We're not one of those "We told you so" sites, ...
Posted On: Saturday - September 22nd 2018 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity
... but, dammit, we told you so!
That is hopefully no slur on Peak Stupidity's loyal readers, just the 329,999,971 other Americans who get their stupidity off the Lyin' Press. It's been 2 DECADES now, that we've been hearing there are 11 million, oh +- a half million, per somebody's rectally-extracted value, from that time. (I.E. it wasn't necessarily near the mark in 1998 either, but definitely lower than now. I quote Peak Stupidity here from 1 2/3 years back, in Illegal Aliens effect on Election '16:
Let's be realistic about the numbers also - this 11 million number is total bull, as that number of illegal aliens was claimed back at the turn of the century, and it was rectal extraction-based, just as my 30 million right now is. I could see there being 5 million illegals just in California, and yes, I have spent time there.Ann Coulter has used a working number of 30 million illegal aliens living in America since at least this column, from 2013, but I have no idea if she had written that earlier (she writes A LOT about this subject!). Her numbers, as I recall fairly well, but from a different article, were from estimates from financial firms.
Now, this new study* from Yale university, "models" numbers about 1.5 to > 2 x the old undocumented 11.5 million value, coming up with "oh, somewhere between 16 and 29 millions [sic]", per:
After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers’ 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean.Do you see first why I had the quote marks around "models". Monte-Carlo simulation? 1 million simulations? Give me a break, researchers. That's for physics. This estimation of illegal aliens doesn't require "modeling". Just find a good way to obtain your raw data. There are probably many ways to go about it this estimation, but you don't make a model of it all together. You try different methods, compare, try to find flaws in the ones that are outliers, and come up with a number with a tolerance band. I'll give them credit for not giving a number with a precision of 1 million, but this sounds like it's not much more accurate than my rectal-extraction figure that matches Ann Coulter's.
Most numerate people with common sense (they don't always go together) know that the number of illegal aliens is nothing like 11 million. Instead of this article being named "Yale Study Finds Twice as Many Undocumented Immigrants as Previous Estimates", I'd have named it "No shit, Sherlock".
* See VDare take on this by Steve Sailer with comments here on unz.com.
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New, conservative sources of caffeine
Posted On: Saturday - September 22nd 2018 6:19AM MST
In Topics: Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
There is an article up on VDare by one Hubert Collins that hits on a couple of Peak Stupidity core competencies (picked that term up from "Josh" at the all-hands meeting) at one time. The first is the idea and usefulness of boycotts/buycotts, per our 3-part series on "Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs who should shut their mouths more." ( Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 ) A quick take is that these actions can indeed hit the Big-Biz people who want to ruin our world. where it counts, in their profits and stock prices. However, boycotts and buycotts can get complicated, confusing, and even conflicting, but please read the 3 articles for Peak Stupidity's entire take on the subject.
The second interest in the article is the hard-left attitudes of Big Biz in modern America, which is due to our crony capitalist system. Big-Biz must stay in the good graces of Fed-Gov, so must act accordingly ctrl-left. VDare's sole priority is immigration. Since any individual or entity who is not a real conservative these days is pro-immigration-invasion, Mr. Collins writes in favor of the Austrian company that is conservative, or at least not actively ctrl-left, in Boycott Starbucks (They Hate You!) Drink Red Bull Instead.
Mr. Collins gives lots of details of the left-wing, politically-correct, anti-Christian, anti-white, perfidy of the huge Starbucks coffee chain and its owner and CEOs, going back 20 years. He suggests drinking a can or two of the Red Bull energy drink instead of getting Starbucks coffee as a daily habit.
Well, I've gotta correct that term "energy drink". In the actual physical sense, I'd have to say hot chocolate, cokes, and craft beer are the real energy drinks. The energy is locked up in the sugar and carbs, and can be used by the imbiber at a later time. Red Bull and the like have lots of caffeine, a drug like lots of others people get hooked on, which lights up the brain. It's not physical energy itself, but it sure makes it easier to make use of your physical energy. That said, this blogger does not need any new drug, so with this boycott idea, or switcharoo of caffeine sources, I would not personally make much of a difference to the economy of caffeine.
I have lately had a habit of buying a hot chocolate at the Starbucks chain weekly or so while hanging out with friends that do like their coffee. No, I'm not gonna turn them on to Red Bull. That's not just because they won't listen, but because this is more a social thing for us than a drug-delivery mechanism. I buy the hot chocolate, also as a social thing, and because the other locally-owned coffee shop is just a complete rip-off and, knowing the place, I'd bet much money that the ownership is as left-wing as it gets.
That last bit was all personal taste, but if you do partake in the caffeine, Hubert Collins' suggestion is a good one. We seem to have no say at all, as of yet, on the cultural stupidity going on in America. Big-Biz seems to be a leader in this, so hitting them in the top line is the best way to let them know, beating letters to the CEO and that sort of thing. It's just a good feeling too, to be able to do even one little thing. Mr. Collins seems to be a young guy, just judging from the Red Bull habit, and it's good to hear from guys like him with simple, practical suggestions:
So the next time you need to get some writing done, buy some Red Bulls and head to Starbucks. Buy nothing there, but use the free wi-fi and comfortable seating. You will need to bring some headphones though, as the music played at Starbucks is indeed unfailingly awful.Now, at first take, that seems kind of rude, but (see the rest of his article) it is nothing more than another application of one of one of Alinsky's rules, now used by Conservative radicals. Yeah, I know, Red Bull doesn't warm you up in the wintertime, and you can't get whipped cream on top - such is the life of a radical.
This may, or may not, describe what I am doing right now.
(More on the coffee shops here and here.)
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You know I read it in a magazeye-eee-eee-een...
Posted On: Thursday - September 20th 2018 6:52PM MST
In Topics: Music China Artificial Stupidity Female Stupidity
As promised, Peak Stupidity presents more of/about sexy "cyborg" Naomi Wu of Guangdong Province, China. (No, the sexy does not need the quotes, just "cyborg", I'm sure we'd all agree. Are you reading yet?) The information in that first post indeed came from a magazine, an on-line one called medium.com. Miss Wu's opinions in the interview presented there are of no consequence. They should be taken with a grain of salt (or perhaps a few hundred grains on the lip of a large margarita glass), as they should for pretty much any female under the age of Margaret Thatcher* deigning to discuss politics.
That wasn't the point of my presenting Miss Wu to the Western world though. I explained the two reasons in the last post, but I will re-titerate them here, just due to one particular excellent Elton John song, a real prescient blast from the past. Though she envisions herself as some computer-software-tech (just "TECH", they call it now) wizard, Miss Wu has a mighty youtube following due simply to her mighty artificial mammary glands and a scantily-clad hot body. She's under some kind of mistaken impression that it's her soldering and wire-stripping abilities, skill at following a schematic, and possible dexterity with Dremel tools that have been getting her the up-votes. Yeah, see, this is what I mean by post-menopausal only, for anything more than city water department clerk.
One may find these videos on youtube easily**, so I won't recommend a specific one, though they are better enjoyed with the sound off. You're not going to be watching them for technical content, as the fact is that nowadays there is nothing hard about making any project that uses computer logic and LEDs. These are what Miss Wu seems to enjoy as clothing enhancements, to bring attention to herself, which aids in the struggle for women to be judged by their words not their, well, "electric boobs". Did you say ... yeah that's from 40 years ago:
"Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet?Now, hold on a minute! Granted, when you're new to rock-and-roll, you're bound to start out with mild lyricosis. It seemed slightly possible that I was wrong on the bolded lyric when I first heard the classic live version of Elton John song from his best album ever, the 18-song Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's possible ... I mean, because I couldn't quite envision these "electric boobs" that Bernie Taupin, Elton's lyricist, mentioned. This was before cheap digital electronics and anything but red LEDs, keep in mind.
Oh, but they're so spaced out,
'B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets'.
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful.
Oh Bennie she's really keen.
She's got electric boobs, a mohair suit,
you know I read it in a magazeye-eee-eee-een,
'B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets'."
Could I have been wrong? Now, 45 years after Bennie and the Jets, this Naomi Wu could indeed manufacture her own set of electric boobs, I'm sure (did I mention that she's in TECH!?), but then I came upon another youtube video:
... you know I read it in a magazeye-eee-eee-een.
Oooohhh, electric BOOTS! (I guess that makes more sense??)
Yes, that is one of the latest projects by this female TECH pioneer, electric boots. One wonders what the purpose of inserting a TV set, or idiot box (OK, OK, a smart screen) in the 8" high heel of these boots was, aside from making Miss Wu's ass look that much better. I guess I answered my own question, but that's a lot of "engineering" time there. We're not gonna be watching the screen, young Cyborg Wu.
You're gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound:
This has Elton's great piano playing, but don't forget that this was a real rock band, not just the one guy. Check out the rest from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road sometime.
The band:
Elton John – piano, organ, vocals
Davey Johnstone – acoustic and electric guitars
Dee Murray – bass
Nigel Olsson – drums
* Pro-rated to the Falkland War era, of course.
** Look up "sexy cyborg" and "electronic boots"
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The Plantation Mentality and Misogyny of the Engineers and Technicians
Posted On: Thursday - September 20th 2018 12:37PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor Political Correctness Race/Genetics
Here at Peak Stupidity, rather than write all about politics, politics, politics, we need to spend more time on posts that should be our bread and butter, just everyday examples of stupidity and how high a level it's gotten to. Right now, it's not like things are getting any saner, so the material is endless. This will be one such post, in this case, on the continuing rise of political correctness to new highs, and most of the time, rather than getting upset, we should just enjoy the humor.
Political correctness is ostensibly about not offending the very small minority of people who may be easily offended, not even by purposefully offensive speech. I say "ostensibly", one, because it's a new big word for me (!), but also because I mean that there is evil intention behind PC on the part of the real instigators. They want to control thought via speech per the methods George Orwell presciently described in 1984. There are lots of ways to accidentally offend somebody, somewhere, and well, "let's just not take that risk" seems what's causing new PC trends. What's trending right now?
