See Light But Squander Heat

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You know what I don't get - and, I ask, do you get this? The federal government is outlawing Thomas Edison's cheap source of good illumination, the incandescent light bulb, but is not banning the sale of water heaters as sold in their present, apparently incomplete and energy-wasting - not fully insulated - form.

If, as our elites keep lecturing us but are doing precious little about it, the US national goal is reduction of energy consumption as a means of attaining national energy independence from foreign sources, then why are water heaters sold without those aftermarket insulating jacket kits. You know, the big awkward horse blankets of plastic-sheathed fiberglas insulation that energy experts and every HVAC dealer in the land urge us, if we are really concerned about slimming down our gas & electricity consumption and bills, to bundle and tape round our water heaters. Why, then, is our federal government's chief (ir)responsible agency, the DOE, not banned, or proposed legislation to end, the sale of halfway-insulated water heaters , and begun the New Energy Progressive Era of properly factory insulated, or upon-installment fully insulated, water heaters?

Isn't selling halfway-insulated water heaters rather like selling new homes topped with half-insulated roofs?

Is there a natural gas utilities lobby resisting a mandate for fully factory-insulated water heaters, or a water heater manufacturers' lobby looking to keep water heater prices down and thus more appealing by not fully factory-insulating these energy gobblers? Wouldn't you think that fully factory insulated water heaters and a federal law to mandate their exclusive manufacture and sale makes sense?

Isn't this also true of other halfway-efficient appliances? For instance, why aren't maximally efficient new-manufacture refigerators, washers, dryers, computers, TV's, HVAC systems the only government-permitted types to be sold? But then none of those appliances can be made more efficient by their owners applying, as to water heaters, an aftermarket energy-conserving add-on - which is why the lack of legislation forbidding halfway-insulated water heaters just seems to stand out as peculiarly ignorant and absurd. Where is the Obama administration's Water Heater Full Factory Insulation Czar?

Of the incandescent light bulb ban US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said last Friday, "We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money." Here's a tip, Mr. Secretary: how about banning consumers' non-choice of being forced to buy inadequately insulated water heaters that make people, you know, "waste their own money"?

It doesn't hurt to ask, does it?

Weiner, Women, & Song...

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To the tune of The Beatles' "She Loves You":


You sext her, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
She sexts you, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

If you think your sext is prive,
well, we saw it yesterday.
It's you it sure describes,
and despite the lies you say-yay
We know it's Weiner!
Can't mistake that that you're so bad!
Weiner, it's you, man!
You don't care your act's so sad!

You know those shorts are yours:
that's your weiner dangling there.
Unwise of you to sext...
the jail bait - you don't care!
And then you lie, man!
The world knows you're a cad.
Then you lie more, man!
even though your wife's so sad.

You sext her, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
She sexts you, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

If you think you've got our votes,
you'd better think again.
Your lies have exposed you:
now we know your sleazeball game!
Because you lie, man!
The game is up for you.
Yet you lie more, man!
Don't give a damn who you have screwed!

You sext her, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
She sexts you, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

As transparent as glass
was your apology.
No one believes you any more:
blame your insincerity!
Because you lie, stud!
No one trusts your phony ass.
Because you lie, dude!
Now your district's up for grabs!

We know you lie, stud, "Blah-blah-blahhh!"
So go resign, dude, "Waaah-Waaah-Waaah-Waaa-a-a-a-aah!"

Windows 7. Microsoft. Bastards.

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Three days since my old PC, that used Microsoft XP, died and I replaced it with a new PC that uses Windows 7. Microsoft, when they imposed Windows 7 on unsuspecting customers, are bastards.

They even managed to fuck-up solitaire: it wasn't broken, but they went ahead and "fixed" it, "improved" it, anyway. They made a clear simple fun game so bizarrely over-busy so that I don't enjoy playing W7 solitaire - because it hurts my eyes just to look at it. Its over-busy design elements (cursor-on halos round cards; stupid outlines around cards and permanent outlines around even the empty spaces where you know very well cards can and do go - outlines which DO NOT APPEAR on your table top when you use a real deck of cards; horribly busy, needless-sheened-&-shaded, fuzzy-resolution suit symbol, card face and back designs that hurt to look at) and the overall excessively busy visual design hurt my eyes just to look upon the screen. It is now visually painful just to play this game whose earlier design made it fun to play. Not only that, but instead of getting DEAL AGAIN? at game's end, I now see pop-up Third Degree screens that give me a no less than two-step Third Degree just so I can , you know, DEAL AGAIN. Microsoft. Bastards.

It seems that, unlike XP, with this W7 I can't even set another e-mail program as my default e-mail. When I tried to learn how to do this in W7 the Microsoft in-computer and online "support" (Ha!) Full Of Empty Useless Crap screens just sent me round in circles without affording a means to replace - what else! - Microsoft's crappy e-mail program as my default e-mail.

Tabs: Can't make my browser open new sites in tabs - the browser insists on opening them in whole new windows. Microsoft. Bastards.

