Black Swan comes home to roost

Anthony Watts at What's up with that blog has an excellent
essay with photos showing what happened at the Deepwater
Horizon, some of the best information about what happened out
there, when no one from BP has given any details about what
was going on at the time of the disaster, and I've given up on
speculating because I feel similar to after 9/11; it's hard to believe
such a big rig burned up and sank taking 11 men with it.

What is clear to me is this was a Black Swan. BP's emergency
response plan apparently said there was low risk of pollution and
low risk of a catastrophic accident. The definition
of a black swan is when one is operating in extremistan where large forces,
monetary flows or pent-up pressures are operating. Where on the frequency
axis, if you make an estimate of the rate of negative events you are probably
wrong, with disastrous results, and where the events are 'rare' enough that
we don't really know what the frequency distribution is, or if it has a shape at all.

Where those two axis' collide is the forth quadrant,
where it is dangerous to assume that a low frequency event will be rare
enough to not affect you, and when you are wrong people are killed,
giant structures are reduced to pillars of flame, economic systems destroyed,
cats and dogs sleep together. [This is all covered by Nassim Taleb in
The Black Swan, and more precisely in an essay called The Forth Quadrant,
which has to be one of the most important articles ever published for
free on the internet. I added the dogs and cats]







from NNT's
the fouth quadrant.












The wonderful thing about the oilfield is it is where economics and engineering
geology and mathematics are all applied to create money. There are no evil
shadow organizations needed, just the simple rule that if a project will make
more money than the discount rate plus some stated excess profit taking into
account the probability that you'll get nothing in return, the project is drilled.

...

Before anyone says that the operator (BP) or the rig owner was incompetent
or negligent, the problem doesn't come from the lack of hard work or oversite,
but of thinking that we can operate in the forth quadrant without getting burnt
occasionally. We will get hurt and accidents will happen as long as men dare to
sail the sea in ships, fly to the moon or drill the ocean depths.

.

Guests of the Ayatollah

Today is the anniversary of the Desert One disaster

during the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran.

A fantastic excerpt from Mark Bowden's book on

this event is here.

How many things would be different if that mission had

succeeded? No 911, gulf wars 1 and 2, no president Reagan?

Here in one paragraph was a key problem with the mission:

The question of what to do with the passengers was relayed all the way to the White House. The president and his staff were deliberately going through the late-afternoon motions of a typical workday but secretly hanging on every update from the desert. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security adviser, relayed the unexpected problem of the bus to the president, and Carter agreed that the only thing to do was to fly all the Iranians out that night on one of the C-130s and then return them to Iran when the mission was complete.

Deepwater Horizon

Rigzone's report was wrong, the 11 missing men on the deepwater horizon

weren't found, they are still missing.

The rig finally sank as can be seen in this slideshow from the times picayune

in New orleans.

Fire on the Deepwater Horizon

There was a blowout and fire out on the Deepwater Horizon
which was working for BP in Mississippi Canyon 252, which is the
Maconda field. From Rigzone, it appears that they've found everyone,
yahoo is still saying 11 men are missing though, so I hope Rigzone is
correct

They were trying to plug and abandon the well after an exploration well,
I'd guess they did a well test and were trying to set a plug afterwards so
that they can move the rig to the next well, and either they swabbed in
a kick by moving the drillpipe up too quickly, or perhaps they thought they had
the well killed after the well test and it bit them in the ass. (I have no idea
what happened, i'm just speculating).

It's interesting to me because it scares the hell out of me, the idea of having to
evacuate from a burning rig is pretty much the worst case for the oilfield. On
land you can just run away, in shallow water maybe swim to land or another rig,
but in deepwater there is usually nothing within miles, and the water is 5000' deep.
To carry out an evacuation and not lose anyone is an amazing feat, and depends completely
on the professionalism of the workers of transocean and bp.

[picture from

Rigzone, better

version there)

mmmmmm, lunch.

I just had a super good lunch at la tavolaccio, just their ordinary lunch special of
spedinni quatro formaggio for prima piatti and tonnato for secundi, piu patata al forno.

Freaking excellent. Tonnato is veal sliced thin covered in a sauce made from tuna
an mayonaise (i think). spedinni are star shaped tubular pasta that are about the
same size as kraft macaroni and cheese, but just cooked al dente with a white cheese
sauce made from 4 cheeses. Plus a half liter of wine. (doh!)

What I like about italian food is the good food isn't the outliers, I don't think there
are many 4 star italian restaurants serving minute portions of food, but the average
places are so good. Of course, this is where the truckers go too, so there's some universal
law at work of 'eat where the truckers eat'.

Lunch was topped off by a nice coffee. I think the big difference between new arrivals and
people that have lived in italy a while is the way they drink coffee. First of all, there
is a national law that says no cappuccino after lunch (or after any food, depending who you
ask). Second is when I first arrived I saw the tiny espressos and drank them in a gulp.
After a while, the sip of coffee in the espresso cup becomes 4 sips and then the real miracle
is when you realize that there is a fifth sip that include all the sugar that you put in the coffee.
(no sweet and low here).

I don't know how I'll make it back to drinking normal drip coffee. Once we get home I'm
afraid I'll be a tea drinker.

We know you have a choice when you fly...

Let slip the Professors of War

Mark Bowden has a profile of General Petraeus over at
vanity fair. Excellent as everything that Mark Bowden writes,
hopefully it's a profile of the next President.

Facing Congress, he didn’t waver. It was the same now as on the day Bush had met with him privately in the Oval Office after the Senate confirmed his selection for what most felt was an impossible mission. The general had said, “Mr. President, this isn’t double-down.… This is all-in.” It was an expression that would be repeated often within his inner circle. They were staking everything on the outcome. There could be no second thoughts, no looking back.

Tirana

Well, I'm in albania and tripadvisor was right about the traffic noise
in Tirana, the sound of the cars passing almost overwhelms the sound
of the call to prayer from the mosque down the street. The lack of traffic
noise at 5 am means the morning call to prayer sounded like it was right
outside my window. Too early, I don't think I have it in me to be so devout.