Any words that imply anything about slavery, that's one. Let's forget that just about everyone alive has some long-ago ancestors who were enslaved somewhere. Most of us don't dwell on it. Some certain people do. They don't want the words "Master" and "Slave" to be uttered, unless ... I dunno, slavery comes back, I guess. In technical endeavors, however, there is a problem. Many mechanical and electrical devices use these terms to describe the function of the system. Do you remember assembling a computer? It wasn't exactly a blast, to me anyway, but it'd save some bucks. There was the Master drive and the Slave drive, as I recall.
Now, in the mechanical realm, there are the non-powered hydraulic systems. In automobiles and small airplanes, you've got your muscle-powered hydraulic brakes, along with your clutch systems in cars too. The smaller-diameter cylinder, that one loads with human power moves a longer distance under a human-level force than the larger-diameter (but much-shorter-traveling) one that moves the brake pads or lever on the clutch with a much larger (leveraged, one might say) force. Without much movement, or significant elevation change, the pressure at the 2 cylinders is the same, meaning the larger one generates much more force than is put on the smaller one. There's your physics for the day, but notice I never used the terms one may need to specify or buy the parts. Why? PC! The cylinder that is moved by foot is the Master cylinder, while the cylinder that is moved, via fluid flow, to activate the high-force-requiring device, is called the Slave cylinder. OMG! Can they think of another term, these raciss engineers?!
Oh, your average engineer or car mechanic may say some bullcrap like "Hey, lighten up, people, it's not like whips and chains are involved, just DOT-3 or Mil-5606 spec hydraulic fluids." But see, it's the words that matter. That whole sticks-and-stones boomer excuse is not cool anymore, bro. You can't go around talking like that.
Next on the PC-enforcement docket, you've your electrical connectors, something mostly mechanical engineers, with a bit of electrical engineering involvement, are responsible for. Here's a set:
This gets pretty involved. If you've been to Radio Shack, you may have asked the guys for some male or female connectors for your power or data conducting needs. You've probably been told "I don't know what you're talking about," due to the fact that Radio Shack mostly has unknowledgeable idiots nowadays that just want to get commissions selling phones. Or, maybe they really never have been taught about the birds and the bees, ya think? Retarded Radio Shack personnel notwithstanding, the terms "male" and "female" seem pretty obvious to most, hence their being used by technical guys for perhaps a century to specify. One goes inside the other, kinda like, well, this is, after all, a family blog.
The use of obvious gender or sex terminology with electrical connectors can be not only fun, but also pretty descriptive of parts that otherwise may be difficult to explain. If you've got one female end of a coax cable that needs be connected to a female part on the box, well you need a gender-transfer connector! Yes, people use the terms. Sure, one still must specify male-to-male or female-to-female. Hey isn't that kinda homophobic right there? Why CAN'T one plug the male end into the male end? Ummm, ask a homosexual, I guess. Come to think of it (and yes, maybe we're branching away from our family-friendly core value here), there'd need to be SOME OTHER HOLE, no two ways about it. Should we start describing these special pass-through connectors as "gay" and "lesbian" connectors? I'm fine with that.
The set in the picture above is more complicated in terms of description (and manufacturing). See the ones with pins (male because they stick out, if you really haven't heard about the birds/bees) are contained in an overall housing one would call female. That housing surrounds the other connector's housing, provided there is enough moisture and foreplay ... uhhh, yeah, so one connector is male at the large level and female at the small level, while the other is the reverse of this. They still can get together and conduct beautiful current. I've called these connectors hermaphroditic myself. That can specify the idea of what's required, but not which is which part of the set. I think we can take heart in one possible benefit from all the new 72-flavors of gender business. We may get just the right terms to describe any configuration in electrical connectors an engineer could need. Of course, we'd have to know and understand the human instantiation first. Nah, let's just use part numbers.
The ironic thing about the Political Correctness stupidity as applied to this hardware is that the engineers, technicians, and mechanics are about the last bastion of the un-PC environment. They DON'T CARE about your worries about offensiveness. They've got a job to do. (Hmmm, is it possible those last two sentences go hand-in-hand?) Even at the auto parts store, there may be some retards, but nobody who will have a problem looking up a slave cylinder or a male wiring harness connector. I don't know how far this is going to get before Peak Stupidity.
Speaking of that, when will the level of silliness decrease, or at least plateau? Well, I can tell you that there are no plans to shut the site down in the near future, if that's any hint. However, as I've done a few times each year, let me point the reader to our "about" page, What is Peek Stoopiditee?. All of the facetiousness of that page aside, its point is that stupidity will not peak due to some inherent property, such as that of a power or torque curve of an IC engine. No, Peak Stupidity's working theory is that the general stupidity will peak following a peak in Global Financial Stupidity, which is the cause of an imminent economic crash. At SHTF-type times, even the high-level stupidity the Western world is experiencing will be cast off like a fur coat in the Sonora desert (and then not found again after nightfall occurs and the concept of radiant cooling is observed, speaking of stupidity.) When things get real, the stupid, all of it - feminism, economics, PC, Big-Biz - it all stops.
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Psychologists - Heal Thyselves!
Posted On: Wednesday - September 19th 2018 8:47PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Music Humor Feminism ctrl-left
The previous Peak Stupidity post on the Judge Kavanaugh nomination saga was about the politics of it. Here's a little more about the woman who made this ridiculous accusation regarding a 35-38 year ago (she can't seem to pin it down) drunken groping by the then-teenaged Brett Kavanaugh. The last of the 4 links to Steve Sailer in the previous post, Kavanaugh Accuser Wants FBI to Figure Out What Happened Before She Testifies Under Oath, has his usual NY Times excerpts (well, someone has to read it, I guess?) plus excellent comments, about this Christine Blasey, excuse me, Dr. Blasey. That's last is what I want to write about.
Mrs. Blasey has a doctorate in psychology, and that does not impress me one single bit. It's not just that it's one of the easiest majors in college (down there with journalism), its classes meant mostly for engineering majors requiring a few easy humanities electives to make time for the study of Thermodynamics. That's fine. Another reason a young man might take a psyche course is to meet the many (maybe 90%, whoo-hoo!) women who may be in there to fulfill an MRS degree requirement.
Some of the women, and a few men, in there, especially the ones that take it to the max, Piled higher and Deeper, are in it for another reason. They've got, let's just say, some problems. Nowadays, they'd be on some kind of spectrum, and I don't mean the vitamins. They go into the field to try to figure out their own problems. I've personally known two. This Mrs. Blasey seems to be one of these types. She's been in therapy herself and even worse, marriage counseling. This Sailer comment (and don't miss them) made this blogger LOL at the stupidity of this lady's understanding of just how much BS people are going to believe:
As I’ve been pointing out, so far nobody has come forward to stay that Ms. Blasey-Ford accused Kavanaugh by name before he became famous in late 2011 voting against Obamacare and then got talked up in early 2012 as a Supreme Court nominee. Her husband says she was worried about Kavanaugh getting on the Supreme Court when she they went to marriage counseling (although Kavanaugh’s name doesn’t appear in the therapist’s notes).You're killing me Sal, I mean, Steve, or really Mrs Blasey. Let me get this straight. A Supreme Court nominee was discussed during marriage counseling. Really? It wasn't stuff like:
"Yeah, she takes stuff out of the cabinet and never puts it back in the same place!" "So, if you'd find another place for your Harley besides in the living room ..." "You're just jealous of my Harley; it's sexier than you, since you've gained ..." "You take me for granted.... I clean, I cook, and what do I ge..." "Hell, she uses the smoke alarm as a timer, you call that cooking!"See, that's the kind of thing that goes on in marriage counseling (I can only assume, as I'M NOT GOING!). We are however, expected to believe it went more like this:
"Sex is not fun anymore, especially with her." "It's not my fault. Right when he was anally penetrating me, a couple a weeks back, no maybe it was in the eighties, I started really worrying that America was gonna get screwed if that Kavanaugh nomination was going to proceed out of committee..."Besides that point of mine that about psychologists needed to heal themselves, first, which I'd thought about for years, there was another somewhat relevant point I'm getting straight from a commenter. The feminist artist/icon of the 1970's, Mrs. Helen Reddy, sung a bunch of hits about people who were somewhat "off", if I may. Three of her hits were about that sort of thing, and I'd never thought of this before. Guess what, I read Mrs. Reddy's interesting bio on Wiki, and she wasn't a psychologist but did study a bit of parapsychology, as if psychology isn't fake enough for us.
I would not post these 3 songs if the tunes weren't good. I'd never though much about the lyrics until now, but the songs bring back memories. These were hit songs by Helen Reddy:
Angie Baby:
Delta Dawn (Great country song, not written by Mrs. Reddy):
Ruby Red Dress (leave me alone):
Is there any way Helen Reddy could be called up for the Senate hearing to come? She would make a great expert witness, just based on her song lyrics.
BTW, Ann Coulter (NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST!) nails the hypocisy in her latest article, with a lot of other ideas that appeared first in the Steve Sailer posts.
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Kavanaugh nomination - a man's got to know his
Posted On: Wednesday - September 19th 2018 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Feminism Media Stupidity US Feral Government ctrl-left Orwellian Stupidity
I really couldn't come up with a better title than Steve Sailer's Supreme Court Nominee Accused of Something Sometime in Distant Past, the first of 4 (so far!) posts of his on the Supreme Court nomination Senate-level stupidity (see here, here, and here for more good stuff).
Once in a while, Peak Stupidity WILL try to keep up with current events, otherwise usually known as fake news. This one IS really a doozy, as far as unadulterated fake-news stupidity goes. It's not the ctrl-left/Democrats' strategy of playing dirty game using Alinsky's (or one of those American Commie's) playbook that's the stupid part. We know those people are evil. Everyone on all sides of this Brett Kavanaugh nomination circus knows that the D's in the Senate want to derail the nomination process one way or another to drag it out past the 2018 election.
