Poetry Corner

Good evening poetry lovers, tonights offering is from W.B. Yeats:  \Bullwinkle

A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home’ and drink your beer
And let the neighbours’ vote,
        Said the man in the golden breastplate
        Under the old stone Cross.

The rest of it is here.  I've been told that a statesman is a dead politician, but I 

could be wrong. Yeats died in 1939 but this bit is as fresh as tonights news, 

which would make it about 2 weeks out.

H/T to Greg for this one. 

The Future Of Transportation - Urban

Her you go folks, the Westward Interceptor III, a sporty single-seater just made for today's crowded urban environment.

Shown here in NYPD meter-maid regalia and Popsicle truck body form, this little baby is actually slightly larger than a Smart For Two, but can be had in pickup or van form, either of which will out-carry the Smart. It has a 4-cyl F.I. engine of 61 hp with a 4-speed automatic, so performance should be adequate, and options include a tip-over warning to let the driver know they're going around a corner too fast.

Also included is an electronic speed governor that limits the beast to 40 mph, which looks to be in convenient plug-in form, suggesting that it's un-plugable as well, Un-plugged, it will reportedly reach 70 mph, but watch those curves.

Since this is considered a motorcycle in most states, insurance will be significantly cheaper than a car to insure, and parking into the curb is legal, although you may be required to wear a helmet while driving. It is built around a full roll cage and features sliding or hinged doors, so if you should over cook a corner, you just hop out, right it, and proceed on your way with damage limited to perhaps one of the mirrors.

Get one now and help your neighborhood begin to resemble a New Delhi traffic jam. Many of these should soon be on the used vehicle market as New York has decided to go with the more cost-efficient* Chevy Volt, which can spontaneously make a neighborhood look like an Iraqi traffic jam after an Al Quaida car bomb presentation.

America's answer to the Reliant Robin runs about $20K new and about $4K used, depending on condition.

*"Cost-efficient" apparently has a different definition than we're used to when used by Mayor Bloomberg.

Extorting Amazon

I could be wrong, but that's what it looks like. After several states were unable to squeeze money from Amazon over the collection of local taxes, Texas finally seems to have won its case.

To accommodate Texas, Amazon will add 2500 people to their payrolls, and spend $200M for no other purpose than to collect $260M to give to Texas.

If I ran Amazon, I'd see if Texas would take $200M in cash to simply leave me alone. It's the Chicago way after all.

Voting Twice

More or less in the same election, too.

In Wisconsin the unions have come up with enough petition signatures to trigger a recall election to remove the Governor. Signatories included Tim Tebow and Micky Mouse, but this is not considered a problem. In Wisconsin, they do things a bit differently in a recall. Superficially it's just like the general elections. The Dems have a primary to decide who will be the party candidate to run against Gov. Walker. Normally the Republicans would let an incumbent governor represent the party, and without a challenger from within the party, and he goes forward.

In a recall however, to get on the Republican primary ballot, all you need is 2000 signatures which the election commission (5-1 Dem) approves, and you get to run against the Governor in the Republican primary, which is open to anyone to vote in. Primaries are also famously under attended. A candidate from Occupy Wisconsin has gotten himself onto the Republican ballot. If he wins the primary, the election will be between two Dems, one running as a Republican.

To keep their governor, Republicans will have to turn out in high enough numbers to offset the truckloads of migrant voters and the trunk loads of absentee ballots found in abandoned cars after the election. Then do it all again in the general.

Aren't open primaries fun?

More details and many links at Samizdata.

Sittin' It Out

The election, that is.

Uncle favors this approach, being unimpressed with the available choices, and Robb finds his argument persuasive, but not convincing. I'm with Robb on this one. Let's face it, Attila the Hun isn't on the ballot this year so we make do with what we've got.

When you pull the levers this year, think about the difference control of the WH and Senate will make in the selection of two supreme court justices. It's not just the next 4 years, it's the next 20.

Mad Science

Now this is a whole lot more fun than ranting about politics and economics, although thoes probably have a greater impact on your life than doing this.

Unless you fail to keep an eye on the trajectory of the flying 55 gal drum your neighbor just lit off.

I Was Right

Yet again of course, predicting that the 450M rounds of 40S&W ammo ordered by the DHS would soon be on the market when the agency was disbanded.

Well lookey here: the War on Terror is officially declared over, so the DHS is now officially surplus to the national needs, thus the government will need to get rid of all that ammo. First right of refusal will probably go to the Mexican drug lords.

Science Fraud

When the Godfather decides he doesn't like you, for whatever reason, he sends around the stereotypical pair known as "Guido and Nunzio"*, who rearrange your outlook, or maybe just your looks. In extreme cases it's your metabolism that gets altered, from working to non-working.