From what I've seen today, the entire country looks like it's under construction,
things are definitely booming. The strangest sight was the number of bunkers,
nearly every house out in the countryside has what looks to be a machine gun
pillbox left over from the communist days when america was going to attack any
day. It did make me yearn for the days of yore when the carter administration
would gobble up small countries and grind their bones for our bread.
[update: they were worried about the soviets invading too. yeah us!]

I'd bet in 10 more years this will look like any other european country that has
a mediteranean seafront. The people here have advantages; everyone speaks
Italian and some english, they'll zoom ahead of the rest of the eastern european
countries.

(updated from vienna)
I walked around Tirana a little
before flying out, the town is much
better looking than Bucharest,
just because the Mayor took the
initiative to have buildings painted
different colors. Same drab
communist buildings...all
dressed up.

Albania will be banging in
5-10 years. (buy now)

Now I'm in Vienna, and after 2 beers ready to pass out. Sono stanco.

Devils at deem and pass

Watching the political machinations in washington as the deemocrats
sneak the healthcare bill through, it looks to me like the economy is going to
have to get much worse before it can get better. They are finally going to
kill the goose that lays the golden eggs of american exceptionalism.

Every country has smart, well educated people with new ideas, but what I think
made america different was that small percentage of innovators that combine
that education, intelligence and new ideas with ridiculously hard work that
in most countries doesn't pay off so it doesn't happen.

Here in italy people are smart, elegant and well educated, but once you reach a certain
level of income one has to pay 45% income tax plus 9% health care tax. If one has
a choice between working hard or going up to the mountains and skiing with other
beautiful people, most people here go for the skiing, the beach, the museum or
the 4 hour lunches.

Another component of america's exceptionalism is fear. If you know that you are
working without much of a net, or the idea of going on hands and knees for a handout
sickens you then working extra hard to make sure that you stay employed and get
ahead is normal. As the government becomes the source of all things, healthcare, mortgage payments, and discount cars it will become much easier to not work extra hard to get ahead but to take up the 'they pretend to pay us so I'll pretend to work mentality'.

These effects will happen much more rapidly than expected, as soon as people start
to get paychecks with less than half of gross income productivity will decline, tax revenues
will then decline leading to higher tax rates with everything spiraling downward pretty fast to
default on a debt that is pretty unpayable at this point anyway. So maybe things will
work out for the best.

Long strange trip

I'm traveling this week and I think I overdid it and have lost
the will to travel ever again. I went to Bucharest-Ploesti-Constanta-
Bucharest-Istanbul-Ankara-Istanbul-Bucharest-Forli and just
today I've been through a security checkpoint 5 times.

I was just so tired that when I checked in here in bucharest I thought
there was a mirror behind the counter, instead it's see-through to the other
side, the girl on the other side of the counter just looked almost like the
girl in front of me with her back turned towards me. Finally, the girl on
the other side of the counter turned around and in a split second before
I realized there was no mirror, it looked to me like the counter girl in front
of me had seperated from her reflection. I guess I'm tired.

But heading home now.

A good beginning

A link from The Big Picture led me to a column from Senator
Ted Kaufman of Delaware that lays out a plan for rebuilding
the financial system. It sounds pretty sensible to me, this whole
idea of Too big to fail should mean a company needs to be broken up
before it fails.

It's too long to excerpt, but here's the highlights:
The Volcker Rule: A Good Beginning
Glass-Steagall for the 21st Century
Size and Leverage Constraints: Cutting the Mega Banks and Shadow Banking System Down to Size

Hopefully something will be done to wind back the clock to the 1970's, if
there's another financial crash I don't think the USA has much left on it's credit
cards to do another bailout.

This sounds bad

Over 50 Turkish commanders held over coup plot

Police in simultaneous operations in eight cities detained 21 generals and admirals, including ex-deputy chief Gen. Ergin Saygun, former Air Force chief Gen. Ibrahim Firtina and Navy Chief Adm. Ozden Ornek. The rest were mostly colonels.

They are also accused of conspiring to plan shooting down a Turkish warplane to trigger armed conflict with Greece in a bid to destabilize the Turkish government. The military strongly denies the allegations.

Erdogan declined to comment Monday on the raids, saying they had been carried out on prosecutors' orders. However on Sunday, Erdogan said his government had not given "a chance to those who tried to fly a course for Turkey outside the law."

I have no idea what the reality is from this article, it's either the Turkish military planning on asserting control again or the Islamist government framing military members, but whatever is happening it sounds bad for Europe and for NATO.

E pur se muove

The Gormogons have a great post explaining the denialist position
for global warming:

Further, when we hear outlandish statements that cold waves are the result of GW, and that heavy precipitation is the result of GW, and that record snowfall is the result of GW, we really question whether you are stopping to think before you speak to the press. Yeah, some science makes no sense at first: all galaxies are moving away from the others, so that if you pick a random galaxy, every other galaxy appears to be moving away from it? But then you paint dots on a balloon and inflate the balloon...and suddenly the crazy concept is perfectly obvious. We are awaiting these analogies and demonstrations. Because until they arrive, you look foolish.

Maybe if your data checked out. But day after day comes another revelation of a flawed study, or that temperatures stopped increasing, or that something was incorrectly recorded. Maybe you should just stop and start over from scratch with a fresh approach. In football, this is called a punt. Science tries them all the time, but evidently only in other fields.

Hence, in a nutshell, here is what the average Denialist actually believes (and get ready to be surprised at how off-base your assessment of our concerns could be):

Denialists believe that climate science is a new and emerging field, with new discoveries and realizations frequently changing basic assumptions. We understand that observations (in the water, on the ground, in the air) conflict and often indicate a fluid and changing nature. We fully accept that some temperatures may be increasing, that atmospheric composition could be affected by man, and that these have long-term effects which may be disastrous for millions of people.

... and they continue on from there, go read the whole thing.

I'd also add that I agree with the Jerry Pournelle point of view, we don't have enough data, we
should be spending more on data. He often references Bayesian analysis, where as more
data arrives you get a better answer (we use it for decoding noisy communications from
downhole tools)

The warmists are still stuck on the precautionary principle, because there's a risk of something
bad happening we should panic and destroy our economies in the hope of preventing this
bad thing. Even as each drip drip drip of exposed bad data tells me that the bayesian
probability of something bad happening is less and less and the correct thing to do is
gather more data.

