Clown World

Trump and the bullet

First we have:

'. . . FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Wednesday that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel.”' - The Daily Wire

Why would you say something like that? I mean, does it make any difference? There was a man firing a gun at people at a public gathering. Why would you care whether it was shrapnel or a bullet? Oh, right, it's because they are clowns. Now it makes perfect sense. Muder truckers.

RAF RC-135W Rivet Joint

Then there is this from RT:

British spy planes ramped up their activity in the Black Sea in June 2021, just days before a Royal Navy frigate attempted to sail past Crimea in Russian territorial wars. According to the government in London, the HMS Defender was on a “freedom of navigation patrol” from Odessa to Batumi in Georgia.

The Russian navy had fired warning shots at the British frigate and dropped bombs from an airplane in its path. London initially denied that this happened, until Moscow released videos proving its case.

Four days after the incident, classified documents discovered at a bus stop in Kent showed that the Royal Navy deliberately sent the Defender into Russian waters to provoke a reaction. 

'Classified documents discovered at a bus stop'. Seems like I've heard that one before. It could have been that a harried civil servant inadvertently dropped a folder while waiting for a bus, but my suspicious mind says someone was tired of the bullshit and decided to leave that folder where they knew it would be discovered by a reporter.

Yes, London and Washington D. C. are two different cities in two different countries, but the USA barks and western Europe leaps to obey, so their governments are all part of the same circus.

Soviet Era Technology

MYSTERIOUS 50 Year Old Soviet Power Tool: Teardown and Review!
The Doubtful Technician

Just a couple of items I encountered today. Above we have an old Soviet power tool, below we have a Soviet micro computer, circa 1990.

UKNC

Talking to Osmany this morning and he's telling me that back around 1990 in Cuba, when he was ten years old, he was studying computer programming using these big, fat keyboards with a memory module that plugged into the upper right corner. This photo of the UKNC fits the bill. It was a PDP-11 clone. When I was in school ten years earlier, in Texas, we had a PDP-11 computer for certain classes. It was a mini-computer, which meant it was rack mounted.  The CPU was the size of a microwave oven.

There is a UKNC emulator available on GitHub.

Diamond Mines of Mercury

Mercury

The Silicon Graybeard has a post up about the possibility of a ten mile thick layer of diamond beneath the planet Mercury's crust. Suppose there was such a thing, and also suppose we could send a rocket there that could also return to Earth. The way SpaceX is going I expect we could build such a rocket within twenty years or so, assuming we really wanted to. What form would this layer of diamond take? Would it be a ten mile thick layer of gravel made of diamond gemstones? Or would it be like one solid layer like the shell around an egg? What could you do with a mile long piece of diamond? Might be time to go back and Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

Company - Musical Comedy - Keller Auditorium

Company | North American Tour Preview
BroadwaySF

A musical comedy? What we have is funny skits alternating with songs. We saw this a week ago. The skits were funny, sometimes hilarious. The words weren't always intelligible, but much of the comedy was physical: actions, poses, tone of voice, sudden stoppage of words, so you didn't actually have to hear what they were saying. The songs were, well, songs. They did nothing for me, but I'm funny that way. Some people are really into singing. Me, I prefer popular music, not this highfalutin' stuff.

The story is about a 35 year old single woman and the prospect of marriage, or not. The rest of the cast is five married couples, so we take a look at those marriages and none of them are perfect, they all have their own quirks. Kind of like real life.

Simpletons and Scoundrels

The whole Trump assassination attempt, has been, pardon the expression, beaten to death. But then I came across this piece by JMSmith. He brings history to bear on the subject, and I think his take is insightful. Voila:

Simpletons and Scoundrels

“A flighty and half-witted man is the very instrument generally preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to be done.” 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England  (1848)*

Macaulay makes this trenchant remark while discussing a deluded wretch named Granville, the doomed patsy in a failed plot to assassinate the English King William of Orange in 1692.  Macaulay tells us that Granville, a Frenchman, was “undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his country and his religion,” but that his main qualification as an assassin was that he was “flighty and half-witted.”  By “flighty” Macaulay means both impetuous (overhasty) and given to romantic illusions (i.e. “flights of fancy”).  I trust what he means by half-witted is plain enough.

A flighty and half-witted man is the preferred tool of cunning politicians when their scheme is very hazardous because “no shrewd calculator” will do the deed “for any bribe.”  What cunning politicians require is therefore a romantic simpleton who dreams of glory and cannot calculate the odds.

As Macaulay explains,

“It was plain to every man of common sense that, whether the design succeeded or failed, the reward of the assassins would probably be to be disowned by the Courts of Versailles and Saint Germains [the exiled court of  James II], and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared with melted lead, and dismembered by four horses.  To vulgar natures the prospect of such martyrdom was not alluring.”

When Granville was betrayed by his accomplices, his punishment was simply to be hung, drawn and quartered, but the prediction that the French and Jacobite principals of the plot would disown their assassin was fulfilled in full.  The official position of Versailles and Saint Germains was that assassination was abhorrent and Granville had acted alone, perhaps under the influence of madness or some personal vendetta.

After his trial, and without hope of reprieve, Granville named one Barbesieux, an agent in the French War Office, as the architect and director of the plot.  Although Louis XIV officially abominated political assassination, he quietly protected Barbesieux.  Macaulay asks:

“If he really abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would not Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the royal presence, and flung into the Bastille?”

Macaulay’s question is, of course, rhetorical.

A failed assassination.  A flighty and half-witted patsy who met a grisly end.  Official shock and detestation.  The designer concealed and protected.

Some people are going to say this smells like Killary's handiwork and I'm not going to say they are wrong.

If the name Granville sounds familiar, it's because there have been a number of Granvilles in English history, but none that I found from this time period. JMSmith concurs, the only reference we have is in Macaulay's book.

Evanescence - Bring Me To Life

Evanescence - Bring Me To Life (Official HD Music Video)
Evanescence

Listening to the radio on the way home from brunch this morning and this tune comes on the radio, and my wife turns it way up. Surprised me, didn't think she would go for this. I think I remember hearing this tune a long time ago, possibly by another group, but I couldn't find any evidence of that, so here we are.

Inflation

Inflation

Saw this meme about inflation this morning. I know prices have been going up, but they've been going up since I got out of high school and Nixon took us off the gold standard (1971). It seems like they have been going up faster lately, which I blame on the government's profligate spending. I don't know how accurate this meme is but those items which have gone up 50% (for all intents and purposes 49.3% is indistinguishable from 50%) make it look really bad. But how bad is it, really?

So I took the nine numbers listed above and computed the average. It comes out to 31%. So what rate of inflation do you need to reach 31% in four years? 7%. That's only 2% more than the 5% that I use as my default value for inflation.

My general rule is that a business needs to be making 3 times as much as the rate of inflation. One third of that 21% profit goes to taxes, one third goes to compensate for inflation, and the remaining one third is what the investors (the owner or shareholders) can take home. At an inflation rate of 7%, a business needs to be returning 21%. So while profits that large companies are reporting may seem excessive, it is probably no more than they need to survive, and we all depend on those businesses to support our civilization.