The stupidity lies with the naive, though maybe Deep-stated Senate Republicans. Many of them seem to be following along with this sham of taking seriously a possible, distant vague memory by some left-wing psychologist who supposedly is bent out of shape about something Mr. Kavananugh did as a teenager on or about, uhh, the early '80's. They could just state "this is nonsense. The vote is going to be Monday. Be there, or be square." Lots of them act like they must take this obvious plant of an accuser at her word, cause, you know, justice and shit. There are a few possibilities to explain this stupidity:
1) These Senators think this accusation deserves an investigation by the full weight of the law(men). Let me rephrase that - no, they don't really care that "we must be fair." They just stupidly think that their voters believe that. Yeah, right, that's why playboy Donald Trump got elected by the real conservatives. Do they think this is still the 1980's? Nobody wants Robert's Rules of Order from our side, while the ctrl-left follows Castro's rules of Order. We wouldn't have elected President Trump if we still wanted to play fair per the Marquis de Queensbury*.
2) More likely these Senators are not really on our side at all. They might not be in active collusion with the D's, but the last thing they want is for the Constitution to be enforced. They are going to try to run out the clock, but again, they figure their R voters will figure "well, he's nothing if not diligent and honest. It was his duty to get to the bottom of this. It's too bad it didn't work out."
3) They think the public is still gullible enough to feel sorry for some two-bit psychologist who may have not been treated quite like a lady, or a sober lady at least, when she attended a party she can't quite remember, by a coupla drunk 17 year olds. They figure most of their voters have never been teenagers, or drunk, or horny, I suppose.
OK, it's a mixture of stupid and evil then. Everyone involved must know how utterly ridiculous the accusation is, and the even-more-obvious timing of this. (There are rumors that the dishonorable Mrs. Feinstein, of California has another letter of accusation by the same "lady" against the previous Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice, Mr. Gorsuch!) If you're in the US Senate and care about this important nomination at all, you've got to just end the stupidity. You guys (the R-squad) supposedly run the place, for cryin' out loud. Are you all being pushovers on purpose? WWTCLD? What Would The Ctrl-Left Do? You all know damn well that the D-squad would just ignore this whole thing (that probably wouldn't even be known of course, as the Lyin' Press is on their side). Just have the vote. (I am surprised that the fake-conservative neocon Miss Lindsey of S. Carolina is on-board with going to a vote. It makes me wonder if the votes have already been counted, and Miss Lindsey will vote on principle - of "the man is always wrong".)
Judge Kavanaugh should have already told anyone who has asked that the accusation is false, period. Get yourself on the Supreme Court and don't fall for this stupidity. No matter what the real story was, even if you do remember something, a Judge's gotta know his limitations. The statute of limitations, that is, even if it's non-statutory rape.
In all this confusion (and the drunkenness), I can't remember if I groped one breast or two, or if was nineteen eighty- one or two. Miss Blasey, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Did you get lucky that day?" Well, DID YA, PUNK?!
* Don't quote me on this Queensbury guy. I just read this expression every week or so on the internet, so I figure the reader will get the point. It's like a friend that would always say "yeah, it's six and a half dozen or the other thing..." or something like that. I couldn't really understand the guy, but I got the idea after a while.
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Josh at Corporate and the All-Hands Meeting
Posted On: Tuesday - September 18th 2018 8:46AM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Big-Biz Stupidity
It doesn't have to be "Josh" for this post, but who's going to pin me down from that anyway? That's my beef today, in fact. These corporate guys think that we are supposed to know them by their first names only. I don't mean on CNBC or in the Wall Street Journal but to their employees. I get emails from Bill and "State of the Company" ones from Josh, some with corresponding youtube videos (yeah, that's real secure). Nah, not Bill Taylor or Josh Connor, but just "Bill" or "Josh".*
Sure, it'd be one thing if they could sing, play guitar, or show their tits-and-asses, like Cher, Prince, or Madonna respectively. (Bono and Sting are just a couple of more that come to mind, having been discussed on Peak Stupidity for other reasons.) These are members of management, mostly the Master Bullshit Artists. Yes, I have a problem with this.
For one thing, who do you people think you are? Most of us have 2 or 3 names to help people keep track of who we are. Do you think you are the only VP of corporate relations in the world? Do you believe people think that is a more important job than building the product, writing the code, or actually conducting the service that is your company's business? Secondly, I really don't know who the hell you are! You say, Bill ____, that you are glad to have taken this new position and here's our new goals and let me give you a pep talk. I say "Who are you? Bill who? I've never heard of you, I didn't know who the last guy was in this high position, I didn't know he left, and I don't really care who you are and what your plans are." I'm gonna' just do my job as best I can and be very, very thankful that I don't have to know who you are. That's the best kind of job.
I am lucky not to have to attend any All-Hand meetings, as I got burned out on that from raising my hand a few times and given an answer that was nothing but a blow-off. "Yes, you over there in the ball cap and blue jeans." "Yeah, hey, Bill, uh, I want to bring up this idea ...." "Yeah, what's the name again (like he's gonna remember)? We don't really need to do anything like that right now, but I raise that to Josh going forward ..." "Josh who?" "Our CFO, Josh, you all should have gotten his .pdf on the State of the Company." "Okay, I'll check my SPAM folder when the meeting's over." "Uhhh, yeah, see those .pdfs are really import..." "Oh, pager's going off, gotta go."
* In the future, it'll be tweets from Tanner, Connor, etc., but that'll be their first names. I won't be at that company.
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Sexy Cyborg - Miss Naomi Wu
Posted On: Saturday - September 15th 2018 8:15PM MST
In Topics: Music China Female Stupidity
"Maker" is on of those new terms people use for those who tinker with 3-D manufacturing and other new manufacturing processes, including even some real engineers, who don't know enough terminology to say anything less stupid. The woman above is one Miss Naomi Wu, a self-proclaimed "DIY and tech enthusiast" living in Shenzhen*, China. That's pretty reasonable a self-description there, but then Miss Wu is also a self-proclaimed "sexy cyborg". Sexy is correct, but she is no cyborg, unless I've been watching the wrong science fiction movies. A cyborg could not come up with much of the silliness I've read and seen of this woman, even if it were a were 24 years old with huge fake tits.
Peak Stupidity has only come upon Miss Wu and her videos and "makings" via a connection of this girl to the American-born Korean lady, Sarah Jeong, the anti-white-people NY Times head twitterer, that we discussed in a post last week. Apparently, Miss Wu was in some continent-to-continent, Oriental-on-Oriental, spat with Miss Jeong, and there was the usual tit-for-tat (or tit-for-much-bigger-tit). Please do not get excited yet, readers. There are no plans as of yet for any type of youtube-televised cage match, though I would sure want a part of it, and would suggest the half-way point of Hawaii, if anyone reading can make this happen. (First rule of Oriental-girl fight club - No sucking below the belt.)
I came upon this interview with the young Miss Wu, and it confirms my opinion that girls of that age and +/- 25 years or so don't have any opinions on life worth reading about. There may be some translation problems, but the flakiness and stupidity of this sexy cyborg are something else. I didn't get out of the long article what the spat is really about, but did learn that social justice, feminist, ctrl-left stupidity is not something contained only on the N. American and European continents and tectonic plates.
Miss Wu has a lot of followers on youtube, and is some kind of sensation. I believe she is under the impression that her political opinions and her ability to solder and follow a circuit schematic are the reason for her big following. The plain fact is, that this woman is famous on youtube for only 2 good reasons - the left one and the right one (OK, as we are viewing her, her right one and her left one.) You don't see this kind of endowment on very many Oriental girls at all, and that's not a big deal to me. They do, however, keep the eyes fixated on the whole nearly-naked package (it's got to be a little risky to solder like that, but they don't have OSHA over in China, luckily for the Chinese.)
That's what this spat between the rabid twitterer and the sexy cyborg is about, really, their attractiveness and love-lives. You won't read that in the interview, because I doubt these two really know themselves what their problems are:
No one will tell you I am a typical Chinese girl. I have a difficult background. I have had to fight for everything my whole life. When I became a tech enthusiast, due to my strange appearance I had to fight to be allowed to speak at events, and then fight for other Chinese women to be allowed to speak as well. In the West powerful men declared there was no way a Chinese girl could do what I do. I beat them and proved them wrong also. Still, if needed I will show up with my soldering iron and my kit anywhere if anyone doubts me. I am no coward to be easily bullied. My mother taught me that one day a man will beat you, and you should keep getting up until his hand is broken to teach him the lesson that it will never be easy. I live by that.Ancient Chinese secret huh? Yeah, sure, that'll work ... and, no, it's not that they want to hear you speak, do you wonder why they ask you to turn around and love it when you drop the pointer?
For the past few years, I’ve fought for my right to participate in my field as an equal- because I’m qualified not through some charity or quota. I fight in the tradition of the hacker community- with tech. I have engineered and deployed WiFi hacking drones to send messages and built and worn LCD clothing to attract a crowd to listen to me speak about letting Chinese women participate in tech events as more than just decoration. Why else do we encourage young women to learn STEM if not to empower them with new tech for a new age?Nope, you are not an engineer, young lady (more about this in a follow-up post). Haha, more attractive doo-dads on your body were "engineered" for "... letting Chinese women participate in tech events as more than just decoration."? Not exactly engineer-level logic there.
I’m Guangdong born and bred, daughter of the Ten Tigers, my ancestral home is Foshan- the same soil as Wong Fei-hung and Ip Man- you can’t come to our place and bully a local girl. Even if I die you can’t do that.Again the logic is not strong in this one. I don't care if it you come from the ancestral home of Wang Chung, you are a 90 lb 24 y/o girl. Talking like Braveheart is not cutting it - you would be best to find one of your favorite followers and settle down. You know you want that:
Like all Chinese I love children very much, since we have had so few under the one-child system. I am already twenty-four and I have no baby.You see those upvotes on youtube, Miss Wu? 95% of them are from guys who would like to help you make this baby.
I don't know why I got into this about these 2 girls, as this is not People Magazine. I've just never seen this type of stupidity at this level. Of course these two are exceptions, but it's definitely not what you'd expect out of the Orient. Both of them are nuts in their own way. There WILL be a follow-up of this young lady, not just for the pictures, but also because I have a song in mind that is so appropriate that ... coming next week.