I'm not that worried about Co2, and though I think we are close to peak oil production there
are plenty more hydrocarbons available (maybe at higher prices). We should be working
on reducing imports of hydrocarbons and trying to find the economic green energy answer
that solves our energy import answer and not the global warming answer.

Go Saints!

I'm trying to stay awake to watch the superbowl. I have to get up and
work in a few hours but luckily the well has pushed a few hours and I can
at least watch the game at home.

Update 3:45 am: Saints Win! Hot damn. I know it's foolish to follow a
sports team over 4 decades, none of the players are the same, nor coaches,
nor owners. But I'm the same, and all the rest of the fans are still the same,
the fans and the city are what make a team, players come and go, but the
city is still there. Congratulations Big Easy!

Hell freezes over, the ghost of Buddy D. wears a dress

From the times picayune comes the story of the "Buddy D. Dress
Parade", the photos include one of Bobby Hebert wearing a dress
and a blond wig. A parade in honor of Buddy Diliberto who was
a local sports anchor who swore he'd wear a dress when the saints
went to the superbowl.





Image from Buddy's
broads.com












Hopefully Buddy Diliberto is smiling wherever he is. Old flannelmouth
was always a strong Saints supporter by doing strong news reporting and
not just rah rah. (there was plenty of rah rah too though).

He was the first sports reporter in the city to wear a bag on his head when
the Saints went 1-15 and officially became the Aints, and he and Hap Glaudi
were the original TV sports reporters I remember from the early '70's, the
ABC channel would bring in a different face every couple of years, but they
couldn't take the pain of reporting in a city with such crappy teams.

(update)From Peter Finney's column in the Times Picayune some malaprops:

Meaning to say "secondaries,'' he once announced "quarterback Dan Fouts retired today after 17 seasons of terrorizing NFL secretaries.''
And there were those throwaway lines:
"That's a mute point.''
"That's just the chip of the iceberg.''
"The Saints led in time of obsession.''
"If the Saints can make the trade, it will be a good one, like manana from heaven.''
"Old Dominion'' became "Old Dominican.''
When it came to injuries, a player was out with "a torn lee nigament.'' On another day, a shoulder operation might be called one to remedy "a torn rotary cup.''
A visit to Children's Hospital once prompted the observation about "those courageous boys and girls lying there, hooked up to their RVs.''
Buddy D sailed through his sea of squirrels, with passion, with frustration, with optimism, always with a smile.

Snow day

It's snowing pretty hard here today, starting with the small
granules of snow and building up until huge clumps of snow are falling,
looking like someone overturned several thousand baskets of white
feathers.

Not much seems to be accumulating though on our street, I would
imagine that outside of town there is probably around 6" on the ground,
in town there's bubkus on the roads I can see from our windows.

It would much better if we had some kind of sweets to eat, we're pretty
well stuck inside.

Pigs fly, hell freezes over, cats and dogs, etc

The Saints won
last night giving them
a trip to the superbowl
for the first time ever.

I'm the same age as the
saints and it's taken my
entire life to reach the
big game, and it's about
freakin' time.

who dat say dey gonna
beat dem Saints? Who
Dat, Who dat.

Thanks again President Bush

I just watched a clunky B-movie called Deterrence, starring Kevin Pollack
as the president of the USA, Timothy Hutton as an advisor and one of the hobbits
from LOTR's as a local redneck. It's a pretty bad movie that I was semi watching
by flipping back to Top Gear to see their space shuttle launch (super cool)

The movie was interesting because it was made in 1999 starring a couple of
left wing actors and written and produced by French guys, yet the premise
of the movie was that Iraq was reinvading Kuwait, we threatened them with
nukes to stop and they responded by launching nuclear bombs at us.

It contained a lot of information that was common knowledge at the turn of
the century, the president of Iraq was Uday Hussein (so we couldn't just wait
for Saddam to drop dead), Iraq was trying for years to get NBC WMD's and they
had them, and were ready to attack Kuwait or the US at any time.

It was just another data point that tells me almost all of the Bush lied meme was just
cynical political posturing by democrats scrambling for power. Things that were common
knowledge in 2000 became hard to track intelligence data points pumped up by
political pressure by 2004.

Bush instead took the much harder decision not to nuke bagdad, or conventionally
bomb them for days or weeks as Clinton did, but invade. I would have nuked them
from orbit, or tomahawked them for months before risking american soldiers, but
Bush didn't. He took the non-cynical more moral decision that I still think will have
long term positive effects, for Iraq at least, even though it cost us a hella lot of money.

Once the glow has fully faded from The One, the comparisons will be even clearer.

Who Dat!

I doubted the saint's head coach a few weeks ago when it seemed like
there was no way that losing 3 games in a row was part of a cunning plan,
but it looks like it was a pretty cunning plan. The Saints beat the cardinals
like a drum 45-14 and they are going to the NFC championship game.

Just beat Dallas or Minnesota, and we're off to the Superbowl.

Go Saints!

The Saints just started playing Arizona, It's already 7-7 and it
looks like both defenses have stayed home and could be a 60 point
game, maybe a great playoff game, but I hope it's a blowout for the
saints.

I'm drinking a white spritzer wine that a friend gave me made up
in Veneto, and opening a bottle of wine is as much preperation as I
want to make for a Saint's playoff game. The first time they went to
the playoffs back in '92(?), they were crushed so completely that the
game beer became consolation beer, and we ended up renting a movie
by halftime.

Hopeful but nervous, excited but frightened. I'm enjoying the Yin and Yang
of saints football, and I don't want to enjoy it sober. Who dat!

Cold weather

A column in the timesonline from the UK mentions that the UK Met service
is saying that statistically this will be one of the warmest winters ever. Of course
that's probably averaging in the southern hemisphere, so even after what seems to
me to be the coldest winter since around 1988, when one of the first times that I walked
out onto the flightline I stepped on a frozen puddle, flipped ass over teakettle and
dropped a tech order book that exploded into 1000 pages of FOD.