Taskbar: now, instead of instantly reading the XP-style app-icons in the taskbar, Microsoft removed the text on the app-icons which are now, in W7, nothing but dumb fucking symbols...onto which I now must place my cursor to make a mini-thumbnail of the app pop up: so Microsoft took a no-step function and turned it into a 1) move-cursor, 2) wait for thumbnail pop-up, 3) read thumbnail pop-up, 4) move cursor back where I need it to be four step pain in my ass. Nothing like one giant leap backward for mankind there, back to Bronze Age pictographs. Microsoft. Bastards.

Games: they took away pinball which, aside from solitaire (which, as we learned above, Microsoft has now ruined, turned into an implement of torture), was the only other pre-installed computer game I enjoyed playing.

My Pictures folders: in XP My Pictures folder icons showed wee thumbnails of their contents - so that you could ID the contents by the wee thumbnails or by reading the folder icon text. But W7 "improves" - screws this up - Big Time by giving us folder icons that are half-fanned open so that you can't tell what the now in-perspective half-hidden and now distorted icon thumbnails are - it forces you to read the icon text, deprives you of ID-ing the folder by the useful old style wee thumbnails. Microsoft. Bastards.

I have lots more serious complaints against Microsoft, but this is a blog entry, not a book in several volumes.

Atop all those serious flaws, W7 has so-called "HELP" screens and links to Microsoft "support" web pages - both of which, as was also true of Windows, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, send you round in neverending circles while never answering your simplest fucking questions. Microsoft. Bastards.

And I'm still waiting for a simple, thoughtful, kind, eminently humane app, or feature, that lets me disable, or reassign, keyboard keys - just so I can disable the endless pain-in-my-ass CAPSLOCK and INSERT keys that daily waste more of my time than I'd waste waiting everyday in the line at the Division Of Motor Vehicles.

Guess what, Microsoft? When in the usual three - at most four- years this new desktop Windows 7 PC dies, I'M BUYING A MAC!

Microsoft, you just insulted and lost a customer, turned her into a Cassandra who will tell everyone she knows how shitty Microsoft products and services are, how worthless and insulting Microsoft "customer service" and "support" are, and how Microsoft holds its customers in utter contempt: I can't even get to talk to anyone at Microsoft, because Microsoft has the gall to let me know (only after I navigated through dozens of their defensive fortifications' screen pages of automated Growing Frustration & Customer Insult & Defeat steps) that for this brand-new Microsoft product I would have to PAY THEM TO TALK TO ONE of their minor "support" employees.

Buy another PC with Microsoft in it? NOT FUCKING AGAIN. Not even with someone else's money.

The Doormat Medal

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Now circulating for approval round the US command in Kabul, Afghanistan is a proposal for a medal to be awarded to members of the US armed forces who show "courageous restraint" in execution of the COIN tactics mischosen and misapplied by General Petraeus and his ilk. This decoration deserves to be called what it is: the Doormat Medal. (Other suggestions: the Dhimmi Cross; the Dhimmi Disc; the Yellow Stain [apologies to Herman Wouk]; the I Have Not Yet Begun To Have Been Allowed To Fight medal; the Allahu Akbar Award; the Afghanistan Highway Safety & Transportation Certificate of Demerit; the "Kick Me" medal; the "By All Means, Do Tread On Me" medal; the WAOU [pronounced "Wow."] - Walk All Over Us - award; the Anti-Campaign medal; the Punching Bag Star; the Eat Shit And Die medal; the Why We Don't Fight medal; and the Loser's Badge.)


If this "honor" is indeed instituted, then I will want a custom rug woven in the color pattern of its ribbon, so that each time I enter or exit my home I'll walk all over it and think hard on the lives of our boys and girls surrendered gratis to the enemy - the lives handed, by our spineless "leaders", unnecessarily, avoidably, and unconscionably to the enemy under the horrifyingly misconceived, appallingly inapt, utterly stupid kid gloves COIN "strategy." Nothing like sending the right message to our enemies, is there?

Raising Arizona

Congratulations to the people of Arizona for having succeeded at getting their elect to pass the state's new law which adds checking suspects for US citizenship to law enforcement's brief. Of course the Beltway bien pensant and the we-know-what's-best-for-everyone mainstream media elite don't like the new statute. But with one in ten American citizens out of work our elect-elite seem awfully blasé about having swarms of illegal immigrants - invaders, to be precise - pour onto our soil to debase the coinage of US citizeship and to make of themselves and their progeny yet another burden to be borne by US taxpayers.


The new law embarrasses our Beltway elect because it gets Arizona state employees to do the job that we're supposed to have the federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement federal agency for. If ICE had been doing its, you know, Enforcement, job then Arizonans wouldn't have had to defend their state's sovereignty.

