Gun Salesman of the Year

The Blaze reports on Smith and Wesson's quarterly results, using the phrase "insane earnings" and "revenues skyrocket".

“Gross profit for the first quarter was $51.3 million, or 37.7% of net sales, compared with gross profit of $26.5 million, or 28.9% of net sales, for the comparable quarter last year [emphasis added],” the company said in its press release.

As with most industries, it's best to look at year over year instead of quarter to quarter, but they're done pretty well there, too.  Aside from the slowdown in 2010, it has been pretty steadily upward for the team at S&W. 

 Graph from Zerohedge, who also notes:

Well one comment: when the final bubble does pop (and here we make the wild assumption that no intelligent extraterrestrial life will be found to bail out the central banks in time), at least everyone will be locked and loaded.

(I swear I've used almost those same words about extraterrestrials, although I may have edited them out).

And some highlights from the just released investor presentation:

• Record-level quarterly sales growth from continuing ops of $136.0M, +48.3% Y/Y
• Record-level quarterly income from continuing ops of $18.9M, or $0.28 per diluted share
• Record Adjusted Non-GAAP EBITDAS of $36.1 Million
• Raised Full Year Fiscal 2013 Financial Guidance
• Exceeded high end of upwardly revised sales guidance
• Quarterly unit growth +30.1% vs. market growth +23.5% (Adjusted NICS)
• Backlog of $392.4M versus $148.8 one year ago

A 263% change in order backlog!   No wonder they're working extra shifts and adding people.

I'm sure you've seen this before...

Smith & Wesson is worth following because as one of the only firearms companies that's publicly traded, it gives us an indication of how the industry is doing. I hope to see Ruger's results soon.

Dems Want A New Assault Weapons Ban

Thanks to a commenter at New Jovian Thunderbolt, we can read for ourselves that the 2012 Democratic Platform calls for a renewal of the AWB.  As I said the other day, "party platforms aren't really worth the paper they're printed on - no one is required to follow them (heck, no one is even required to read them)".   Still, they give you some idea of the soul of the party - the direction some high-level members of the party would like to go. 

We can focus on effective enforcement of existing laws, especially strengthening our background check system, and we can work together to enact commonsense improvements—like reinstating the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole—so that guns do not fall into the hands of those irresponsible, law-breaking few. (emphasis added - SiG)

To those without a Bullshit to English translation program on their machine, "closing the gun show loophole" means, "making it illegal to sell your private property where you want".   The Bullshit to English translation of "loophole" is "fully legal activity the speaker disapproves of".   DOJ Statistics show that about 1% of guns involved in crimes are bought at a gun show.  They're either bought as stolen property, or the criminal steals them directly.  39% are bought from family or friends.  Gun shows are not a problem. 

How effective is an AWB likely to be?  Not effective at all.  We don't need to speculate, we have the 1994 - 2004 AWB to use as a model. It wasn't effective, why should a new one be?

I think that few would disagree that "Gun Facts" is one of the most thoroughly researched sites on the web.  Version 6.1 says:

Fact: In 1994, before the Federal “assault weapons ban,” you were eleven (11) times more likely to be beaten to death than to be killed by an “assault weapon.”359
Fact: In the first year after the ban was lifted, murders declined 3.6%, and violent crime 1.7%.360
Fact: Nationally, “assault weapons” were used in 1.4% of crimes involving firearms and 0.25% of all violent crime before the enactment of any national or state “assault weapons” ban. The rate is less than 0.1% In many major urban areas (San Antonio, Mobile, Nashville, etc.) as well as some some entire states (Maryland, New Jersey, etc.).361
Fact: Even the government agrees. “The weapons banned by this legislation [1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban - since repealed] were used only rarely in gun crimes”369

I'm sure these facts aren't surprising to any regular readers, just as I'm sure I don't need to remind my readers there really is nothing that distinguishes a so-called assault rifle besides appearance.  

Face it, Dems, these guns are very rarely used in any sort of nefarious activity.  When you consider that they're the most popular rifles sold in America for the past several years, and the sheer volume sold, they certainly would be available for criminals to steal.  But as Charles Krauthammer said (The Washington Post, April 5, 1996):

“Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic, purely symbolic move ... Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.” 

Symbolic acts that hurt law-abiding people while not impacting crime in any significant positive way?  Yeah that sounds like Evil Party logic.  Tyrants can't stand an independent, armed populace.   There's no logic involved, just emotional reactions. 

As always, gun control isn't about guns, it's about control. 

About That Whole Global Economic Collapse Thingy - Part VII

I'll admit I've been pretty remiss in this thread.  Part 6 was two years ago!  (Strangely, one week short of two years to the day). 

What prompts the restart is that Karl Denninger over at The Market Ticker posts a good example of the math that is assuring the economic collapse of the US, if outside forces (the EU, or others) don't do it sooner. 

So, according to Nancy Pelosi, both Medicare and Social Security are on the ballot, and therefore you must vote for Obama, because if you don't you're going to lose your Medicare and Social Security.

There's one problem that Nancy hasn't addressed -- if you vote for Obama you will definitely lose your Social Security and Medicare.