Hopefully people will start to come to their senses and ignore some of the stupider
climate change nonsense, like switching to 100% windpower that would lead to
periods like last weeks low temperatures killing thousands of people as they freeze
in their houses. High Pressure = low temp = no wind gives the coldest and hottest
days with lowest available power.

We need to be moving away from burning oil and gas for heat, but what we need to
move to for the grid has to be something that can be switched on and off, not waiting
for the breath of god to turn it on and off. There needs to be an intermediate
compromise that doesn't involve name calling, and a technical plan that is less
of trying to appease an angry Al Gore and more of a detailed look at what is available
and what will be available in 10, 20 and 30 years.

Build more nuke plants, study fusion and advanced storage and hydrogen. Instead of
cap and trade that looks like it will just enrich the Al Gores of the world, I'd put an oil
tax at some level below where prices are today, say $75 per barrel. In the USA I'd make
it an import tax. If prices are high it won't have any effect. If prices go low then low oil
prices won't destroy the economics of alternative energy or nuke power, and in the USA
it won't necessarily destroy the american oil industry again. ( or worse than it is right now)

A cunning plan

According to Jeff Duncan at the times picayune, Sean Payton
is an evil genius and losing the last 3 games was part of the plan
for the Saints to win global domination.






link to photo














I'm not buying that, I'll give him yesterday's game, almost no one
played and I turned it off after the 2nd quarter. But I don't
think this is part of a strategy to manufacture a crises and motivate
this time, I think it's a crises and we'll see how good a coach Sean Payton
is if the Saints can win a playoff game. If they follow the current trend
I'll be watching the colts play the vikings in the superbowl.

Dr Evil I presume

The Gormorgan's Notorius EV
posted a photo of Obama speaking to
Joe Biden and both wearing tuxedos
looking like James Bond villains
trying to figure out what step 2 is.

Step 1. Kill Bond
Step 2. ?
Step 3 Rule the world and get
control of ALL the healthcare.

Here's another photo showing
the president looking like he's toasting
the hatching of another evil scheme.

Bwahahahahahahahhaahah.

photo credit

I told you so too.

Mike at Cold Fury links to an article from IBD:

Before the election of 2008, few Americans described Obama as liberal, let alone socialist. Polls typically reflect media opinion, and the media by and large portrayed Obama as a moderate. Now his far-left views are obvious, and for the first time most Americans see Obama as governing from the left.

What we warned of then is now governance, though we take no pleasure in the validation. The pending government takeover of the medical system (one-sixth of the economy), as well as the ownership stakes taken in autos and banking, not to mention the demonization and planned destruction of the private insurance industry, were foretold by us, along with the accumulation of power to the federal government in the name of “crisis” upon “crisis.”

I share some of the blame for this too, I didn't vote, I didn't get my ballot and mail it in, figuring

that my ballot would go to Texasn anyway, a sure win for Mcain.

Here's what I wrote before the election:

It's not the color of Obama's skin that bothers me, it's that I don't agree with
anything he says or anything that he plans to do. I also tend to think that he
was sent by someone in the chicago machine, or sent by a diabolical marxist organization
that is bent on undermining a free and capitalist america or sent as a product of
an extremely liberal education that was then baked in an oven of an anti-american
preacher. All those ideas might be believable or laudable in some situations, but
I don't want them as part of the makeup of the president of the united states.

sorry America.

Number of the Year

Over at the ever valuable Numberwatch, the Numby awards have been
given out and the number of the month, year and decade announced. The Numby
award for person of influence is Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri.

[shown here accepting
his Numby]









from Wolf Howling:

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is immensely powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post.

EU referendum is covering this as well when they take a break from exposing the
inadequacy of the british MOD.

I'm always amazed that the left/green/communist interpretation of the world always
includes evil oil men suborning governments and destroying the world, but is blind to
things like the man in charge of the IPCC having vested interests in global warming
being true, whether there is any evidence for it or not.

I just had to repeat our company's training on avoidance of conflict of interest and ethics,
and to avoid even the appearance of corruption I can't accept gifts worth more than $200
from suppliers, or own stock in oil companies because I could conceivably have access to
data that could give me inside information. And I'm just a nobody so far down on the org
chart that I have a dashed line connecting me to the janitor.

Dr Pachauri doesn't just have the appearance of conflict of interest, a simple google search
shows that he's a direct beneficiary of the policies he's supposed to be investigating. I prefer
some good honest oilfield fatcats be in charge of the IPCC.

The Number of the year was also presented, and it is the number one.

One stands for the Norwich One, the whistleblower who revealed the contents of emails and program files from the CRU at the University of East Anglia . He provided much solace to those who attempt to continue the tradition of sceptical science, by providing evidence that what they had deduced about what this and associated outfits were up to was, in fact,

congratulations to all the winners.

Instalaunched

Thanks to a link from Glenn Reynolds I just quadrupled the
number of hits I've gotten in the past 3 months in the past 3 hours.
Wow. Very potent linkage.

Thanks for visiting. Please don't be offended by the blog title,
a coonass is just a person from Louisiana of cajun descent. The most
interesting things here are when I was liveblogging about Katrina, and
when I was hotairlaunched pointing out the slant about Haditha from
the Times of London. Otherwise mostly travel and drunkblogging with
some political rants thrown in.

First attack of the new year.

Danish Police just shot a somali man a man who was trying
to attack Kurt Westergaard in Denmark. This was the cartoonist
who drew the cartoon of mohammed with a bomb in his turban. This is on bbc
tv right now, of course they won't show the actual cartoons they are
talking about.

No word on the religion of the attacker.

Happy New Year!

A fairly strange but good new year's eve. This hotel's
restaurant was closed so that it could cook for the hotel's
new year's party that we weren't invited to. Luckily the
excellent staff here at the hotel hooked us up with
dinner in the bar, with good food, good Ouzo, champagne
then more good ouzo.

Today I feel shot at and missed, shit at and hit and my eyes
look like two piss holes in the snow as my father would say, but
the ouzo seemed to kill off most of my sinus infection I've been
fighting all week, making this a worthwhile new year's hangover.