Viacom's Dhimmitude

I'm no fan of South Park because its vulgarity assaults my sensibilities (the best satire needs no help from scatology); and because the shrill puerile voices its "creative team" gives to the show's characters grates down to my marrow. Yet to Viacom, for its dhimmitudinous haste to sanitize South Park's 200th episode of all depictions and verbal references to Mohammed, I must recommed Benjamin Franklin's timeless observation:


"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Babe In Bethlehem

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Merry Christmas! (Photo: Christmas Day 12:47PM, view from my living room window across to Willmore Park, St. Louis)




May the grace and peace of the Infant Jesus be yours.

Lest We Forget

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Sixty-eighty years ago today, out of a bright blue Sunday morning sky, Japan sneak-attacked Pearl Harbor. Lest we forget.

Postal Service Makes Santa Letters Go Belly Up

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How many more adults will spoil things for children (and for other adults)?: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hCHNHQco9s98ruRro8qyPD2vwB_AD9C2K4TG3

Bye-Bye Daylight Savings Time, Kimosavee

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Republic of Lakotah site relates:

"When told the reason for daylight savings time the Old Indian said: 'Only the Government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom and have a longer blanket.' ”

Liu Bolin, The Invisible Man

Artist Liu Bolin paints himself into his environment: http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man

More here: http://www.thisisdiversity.com/articles/all/2282/chinese-artist-paints-himself-invisible/

　

　

Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!

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Atomic goodie for you. How big is small? How small is big? As I sat here in my cell, this I found illuminating (work the slider): http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/

Who Wears Short Shorts? - Or - Decadence Alert!

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Two things Belgium invented: "French" fries and...the Famous Underwear Museum.

Honestly.

Why not go to Saks or Bonwit, or what have you, and see the damn skivvies for free before the famous buy them?

Let's look on the bright side: the museum's debut may vex the crowd that denounce the Shroud of Turin as a fetish.

Neather World

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A public statement by former Labour speechwriter Andrew Neather reveals that Britain's Labour party (the liberals over there) determined secretly, without so much as a by-your-leave to British voters, the deliberate immigration policy of forced multiculturalism to alter willfully the makeup of the UK population.

Ever Wonder Why...?

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So how come the British drive (or motor) on the left but ride their underground escalators on the right?

Flying Down To Rio

What was this - Brazil's Olympic anti-aircraft trials? No, just another turf war among drug gangs.

Another Iraqi Our Boys Will Have To Go Back To Winkle Out Of A Hole?

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UPI reports Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has been up to some clever democratic tricks in behalf of himself and his party. Perhaps President Obama might suggest to Maliki that he take a Ba’ath?

A Leonardo Found

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By a fingerprint in its media (surrounded by the white box) a hitherto misattributed Leonardo is found. How marvelous it is to look upon a so splendid a work from that superlative, nonpareil genius.

COP Keating (Kamdesh), follow-up

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To buttress the conclusions I drew in my previous post, this from a 9 January 2009 Jason Motlagh report on combat outpost Keating (Kamdesh):

“Given their low-lying position at the base of a ravine carved by the Landay River, members of B Troop, 6-4 Cavalry train their weapons at a 45-degree angle during firefights, shooting up into the trees where insurgents creep almost unseen.”

Little Dienbienphu

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George Santayana's epigram needs repeating (again, dammnit): "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The recent Taliban assault which breached the outer perimeter of the US-ANA outpost at Kamdesh, Afghanistan, seems to be the fault, the responsibility of someone, or many someones, in the US armed forces who did not bother to study the French Union Forces 1954 defeat by the Viet Minh at Dienbienphu.

Kamdesh invited enemy assault before the Taliban attack on it began. Kamdesh repeated all the errors the French made at Dienbienphu, and the officers who chose it actually made worse errors than the French made. Both Dienbienphu and Kamdesh lie in low ground, in the middle of valleys. The main French base at Dienbienphu was at least a short distance from the mountains that ringed it - so it was like being at the bottom of bowl; but the outpost at Kamdesh is like the bottom of a test tube - it's in a tight valley, not just surrounded but hemmed tightly in by precipitous peaks which gave the Taliban terrain even more advantageous than that enjoyed by the Viet Minh around Dienbienphu.

Both battles were also intelligence failures: in both cases the defenders' intrinsic and higher command intelligence operatives failed to detect the long, slow enemy buildup of positions, weapons, and troops that came to surround and assault the outposts.

In both battles the enemy assault forces could and did shoot down, not just at the troops holding those outposts but also down at the aircraft upon which both of those posts depended for resupply and casualty evacuation.

I've nothing but the highest praise and eternal respect for our US soldiers' expertise, grit, and bravery, and I have - perhaps - praise also for some of the ANA soldiers (our US troops themselves will tell you that ANA units' loyalties are not to be trusted, and about a dozen or so of the ANA defenders of Kamdesh seem to have gone missing - captured or killed by the Taliban, or...?). Yet direct comparison of superior officers' choice of Kamdesh with that of the French high command's choice of Dienbienphu cannot, must not be ignored or dismissed. Given the experience of the French Union Forces at Dienbiephu the best I can say about the US choice of Kamdesh is: you can't make this stuff up.