As Bill Whittle put it in this recent video, "Those generous, widespread entitlement benefits won't be paid if you vote Republican.  And they won't be paid if you vote Democrat, because those entitlements are simply not going to be paid one way or another because there's just no money.  It's all gone".  You should watch that video, if you haven't seen it. 

Quoting Denninger again:

In 1980 this is what the Federal Budget looked like:

Health Care (all programs) was $55.3 billion.
In 2011 the Federal Budget looked like this:

And Health Care spending was $858.2 billion.  That is approximately a 9.3% annualized growth over that period of time.

Note that as a percentage of the budget Pensions (that is, Social Security) and Defense did not materially change.  Health care exploded.

This is where the problem is.

Denninger brings more than a little pucker factor to this story, as he tends to do.  But he's got the details right.  Go read.

It has been said that there are only about three basic different ways of paying for health care:  Free market (examples are Lasik eye surgery and most cosmetic procedures), a single payer system  like the British NHS or Canadian system where care is rationed by bureaucrats, and a third party system where someone other than the patient pays the provider, so market forces don't really work well and rationing is hardly imposed.  That third system is the worst of all alternatives, and is the one we have.  This story sums up the stupidity pretty well.  An Arizona woman gets stung by a scorpion, and eventually gets billed over $83,000 for two doses of antivenin, or $39,562 per dose, 10x what the hospital pays for the stuff.  While in Mexico, a dose costs $100, instead of that $39,562.  The 400x mark up from the price in Mexico partially reflects the lower amount used in the US, but mostly reflects the way hospitals bill, which could be a whole subject in itself. 

Obviously, I believe the free market approach is best.  From everything I read, Lasik and cosmetic surgery are getting better and cheaper every year, just like most things bought on a truly free market.  A free market along with insurance to backstop catastrophic losses; insurance that isn't required to pay for the federally-mandated list of things that they must cover, along with tort restrictions on the lawsuit industry, would go a long way toward reducing the runaway rate of health care cost increases. 

Cheap Solar Power - Hacking the Explorer2, Part 2

The situation is that I have a solar panel that's not particularly useful for it's intended purpose.  Actually, it's two panels.  They don't quite meet expectations.  So what do I do? 

I'm not going to say I have the world's monopoly on good ideas or good sense, but here's how I think about it.  The panels will deliver 5.5V at 750 mA.  If you're keeping score, 5.5 V times 0.75 A is 4.125W and two panels gives me 8.25W.  If I connect them in series, that's 11V at 750 mA (check that 11 V times 0.75 A is 8.25W).  If I connect them in parallel, I get 5.5 V at 1500 mA.  Either way of directly connecting them is the most efficient thing I can do and the closest I'll get to that 8.25W.  Anything else I do will consume some fraction of a watt and lead to recovering less than that 8.25W.  (In the real world, there are imperfections, such as the two panels never delivering exactly the same voltage, one will try to force current into the other, and so on.  We design to optimize the variables as best as we can).  If I'm lucky, I can get around 90% of that 8.25W or 7.5 Watts. 

Let's say I want to charge a 12V gel cell.  I need 13.6V to charge that, so it's more than I can get by putting the two in series.  A DC to DC converting switching power supply can convert to either a higher or lower voltage, so I'm going to choose to parallel the two panels into a 5.5V source at 1.5 A.  I can make almost any output voltage easily with the power supply so the starting voltage doesn't matter much.   

"Not so fast, Graybeard", you reasonably say, "I hardly even know what a switching power supply is, and that's only because you talked about it once in that series you promised to write for us but keep avoiding.  How am I supposed to know how to design and build one?!?"  To be honest, I don't know how to design one, either.  Never have.  But it's electronics, so it's more understandable to me than a lot of other things in life, and building it is more a matter of having the tools and knowing how to solder.  As it turns out, the companies that make switching power supply controller circuits really want to sell them (well, duh!), and they're very helpful.  Texas Instruments, the company that brings you Digital Light Projection in movies, is a giant in this field and has free online tools that will design several circuits to your specifications so that you can choose the approach you want.  (Linear Technology is another giant in the field).  I don't know if hobbyists can use TI's "Web Bench" feature.  You will need to register with their website but I don't know if or how often they'll try to call you for sales.  Certainly if you were trying to set up a company to sell solar power systems, they'd be happy to talk with you and help you get your design perfected. 

I'm not done with this, (or, as I like to say, I'm not "done" done) because I'm not sure what this solar charger system is going to be: is it going to be for big lead acid batteries, or just an improvement for the few USB charged things I own.  I have that solar panel system I talked about here for charging a moderately-sized battery.  This one just won't add much to that show.  It's probably best for those USB thingies.  

More later.

As California Sinks Farther Into Collapse

Six, over at The Warrior Class tells the story of dealing with the California bureaucracy.  You should read the whole thing. As usual, I'll tease the story a little.  He begins by telling the story that he had planned to go help a friend replace the shingles on his roof.  The state, however, has deemed that illegal:

Why? Because the ever so caring and concerned (Democrat controlled) state of California has decreed that if one replaces their own roof on their very own house they cannot be helped by anyone who isn't a blood relative who lives under that same roof.