Home and back again

We went to the USA for Christmas which was nice to see family
and bask in the deserts of home. (mmmm, chocolate). I had to come
back here for work which meant my flight was Birmingham>Houston>
Frankfurt>+2 more connections and 29 hours total. Today I feel like I was
shot at and missed, shit at and hit.

Apparently I traveled just ahead of the new search requirements and
the restrictions of going to the bathroom in the last hour of flight. That restriction
won't stand up to actual practice, we'll have situations like Frozone in the
Incredibles "You can shoot me, but I'm going to pee".

Apparently the guy setting off the bomb hid it on his leg and burned off his
junk. I don't see how improved searching is going to find these kind of bombs,
if someone is willing to burn their love tackle off to take down a plane no amount
of taking your shoes off is going to stop that without much more personal pat downs,
and even then you'll get the eternal question, "Is that an explosive in your pocket
or are you just happy to see me?"

Sleepy luggage thief

We made it back to the usa for Christmas. I had to travel to Greece
and back earlier in the week, then we flew from bologna to germany to
Houston to New Orleans and I was pretty wiped out by the time we got
to MSY. Instead of dutifully checking my luggage tags, I picked up a bag
that looks just like ours but is around 10% smaller. We zombied around for
a day, my wife thinking that the strange bag belonged to my parents and our
bag was still in the car. I thought I had the right bag until I was asked to go
get our other bag. It several minutes of travel fogged arguing until we looked
inside and gave a mutual "doh!"

I called Continental and they said bring the bag to the airport and pickup ours
and the bag's owner would be waiting. I said that sounded bad, what if he's
some kind of hitman on a mission? The girl said 'don't worry, he'll be waiting
outside', which didn't really comfort me.

Luckily the bag's owner's went to lunch when I made the bag switch and there
were no sniper's bullets to take me out as I walked into baggage claim. It turned
out the bag's owner's had a wedding to go and were about to go out to buy new clothes.

All I can say in my defense is "doh!"

Lileks needs help, send money guns and lawyers

Or just Money. James Lileks who is one of my favorite columnists
is running a pledge drive. If we don't send enough money he'll
give The Bleat the ax.

So send money to keep high quality bleatage going like this:

As I tweeted: Target was doing their photo-booth hiring from the Li’l Witch Employment Agency this year, it seemed. I asked her if she had a thumb drive I could use, and she said – literally – “Nah.”

Nice to hear that someone still says “Nah,” because I tend to use it in a novel from time to time.

I sent 30 simoleans, which I found out today are a chain of mountains in northern italy.

A year of magical thinking

Stephen den beste is back on the intertubes with a column on hot air.


On hot air he's writing about Obama as a Teleological thinker, how he expects
magical thinking to work to transform the USA:

It explains his economic policy. Teleologists inherently don’t believe in unintended side effects when it comes to implementing their idealistic policies. Obviously it should be possible to provide free health care to everyone without wrecking the economy; it’s just how things really should be, so that’s how it will be. Where will the money come from? That’s the kind of question that materialists ask; teleologists don’t concern themselves with such trivial. It’ll happen somehow, because it’s obviously how it should turn out. To say we shouldn’t do it is to be heartless, uncaring — and those things are more important than mundane claims that it won’t work. If you just believe, it will work.

Jimmy Carter was similar and we see how that turned out. Jimmy Carter described
the congress as the ravening wolves, and we're seeing the wolves running free now
as they create 2000 page healthcare bills. Depending on the kindness of congress
or the kindness of governments that don't like us is a bad idea and likely to have
bad results in the non-magical world.

Den Beste was one of the four horsemen of the ablogalypse, and his USS clueless
blog was one of the first must reads for clarity of thought. Here's a blog on the
mean green meme that explained so well the way that different groups of people
think post 911. I'm glad he's back.

Liberation Day for Ravenna - Dec 4th, 1944

Today's the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Ravenna from
the German occupation.

It was liberated by a combined attack of partisan's and British,
but the partisan attack from behind meant it was not destroyed
by bombing.

The British were led by Popski's private army, a commando group
whose attack saved St. Apollinare in Classe from destruction. It was
thought that sniper fire was coming from the church's bell tower, but
Popski's group went forward under fire to find that there was no one
there, so it wasn't bombed to ruin.

Is it Christmas today?

I just woke up to see that the Saints crushed New England 38 - 17.
Sleeping through the game and seeing that they won is almost as good
as watching it live, all the suspense was between the time the computer
started until it showed the NoLa webpage, and with my new supergiant
dell 6400 that only took 3 seconds.

It makes me wonder what New Orleans would be like if the Saints had won
consistently all through the 70's, and won super bowl after super bowl like
Dallas. I think half of the city's confidence problem and letting events just
happen comes from the Saints snatching defeat from the jaws of victory over
so many years. Or maybe that just me and I'm projecting.

Anyway. Who Dat!

Buy them out

One interesting aspect of the CRU scandal is that the scientists are
constantly unwilling to give up their "code" because that is the real work
that they have done over tens of years. Unfortunately for them and for
the world, their code looks like crap, it looks like my Fortran code from a
machine design class, where I struggled with it until the last possible minute
and my code was producing a cam with a diameter of 1E22 meters. Basically
a cam that would drive the Universe. I finally had to print it out, white out the
extra digits and photocopy it to keep from getting a zero.

These guys have written the same kind of code, full of goto's, and they deserve
to be eaten by velociraptors.













All the crappy code should be over with by now. We're talking about adding
taxes to destroy the economy in order to reduce carbon output. Amateur coding
hour should be over and they should hire Apple or someone to write whatever
beautiful code they need and put the code on gold plated iPhones.

If we have to buy out all these guys and their scientific careers by giving them
professorships, money, women and software developers, then it will be cheap
at the price. They just need to give us the data and show exactly what they did
to the data on live TV to get the answers they have. If it still makes sense, then
lets talk about donning animal skins and hunting the nutria as my ancestors did.

To build their scientific careers at some podunk university in Britain they are willing
to destroy the western economies. They are either are true believers and the data
backs them up, or true believers based crap data. We need to know which it is.