Again, the lady above is no engineer, much less a Doctor, but Dr. Wu by Steely Dan comes to mind:
"Katy Lied" is the name of the 1975 album this song is from. There were so many musicians that played with these two guys in the studio that it was difficult to do live shows with them all, but it was Donald Fagan and the late Walter Becker who were Steely Dan.
*In Shenzhen they have
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Inflation by Deflation - building materials version
Posted On: Friday - September 14th 2018 7:39PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Economics Inflation
In our very first economics post, Inflation by Deflation, Peak Stupidity concentrated on Dannon coffee-flavored yogurt (guess I was kinda hungry at the time for 6 OUNCES, dammit) In The Destructive Power of Inflation we mentioned ice cream (also pretty tasty, so ...) In On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles, however, I wrote that it's difficult for the manufacturers of the major building products to do the same thing, that is, reduce sizes for the same price items in what I'd call cowardice by the marketing people.
Roofers, framers, and other tradesman have worked with certain standard sizes for a long time, and those sizes make for standard methods and structures. Roofing shingles, for example are now made in metric (SI) sizes, but they will only be used with others in those same unit on the roof. It'd be a problem to repair a metric-shingled roof with English unit shingles in 3-foot sections. For either unit stuff, though, were they to be shortened or narrowed by even a little, that would truly make trouble for roofers' calculations. It's still not so bad in their case, as they don't have to really fit with the rest of the building materials. A new roof could be made, but roofers don't like math that much.
Now, let's talk 2 by 4's ... 2 by 6's, 2 by 12's, fried 2 by's, sauteed 2 by's, knotty 2 by's, rotted 2 by's ... [OK, END GUMP NOW! - Ed.] Where do they get the name "two by four"? How would you know, as it's been 3/4 of a century since the cross section of one measured 2 inches x 4 inches? A 2 by 4 cross-section is 1 1/2" x 3 1/2". (No the length in feet is what is written so there's that, at least!) The 1 1/2" width dimension holds for all of this type lumber (through 2 x 12 etc.), while the longer dimension of the cross-section is 1/2" shorter than the nominal. We are now used to that.
BTW, I have read about the "inflation by deflation" of this lumber as having happened in WWII times or so, but I measured lumber in a 60-odd y/o house that is in between. It was either 1 7/8" or 1 3/4", though I believe it was the latter.
The thing is, I figure the corporate marketeers can't change these without big, big problems and pushback. They are used for framing of houses, the heart of residential building. If you reduce the 3 1/2" side even a little, that would mean house wall thickness change. It would make home repairs and upgrades a real bitch. (Yeah, one COULD use thicker drywall to match, but... nah,...). For both dimensions though, especially the 1 1/2" one, building codes would have to reflect these changes, as this would make the bending and buckling calculations built into the codes wrong. Structures would obviously be weaker, but I'll go into that more a bit later. If more "2 by 4's" were needed, at closer spacing, for the same loading, that would wreak havoc on use of the sheathing materials.
Plywood, drywall, paneling, and other sheathing material all come in 4 foot x 8 foot sheets. They can't change that either. That would screw up even new houses, though providing extra work for architects and engineers.
Finally, let's get to the reason I wrote this post - "One by's". Yeah, they haven't been 1" thick since I've been aware of my surroundings, but always 3/4" thick. If you want wood that's 1" thick, you've got to go buy "Five Fourths". That's just getting stupid, when you think about it, but I guess the building supply stores really didn't have another option for a name - "Real One By" lumber would make one wonder about the other stuff. OK, I'm used to 3/4" thick x 1 1/2" wood for use in outdoor table tops, etc. I hadn't had a use for the stuff in for long time, but I bought some recently. It looked a bit thinner, but then I'm a curmudgeon and all, so I should give them the benef...
Look at that fine print! (OK, yeah, I had to reduce it for the blog.) That 0.656" thickness used to be the 0.75" (3/4") dimension! I see even the width is less than 1 1/2" now. The difference in thickness is quite visible, and I measured it to check. Yep! BTW, it's not an odd number, that 0.656", it's just 21/32" - closer to 5/8" than 3/4". This is no small difference. To explain that, let me get to what I promised higher up here. This material will usually be used in a way that loads it in bending (as opposed to axial loading, etc.) As much as I want to get into the formula to explain, this post may have hit the limits of our reader's boredom tolerance already. I'll boil it down to this: In bending the "strength"* goes as the square of that thickness. This new, deflated, stuff has < 77% of the strength in bending as the old stuff. There's your inflation.
Do these marketing bastards really think that nobody will notice this stuff? It's not even the hidden inflation, due to the fact that they were too cowardly to just mark the price up, that perturbs me the most. It's that I've got to rethink what I want to build with, and I can't repair old stuff with the new... oh, maybe they are brighter and more evil than I thought.
* I put "strength" in quotes because that usage is accurate but not technical. Technically, the highest stress in the wood in bending occurs at the outside, it's this stress that goes up inversely with the square of thickness (linear with the other dimension, BTW). We should think of the strength of the material as a property of the stuff, whether, in this case, say yellow pine or poplar. We end up with higher stress in the same strength material which means colloquially "lower strength".
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9/11 - Never Forget?
Posted On: Friday - September 14th 2018 10:35AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Police State Anarcho-tyranny
... if it's still business as usual?
Peak Stupidity is up to nearly 100 posts or so related tagged with the Immigration Stupidity topic key. A big, probably more intractable problem of America's immigration stupidity is visa-overstaying. We have harped on this a number of times, most recently in the post The America motel - they can check in, but ....
The Anarcho-tyrannical ridiculousness of Police State America's treatment of Americans vs. foreigners can be seen with its non-immigrant-visa policy or lack thereof. As an American with a blue passport coming into America, or just a driver getting pulled over for rolling through a stop sign, you often get the 3rd degree, and "the law is the law - I have no leeway." Or, try just not filling your Fed income tax form out a few years in a row. Yeah, we have a strict rule of law for American citizens but then don't make any effort to keep track of when foreigners, supposedly visiting for tourism or business, don't make it out of the country on time, if at all. I don't see that the IRS is all over their asses.
Michelle Malkin, one of our favorite pundits with the usual caveat for women, wrote about this topic just the other day in her weekly column. She relates this problem to the 9/11 attack. Now I'm not so certain about the real story, but the 19 Moslem hijackers sure are the Fed-Gov's story, and they are the ones that Americans reckon (haha, the government, haha) should fix things so it never happens again.
If nothing else too complicated, such as idiotic anarcho-tyrannical stuff like TSA strip searches of Americans, at least you'd figure this: Since it's pretty much the sole reason the Fed Gov was formed, for a common defense, you'd figure we'd have secured the entries and exits to the country via:
1) Curtailment of legal entries to the country by people from countries we've pissed off enough to hate our guts (or they naturally do).
2) Control of the borders and ports.
3) Tracking of legal entries and exits by foreigners.
America has let massive numbers of students from Saudi Arabia in to "study" here, many more than before 9/11, and that is true from other Moslem countries too. Number 1 has been a complete failure - hey, "failure" is probably not the right word. Nobody in Big-Gov besides PresidentTrump even brings it up, so it never got started. Number 2 was never implemented, resulting in the election of Donald Trump who's pretty much failed so far. Number 3 is just now being talked/written about, except by your VDare types, and maybe patriotic insiders deep down in the Border Patrol/INS/ICE etc.
Just on the issue number 3, which is not even known about by most Americans, and we are talking 700,000 people overstaying their visas just in 2017! Read the article for more of the numbers. Back to 9/11:
Did you remember that five of the 9/11 hijackers—Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Satam al-Suqami—carried out their killer plot after overstaying their visas, evading detection and avoiding deportation?This was 17 years ago. It's not quite like the reaction to Pearl Harbor by Americans and the Fed-Gov in 1941, is it? No, I don't want more wars; don't get me wrong. What was the point of all that? However, a country has every right to control who resides in it, just ask ... like, every other one that's not in Western Europe. The 3 points above are simply what it would have taken to prevent another 9/11. Mrs. Malkin writes:
Did you remember that other radical Muslim members of the Terrorist Visa Overstayers Club? They include 1997 New York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil; 1993 New York landmark bombing plot conspirator Fadil Abdelgani; convicted Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad; and U.S. Capitol bomb plotter Amine El Khalifi, whose visa expired in 1999 and who escaped Homeland Security's notice for 12 years before he was arrested in 2012—just blocks from the Capitol building donning what he thought was a suicide bomb vest.
Did you remember that a year after the jihadist attacks that stole nearly 3,000 innocent lives, the 9/11 Commission urged our government to build a biometric entry-exit program to track and remove visa overstayers—who comprise an estimated 40 percent of the total illegal immigrant population?
For 17 years, America has engaged in a collective ritual every Sept. 11: Hang flags, light candles, bow heads and make vows to "Never forget."I'm not playing their game. Our Feral Gov, or the high-level people at least, tell me I should submit to the Police State, because "Never Forget", while most of them know the simple steps it would take to do this. That just doesn't jive with their ideas to replace the American people with a more subservient and diverse population in order to become the 3rd-world oligarchs of their daydreams. They don't want to take the necessary steps to fix anything, as they don't really care. I'm not going to pretend I care either, every 9/11. That's why I'm writing this on 9/14 - I forgot, and I don't care.
Then, every Sept. 12, it's back to business as usual: See something, do nothing.
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6 Degrees from Kevin Bacon
Posted On: Wednesday - September 12th 2018 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Media Stupidity Race/Genetics ctrl-left
As happens often in the pundit, or any other world, sometimes I think of a humorous association, but another puts it on-line before I get a chance to write. I documented a case of this once before in the Peak Stupidity post "Of course the Russians love their children, you dumb bass player!" regarding a reference to lyrics in a Sting song. This time, a great article by the VDare writer James Kirkpatrick, Unless the GOP Learns to Handle Anti-White Race-Baiting Attacks, It’s Done—and So Is the Historic American Nation (comments here on unz.com) uses the 2-decades(?)-old "6 degrees from Kevin Bacon" meme that I'd thought of already regarding current ctrl-left/PC happenings. I think it's "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon", as Wikipedia says, but that doesn't make as much sense, and "meme" was an unknown word during the Kevin Bacon era - we were more footloose back then and didn't need freakin' memes to get through the day.
