cliffs of Insanity says, "which way are you facing?"