Bill Callahan (who also performs as the band "Smog"), in one of the Black Cab Sessions. A *lot* of good stuff in the Black Cab Sessions, you might want to browse them on YouTube.
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
I just finished upgrading my MacBook Pro to 8 gigabytes of memory. That ought to allow me to run a few different VMware virtual machines at once (I use all this RAM to slice it up into virtual machines for developing software for different operating systems). In particular, I just bumped Windows 7's memory allotment to 2 gigabytes. Maybe it'll quit running like a dog...
Note, BTW, that WIndows XP runs just fine in 512 megabytes of memory.
-- Badtux the Geeky Penguin
Penguin: Welcome to Penguin News Network. Here at PNN we present only the finest of news, read by the most adorable of penguins. Today, our guest is Joe Mentum, Senator from SmallState, here to explain what being moderate is all about. Hi, Joe!
Joe: Hi, Penguin!
Penguin: Okay, Joe. You're well known for being an independent moderate. What does being moderate mean?
Joe: Well, Penguin, being moderate means that when there's a disagreement, you arrive at compromise solutions that nobody really likes.
Penguin: Like deciding to serve spinach souffle if your kids can't agree whether they want tuna casserole or beans and franks for dinner?
Joe: Exactly! See, that's a moderate solution, because both kids end up unhappy!
Penguin: Okay, Joe, as we all know, health care is a hot issue today. Democrats really want to create a right to health care so that no American has to die for lack of health care. Republicans have countered with their own health care plan where, if patients can't afford health care, they report to Soylent Green processing centers for conversion into cat food. What is your compromise plan between these two?
Joe: Well, the Democrat's plan makes taxpayers happy, but makes my buddies at Hartford Insurance unhappy. Someone's happy, so it's not a moderate solution! So my plan is that half of Americans get a right to health care, and the other half report to Soylent Green processing centers for conversion to cat food if they get sick. My buddies at Hartford Insurance are unhappy then because they're forced to pay for the healthcare of the half of Americans who have a right to health care rather than being able to give multi-billion dollar bonuses to their executive staff, the half of Americans who must report to Soylent Green processing centers are unhappy because they would rather have health care than a painless segue into cat fodder, so it's a moderate solution!
Penguin: Wow, Joe, you're right! It's as if Eichmann had arrived at a moderate solution to his Jew problem -- only send HALF of them to the gas chambers! Adolph Hitler would have been unhappy because half the Jews would still be alive, the Jews would be unhappy because half of them would get gassed, so clearly that's a moderate solution that should have been embraced rather than the extremist Final Solution that Eichmann eventually arrived at!
Joe: That's not funny. I'm Jewish, you know.
Penguin: But you're a moderate. So surely you would embrace that solution, since it made everybody unhappy and thus is a moderate solution to the problem, right?
Joe: This interview is over. [Rips microphone off, stomps off the set.]
Penguin: And that's it for this episode of Press the Herring. I've learned a lot about what it means to be a moderate, and I hope you have too. Remember, violation of only some of the population's fundamental human rights isn't an atrocity -- it's a moderate solution!. So until next time, this is Badtux the Snarky Penguin signing off...
[Darth Vader voice] This... is PNN.
[Woman's voice] Bothered by unsettling herring stains on your tuxedo? Try new all-temperature Reehc! Its soothing enzyme action even works in the coldest of cold water...
Spent some time evaluating it this week. It's purty, and it's better than Windows Vista (how's that for damning with faint praise? Talk about a low bar to exceed!), but it's still a friggin mess, just frosting and sugar on top of the same old Windows 95 user interface that was introduced over 14 years ago. My conclusion:
You can polish a turd until it's nice and shiny and spiffy looking. But in the end, it's still a turd.
'Nuff said.
-- Badtux the Technology Penguin
The right wing has a solution for all of society's problems:
For those of you who suggest that the free market does NOT solve all problems, shame on you. You make the Free Market Fairy cry!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The government says it's the U-3 measure, which stood at 10.2% as of November 5. Sceptics say it is the U-6 measure, which stands at 17.5%. But my suspicion is even higher, because of one piece of data contained in neither figure: labor force participation rate, which is 2.1% lower today than it was in 1999.
What that implies is that 2.1% of the U.S. population -- or roughly 3.15% of the available workforce, since children and the elderly are not counted in the available workforce statistics -- is not counted in the official U-3 measure. Now, clearly, some of these people are being counted in the U-6 measure. But how many?