Back to VDare and a guy names Darren Beattie, a speechwriter who was fired by President Trump's administration for having appeared at a an H.L.Mencken (a long-ago well-known curmudeonly columnist at the Baltimore Sun newspaper) honorary-club meeting. The guy was fired solely due to the drudging-up of this 2 year-old association with a perfectly decent organization, but one the Lyin' Press feels doesn't support the narrative. On VDare a coupla weeks back, the head of the site/organization, Mr. Peter Brimelow, is featured in this great interview (voice or transcript - but the podcast sound wasn't so good, and you can read a transcript in 20-25% the time of listening). Mr. Brimelow, along with discussing President Trump's leaving Mr. Beattie out to dry, also talks about TV financial pundit, now Trump advisor, Larry Kudlow. Mr. Kudlow was given the 3rd degree by the Lyin Press apparently for having been at his own dinner/birthday party when Peter Brimelow attended (year after year that is, as they were acquaintances and Mr. Brimelow, who is anti-immigration and pro-white-people, was invited).
Do you understand the reason for the site name, Peak Stupidity yet? The ctrl-left is now of the opinion that one's entire past, down, I guess to toddlerhood, is fair game for a "2 minute hate", if one has been associated with any one of "the wrong people" at any point. It's not just about marriage, business partnerships, mafia families, or direct relatives anymore. These associations can be as tenuous as "hey, this Peak Stupidity blogger bought an alternator from a guy at AutoZone whose sister's manicurist's step-dad had two (not just one, but two) employees who's granddaddies rode for the Klan". You can find something on anybody this way, and that gets us to the Kevin Bacon meme.
The point of the Kevin Bacon humorous line was that, per mathematicians versed in set theory, game theory, or some crap where you don't even need to know arithmetic, everyone is related in some way, with ≤ 6 degrees-of-separation from Kevin Bacon*. Why Kevin Bacon? I guess because he was FootLoose, I dunno?!
This association via 6 or more degrees means that everyone is fair game for a struggle-session from the Lyin' Press or anyone of the ctrl-left. They can get you on anything, even if you've been living in the backwoods of Fennario for most of your life. Now if you were raised by (Dire) Wolves from the get-go, then maybe they may have to back off a bit, but that's only due to fear, and the incorrigible political-incorrectness of wolves.
What can we same people do to fight this latest tactic of the ctrl-left. As usual, KISS, as in, Keep It Simple Stupid, is the mantra to follow: "We found out that your Dad employed a lawn boy whose brother's TV repairman's great-great-grand-father-in-law was THE Grand Wizard of the tri-states Ku Klux Klan, a guy named Kevin Bacon, coincidentally. What do you have to say to us about that?! The public demands an apology.". "Fuck you." KISS, remember.
In the case of Mr. Kudlow, he seems to have somewhat denied Peter Brimelow ("denied" as per a different Peter in the New Testament sense), though I'm not sure if he waited until after sunset, so there's that. Mr. Brimelow was very diplomatic and understanding of his former host in the article.
Now, see, I've got an idea from this. It's better than the 2-word solution recommended above, even. If you are a Peter Brimelow or anyone else who the Lyin Press and ctrl-left have a problem with, you are really at kind of an advantage. Let's make lemons into lemonade, people. (I believe there's an Alinsky Rules for Radicals rule on this one too, but it's just turned around to fit with the vicious way the left thinks - "Let no crisis go to waste", that's their ticket.) Mr. Brimelow now can attend, invited or not-invited, the birthday party of anyone he doesn't like and effortlessly put the kibosh on his career prospects. He can ruin the careers of whole sets of party-goers, warehouse employees, softball teams, stoners, and so on, just by attending, working, pitching, and toking respectively.
What power Peter Brimelow now has! At this point, Peak Stupidity can only dream of this magic power to destroy people by showing up. It's the sort of power that could defeat Superman, Spiderman, and the Incredible Hulk, all together, not to mention the Karate Kid. Trade in your Kryptonite for the power of the hated. You can help get Peak Stupidity on the road to attaining this power by at least supporting us in our quest to be added to the HATELIST, for the price of a single double-cappuccino grande whipped latte a day, with extra whip cream ...
You must remember now, Mr. Brimelow: With great power comes great responsibility.
- Connor Sun Tzu, Poontang Dynasty
* OK, at least if you are in the movie business, per the fairly interesting Wiki page. You may need to go to 7 if you know someone in the movie "BIZ", but I really doubt even that.
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Peak Oil
Posted On: Tuesday - September 11th 2018 8:16PM MST
In Topics: Economics
The post on inflation of building materials was leading me to write just a bit about "Peak Oil". I should, then, if nothing else, because our website name uses a take-off on that term as its meme. Peak Oil, as a concept, peaked out around 10 years ago, when oil had peaked and the gone way down.
There were a few parts to the theory. One is about the question of reserves and lack of big new finds of crude oil. That is something for the geologists to argue, and I'm not one of them, along with the concept of abiotic oil (i.e. whether you - the earth that is - need dead organic matter to make the stuff). Another was the fact that oil is getting more expensive to obtain - they'll be no point when it comes down toward needing one barrel of oil to extract one barrel, of course. This is still somewhat arguable, as if you have other cheap, NON-TRANSPORTABLE sources of energy for oil extraction, if the equivalent in energy of a barrel of oil can produce one barrel of crude there still may be a point.
That brings me directly to the next part of the peak oil theory. People need transportation, and the economy itself does (think of transportation of those building materials, along with everything else). Oil-based fuel has been the best thing going for a century now. Peak Oil assumes that will remain the case. In transportation, you must bring all the energy you need with you, so you need an intense form of energy storage like the chemical energy in gasoline and diesel. The "lower heating value" (a technical term I don't want to explain here) of gasoline is 115,000 BTU/gallon, or to mix the units (for better understanding, though) about 35 kW-hours/gallon. I used mixed units so the reader can compare this form of energy to electricity, as measured by the meter and seen on your bill. If used efficiently, that gallon could power a decent-sized house air-conditioning unit for the day. Even today, batteries can't come close to this amount of storage. Peak Oil was the big thing 10 years back, and batteries were worse then.
However, innovations can really change the whole direction of the economy sometimes, and maybe battery technology will be one such innovation. Can batteries compete with gasoline and diesel? There's no theory that says they can't, as gasoline if just made of a bunch of molecules that react (via combustion in this case) to release energy. If one could make even a single use battery that used a chemical reaction that released that much energy per unit mass, it'd be a hit. Granted, the point of a battery is to not release that energy in an explosion (though it's been known to happen!) In gasoline these explosions happen in the cylinders. We'd rather have a steady controlled reaction, such as in batteries. With the complicated engineered designs to make this happen, we end up with batteries that are too expensive to be single use, but luckily they aren't. If we could carry a high-energy-density source with us, then that energy could be obtained for charging from any source, abundant coal, nuclear, solar or whatever, yet the peak oil worries assume oil is absolutely necessary for transportation.
Many detractors of Peak Oil would, or may still, bring up the point that innovations will eliminate the need for all this energy period. I think that is where the Peak Oilers bring up a very important concept that I am convinced of. You need the energy, no matter how advanced your economy. Robots may be picking crops, building cars and houses, doing it all, but the energy to move things, dig to extract materials from ground, manufacture parts, etc. can not be reduced. You can get more efficient but the 1st law of thermodynamics kicks in. Anything that takes work, as defined by physics, dissipates energy. There's no getting around this one. Going back to the point of the last paragraph, though, if it weren't for that pesky important transportation usage dependence on oil, all this energy could be obtained from any source
It may be easy in hindsight, or maybe still not be, to discount the people who promoted the view that big economic problems were/are on the way due to Peak Oil. Things didn't look so good a decade ago, with the high prices discussed in the gasoline-inflation posts here and here. Other than the fracking techniques, a great boon to American energy independence, but probably not a long-term solution, there's not been anything, such as big new finds, to prove the Peak Oilers wrong on the one part of their theory, that we are slowly running out. However, if energy storage in the transportation field can compete with fuels made from crude, maybe the prices won't shoot up again, enough to crank back up the Peak Oil websites and worries. In the meantime, inflation, the topic we've been on about for a couple of weeks running, is still heavily dependent on the price of oil.
OK, Peak Stupidity does not intend to be a kinder, gentler Zerohedge.com, so we'll have to get off this inflation topic pretty soon. They'll be just one or two more, hopefully interspersed with the harder-core varieties of stupid. No, we'll never run out!
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Send in your payment - STAT! (more doctor stories)
Posted On: Saturday - September 8th 2018 8:41AM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Movies China Healthcare Stupidity
oh, put Dr. Gupta on the sign-in log, will ya, honey?
In a continuation of some of Peak Stupidity's Doctor humor (see here and here), I'd like to talk billing, if I may. We've got lots more we can say in derision of the healthcare system in America, but it's not anything about the doctors, just the Socialism (to compare to "RED" China, read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of our personal expose of free-market (gasp!!) health-care in the Middle (or mid-lattitude, far-east) Kingdom).
A larger doctor's clinic can easily have 20% of its employees just involved in billing. If it weren't for our government-regulated disaster of a system, these decently-paid people could actually be doing something constructive, not like this:
I had been involved in a minor accident and was not on any sort of health plan. I'd paid most of the bills I'd gotten (not too bad in those days) within a couple of months. That's when I got another bill, this one for radiology work. It wasn't bogus; I'd gotten x-rayed and a radiologist had to look at the pictures. My problem was that this bill had big red bars on either side and told me "THIS IS OUR LAST WARNING! YOU MUST MAKE A FULL PAYMENT BY JUNE 18TH OR BLAH! BLAH! DEADBEAT BASTARD!" (I may not have remembered the exact wording from 2 decades back.). This was the first I'd heard about it, that was my problem with it. I'd gotten a number of other bills, but nothing from this office until this nastygram. Now, keep in mind that this was a while back, to before much of the Artificial Stupidity, hence I was able to get a live person at the hospital who got a live doctor on the phone, who I'm sure thought it was more important than what I was about to say.