After you ponder the wonder of that statement - that friends aren't legally prevented from helping friends - check this out:

When Car Guy went and got his permit, that he paid the very same fee as roofing companies do but that's for another post, he was informed that the city would forward his application information to the state and that said state inspectors were actively checking roofing sites to ensure compliance with their draconian rules and regulations and had in fact already issued 'several' citations. The fine? I am so glad you asked. $100,000.00.

One Hundred Thousand Dollars. Contemplate that for a moment my friends. ONE. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. Minimum. Which means it most certainly will be more if the state can see any way to squeeze you for more. For having a friend help you roof your house.

As always when dealing with government, it gets worse.  You should read the piece.

I've quoted Victor Davis Hanson before on the mess that California has become.  California is in collapse, a zombie state that can't provide the minimal amount of reasonable governance, but instead of trying to create a friendly business climate, argues over outlawing circumcision and Pate de Foie Gras.   I've heard that 1000 Californians move out of the state every day, with 200 of them moving into Texas every day.  This is yet another example of why.

Flag of the People's Republic of California.

Cheap Solar Power - Hacking the Explorer2

A couple of weeks ago, someone pointed out that the Brunton Explorer2 solar chargers were available at substantially lower prices than usual.  The MSRP on that website is $96, and Amazon has them listed for $79.  A quick eBay search shows them for $30 on "Buy-It-Now" and auctions starting less.  This is described as a USB charger, 5V at about 1000 mA, certainly enough to charge an iPod or some similar devices.  At that price, I grabbed a couple.

The USB charger is in the little hexagonal nub on the left in this picture.  A little online reading will tell you that not everything charged over USB is happy with this dude.  For example, my Garmin GPS is happy with it but my iPhone 4s isn't.  An older Samsung cell phone is happy, as is my Nikon S4000 point and shoot digital camera.  A foldable solar cell array for $30 is not a bad price, so  even if it doesn't charge everything you'd like, it still might be hackable. 

To begin with, let's pop the cover off the little charger module.  Inside, you'll find this:

You might recognize the large shiny thing on the left as the USB jack.  Electronics geeks will probably recognize everything else; it's a switching power supply with an LED that glows to show you it's doing something or other.  The switching controller is probably the six pin (SOT-23) package at upper right; the five pin (SOT-23) package below it might be a dual transistor, and the large part that says "100" on it is the coil for the switcher. 

The next step was to unsolder it from the wires, so that I could look at the panel itself.  The solar cells put out about 5.5V with a short circuit current of about 750-800 mA (it was getting kind of late in the afternoon, so it might do better at noon).  Two of them in parallel should put out twice that, with some voltage drop (0.2 or so) in Schottky diodes (many people recommend these when combining panels).   I frankly don't see how it could really provide 5V at 1000 mA, as their web page says.  Maybe for a short peak on a good day (or "downhill with the wind at its back" to use my cycling term). 

On its own, the panel will charge 3 AA NiCads or NiMH batteries in series.  I wouldn't even use a voltage regulator for NiCads.  Most cheap chargers are just a transformer and a single diode to half-wave rectify the AC.  You would need to put 3 of these in series to charge a 12V lead acid battery.  That should be able to keep a rarely or lightly used battery topped off, but at 800 mA, it would take forever to recharge a dead starting battery.  Two in series would take care of a 6V gel cell, and those are pretty common. 

An interesting use for the solar cells occurred to me while playing around with this.  I have halogen lights in my kitchen, and I find that putting the panel on the table produces usable output from the solar cells.  I tend to leave the kitchen lights on, which is wasting electricity and a habit I need to break if we're living in a grid down situation, but here's a way to scavenge some of that wasted energy; use it to top off some batteries!  That's completely stupid if you're using it as an approach to charge batteries, but if the lights are on anyway, you can harvest some energy instead of just warming your table top. 

More to come on experiments with this cheap little solar panel. 

A Trillion Here, A Trillion There, Pretty Soon ...

A trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.  They may say that in Zimbabwe, but over here a trillion is real money every time.

H/T to Peter, Bayou Renaissance Man for pointing out that we have surpassed $16,000,000,000,000 in debt, as demonstrated by Zerohedge and other places.  

Today, August 28, 2012, is when we can unofficially celebrate again, because 286 days after the last major milestone was surpassed with disturbing ease, total US debt following today's $35 billion auction of 2 Year bonds is, well, in a word: $16,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOOBAMA! 
....
The result: $16.05 trillion, which is what the debt to the penny will officially show next week.

The last trillion dollars started on November 16, 2011, just a few days before we hit a debt to GDP ratio of 100%. 286 days to add a trillion is faster than the trillion before, which was faster than the one before that: that's characteristic of the nearly exponential growth the debt shows.  That previous link about hitting 100% shows a sort-of recent graph of debt vs. time, so I won't repeat that here.