Our clue is the U-4 measure, which includes "discouraged" workers -- i.e., unemployed, would like a job, but haven't sought a job in the past month. U-4 stands at 10.7%. That means that 0.5% of the U-6 measure is comprised of "discouraged" workers who are not counted in the labor participation rate but who are counted as unemployed in the U-6 measure. Thus U7 (U-6 minus "discouraged" workers) is 17%. Add in 3.15% for people who USED to be working and aren't working now, and you're at 20.15%.... uhm. Err. Bad. Last year I predicted that fireworks would start happening at 20%. Let's just hope that U-6 (what I was using then) is the correct measure for when fireworks start and that unemployment will start going down soon... because if not, cue the food riots and fascist revolution (Communism having gone out of style since 1932).
-- Badtux the Economics Penguin
Richard Simmons is a terrorist.
This penguin is speechless. The mighty Gay Agenda at work again, to terrorize us with well-coifed hair styles and tasteful interior decor?
-- Badtux the Head-shaking Penguin
If you are not reading Calculated Risk, go. The current news is... sobering.
-- Badtux the Unfortunately-sober Penguin
So let's talk about "conventional wisdom". What you find, looking at the data, is that "conventional wisdom" typically is nothing of the sort. It's passed-down superstitions and talking points with no basis in fact, no supporting data, no reality.
So let's look at Nathan's "conventional wisdom" from my post on unemployment below:
Instead of lasering in on unemployment as the lone bogeyman, I think we should look at the entire basket of problems.The problem is that employment is necessary in order for people to consume, and consumption is necessary in order to employ people. Hmm, circular relationship there, right? But in any event, if we're going to wean the economy off of government intervention, clearly focusing on employment is the way to do that, because only increasing employment can increase consumption enough to remove government from the role of "consumer of last resort".
1. we need to deleverage the economy and get back to saner levels of personal and savings,Indeed, and that is happening. That is the cause of the problems with the banks and deflation, deleveraging by definition decreases the money supply via increasing the effective reserve ratio of the banking system (see: fractional reserve banking). The problem with deflation is that past debts are unpayable with today's lower incomes caused by deflation, causing more defaults, more bank failures, more deflation, wash, rinse, repeat. In short, while deleveraging is necessary, the deflation caused by deleveraging is harmful and must be addressed via monetary expansionary efforts, which are ineffective when we are in liquidity trap territory because any printed money just goes under mattresses because it will be worth more later (as the currency in circulation further deflates). Thus the requirement for fiscal stimulus and deficit spending to draw that money out from under mattresses and put it to use, otherwise the freshly-printed money would just disappear under mattresses where it does nothing to foster employment and investment -- just as what happened in Japan during the 1990's, causing their 'lost decade'.
2. we need to own more of our debt as a nation.As long as the debt is owed in dollars that is irrelevant. If China was so stupid as to call in their debt, we'd simply print dollars (by issuing new debt that was purchased by the Federal Reserve with freshly printed dollars) and give them to the Chinese and say "okay, here you go!". If we wanted to be *really* mean, we'd deliver it as freshly printed bales of $100 bills, and let the Chinese figure out the logistics of how to get several freighters full of cash from the wharfs in Oakland to Beijing ;).
3. the trend toward higher spending has no end in sight. Is government spending the only hammer in your tool box?Utter nonsense. We are using government right now as consumer of last resort to provide consumption necessary for full employment. We need full employment in order to prevent the sort of human misery that results in social disorder, violence, and the breakdown of society -- people do *not* voluntarily starve to death. Once employment is on the rebound the amount of government consumption can -- and will -- be reduced because rising prices as economic activity causes a resumption of lending and thus decrease in effective reserve ratio and thus inflation will naturally shift resources away from fixed-price government contracts back into the free market (i.e., $1 of government money will no longer buy as much). We have equations on how this happens that have accurately described this behavior during past recessions. We don't need speculation, talking points, or "common wisdom" here, we have data.