"Hey is this Doctor Freeman (I couldn't tell you the real name if I wanted to, due to my memory), this is [the Peak Stupidity lead blogger] (also, not a real name)." "Yeah, I don't know you. What's up?" "Man, I got this $220 bill for radiology from you. I'm gonna pay it, but you're acting like I'm some kind of deadbeat. It's telling me you're about to call a collection agency. It's the only thing I've ever gotten. This is the first I've heard about it." "Oh, see that's not me. I've got a billing office that does this stuff." "OK, well tell them to get their shit together and lighten up on the threats." "Uhh, yeah, I'll try to get them to do better." [Hangs up, thinking "who keeps transferring these calls?"]I do hope he wasn't in the middle of something, but he's the boss of it all.
It can get worse than that in this screwy non-customer-oriented "industry". With the big confusion on who actually pays for what, the customer does not often bargain, or even care, about the financial aspect of any service rendered. Sometime you do though. You may wonder about the extreme prices on these bills. (Did I explain the part where you're paying for illegal aliens too? That's part of it.) You may get harrased for no good reason like me, and take it maybe too personally. Have you thought, even, about whether you've been billed for services never even rendered at all? Did you remember all the doctors, general and specialist, that you saw at the hospital, or let me say "saw you"?
This is not a real phone call of mine, but it could very well be someday:
“Hey, it says I owe 400 bucks for treatment by a Neurologist named Gupta. I never saw the guy!”In China, it's very possible that you could call a prostitute to come to your hospital room after hours to render a service of some sort. Yes, it is a freer country in some ways. I also could believe you may get a bill for one who never took off her skimpy nurse uniform or panties, nor even came in the front door of the hospital. Because cash is king over there, you'd probably not be liable, but can you imagine the bill:
“Sir, calm down. Dr. Gupta saw you on the afternoon of the 9th, while you were still under. That’s why you didn’t see him. He assessed you.”
“Assessed, my Ass! How do I really know this Dr. Gupta did anything?”
“Sir, he assessed your torso. Trust me, the computer says Dr. Gupta wasin the area playing 18 holesthere. We can come up with a payment plan, if that’s the problem.”
“Oh, yeah, you can send me .jpegs, or send this bill to the collection agency, your choice!”
1) Nitro (2 mg) - 120 元
2) Defibrillation (10 min) - 85 元
3) Medical O2 ( 100 litres) - 150 元
4) Shenzen number 4 prostitute (2 min, 18 sec) - 1100 元
5) Number 8, "Spicy Taiwan Beef" (2 portions) - 22 元
(Patient discharged on the 18th with all vital signs trending up.)
This Suicide is Painless scene is from the 1972 movie M*A*S*H*, not the considerably lamer successful 1970's TV show, adapted from the movie. In the show, this song, a nice tune, is just a 1 min or so instrumental, as the intro.
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
Posted On: Friday - September 7th 2018 8:55PM MST
In Topics: Music Movies
The networking algorithms that youtube uses are pretty amazing, I've got to admit. I'm not sure if "networking" is the right term, but I mean the software that makes picks of videos that relate to the one being viewed (and seen on the right margin. As I listened to She's so High, youtube displyed this next one in the margin. It so happened that I had been thinking of this one right just as I had been trying to remember enough of the last song to look it up. It turns out it was from a few years earlier. I don't like being mind-read like that, but all it really is is a big database relating the connections in youtube viewers' heads, with enough data to try to reproduce those connections for viewers.
The song is Breakfast at Tiffany's by a band called Deep Blue Something. As far as I know, it's the only song by that band I've ever heard, and it's been a long while. The guy doesn't have a really strong voice, but it's just a very decent tune:
You say that we've got nothing in common,
no common ground to start from
and we're falling apart.
You'll say the world has come between us.
Our lives have come between us.
Still I know you just don't care.
Chorus:
And I said what about "Breakfast at Tiffany's?
She said, "I think I remember the film,
and as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it. "
And I said, "Well, that's the one thing we've got."
Breakfast at Tiffany's is a 1961 movie starring Audrey Hepburn as the famous-named character Holly Golightly and Goerge Peppard as Paul Varjak, with Tiffany's being a big and famous Manhattan, NYC jewelry store. The movie is not Peak Stupidity material, so no review here, besides, don't pay good money for it, but it has a great song of its own in it. That would be Moon River, which, unfortunately, I'd first heard sung by "Edith Bunker" in an old episode of All in the Family. (Do you know the introduction song of that show? She sings like that, as a joke.)
This is the original from the movie, back when some actresses were taught to be singers, I guess, because Audrey Hepburn doesn't have a strong voice either, come to listen to this again. It's another very good melody though, written by a guy named Frank Ocean. BTW, don't let the hair in the video pic. fool you, Audrey Hepburn looks pretty hot in the movie.
Moon river, wider than a mile,
crossin' in style someday.
My dream maker,
heartbreaker,
wherever you're going I'm going the same.
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On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles
Posted On: Friday - September 7th 2018 10:13AM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
If it takes 50 posts, by gosh, Peak Stupidity will cover this topic of inflation, with a 30-year guarantee, or until peak stupidity, whichever comes first. The roofing shingles above, not usually a topic of political blog discussion, bring up 3 points here related to the topic of inflation that I've been pounding on for weeks now.
This could have been inserted back into the post Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?) from a week back. I had just forgotten to, as I wrote the paragraph about lumber prices. Here is another building material for which I have an even better memory of the price. Roofing shingles are sold in bundles of 29 3 ' x 1 ' sheets of the 3-tab type. 3 bundles make what roofers call a "square". It's one of those terms that is not very precise but just grew out of the industry, so you just use it. What one "square" is, is enough to cover an even 100 ft2. That makes calculations pretty easy. Got 3,000 ft2 accounting for slopes, overhang, ridges, valleys, and scrap on a medium-sized house (maybe only a 2,200 ft2 house, as far as plan area)? You need 30 squares, hence 90 bundles.* "That was easy." Nah, not totally because the math sounds way off - that 29 shingles/bundle x 3 ft2/shingle x 3 bundles = 261 ft2. Don't forget overlap. I'd always though overlap was about 50%, but it must be more like 60% - it's been a while.
OK, this is not a roofing blog, so let me get to my point - the inflation. I'd done a project in the mid-'90's, and then another almost-same-sized one in the later '90's. The price may have changed 50 ¢ or so, but it was somewhere around $6.50 per bundle. I seem to recall a price right at $6.66, in fact. That is cool not as a reference to the AntiChrist. (I just somehow can't see the AntiChrist coming from a roofing background.), more just that it made the calculations even easier - $20/square - meaning $20/ 100 ft2 of roof covered. Things were really cheap then, as when I anticipated a roof job coming about 18 years later, for which I would spring for materials, I took a look around and was aghast at prices 3 - 4 times higher. Now the 1990's work was pretty much before the "architectural" style came along, but I'll compare apples to apples, just the plain stuff which can still be obtained. It's now about $22 per BUNDLE, not SQUARE (3 bundles), on the plain stuff. That's 7% annual inflation on this building product, that is a widely used in a big industry. You've got to replace the roof more than you replace the lumber.
As I was buying the roofing materials, a friend and I were agreeing with the fact that one would expect it to go up in concert with oil prices. The stuff is mostly made of asphalt (with some inexpensive gravel in there). Let's just look at the crude oil by-the-barrel price on the 1st oil-price post (red curve). Just do an eyeball smoothing of the mid-'90's numbers and then one of the 2012 +/- coupla years period. $18/barrel up to about $70/barrel is an increase of near 4 times. How interesting! Yeah, I'm glad something makes sense. These shingles, along with lots of building materials (lumber, brick, and especially low-cost products like cinder blocks) also cost a lot to transport. Well, sure enough, when oil goes up, transportation costs go up. This is why oil is and has been such an important part of the economy. Will it be in the future though? (uhh-oh, I see a Peak Oil post coming ...)
Besides my excellent memory of the prices of this fairly unchanged product (non-architectural roofing shingles) and the point about oil being a major part of the economy, hence its price being very important, I had a 3rd point I'd wanted to mention. Roofing shingles are made a certain size that is pretty constrained. This makes it harder for Owens Corning to skimp on the size, as is done for food products, such as yogurt and ice cream. Change them from 3' x 1 ' to 2.75' x 11 " and you're really gonna piss off some builders and DIYers. Lumber has that same "problem" (a feature for most of us) too, to some degree - they can't change 2 x 4's right now without creating a lot of havoc, but that won't stop Big-Biz from trying this surreptitious style of inflation as much as they can (more on this coming.)
* If I have any female readers left by this point, I'd be amazed. Since there are only guys reading from hereon in the post, I will alert you to an upcoming post with a Chinese "cyborg-girl" with big tits. Don't lose this URL!
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Is Sarah Jeong of the NY Times tweetworthy?
Posted On: Thursday - September 6th 2018 2:16PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Media Stupidity Race/Genetics ctrl-left Female Stupidity
Though the Peak Stupidity blog may not catch up on the tweets from one idiot to another, excuse me, current events, in much of a timely manner, this writer did read about the lady in the above pic, and her racist tweets, and the uproar, or lack-thereof, therefrom (I used to be pre-law) a month back. Steve Sailer, at his iSteve blog on unz.com gets on a compulsive roll sometimes (kinda like PS with inflation lately, huh?). He had a series of posts on Miss Jeong, of which this, this, and this are just 3 for starters. (There are at least 3 more - scroll towards 08/02 - 08/04 here.) Mr. Fred Reed* had a fairly good column too, called Cruelty Legitimized. NYT Hires from Caligula’s Basement.. I just don't see a reason to be particularly timely on this. I've got my thoughts though, so here goes:
Yes, Sarah Jeong is this (occasionally) purple-haired ethnic-Korean SJW type who had recently tweeted a series of "I hate white people..." statements that would have caused a white man to go straight to jail or at least get fired, if he'd said the same about purple-haired Korean "gals". I don't really give a damn what the lady tweets. None of this seems to appear in my inbox, my real mailbox, or anywhere else I'm supposed to see it at. It's not a problem for me in that sense.