(source credit)

And you know what?  The $16 trillion isn't really the big problem.  Oh, sure, it will lead to economic collapse, but probably not very soon.  The debt to GDP ratio of 104.4% is bad, but it won't be fatal, yet.  Japan has a ratio over 200%!  Aside from Japan, Greece has 165%, Italy 120%, Ireland and Portugal each have 108% - all have a higher ratio than the US.  Notice that except for Japan, they're all in the PIIGS that are considered the worst risks in EU (Spain, by the way, is at 68.5% debt to GDP!) .   No, the problem is the entire picture, including the "off the books" accounts of medicare and social security.  Peter quotes Gary North in a review of the movie 2016:

... the on-budget debt of $15 trillion, which is chump change, while never mentioning the central problem: the $222 trillion present value of the unfunded liabilities of the off-budget deficit, meaning the deficits of politically sacrosanct Social Security and Medicare. This is the heart of the federal government’s highly entertaining Punch and Judy show over the deficit, with Paul Ryan as Punch and Obama cross-dressing as Judy.

I commented over at Peter's place that we are going into the most predicted and preventable economic collapse in history.   If you believe that collapse is preventable, look at the mismanagement by the elected officials of both parties.  Congress hasn't passed a budget since Obama took office - the Senate refuses.  Deficit reduction commissions like Simpson-Bowles are routinely ignored, and even the meager Ryan plan isn't adhered to.  The secretary of the treasury told Ryan (about the CBO statement that the economy is going to collapse in a few years), "we don't have a plan, we just don't like yours".  The obvious conclusion is that the collapse is deliberate. 

It's not that hard.  This is 7th grade math at best. 

Neon Signs and Old Cars

Just a cool video.  Go watch the HD version full screen here, rather than a little, small screen video I could embed here. 4:40. 

The Complete List of Racist Code Words

Well, I'm not sure there could be a complete list since it's always growing.

H/T to Michelle Malkin for digging into "The Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racist Code Words".  In the continuing effort of folks like Chris Matthews of MSNBC to label every word, or every thought a normal person might have as racist, we've heard this week that the following words are racist: Chicago, golf, angry, professor (srsly?) and others, while the US State department chimes in with attributing racism to the phrases like "holding down the fort", "rules of thumb", and so on.  (If you think I'm kidding, read the State magazine (pdf) column on page 8.).  Michelle's column is great and short.  RTWT.

While the State department column may aimed at telling employees things like the old "don't make the 'OK' gesture with your thumb and forefinger in Brazil" sort of warning, the others are pure applications of my analogy of Godwin's Law.  The idea behind calling you racist is that the charge is so severe that you need to spend your time talking about how you're not a racist, not what you want to say.  Ideally, you won't be allowed to say a single word.  If enough people laugh in their face and say, "are you on crack or something?" and then get back to their message, it might make the nonsense stop. 

Our national issue isn't racism.  According to this 2011 Gallup study, 5% of Americans say they won't vote for a black, while the national average is 22% say they wouldn't vote for a Mormon, 7% won't vote for a Catholic, 9% won't vote for a Jew, 32% wouldn't vote for a gay or lesbian and 49% wouldn't vote for an atheist.  People, we're hiring someone to clean out the septic tank, not to have dinner with. 

Epilog to Fed Watching

So what did the Bernank do?  He did just about nothing, it's what he said.  He issued a tepid statement early in the day, 10 AM eastern, which is 8 AM out in Jackson Hole.  If they had announced the QE round, they probably would have issued that statement after the markets closed, at 3 or 4 PM out in Wyoming.  No, this appears to have been done to cause the market to go up.  My opinion only, of course.  The Blaze reported:

Chairman Ben Bernanke sent a clear message Friday that the Federal Reserve will do more to “help” the still-struggling U.S. economy. His remarks seemed to leave two questions: What exactly will the Fed do? And when? 

The "what" is pretty obvious.  With interest rates essentially zero, there's not much room to lower them; what's another quarter percent going to do?  The "what" will have to be some form of QE, most likely buying more US Treasury bonds, as they've been doing for quite some time.  The Wall Street Journal put it this way:

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke left almost no doubt this morning that he’s leaning toward another bond-buying program, quantitative easing,  a so-called QE3. He offered a studied defense of everything the Fed’s done so far, and he isn’t sold on economic growth. Inflation’s only a ghost, so the deck’s are clear on that front.

Inflation's only a ghost!  "That Minx!  What a lively sense of humor" (Otter - Animal House).  Food inflation of 10% is just a ghost!  Non-existent!  Hahahahahahahaha!  Wew.  After that knee slapper, the WSJ continues:

From our reading of the speech, it appears that Bernanke has given up on the idea of Congress stepping up and taking care of its business, which means he thinks the “fiscal cliff” will remain an issue through the November election and likely right up to the end of the year. The drag on the economy will only get worse the longer that hangs around, and that’s apparently unacceptable to the Fed chieftain.

And from my reading of the WSJ and the markets' reactions, they all believe Bernanke is going to "take care of business".  The major indices, DJIA,  NASDAQ and the S&P 500 were all up about 0.6%, but the metals were up more:  Gold was + $36.30, 2.19%, Silver + $1.30,  4.27%.  The dollar, not surprisingly was down, 0.52%.  So, now the "when" question comes up.  My guess is whenever this little goose to the markets starts to decay away, or if the election looks too close.  End of September?  Just a WAG.