Hamlet's Mill and the Mayan prediction

I'm watching a program on National geographic, they are looking at the
mayan prophecies and how the world is going to end in 2012 as predicted by
the Mayans. It's a strange mixture of Science, History and religious mumbo
jumbo from 'descendants' of the Mayans. "When the sun aligns with the center
of the galazy it will create energy that will end the world"

It is a strange mixture because this program is overlying the mumbo jumbo
on top of a description of the ancient Mayans as astronomers and technically
proficient.

This story was already told in a book called Hamlet's mill that tries to explain
the reason that there are so many stories around the world describing end of
the world floods and ends of the world as cycles end. Two different things
must be kept in mind about the people that created the world destruction myths.
They were serious people that built pyramids and Empires. Your average new age hippie wouldn't know how to begin to build a pyramid, and in the same way the people that built the
pyramids wouldn't create a frivolous myth, their myths were used to transmit
information over long periods of time. The second thing to keep in mind is that
these same stories of end of the world due to flood are the same all around the
world.

The reason the myths have to be transmitted over long periods of time is there
was no writing when the original builders and astronomers lived and worked and
the time periods discussed were very long because they are trying describe the
precession of the equinoxes. So they needed a timekeeper, an object with a fairly
long period that repeated and they called that Chronos, but literally it was the planet
saturn with an orbital period of 80 years. Saturn marks off a second hand on a massive
clock where the hour hand is the precession of the equinoxes around the zodiac.
Each hour is the 2400 year age that is occuring. (eg age of Aquarius), and the end
of an age is the end of the "world" when the old gods die and new gods take over.
Kronos to Chronos to zeus. Interesting, but if you're not living in a completely agricultural
world that risks famine if the equinoxes are mis-predicted then it's not really end
of the world stuff.

So in the end it was a pretty annoying program. Instead of highlighting yet another
society that was either influenced by truly ancient people (egyptians were in Mexico?),
or just pointing how smart the people were 2000 years ago and look at all these things
they built and observations they made, they spent an hour of my life trying to predict
how the world is going to end as predicted by the ancient Mayans.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My wife went out into the Italian wilderness and came back with
the makings of thanksgiving dinner, with Turkey, macaroni & cheese
(pasta) and mashed potatoes and gravy. mmm.

I'm thankful for that and for my family.

do you want to kiss me?

More global warmin hack

Bishop Hill has a list of emails from the hru server that is
pretty damning. The great thing about the list is includes
a unique number for each email, and if you google that number
the first hit is the original text. from 1107454306.txt

Mike,
        I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !
     Just sent loads of station data to Scott.  Make sure he documents everything better
     this time !  And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is
    trawling them.  The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear
    there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than
    send to anyone.  Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within
     20 days? - our does !  The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.
    We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried
     email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code.  He
     has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that.

I'm no lawyer, but if you conspire to break a law is that conspiracy or just
obstruction of justice?

I kind of feel for these guys. If my email got hacked it would be a boring
list of go here and do that, and me either going there and doing that or finding
some way to weasel out of going there, or if I really go there do I have to do that
or can I just sit in a pub and drink?

Which just points out the futility of my career versus these guys who are supposed
to be gathering accurate data that will determine whether the government wrecks
the economy to prevent a bigger disaster. They seem to be working on an agenda
to change the world and wreck the economy, which would be the plot of a bad Tom
Clancy novel except that I think all this will be coming to a vote in the next few months.

Note to climate scientists: Gather good data. Try and compare data to models.
When your models can reproduce the weather of the past 50 years I'll listen to
the future predictions of your models. Oh yea, good job on appearing to have not a single
dirty joke or nudie picture in the entire archive. Stop working so hard, you're making
us look bad.

Hacking the real scoop on global warming

Over at WUWT and climate audit, they are posting some mail
and documents posted by a hacker that hacked into the CRU facility
in the UK.

If some of the documents are real then it's just another example of don't
put anything in an email that you wouldn't printed in a newspaper, but
without the sex talk seen in normal examples of released emails.

I can't download the info to a work computer, the hacked docs are probably
chock full of virus', but the posted examples seem too good to be true:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

If some of those mails and documents are true, then get ready with
tar and feathers for these people. More likely they were created by
the hackers or taken out of context. They would be more believable
if there were some off color jokes or light sex chat.

Hurricane passed

The hurricane passed and everyone is ok at home. No Hurricanes
here, just cold, then rainy and colder then cold again. Winter still
hasn't started though, so it's not really cold, unless I-10 is your normal
boundary in which case your thermostat is sitting on the maximum of
24 deg c. (we've got a smart meter that keeps us from using more than
4 kw at a time, and a thermostat with a max temp of 24.) I don't know
what we'd do if it got really cold this apartment is just a brick sh-thouse
writ large, no insulation, no attic. Hopefully the government would come
with more blankets.

Hades temperature decreasing

The saints won and there's a hurricane in the gulf in November,
sure signs that the saints reaching 8 - 0 is affecting the weather
down under, not meaning Australia.

I'd be on the lookout for heavy houston snowstorms, ice in Lake
Ponchatrain and sober people in the french quarter, all signs
that the Saints can go all the way.

Saints and suitcase bombs

I had an early flight this morning and I meant to wake up in time
to watch some of monday night football before heading out. As normal
I woke up just in time to get in the taxi and dash to the airport. I wanted
to know how the Saints - Falcons game was going and the only way was to
use the Forbidden Phone Internet. Normally touching any advanced feature
on my crappy Palm phone gives a warning in Italian that suggests using a different
connection for half price internet

But I didn't care, I cast Euros to the wind and connected to NFL.com to get
the score...28 - 21 and we're beating the evil Falcons in the 3rd quarter, then
I hit reload 50 times on the way to Bologna as the falcons got a field goal then
the saints got the ball. I reached the Alitalia counter and got in line behind a
heavy-set nervous looking guy. He said something in Italian that I missed because
I was reading the last play ("hey little rabbbit, hold da ballons while I tie da shoe
laces") then he scampered away. I looked up to see his giant bag in front of me
that if it was a bomb would blow me halfway back to ravenna, but I just kept
clicking refresh until the Saints scored!