I don't think it would be a problem for those writers/commenters that I've read on the subject either, but for the fact that Miss Jeong is a writer for the NY Times. "Nobody's got a gun to your head, forcing you to read that rag..." many would say, including Peak Stupidity. However, it's the hypocrisy that has got many upset about this woman's stupidity. She did not get fired from her employer, the NYT, even with this obvious record of "hate" speech (hey, I don't agree with the whole concept; that's why the quotes). That's still the NY Time's business, not mine. The hypocrisy is the guaranteed outrage that the NY Times would have if the situation would have been reversed. Even a dog-catcher, had he tweeted blanket anti-Korean Heets (hate-tweets) of this kind, would have been HOUNDED (I swear I didn't even have to work on that!) out of his job, assuming dog-catching is still a job somewheres.
It's not just hypocrisy that's the problem though. It's the cowardice and stupidity of those that are in the right on the subject of free speech. As an example from ~ 5 years back, you've got your supposedly conservative magazine, The National Review, that fired the excellent writer John Derbyshire for writing a checklist type of column (called The Talk as just advise to family members to avoid being hurt by black thugs. It was a perfectly civil response to some black writer's ass-backwards imbecility in writing something about what black people have to be afraid of from whites, and therefore to avoid them. (yeah, right!!). Was The National Review editor just stupid or more like cowardly? I think it was a bit of both. He was stupid enough to think that Mr. Derbyshire's article didn't belong in his "conservative" publication, but also his cowardice made him fire the man in order to avert the anticipated heat coming down... from, say, the NY Times. The ctrl-left plays hard-ball on the dirt, while the conservatives play whiffle ball on rubber mats. That's why we've got Sarah Jeongs out there spouting anti-white tweets while being gainfully employed by the "paper of record".
There's an immigration aspect to this too, and that's lots of what has angered the folks on the right. This girl was born in America, seems to hate the place, yet doesn't seem to want to go back. If I happened by strange, missionary, or diplomatic circumstances to have been born in China, I can't see myself going around the place writing and talking about how I hate the slanty-eyed Chinamen (and slim-figured Chinawomen), without also seeing myself in a musty non-wifi-enabled dungeon in downtown Peking... if I were lucky! The woman has a lot of gall, I'll give her that ... and stupidity, perhaps in equal amounts.
Lots of the time, when it's women writers coming out with this stuff, it really has nothing to do with any problems she's got with the (for-now still) majority population of her adoptive country. It may have nothing to do with politics. You've seen this business before if you know any women, period (or, for that matter, know any women's periods). It's not just these writers and tweeters. Lots of times with women, the anger is about something TOTALLY unrelated that you'll only begin to hear about after 5 hours of argument, over the course of a week, if you're lucky! Imagine the same deal done via twitter, and you've got one Sarah Jeong. Sarah Jeong, per the articles and comments I've read, liked the white guys romantically. She got dumped at least once, and nobody really likes that. Is that what this brewhaha is all about? Isn't that why we shouldn't care what women think or write on politics, at least women younger than 55. [Editor - when does menopause start and how old is Ann Coulter? STAT!]
Let me put it this way, as a couple of pictures are worth a couple of thousand words, right, and I'm only at a few hundred: Would you receive Miss Jeong's type of tweets from the girl below?:
I don't know who she is, but she's pretty damn tweetable.
* Of course, Mr. Reed had to get his digs in against Americans from his bug-out locale. Hey, he's right on the point that most Mexican women are less feminist-brainwashed than American women, but the Americans aren't all Sarah Jeongs either, and, is Sarah Jeong an American anyway? More on Fred Reed. I'm getting sick of him.
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She's so high ... Tal Bachman
Posted On: Tuesday - September 4th 2018 7:46PM MST
In Topics: Music
Peak Stupidity could put "boomer" music up every day of the week and we wouldn't run out until well after peak stupidity, believe you me. I use that generational appellation kind of in jest, as some of the young people like to pigeon-hole (now, see, there's a boomer expression) everyone within a, what, 25-year age range? It's not like I've never done that - see Are the millennials Retarded?. Yeah, OK, it's tempting to generalize, but one thing the millenials can't say is that boomer music sucks, such as we can about the worthlessness of today's Billboard top 100 (what? Billboard doesn't exist anymore? But, but, Kasey Kasem said ...")
Nobody can come on here (on the comments perhaps) and tell us that the previous generations didn't make great rock music - listen to Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, ElO's Time, Billy Joel's The Stranger, or 10,000 other albums and go ahead and write back in the comments (PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO START COMMENTS WITH "PS" IN CAPS for spam control.)
Occasionally, though, something really good gets through from more recent times. In the store, I heard some song with a male high-pitched part that reminded me, and got me struggling to remember this song, as I probably hadn't heard it since it was big in 1999. "like Marlon Brando... something, something... and Aphrodite ..." It took 10 minutes to accumulate enough out of the brain registers to look up "she's so high song", and I GOT IT! This is a good one from one Talmage Charles Robert "Tal" Bachman, a Canadian. I had no memory of that name at all. It turns out this guy is the son of Randy Bachman from both The Guess Who and later Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Here's She's so High from Tal Bachman:
"She's blood, flesh and bone,
no tucks or silicone.
She's touch, smell, sight, taste and sound.
But somehow I can't believe
That anything should happen.
I know where I belong,
and nothing's gonna happen.
Yeah, yeah
[Chorus:]:
'Cause she's so high...
high above me, she's so lovely.
She's so high...
like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite.
She's so high...
high above me.
First class and fancy free,
she's high society.
She's got the best of everything.
What could a guy like me
ever really offer?
She's perfect as she can be.
Why should I even bother?
[Chorus]
She comes to speak to me.
I freeze immediately.
'cause what she says sounds so unreal.
'Cause somehow I can't believe
that anything should happen.
I know where I belong
and nothing's gonna happen.
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah"
[Chorus]
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Government and Big Time
Posted On: Tuesday - September 4th 2018 10:43AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Globalists China Geography
That's not "the big time", but Big Time, like Big Gov, Big Ed, Big Biz etcetra...
Jean-Claude Juncker, titular* head of the European Union (not shown above, might might as well be) has come out with a proposal. The EU, he says (some Irish news web site), should stay on Daylight time, with no "falling back" and "springing forward". That's probably a good idea, in my opinion to be presented in a bit here, but part of that opinion is that it really should be none of Commissioner Junker's business. This one is just a small thing, but it's just very ironic that Commissioner Junker noted how "we carried out survey ..." and then "I will recommend to the commission that, if you ask the citizens then you have to do what the citizens say."
Oh, yeah, Junker, did you do a survey on submitting to foreign invasion from Africa and the Middle East? How about a survey on whether nations can opt out easily from your bureaucratic, domineering EU shitshow? I have not seen the results of such surveys, as of press time. You Euroweenies in Brussels have a lot of damn gall with this "ask the citizens" bit on Daylight Savings Time. It's not quite the big, existential question for the European people as is their replacement by people of the 3rd world. I believe this is tiny tidbit from the masters to the common dogs under EU control to make them believe that "You are the EU".
Yeaaaahhh! [/Cosmo Kramer]
With that initial rant over with, let me discuss this issue for a bit, as something completely different from our normal stupidity coverage, and than segue back to another rant. I got on this subject from Steve Sailer here on unz and the comments thereunder have a good discussion of the pros and cons for different locations (latitudes and longitudes and cultural aspects). Even in the same country, with the same official "hours", people are different. Some people can't get up when it's dark. Some can't sleep when it's still light. Yeah, I GET THAT!
However, no matter what you do with the clocks, nobody is gaining or losing any daylight – we all know that, I hope. The Daylight Savings Time program that was implemented during WWII in the US was done for energy savings, having to do with the "burning" of lights in the evenings. There was rationing and shortages even in the good old US during those years, and the start of a program like this in the still-very-free US shows that indeed, war is the health of the state. Without a big war going on, Americans during the 1940's would have rightly figured "why are our daily schedules any business of the Feral Gov?" Nowadays, energy usage is different in so many ways. Though people may try to frame the DST/Standard Time program as a savings in some way, I'd sure like to see the massive calculations, which would change drastically with location.
I won't get into the details, lots of which are discussed in that Sailer post's comments. I do want to bring up China though: China has one time zone. As discussed some in A tale of 2 Countries (for picking blackberries), that country is not really as wide East-West as you might imagine from the maps, as most everyone is in the eastern 60% – the rest is Tibet and Xinjiang(?), which is just desolate mountains and high desert.
Having only one time zone to encompass a big country** is not some great idea or doing anything magical or smart. It may work well for airline schedules and the like. As far as daily life though, if you live in Chengdu, fairly far west, you’re not gonna start work at 8A when the sun doesn’t come up until 9:30. People and business will make the hours fit the human body. That means people still have to keep track of different hours of people in places that are far apart in longitude when doing business.
There’s no perfect way on this. That’s why we have our retard phones to tell us what time it is along with when our facebook friends had their last bowel movements.
As far as the semi-annual switching goes, why should the government be let to run your life like this, getting you running around the house switching the clocks? It’s a lot more trouble than that (as a computer-type in the comments already wrote) for software, airline scheduling, payroll departments, etc.
If people in Seattle, let’s say, want to have more daylight in the morning in winter for the safety of the school kids, then they can change the school schedule whatever date they want and switch it back whatever date they want. If I run a softball league, I can make the games start earlier in the late fall. You don’t have to go switching the “official” time – just change your schedules to suit the sun and the needs of your students, employees, or softball players.