4. everyone knows the phrase "no pain no gain",Talking point and "common wisdom" borrowed from the sports world that is actually contradicted by facts. What exercise physiologists have discovered is that if you are in actual pain while training for an athletic event (as vs. mild discomfort), you are overtraining. Athletes who train to the point of pain perform more poorly in athletic events than athletes who train to the point of mild discomfort. In short, "no pain no gain" has been utterly discredited and refuted by science -- if you have pain, what that means is that you're causing muscle breakdown, and muscle breakdown is *never* good if you're trying for optimal muscle performance.
As is true for physiology, so is true for economies. Unemployment beyond the amount needed in order to keep human resources mobile is *never* good. Mild discomfort (i.e., unemployment around 5-6%) can be good for an economy because it allows the economy to shift resources around to what's most in demand, but once you pass into actual pain, you are contributing to the sort of deflationary cycle that is not solvable via pure capitalism.
Blessing like belt tightening, going back to school, providing venues for humility and charity, focusing on what in important in life, *a smaller carbon foot print!*, slowing the pace of urban sprawl, and restructuring society for future sustainable growth.Some of these are undoubtedly good things. But people do not willingly starve to death. Real unemployment is now somewhere around 20%, and those people are starting to run out of resources as food pantries and soup kitchens become overwhelmed and run out of food and family and friends become overwhelmed and unable to provide further support to the unemployed. They will do whatever it takes -- WHATEVER it takes -- in order to avoid starving to death. We will need some sort of government intervention here because capitalism has no -- zero -- mechanisms for solving the problem other than "let them eat cake", and that works no better today than it did during the time of Marie Antoinette. The French Revolution was a disaster not only for the French aristocracy (who all lost their heads -- literally), but for the people of France, since it led to the rise of the despot Napoleon and the death of probably 25% of adult Frenchmen in Napoleon's endless wars of conquest. I think we need to avoid that example, thank you very much. If it means that I'm going to be taxed a few percent higher in order to provide food stamps to people currently not eligible for food stamps, well, so it goes. Better that than lose my head (literally).
Come on people, look at this thing holistically. I don't buy that the end of the word is nigh if we don't spend 2 more trillion. Let's start taking our lumps and quit whining.Who's whining? I'm talking about facts here. The fact is that without serious intervention in the economy, we are going into a deflationary spiral that will result in the collapse of capitalism much as happened multiple times during the 1800's and almost happened in 1932. If capitalism collapses unemployment is likely to peak at around 50% before things start getting better, and the only reason they'll get better is because America and Americans will be so impoverished by then that we'll be living like the Mexico City garbage dump inhabitants who survive by scavenging rotting banana peels and such from the piles of reeking garbage, i.e. they'll get better because it will be impossible to get worse.
We do not live in the agrarian nation of the 1850's, and we cannot survive severe depressions and the collapse of capitalism today by hunkering down on our farms and growing our own food. In the 1850's it didn't matter if capitalism failed for a while and reduced the economy to a barter economy for a few years. But we don't live in that world anymore. For better or for worse we hitched our horse to capitalism, and if capitalism fails today, the suffering -- and outright death toll -- would be horrific. What that means is that we have to do whatever it takes to keep capitalism from collapsing, and the first thing that has to be done is prevent a deflationary spiral, which means we have to figure out some way to get that $2T of disappeared dollars back into the economy -- and circulating, NOT under mattresses, where it's useful for nothing other than mattress stuffing. Since capitalism has no mechanism to do this, we are, by default, stuck with government doing it. If you have some other mechanism in mind, tell us.
-- Badtux the Economics Penguin
Republicans talking about fiscal discipline is like a street-walker preaching about chastity.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
So now the newspapers are filled with triumphalist natterings about how Ronald Reagan was responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall (even though it happened during the presidency of George H.W. Bush) yada yada yada. To which I have only one word to say:
BULLSHIT.
The Soviet Empire fell because the cost of empire bankrupted the Soviets and their creaky command economy was incapable of dealing with the information age, not because of anything Reagan did or didn't do. The first cracks in the Soviet economy were visible as early as the late 1960's, when Soviet attempts to build a moon rocket failed because their creaky command economy was simply incapable of building big rocket engines or the complex computer systems needed to control large clusters of smaller engines. The basic problem was the intermediaries problem -- modern technology requires thousands of intermediate steps to create the final product, and arranging for the production of those intermediate products in order to get the final product is a huge task. Capitalism's solution to the intermediaries problem is to train economies via tokens ("money") to produce the intermediaries needed for the final product, i.e., it is a neural network type solution that "trains" the economy towards the desired goals. But the Soviets never managed that, meaning that their economy by nature was inherently inefficient and could achieve complex goals only with horrific overheads. Couple that with the huge costs of maintaining an empire -- oil deliveries to Cuba alone took up massive amounts of oil that could have been sold for hard cash on the open market to buy things the Soviets needed from the open market, for example -- and the outcome was certain.