If it had been a movie the camera would have panned back as I threw my hands
up in victory then blasted me to kingdom come. Instead the nervous guy got back
in line as it just started to move, having had his cappucino and crossaint. Well worth
being blown up as long as the saints make it to the superbowl.

Neptunus Lexicon

Some of the best writing around is over at Neptunus Lex, an ex Navy
Airman who just dropped off his son for flight training.

Arizona passed as a long series of dry plains like desert battlefields parted by the highway. On each side opposed battalions of tall cacti stood formation in endless ranks. Third world thin, backed by mountains in the distance. New Mexico at dawn an inexpressibly beautiful, alien landscape, with soaring escarpments casting the stern, implacable shadows of alien gods. We spoke of the courage those people had shown crossing this country from east to west on their horses and covered wagons little more than a hundred years or so ago, the unremitting waves of hostilities they had stolidly faced, sentient and otherwise. We didn’t speak aloud to wonder where it had gone, the kind of hardiness that had made this land. What was left of it, I sensed, sat beside me.

Where he tells the story of his first night carrier landing is a story comparable to Tom Wolfe
and the right stuff and it made my palm sweat on the mouse just scrolling down the page.
The closest I ever got to being a fighter pilot was riding down to the trim pad in the back
seat of an F-15B, but at least with such great writing I can live vicariously on the interwebs
and read the deeds of warrior poets. This makes for a slight change from the Domestic Poets
and scientist poets that I'm usually reading.

Naked Coffee in the castle

I keep seeing the news about the guy Eric Williamson who was arrested
for drinking coffee in the nude. I think a man's home is his castle and he should
be able to do what he wants there as long as no one inside the house is being hurt.

My favorite response was a comment on weird news where they are advocating everyone drink coffee in the nude until he is free:

Busted for one woman’s nagging,
Coffee Guy set tongues a-wagging;
He legally brewed
At home in the nude
Rather than public teabagging

(from JFD8 on twitter)

I'd join in with the naked coffee protest but a window facing the apartment
building's courtyard has no curtains. I don't want to shock or annoy the
neighbors when they gave us such a nice lunch today.

Obama is The Man

The Czar over at the Gormogons makes a pithy summary of
Obama's problems with Fox News from a wsj article:

And kudos from the Czar to whomever first realized that President Obama’s playbook is limited to fighting the man. He does not realize that he is, now and tomorrow, the man himself.

Obama needs to add some pages to his playbook and stop playing the victim.
There are people and countries out there that are perfectly happy to really make
Obama and the USA the victim. Obama squealing like a little girl just makes him
look weak to the real sharks that are out there.

The president also keeps saying stop distracting him and let him work on the
economy and create jobs, when in fact he is creating the distraction by trying to
change healthcare and add a climate change bill. One of the big takeaways from
the book "the Forgotten Man" was that much of the depression was caused by the
government mucking around and changing the system.

People with money to invest or businesses to start tend to do less of investing and
business starting when you can't know what your costs are going to be in 6 months.
The President should delay the new health care and climate change bills until the
economy is stronger so that you don't kill the patient. He is The Man in every sense
of the phrase, now is the time to act like it.

Palin goin' rogue

On Sarah Palin's facebook page she's supporting the conservative
candidate in a new york congressional election over the RINO
republican:

Doug Hoffman stands for the principles that all Republicans should share: smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty.

Political parties must stand for something. When Republicans were in the wilderness in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan knew that the doctrine of "blurring the lines" between parties was not an appropriate way to win elections. Unfortunately, the Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate who more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race. This is why Doug Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party's ticket.

If she'll lead I'll follow. Here in Europe she's been painted as an idiot by only showing
the heavily edited interviews she did in the campaign last year. I've seen enough speeches
she's given to prove otherwise, and she gives a quick summary of my main political beliefs:

smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty

This should be the republican political platform, but most republicans can't lift their snout
out of the trough long enough to stand for anything. That is similar to the libertarian platform,
but the libertarian party seems to be more against strong national defense. I guess I'm a libertarian-conservative, and the candidates I want to support would wantt:

smaller government - all government is bad, some is necessary
lower taxes - taxes should be lower, simpler and more transparent
strong national defense - best navy, air force and space force in the world, beware of
entangling alliances
commitment to individual liberty - I don't care what any adult smokes, drinks etc or does
in the privacy of their homes.

and remember

Ray Nagin is still a twit

I've been reading the Times-Picayune in New Orleans following
the saints on their historic march to the superbowl (touch wood).
They have an article on Ray Nagin speaking about his trip to Cuba
to see how they do disaster preparedness down in the islands.

"one of the biggest weaknesses we had during Hurricane Katrina is it wasn't clear who was the top authority."

"The president and the governor were going back and forth. . . . In Cuba you don't have that problem, " Nagin said Tuesday evening. "The government says, 'This is what we're doing, these are the resources we are going to deploy, ' and it pretty much happens."

What a load of crap, this guy still doesn't realize that he had total and complete
authority to take care of his city, evacuate people, requisition school buses to
move people, get on the news and demand the president do more...and do it before
the storm hit.

Mayor Nagin has definitely reached his Peter Principle point, for the safety
of the republic he needs to not be in any higher public office.

Limousine point

I flew over to Athens yesterday morning after getting back from
Aberdeen the night before and I almost made a 50 euro mistake.
Walking out of the airport terminal I was mostly asleep, so tired that
I slept through my free cookie on alitalia (mmmm, cookie).

A well dressed guy stopped me and offered me a ride in one of a line of cars,
all mercedes and Peugot 706's. He showed me the price on a laminated
car...90 euros, or I could walk 100 yards to the taxi line and wait. My
tired feet said yes then he pointed out the driver that would take me
who was a spitting image of Fred Gwinn as Ed Munster. I let out an
almost verbal "gah" and scurried to the taxi line. The taxi was only 40
euros, so a scary face saved me 50 euros.

Bridge to nowhere

Mark Steyn has a good reason why nationalized healthcare will
be so expensive in the USA if it happens:

A few weeks back I mentioned a couple of bridges in a neighboring town of mine, both on dirt roads serving maybe a dozen houses. Bridge A: The town was prevailed upon to apply for some state/town 80/20 funding plan, which morphed under the stimulus into some fed/state 60/40 funding plan. Current estimated cost: $655,000. The town’s on the hook for 20 per cent of the state’s 40 per cent – or $52,400. There’s no estimated year of completion, or even of commencement, and the temporary bridge the town threw up has worn out.