What is so bad about letting people make their own decisions about when to get up? No, it seems to be all "the government needs to …" and "the government shouldn’t do …" The government doesn't need to do squat. We are intelligent humanoids and can figure out when TF to wake up and go to sleep and what the best schedule for our businesses and leisure activities should be. Don’t let the Feral Government live rent-free in your heads, people! They already steal 2 to 4 hours of the fruits of your daily labor, whether it’s daylight or standard time.
* Peak Stupidity has not had the resources to actually look up that word, but we like the sound of it. We'll try to use it as often as it is appropriate.
** BUT, BUT, CHILE! No, I can't argue with that. It's almost like Simon Bolivar, the guy who made up most of the countries down there, wanted to make at least one place where people would have no excuse for not being on time. Yeah, I know, that's not gonna stop them down there. (OK, I do get the Pacific Ocean/Andes natural borders thing too. It worked out great for the Chileans.)
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Massachusetts Republican invokes Alinsky Rule # 4 - Hilarity ensues
Posted On: Saturday - September 1st 2018 5:20PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor ctrl-left
This story out of the Massachusetts legislature a couple of weeks back is nothing world-changing, but it's humorous, heartening, and could be a good lesson for some of you would-be conservative radicals out there. Yes, indeed you CAN be a radical though you are a conservative. Actually, being a real conservative MAKES YOU a radical in this time of Peak Stupidity.
You can see those rules up there at the top. I've never wanted to get into the sick minds of the ctrl-left, Commies, and other scum of that sort, so I don't read this stuff. It's just that, as mentioned at the end of our 6-part series There's Battle Lines Being Drawn. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6), getting our way will involve standing up and sticking together, not necessarily requiring Alinsky's rules.
Rule # 4 though, "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.", does apply to the actions of one Republican (yes, there's at least one) MA State-house member, as documented by a sympathetic radio talk show host. The law being voted on was a silly one about allowing various flavors of gender as options on one's Mass driver's license. It's not the bureaucracy of it, or any real worries about this that are the problem. The problem with deals like this is that they are the ctrl-left's way of demonstrating that conservatives have no say in the world and must put up with the stupidest shit, "because we say so." They want to rub it in your face. That's how confident the ctrl-left is at this point in their work of destroying American society.
The writer of this LifeSiteNews article is a guy named Calvin Freiburger. At his first description of the Massachusetts government, he sounds hard-left, but it's not the case. He does a nice fair job with this story:
BOSTON, August 16, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Legislation to add a “Gender X” option to driver’s license should have been a straightforward task in the far-left state of Massachusetts, but one Republican lawmaker managed to derail the bill by taking transgender ideology to its furthest extreme.Turning a milestone into a millstone - that should be one of Peak Stupidity's rules for Antistu radicals, with a hat-tip to radio host Howie Carr and the good MA-senator Jim Lyons, of course. You see, it turns out there are 70-odd flavors of genders, more than twice the number of Baskin-Robbins ice cream flavors, and more than a full-spectrum box of Crayola crayons (you know, the ones that used to have little crayon sharpeners built in - now that was cool!) This Mass-congressman, Mr. Lyons is a smart cookie, and seems to have taken to heart, or come up with independently, Rule # 4 above. Let's give these D-ctrl-left assholes what they want, good and hard. We need to put all of these 70-odd genders in the bill... uhhh, but it may take a while. ;-}
The state Senate voted in June to approve the measure, which would have also extended the option to learner’s permits and state identification cards. No documentation would have been required to prove an applicant is neither male nor female. “It’s a milestone, bill sponsor Sen. Karen Spilka, a Democrat, said at the time.
Despite the state House of Representatives being just as heavily Democratic as the Senate, however, it never got the chance to send the bill to liberal Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk.
“Since all Democrats must admit that the number of genders is endless, how dare the commonwealth lump all the new genders together as ‘Gender X’?” Carr writes, summarizing Lyons’ facetious reasoning. “Every gender, he declared, must be listed on Massachusetts driver’s licenses! That was Lyons’ non-negotiable demand. No justice, no peace.”
Lyons told Carr he settled on demanding recognition for 73 different “genders,” as that was the number he reached by tallying the number of custom gender options Facebook offers.
Knowing that his liberal colleagues couldn’t rule any of the genders out of order without undermining the logic of transgender ideology, Lyons introduced each as a separate amendment to the bill the evening of July 31, each requiring 10 minutes of debate and three minutes to vote on.Hahaha, I LOLed at the "6 hours in" part, for some reason. The "running out the clock" part is humorous too, but that is standard practice. These places of lawmaking are not quite what you had imagined upon finishing your Citizenship-in-the-nation merit badge.
“Number 6 added as a gender ‘cis.’ Amendment 9 — cis female, 13 — cis woman, 14 — cisgender female, 18 — cisgender woman,” Carr details. “Amendment 21 — gender fluid, 22 gender non-conforming, 23 gender questioning, 25 gender variant, 26 genderqueer.”
Six hours in Lyons had only filed 35 of the amendments, at which point House leadership realized he was running out the clock and there wasn’t enough time before the midnight deadline to pass both the bill and the other legislation on the docket. At 10:45 p.m., they withdrew the bill.
“By now, the few remaining sane Democrats in the Legislature realized that Lyons had done them a solid, sparing them from being recorded on a roll call vote on whether to recognize the genders of pangender, polygender and cisgender,” Carr wrote, “not to mention intersex, intersex man, intersex woman and intersex person.”LOL, AGAIN! I really like this guy Howie Carr too. Hell, that was 1/2 the article already, but one more piece:
"One way or another, progressivism is always a death sentence. So we may as well turn it around and use it on its perpetrators whenever we get the chance,” Conservative Review’s Steve Deace said of the incident. “That doesn’t mean becoming like them, but understanding their con and endlessly harassing them with its real-world applications.”Yep, "becoming like them" is not necessary. However, we just can't all be Mr. Pat Buchanans (bless his heart) as far as civility goes. The other side does not play along.
Please read the whole article, if you've got a couple of minutes. It will lift your spirits.
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Recent history of gasoline prices - Part 2
Posted On: Saturday - September 1st 2018 4:28PM MST
In Topics: History Economics Inflation
(... continued directly from previous post.)
Early 1980's steady decline: It was a man named Paul Volcker, who had been appointed to as President of the FED by President Carter who is the one responsible for getting inflation, including that in oil prices under control. Keep in mind, the FED and removal of dollar from the gold standard are the CAUSES of inflation. Peak Stupidity has no love for the FED. It's just that Mr. Volcker forced or let interest rates go way up to their natural level for the high inflation. This was what slowly and surely brought inflation down through the 1980's.
I first saw gasoline prices get down below a dollar on a trip to Florida where it's cheap (low taxes and possibly good distribution). That was in 1982.
Mid-1980's through End-of-1990's stability: This is one discrepancy between the graph above and my memory. It wasn't just my location as I started to to get around, everywhere. Gasoline stayed stable below a dollar for a decade and a half, with a slight bump during the Gulf War year 1990-1991. I was on a long drive headed across west Texas. You don't just wait until 1/8 of a tank to pull in for a fill-up in the desert. As I pulled up, I saw $1.15 or so. OMG! (We didn't write it like that then.) That was a bad spot, I figured and got 3 or 4 gallons just to get me to a more reasonable spot for gas. Well, the next one 100 miles away was higher than that! What I hadn't think about, until then, was that prices were rising not with location, but time. This was during the build-up to war in the Middle East, and prices were rising faster than I could drive! ... or something like that.
Anecdote aside, this period was in general one of very stable prices, Inflation slowly headed down toward a very low (REAL) number by the mid-'90's, something I'll discuss more in a post about inflation and China. I don't think there was a reason to talk about the politics behind oil production for that long while, with that Gulf War exception.
Early 2000's big steady rise: It was not until 1998 when I bought gas above one dollar again, and that was in an expensive location. From then on, it just kept on a slow, steady rise, going through 2 bucks by 2005 or so, then through $3, $4, sky's the limit on through 2008. The graphs are off on this too. I was there in summer of 2008 when, even in my fairly low-cost locale, you felt like you were stealing gas when the sign showed $4.19 (and don't forget the 0.9¢!). California had prices over $5. Is it that the graphs show prices before tax? That'd explain things.
2008 price crash: When the price crashed down from over $4 to $1.70 or so, I told a friend about my idea about his brother (a trucker) buying one of those 8,000 gallon transport trailers just to store us a bunch. I knew (but was wrong) that it would bump right back up to >$3 soon enough. Well, yeah, there's stabilizer, care of the trailer for later sale.... nah, but it was a thought though.
2010's era of stability: We've had it pretty good. With the exception of a decent bump-up in 2012, I've seen the gas between $2.15 and $2.65 for years now.
I have only one important point to make after all this possibly mind-numbing memory dump. Remember that I wrote in the last post that one could get a gallon of gasoline for 2 or 3 silver dimes, well for 2 or 3 of ANY dimes. Now, if one ran into a counter-clerk inside the station who a) could speak English and b) understands the value of real money,... hahahaaa ... OK, not bloody likely... Just say that you did. 2 or 3 pre-1965 dimes which contain mostly silver* would still buy you that 1 gallon of gasoline.
Let me give a few details on that last bit: The cool thing with that old silver money was that the silver amount was linear with face value (denomination). They all have 90% silver and because the weights of those 1964-and-earlier dimes, quarters, 1/2 dollars, and dollars were made linear with denomination, the silver amount is too. Lastly, except for the Morgan and Peace dollars, the 1 dollar coin weighs in at ~ .8 tr-oz, 1 dollar in face value results in 0.72 tr-oz of silver. Therefore, at a mid-range of the fairly stable $14 - $18/oz spot price of silver, 2 dimes, or 20¢, has 0.144 tr-oz, of it, which fetches $2.30 in our fiat dollars, enough to buy, HEY!, yes, 1 gallon of gas.
Does that last part have anything to say about what is REAL MONEY and what are just pieces of green paper? Indubitably, it does!
(I've still got a few more things, as a summary, to say about the interesting history of gas prices, at the risk of losing a reader or two. I'll put that up next week. Top priority!)
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