Indeed, by the end entire sectors of the Soviet economy actually had *negative* outcomes -- they consumed more resources than they produced in outputs. As a result, the Soviet infrastructure started collapsing in the early to mid 1980's. The most important collapse was of their oil and gas delivery infrastructure, which suffered multiple explosions due to leaks caused by poor construction and maintenance during those years. In fact, the most direct cause of the collapse of the East German regime was nothing that anybody in the West did: rather, the cut-off of natural gas deliveries to East Germany in the aftermath of the Ufa gas pipeline explosion resulted in much suffering and misery to the point where even the secret police had finally had enough.
In short, all that Reagan managed to do was scare the bejeezus out of everybody who was concerned that "Ronnie Ray-Gun" was going to push that red button. In that Reagan was crazy like a fox -- he had no intention of starting a nuclear war, he just wanted to bluff the Soviets into thinking that he was willing to do so if the Soviets did something stupid like mount a conventional invasion of U.S. client states, i.e., he did exactly what the Soviet leaders were doing at the time -- but this didn't cause the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc economies, and eventually the collapse of the regimes that controlled those economies, is what caused the fall of the Berlin Wall. All the Reagan triumphalism aside, this should be an excellent lesson for those who believe that America can continue absorbing the huge cost of empire and ignoring its economy. The Soviets thought they could do that because they were, after all, Communists, and thus thought they could merely command things into existence. But reality doesn't work that way, and right now it looks an awful lot like the USA is going the same way as the USSR, as the costs of empire and leaders who refuse to understand fundamental economics principles drag us down...
-- Badtux the Economics Penguin
Tracy Chapman, "Give Me One Reason". Okay, not usually what most folks would think of as dance music, but I dare you to be standing up while it's playing and your feet *not* move in time with the music...
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
We need some bold action from Washington, or things are going to go to hell in a handbasket. Unfortunately today's Democrats have all the spine of a jellyfish, and President Obama appears to be in thrall to his Treasury Department, which is led by Wall Street insiders, and hasn't proposed anything bolder than milk and cookies for bankers. Siiiiigh!
-- Badtux the Economy Penguin
The Mighty Fang and Mencken watching the Cat TV from their prime balcony seats.
-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin
see more Epic Fails
So... if you already died from using recreational drugs, yet you're answering this poll, does this mean that you are... uhm.... Jesus Christ?!
Chalk up one more fail for U.S. drug warriors, who have to be the dullest tools in the workshop...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
They are a disaster, pure and simple. According to the New York Times, real unemployment is at its highest rate since the Great Depression. I will talk more about the numbers -- especially regarding labor force participation declines (which indicate that the number of unemployed is significantly higher than the official figures, even the U-6 figures) later, because I'm out of disk space on my hard drive and thus need to upgrade to a larger hard drive, which will take all night...
-- Badtux the Geeky Penguin
Update: MacOS is installing on my hard drive right now. I'm bored and hooked up a monitor and keyboard to my Ubuntu Linux server to type this, usually my Macbook Pro is the only thing with a keyboard and monitor hooked to it.
We're having a mouse problem at work and the suggestion was made to bring in the Mighty Fang and Mencken to deal with the problem. I laughed. The boys are so lazy that they'd just look up at us and say, "you want us to do what?!". Or meow angrily that we weren't catching the mouse for them.
Here's the only mice they threaten:
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
The Mighty Fang has developed a new trick. He's found that if he starts to nuzzle the wires on my computer desk while he's sitting in my lap, I'll stop typing and cuddle him against me. Both annoying and adorable at the same time, heh!
-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin
The right-wingers claim that they actually DO have a plan for health care: Simply remove all government regulation of healthcare altogether, and the Magic Free Market Fairy will wave her magic wand and magically provide health care for all Americans. I have just one question for these folks: Can they point to one nation, any nation, anywhere on this planet, where this in fact actually works?