Helicopter Ben will ride again.

Time to Put On Your Fed Watching Gear

Tomorrow marks the annual meeting of the Federal Reserve Banks at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  You may have noticed that most of the markets have been trading in a narrow range over the last week or so, IMO in anticipation of the direction that will come out of this meeting.  There was a run-up in prices toward the beginning of the month in anticipation of another round of free money, er, money printing, um, I mean quantitative easing. 

Remember, one of the Rules of Trading is "buy on the rumor, sell on the fact".  The rumor clearly broke around the 20th.  So will there be another round of QE? 

First, for new visitors, I'm essentially a student of the Austrian school, rather than a Keynesian.  That means I believe, as our constitution states, that money should be made from gold and silver; paper should be backed by that amount of gold and silver on demand - the way it was before 1973 when we broke all ties to the gold standard.  It also means, among other things, that I'm deeply suspicious of the utility of creating worthless money, backed by nothing other than "we say it's a dollar, so it's a dollar".  Anyone with any sense knows that the dollars they get are inherently worth less than the ones they are promised, yet they continue to take them.  The Keynesian world economy is a dance in which every partner is insane and disgusting, and the only way to "win" is to end up with the least insane and least disgusting. 

On a more practical level, even if you are a Keynesian, one of the fundamentals of economics is the marginal utility function - the idea that, for example, if you're broke, your first $20 bill has high utility, while if you're a billionaire, another $20 bill doesn't add much utility.  If the first several trillion dollars were ineffective at turning things around, how many trillions will have to be created to make a difference?  The more dollars there are, the less they're worth - which is the cause of inflation.  How much inflation are they willing to create?  Are they willing to go all Zimbabwe and reduce the value of the dollar to the value of the paper?  That could be the outcome.  At the very least, anything you've saved for retirement will be inflated away to nothing.

On the other hand, from Bernanke's seat, it could be the only alternative.  The ECB is getting ready to print more to try to keep the EU from collapsing.  And Romney has already said that if he's elected, Bernanke is gone.   Although party platforms aren't really worth the paper they're printed on - no one is required to follow them (heck, no one is even required to read them) - the Stupid Platform says it's time to create a committee to study getting back on the gold standard - something last done during the Reagan administration.  (See  "Could the US Return to a Gold Standard" for some thoughts).  Since releasing an enormous amount of money is going to do something, perhaps that's enough to force Bernanke's hand, and have him do it.  Personal survival/job security.  He doesn't have to fix the economy, he just has to make it look good enough to get Bamster reelected. 

You have to admit, the timing is perfect.  Not just a Friday press release, but a Friday on a holiday weekend?  This is when they tend to drop the bombs, after all.

(Fed watchers gather in the mountains outside of Jackson Hole)

Stay Classy, Democrats

I've only recently become aware of a young woman from Utah, mayor of the city of Saratoga Springs, and Republican candidate for the US House, Mia Love.  I heard the name within the last couple of months and saw her once on TV.  She's charismatic, poised, and presents herself well on TV.  I was impressed with her grasp of the fight for liberty and the America of our founders, quite possibly because she has lived it.  First, being from Utah, deep in flyover country where self-reliance and helping your neighbors are equally deep in the DNA, and second, from watching her parents build a successful business after coming to America from Haiti "with 10 dollars in their pockets". 

Impressive, attractive young woman whom nobody knows, why not put her onstage?  So the Stupid Party gave her an early time slot as a speaker at the convention.  No, I wasn't watching, (I don't typically watch much of the conventions - as I've said before, I hate day to day politics) but apparently the Evil Party was, because Twitter soon began telling stories about her entry in the Wikipedia was being defaced.  As Twitchy reports...

Tuesday night after rising GOP star Mia Love brought down the house with her inspiring convention speech, the stomach-turning Left labeled the black conservative a “token” and an “Aunt Tom.”

Meanwhile, revoltingly racist, woman-hating Wikipedia vandals were hard at work updating her entry with disgusting slurs like “House Nigger” and “dirty, worthless whore.” The page called her a “total sell-out to the Right Wing Hate machine and the greedy bigots who control the GOP.”

Oh, yeah.  I guess I never mentioned she's black.  No "dog whistle" racism here, this is the real, putrid deal. 

My black, conservative friends have tended to be engineers (for the last 30 years), so I haven't exactly watched them get ostracized at work or in their communities, but they've said they have family problems for not being liberal.  I certainly have read the same from many black conservatives online.  If you watch reactions to black conservatives, they get extreme amounts of hate dumped on them for "getting out of line" - literally "not knowing their place".  Remember when the leftist protesters outside a conservative summit openly talked about killing Clarence Thomas, or torturing him by cutting off his toes?  The Evil Party appears so determined to keep control over every black person in America that they get truly, viciously angry when blacks stray from the party line.  As more blacks realize what a bad deal voting straight Evil Party tickets has been for them, it will have to turn into a problem. 

(Mia with her husband and family)
The speech, preceded by a few minutes of campaign commercial is here on YouTube, as well as her site (linked above).   It is good. 