The president, being from Chicago, understands this but has been briefed that outside of Cook county the overt practice of kneecaping your enemies doesn't play well. Instead, Guido and Nunzio show up with clipboards, briefcases, and EPA credentials.

If anyone thinks they are being heavy handed, remember they have lots of evidence to back up their assertions that whatever you're doing is bad for someones health. They do studies, sometimes taking hours to compile the data and produce the desired results. Of course if the frenzied number-crunching fails to deliver the goods, they simply cherry-pick the bits that do and bury the rest.

All you need is a FOIA lawsuit, and you too can be privy to the truth.

Update: In the first link there's an EPA official calling for oil companies to be crucified. This was a bit much for the DNC which has apologized. I'm sure they prefer public beheadings.

Vote Fraud

Don Surber wonders if Obama could ever get elected without vote fraud.

The Dems in the Senate don't seem to think so.

Chuck Schumer's position is that if the feds don't want to enforce a law, the states are certainly not entitled to enforce it in the feds place.

On Taking Those On-Line Surveys

Fun though they are, you knew there had to be an ulterior motive, right?

Some 2 weeks ago I was directed to a 13-question survey on how politically knowledgeable I might be. The quiz was only mildly entertaining, and I scored 13/13. I also agreed with Roger, the Real King Of France that no one scoring less than 100% should be allowed to hold political office.

So here's the ulterior motive. The survey was a Pew sponsored item which determined from the answers and background questions of those taking it that:

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

I am proud to have upheld my end of the deal.

Clever Inventions

Some better than others, some I expect to see at some point. I like No's 36,37,43, and 44.

One thing though, can anyone tell me what's wrong with this one?

Or is there nothing wrong with it, and we're seeing a brilliant piece of marketing genius?

Speaking of clever inventions, Blogger has "updated" the tools used for post writing. Nothing has actually changed, but everything is now in a new location. One improvement, pictures are now inserted where the cursor is sitting instead of the default location at the top of the post. Another improvement: Strikethrough font has been added.

One non-improvement: Spell Check still doesn't work in the titles.

Deep Truths About The Upcoming Election

Found here, the article goes on at some length on the dynamics of the impending /end of the world/ election.

If Obama wins, he will be elected by those who stayed home because they thought Romney not conservative enough.
If Obama loses, it will be because of people who voted for Romney and then lied about it.

So either way, the result will be YOUR fault.

Green Energy

Over at Zero Hedge, always a good source of interesting tidbits, I find an article on the increasing number of major power outages in the U.S. Here's a graph:
Evidence, if you will, that the Obama administrations war on coal is working. A shut down power plant here or there doesn't show up until demand for power outstrips supply and the old plant isn't there to bridge the gap.

A rational marketplace would shut down less efficient plants and replace them with the most efficient equipment out there, both economically and technically. Windmills and solar panels, alas, don't qualify here so while your utility is investing in both of these, the old coal plant they're shutting down probably produced more power for less money than all the windmills they ever bought.

In a recession, demand drops. If the infrastructure is being systematically pillaged, the supply can drop faster than the demand and the result is first sporadic outages, then rolling blackouts.

Also it does well to remember that the secretive cabal of insanely rich folks isn't getting richer when their enslaved workers are sitting around in a darkened factory waiting for the lights to come back on.

On This Day In History

April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began.

Four years ago, this blog started.

Update: I'd like to thank all of you who read here, and comment too. Yes, even the troll. When you're as small as I am, having your first troll is an important milestone.

Immortality

In an article that brought back memories of headlines blaring that practically everything caused cancer when fed to lab rats in sufficient doses, usually measured in pounds or gallons per day, here's one in which the more or less expected result was neatly turned on its head.

Instead of dying of horrible malignancies within days of starting a regimen of a daily dose of carbon, the lab rats actually doubled their expected lifespans. This is attributable to a couple of things. First the carbon was in the form of the C-60 molecular form, popularly known as "Buckyballs". Secondly, the buckyballs were delivered in the heart-healthy Mediterranean form also known as swimming in olive oil.

The dose:

“Here we show that oral administration of C60 dissolved in olive oil (0.8 mg/ml) at reiterated doses (1.7 mg/kg of body weight) to rats not only does not entail chronic toxicity,” they write “but it almost doubles their lifespan.”

Let's see, given a male lab rat of some 500g, this works out to about 1 ml of "black oil" per rat, per day. For a typical human, me for example, of 77 kg, that's 154ml of this glop every morning with breakfast. Mama mia! Thassa lotta olive oil! You might live twice as long, but I know where you'd be spending all that extra time.

Of course it's also easier to get humans to ingest generous doses of stuff they would not normally overindulge in if you just package it in a gelatin capsule and suggest they wash it down with a Martini, so there's hope for this yet.

At the bottom of the page at the link, there's an ad for buckyballs. They are, alas, a large plastic assemblage suitable for science lectures, and for most people, inedible, even after several Martinis.