[crickets]
Uhm, hello? (tap tap tap). Uhm, guess not.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Iraqi government spends millions on bomb detectors that are nothing but sticks.
Afghan policeman kills 5 NATO soldiers.
These are our allies? Uhm... no. We should be gone. Period. Else we risk more U.S. soldiers cracking and going on shooting sprees... enough. Enough.
-- Badtux the "Enough is enough" Penguin
The MSM is rushing to say that there's "lessons" to be learned in two Democrats winning House seats (including one who ran in a district that hasn't elected a Democrat since the founding of the United States) and two Republicans winning governorships. It's nonsense. Utter nonsense. All politics is local, and these folks won their respective elections because of local issues. Corzine was booted because of corruption, the two Democratic Congressmen won because their opponents were out-of-district Republican crazies who didn't speak to the concerns of the district, and the Democratic candidate in Virginia lost because he was a rural candidate when the majority of Virginia Democrats are urban so the Democrats voted with their seats -- they stayed home.
Of the races, only the governorship in Virginia was perhaps a statement, and that statement is that white Democrats from rural districts who run on a conservative platform don't turn out the predominantly liberal youth and minority votes needed for Democrats to win. Deeds was a horrible candidate for the governorship -- he was from a part of Virginia that hasn't voted for Democrats in state-wide elections for decades, he was a rural candidate when the majority of Democratic voters are urban, and he ran a race that was basically indistinguishable from his Republican opponent. So Democrats stayed home, independents said "why vote for a fake Republican when we can vote for the real thing?" and of course the Republicans would have voted for a red dog if the red dog had an (R) by his name.
But of course the punditry is going to spin all of this one way or another. The simple fact is that in each state, either the opposing candidate was incredibly weak (yes, Corzine was incredibly weak -- the man was as corrupt as a $3 bill) or the winner had an organizational and money advantage that was hard to overcome. The political party only vaguely entered into it, even in Virginia the urban Democrats stayed home as much from geographical reasons ("why would I bother voting for some inbred hillbilly from western Virginia?") as for party reasons.
-- Badtux the Elections Penguin
a) Have idea for song. b) decide the basic verse-chorus structure of what you want to do. c) write fragments of lyrics. d) decide chord progressions and basic harmony. e) babble some lyrics into microphone while playing chords to see whether you can fit what you want into the basic chord progressions, then bounce a crude mix with a bit of compression and EQ to see whether the general sound is what you want.
Hmm. Not bad. The vocals seem a bit too warm, but that can be adjusted at the EQ control and it doesn't sound bad, exactly, just a bit muffled. And as usual, my guitar sounds great with just a bit of compression to even out the dynamics once I hit the chorus with its harder sound. So now I get to take all the verse fragments that I've been scribbling and actually fit them to the music. After I've played it through a few times, then comes the joy of recording. First I'll lay down the guitar track while quietly humming the melody/lyrics to myself so that I get the timing right, then record the vocals track with the monitor headphones on playing back the guitar track while I'm recording. Then I'll add tracks for whatever instruments I decide on -- harmonica makes a nice mournful sound, recorder makes a soft gentle sound, a bit of piano or organ, some electronic drums? And finally, the final mix-down... and mixdown... and mixdown... and re-recording of parts that won't mix the way I want... and mixdown...
You hear about people going into the studio for three days, and three days later there's an album. I have absolutely no idea how they do that, unless they're counting only the recording part, not the mixdown part. Getting all the parts mixed correctly is incredibly annoying and tedious...
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
Mazzy Star, Fade into You
Hope Sandoval looks like she's being held up by a rod stuck up her back, just standing at attention at that microphone whispering the lyrics into it. She looks like at any moment she might bolt from the stage and go curl up into a ball somewhere dark and quiet.
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
K-A-R-Z-A-I, apparently.
But I have one quibble. Thieu's very efficient secret police kept Saigon secure and relatively violence-free up to the end. It wasn't enough to save his bacon -- a terrorized population under the thumb of a brutal dictator is hardly eager to resist invasion (just ask Saddam Hussein -- oh wait, not possible!) -- but clearly Thieu was more effective than Karzai, who can't even secure his own capital city.
In short, not only are we supporting a corrupt dictator in Afghanistan -- we're supporting a corrupt ineffective dictator. And how the fuck is that supposed to be in the best interests of the USA? Curious penguins want to know!
-- Badtux the Curious Penguin