A little over two years ago, I wrote about how charges of racism - like the "dog whistle racism" oxymoron - is the equivalent of the Atomic Bomb of Argument.  Like being called a Nazi, it's supposed to get you so concerned about denying the charge that you go off your message and dispute the charge - a win-win for the opponent.  And I discuss why I don't believe there is such a thing as race. 

This may shock some people, but I don't really believe there is such a thing as race.  I believe there are nationalities, and people from different areas of the world look different, but those differences are superficial and go away as cultures blend.

Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.  No matter how different you think the Italian and Korean look from each other.

Of course, when you think this way, the entire race-baiting industry goes away and that's a set of jobs the Evil Party will never let get away! 

QoTD "Hardware is the New Software"

That quote is from the New York Times, of all places.  Well, slightly modified.  The article is about how the Silicon Valley is making a return to its roots.  As the piece says,

THE shift away from the Valley’s obsession with dot-com services and Web-based social networks is a return to the region’s roots. The Valley began as a center for electronics hardware design in the late 1930s, when Bill Hewlett and David Packard built an audio oscillator that Walt Disney used in the production of the movie “Fantasia.” At the start of the 1970s, the label Silicon Valley was coined because of the proliferation of semiconductor companies. In the mid-1970s, a group of computer hardware hobbyists started the Homebrew Computer Club here, which gave rise to several dozen start-ups, including Apple Computer.

Places like the Silicon Valley (and, to a lesser extent, my own Silicon Swamp) become hotbeds of innovation as engineers get a better idea and head off to start their own companies.  A good technical university can serve as both a backbone and feedstock.  To be successful requires some minimum size and number of businesses, and while many cities have tried to be "the Next Silicon Valley", the original is still the standard.  Of course, this goes on against the backdrop of the ongoing economic collapse of California that "the Professor", Victor Davis Hanson, has so eloquently written.  The Valley may not survive but be replaced by Boise or another similar community. 

One of the emphases of the piece is how the rapid prototyping industry is part of this.

Instead, any designer now has the ability to quickly experiment with new product designs using low-cost 3-D printers. These printers can churn out objects to make prototypes quickly — a fork, wall hooks, mugs, a luggage clasp — by printing thousands of layers of wafer-thin slices of plastics, ceramics or other materials. Products can be made quickly in contract assembly plants overseas, usually in China.

Make no mistake, software is still a very big part of these designs, and they are very much cousins to the (current) grand master of the Valley, Apple.  They highlight several interesting products coming out of the area: the Nest, a self-programming thermostat; Lytro, a really innovative camera which produces images that can be re-focused and zoomed after they come out of the camera; and Shaka, a plug-in for your smart phone to measure wind speed. There are more.  

I think I need to get me one of these! 

As hardware engineer, these developments are encouraging to see.  But I gotta tell you, as a pure radio designer, I feel more and more like a dinosaur these days.  The amount of pure RF design is shrinking yearly; most commercial radios are 1/10 radio and 9/10 computer.  If you are getting started, or serious about building stuff at home, you should look into learning how to program FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) at home.  FPGAs allow you to almost completely encapsulate large sections of digital logic in one moderately priced chip which you program to your requirements. It's where digital design is going.   It's almost getting hard to purchase individual logic gate chips these days.

The Narcissist in Chief Honors Neil Armstrong

Most of us have posted a remembrance of Neil Armstrong.  I haven't.  But IMAO links to Daily Caller who links to the Obama campaign's own Tumblr page with this image:

Yes, that's Mr. President himself.  He honors the death of a truly great man with picture of himself.  I'll be charitable and say I really doubt that he's personally involved in this sort of thing, and some kid campaign staffer chose this picture - "Hey!  We got any pictures of his Lordship and the moon?".  If it gets approved it's probably not a high-level insider like at Valerie Jarret's level.  No, I can't prove he had anything to do with it, and I can't prove he didn't.

Neil Armstrong was a remarkable man.  I won't go into details of his missions, his ability to fly the lunar lander "flying bedstead" as well as anyone, or recovering control of his Gemini spacecraft after the Centaur he docked with started swinging wildly out of control.  Those things are online.  What I find most remarkable about Armstrong is how he steadfastly refused any honor and accolades.  He was just doing his job, he was just the guy NASA called up for a tough mission, a mission with a large chance of not coming back from.  When he found that someone was selling autographs, he stopped giving them out, he didn't start charging.   He left NASA to go teach college and worked quietly at that. 

In a day of people who are famous for being famous, and kids who rank fame above life's accomplishments, I find that really refreshing.  I have some pictures around here, from a 25th anniversary celebration of the landing, when Mrs. Graybeard worked on the Shuttle.  I have some pictures of all three of the crew.  Gotta find them and scan them in before they fade away.

Should You Act In Your Own Best Interest?

An anonymous commenter the other day posted this viewpoint on the way the Greeks are coping with the collapse of their country and the recommendations from John Robb:

What you say sounds reasonable from an individual perspective - but from a societal perspective it's horrible. If everyone spent their time farming their backyard rather than productively working somewhere, then our standard of living all declines. In other words, what's in the interest of the individual to protect their future is not in the interest of the corporate whole.

My first thought is "who says what's best for society?"  It's the same as my point from two days ago, about the randomness of the market being better than the bureaucrats who decide what products we need:  the movements of the vast majority of society are right.  They're right because people are moving in their own best interest.  If everyone is doing what's best for them, that makes the movements best for society.  It may displace people in some jobs - the spread out infrastructure for instance - and it sure won't be best for the displaced people, but that sort of displacement happens all the time.   Remember the slide rule industry?  If everyone tried to become more self-sufficient, more resilient, it would surely change society, but society changes all the time.  It's changing now, and the reality of what's going on is what pushes John to make his recommendations.  He's trying to save lives as this megatrend unfolds. 

I don't know what percentage of people would try to get a garden going in their yards, or what percentage of people even could, due to living in apartments with no space, I'm going to bet it's a small percentage for now.  Much like with Tom Baugh's "Starving the Monkeys", I don't know what percentage of the people would leave the life they know to become an independent contractor and I don't know what percentage would leave the life they know to create a small, self-sufficient community.  Would they make that move if they thought their family's lives and safety were at stake? I bet more would. 

Right after that first anonymous comment (obviously long before I write this) commenter Candide3 posted this:

This is exactly what has happened in the Soviet Union, both before and after its collapse. People spent an inordinate amount of time and effort working their 1/7 acre plots for food. Thanks to these plots they never starved, but the standard of living went through the floor.

What the Soviets did was right for themselves and helped them get their society going again, without the episodes of nastiness that have happened so many times through history.

Saw This Somewhere ...

Saw this somewhere and just had to do the "right click - save image".  Don't recall where.

Edited to add: as I learn more about what the Russian girls did, I see this meme isn't true.  Brandon Raub did not do the same thing.  He did far less, and he did it far less offensively to anyone else.  They were trying to be outrageous and offensive.  He was having a private conversation.  If Mr. Raub was sent to a mental hospital for 30, the girls of Pussy Riot should be in a Siberian gulag for years.  8/27 2050 EDT

Telescope Mirrors, Washing Machines and Our Philosopher Kings

From time to time, I've been know to string together strange analogies around here, and tonight I present another one, involving going places no sane person goes for an obscure analogy.  But if you're up for a few minutes in a totally different world, pull up a seat and a cup of whatever.  

Let's talk about making a telescope mirror.  Do you know that an average person, who simply follows instructions well - you, for example - can make a telescope mirror with their own hands that is among the most precise things humanity knows how to make?  How precise?  Just to be functional, the surface of the mirror must be within 1/2 wavelength of light of the right shape, or within around 10 millionths of an inch.  The performance of a half wave mirror is so bad, though, that most amateur astronomers wouldn't stand it.  Instead, most experienced mirror makers turn out mirrors to better than 1/10 wave - often much better.  That's better than 2 millionths of an inch.  With your hands and extremely primitive tools - glass and abrasive grit. 

Furthermore, the average person is going to produce a more precise surface than most machines, unless a lot of thought went into the design of the surface.  Why?  Because a person can't make the same grinding stroke on the mirror every time while a machine can.  Because we're imperfect.

In a nutshell, here's how you grind a telescope mirror.  First, you put a hard ceramic or glass plate "tool" on the top of a stand of some sort (55 gallon drums are the ideal), sprinkle some abrasive on top of it, spritz some water, then put the glass for the mirror on top of this tool.  Now you stroke the mirror back and forth in a broad "W", turning the mirror a little and stepping sideways the opposite direction around the barrel.  Eventually, you wear a hollow depression in the piece on top, while the bottom piece wears down on the edges.  Once the curve is shaped, you clean up and switch to a smaller abrasive, grinding away the imperfections of the coarser grit.  Refine the surface like this a few times, followed by a polish and you have a surface ready for the real "magic", the optical figuring; making the surface meet the optical prescription.  This can be very easy or take weeks, but when it's done you have a telescope mirror.

We can make this nearly perfect surface because the thousands of strokes are all different in exactly how they work the surface.  The thousands of sprinkles of abrasive grit and water are never exactly the same amount.  The randomization of the actions produces a surface that's an average of the thousands of different strokes, much more perfect than can be produced by machine.  While all larger mirors are made by machine, smaller instruments are not, and the standard of excellence is still the hand-figured mirror. 

OK, now I can hear you saying, "that's moderately interesting, but I have no desire to make a telescope: why are you telling me this?" 

It's an extremely good analogy for the free market.  Millions of imperfect decisions being made by imperfect humans together form a more perfect decision than any machine, or in this case, more perfect than our "philosopher kings" - who are just one of those millions, after all - could ever make. 

Case in point is top-loading washing machines and the Department of Energy (source editorial here).  The DOE, of course, is driven by the agenda that energy efficiency is the single most important characteristic in any appliance, and if you consumers don't always buy the most efficient, then you're just too stupid and need to nudged into the right choices.  Consumers, however, seem to consider a wider variety of factors in choosing things to buy, not just the energy efficiency.  In reaction to how consumers were not always buying what their algorithms concluded were the most efficient machines, the DOE created rules that effectively eliminated top loading washing machines - protested by almost 3:1 among consumers.  One study showed that the average family does fewer loads of wash per week than the assumptions built into the rules did.  These folks saved far less money with the front-loading machines.  Consumers seem to be smarter than the DOE at figuring their total cost of ownership. 

This is just a subset of the study by Ted Gayer and W. Kip Viscusi of the Brookings Institute, called "Overriding Consumer Preferences with Energy Regulations".  (pdf)  It's a 46 page report, but interesting reading.

Consumers aren't perfect because humans aren't perfect.  They will buy a washing machine that isn't as "good" because it's on sale and they're short of money, say.  But they're better at figuring out what's best for them at that time, and the movement of millions of consumers, the market, is better than the models the government regulators  use. 

You're saving some petty bureaucrat's job. 

Tightening the Fence; Putting up the Wire

By now, you've all undoubtedly heard the story about gathering wild pigs for slaughter.  A good example is "The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okeefenokee", where a crafty old guy gathers a herd of wild pigs by scattering food for them for a while, then adding fence posts, one at a time, eventually building a fence and closing the pigs inside.  From wild pig to bacon and Boston butts in a few months.

It's arguable the same thing is being done to us.  William Norman Grigg, normally of Pro Libertate, has a piece on Lew Rockwell examining the links between Brandon Raub, the decorated Marine put in a mental hospital for 30 days (he was released today, early) for writing "politically incorrect" things in a private Facebook discussion and some similar cases.  All involve the Glorious Motherland sending someone to a gulag, um, I mean mental hospital, apparently simply for attracting attention.  These include Matthew Corrigan, a depressed veteran seeking help for a sleeping disorder, David Pyles of Medford, Oregon, whose crime appears to be using a tax refund check to buy a couple of guns shortly after being terminated from work, and engineer Gregory Girard, who doesn't appear to have any transgressions, just the misfortune of being married to a psychologist who knows how to game the system.

Photo from Grigg's column.  Go read, bacon.    

Life In Greece After the Collapse of Civilization

Although it has largely disappeared from our news, Greece has collapsed.  The economy, such as it was, is gone, and people are back to largely living by subsistence farming and trading whatever skills they might have, whatever things they might have.  It's post (or pre-) civilization in Greece.

John Robb's Resilient Communities brings the story, with links to the BBC. 

• There are more unemployed people than employed.
• About 1,000 people a day are losing their jobs (that’s a big number in a small country).
• 76% of the population wants to emigrate (most can’t afford to).

Greece is a great example of what collapse in the modern world looks like:

• Cubicle jobs in corporate and government bureaucracies evaporate.
• Personal savings aren’t worth much due to across the board market declines (from stocks to bonds to commodities), and what’s left depletes rapidly.
• The cost of essentials, from food to energy to water to products, get increasingly hard to afford.
• Rent and mortgages become negotiable.
• While protests can occasionally turn into riots, the biggest security risk is from petty property crime and government corruption.

 (BBC photo - "The members of the community on the isle of Evia live off the land")

While this isn't the Book of Eli, it clearly isn't the lap of luxury, either.  Life is hard, day to day survival.  It's not the Zombie apocalypse, it’s just depressing.

While that photograph links to an article mostly about happy hippies who wanted to get away from civilization, the situation isn't all kids living out dreams.

Until last year, Thomas and Eleni lived with their two children in Athens. But as they lost their jobs and faced soaring taxes, they decided that the everyday struggle of city life was too much. The family moved back in with Thomas's mother in her house in the tiny village of Pahikalamo, in north-west Greece.

Around a simple lunch Eleni tells me there was no other option. "We lost our income and had two children to raise," she says. "I was waking up and doing nothing except trying to find work. And then I couldn't sleep at night because I so worried about tomorrow."

The Greeks are reversing the megatrend of the last century: they're moving from the big cities back to the countryside.  The population of Athens doubled in 30 years (1950-1980).  Now 70% are saying they want to move back to the smaller towns.  They're also reversing the worldwide megatrend of the 20th century: they're abandoning currency and credit, and are returning to money and barter. 

Unless the American megatrend of increasing debt with no end is broken, this is our future, too.  How far out?  That depends on far too many variables to give an accurate answer.  We still have time to work on our own resilience: our abilities to work the ground, try to grow some food, try to achieve more preparations.  As Robb says, we can better bounce back from an economic collapse ...

By becoming resilient in our personal lives.  By learning how to make our own jobs.  By becoming healthy and fit and helping others to do the same.   By turning our homes into productive assets that reduce our expenses and increase our incomes.  By connecting with our families and neighbors to build resilient communities and dynamic local economies.  By producing most of the food, water, energy, and products we need locally.  By learning to sell and trade artisanal products and services we make locally, to the world.

While I have my doubts about the last one (who buys artisanal products when no one has luxury goods? - maybe I don't understand how he's using that word) there's no doubt the rest is reasonable advice.   And it certainly seems to be no doubt that we are living in the days Ludwig von Mises described:

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of the voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. -- Ludwig von Mises

Coolest New Tech

A camera that photographs at a trillion frames per second, so fast that it can watch light propagate:


11 minutes long. I really recommend you watch full screen.