Bridge B: Following their experience with Bridge A, the town replaced this one themselves, in a matter of weeks. Total cost: $30,000.

Government is simple provided two conditions are met: You do it locally, and you do it without unions.

When you're not spending your own money cost is no longer a problem.

Emotive Stick Figures

I'm always amazed
by how much body language
is conveyed by the stick
figures of XKCD.

Here the TSA guy
is about to go into
gun pointing "step
away from the
laptop mode".

If you need to waste
a few hours just go
to XKCD and click the
random button. repeat.

Archie Manning's other son

I paid the nfl $30 to be able to listen to the saints games this year.
Well worth the money since I got to listen to them trouncing the giants.
All I can say is "Who Dat!"

I went googling around to see if Archie Manning has anything to say
on a blog or columns about his sons playing football, or Eli losing to the
Saints and I found this on the Onion from last season:

Archie Manning: "Donovan McNabb Is Also My Son"

NEW ORLEANS—Following the Eagles NFC divisional playoff victory over the Giants, Archie Manning, retired NFL player and father of Peyton and Eli Manning, stunned the football world by announcing Monday that Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is also his son. "While traveling with the Saints I met a very special woman in Chicago, and from our brief but heated union sprang a boy—a boy who naturally grew to play quarterback," Manning said during an impromptu interview, adding that he recognized the boy's mother from a recent Campbell's Chunky Soup commercial....

I'll crush you like a worm

I'm in Aberdeen this week,
it's a pretty gray place. All
of the buildings are made of
gray granite, the sky is
normally gray, even with
an exceptional blue sky
today it still seems like
a gray world.

I did get out and walk around
this afternoon and I stumbled
on a statue of William Wallace.
All of the other buildings that
might be of historical interest
have been turned into pubs. I only saw one church that is still a church, the
rest are pretty cool looking gothic nightclubs. One even has a casino.

Unfortunately I'm working nights, so no guinness or single malt for me this trip.
I did get a fish and chip(s?) with a beef pie on the side. I thought he would just
nuke the meat pie, but he dropped it in a fryer. I couldn't eat after I
saw how much grease was on it which was a shame. They don't appear to be
food for the sober, but are great after about 6 pints of Guiness.

Theodoric's tomb and sea level

I've been trying to read the pro-AGW case on websites
like realclimate and the Stoat. I'm trying to keep an open
mind, but much of what is presented doesn't agree with my
preconceptions that it was as warm or warmer in the past when
CO2 levels were lower. My other bias is that several degrees
warmer doesn't scare me, but if the ice starts to come back things
will be much worse. Going the low energy low emissions route would be
the worst thing we could do if it is actually getting colder, so I'm going
to try and give my anti-agw warming arguments to their pro-AGW
arguments.

the first link on the "is sea level rising" question takes you to the IPCC FAQ that says this:

Yes, there is strong evidence that global sea level gradually rose in the 20th century and is currently rising at an increased rate, after a period of little change between AD 0 and AD 1900. Sea level is projected to rise at an even greater rate in this century. The two major causes of global sea level rise are thermal expansion of the oceans (water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice due to increased melting.

To say that no sea level rise occurred from 0 AD
to 1800 is a pretty big statement. There are
pretty good maps from after the renaissance, but
from 0 AD to 1500 there isn't too much, or at least
not enough to say it didn't happen.

One set of datapoints that exists are structures built near the sea
in classical times. The foundations of those buildings could be
close to sea level at the date they were constructed. if
they are close to a river then the foundations would be covered by mud as the
river builds out into the newly deeper sea, or if they aren't close to a river then
they'd be underwater assuming the sea rose.

A misconception that seems to be prevalent is that rising sea levels always means
less land available, that the sea will just encroach on us. Instead increases in sea level
either give rivers or delta fronts more space to fill, and land progrades out into the sea.
Or if there is no river nearby the newly higher sea lever transgresses over the land.
If sea level decreases, then rivers cut down as steeper hydraulic gradients give them
more energy. (a google search reveals several articles on archeogeology)

From a geological standpoint, ravenna has changed quite a bit over the centuries.
From classical times to the 19th century, the city was surrounded by rivers.
Along with the surrounding swamps the protecting rivers were a reason that
the emperors moved the capitol there. The adjoining city of Classe was the
port for the adriatic fleet and had access to the sea, now both ravenna and
classe are landlocked.

This indicates that the rivers running through Ravenna prograded outward into
the sea, and the height difference between the floors of the 6th century buildings
and current ground level is an indicator of sea level rise.


Theodoric's tomb is a stone
structure that is heavy enough
if it was going to subside it
would have disappeared by
now. It was built in 520 AD.

The difference in height between
it's current floor level and the
surrounding bluffs are around
3 meters. All the other classical
buildings in ravenna are 1-2 meters
below ground level I think that
this indicates sea level rise
is somewhere around 1 meter
per 1500 years , which is 60 mm per 100 years. That's an in the ballpark number
for the sealevel rise estimated by AGW (100mm/century).

I pledge allegiance

Cerca, Trova

Althouse quotes from Polanski's probation report:

Possibly not since Renaissance Italy has there been such a gathering of creative minds in one locale as there has been in Los Angeles County during the past half century."

I call bollocks to that too. There are some talented people in hollywood, Spielberg, Hughes,
Hitchcock. I wouldn't put Polanski in that list. Here were the people that helped make the renaissance:

Lorenzo Ghiberti (born Lorenzo di Bartolo) (1378 – December 1, 1455) was an Italian artist of the early Renaissance best known for works in sculpture and metalworking.

Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi; c. 1386 – December 13, 1466) was a famous early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence. He is, in part, known for his work in basso rilievo, a form of shallow relief sculpture that, in Donatello's case, incorporated significant 15th-century developments in perspectival illusionism.

Lorenzo de' Medici (1 January 1449 – 9 April 1492) was an Italian statesman and de facto^[1] ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (Lorenzo il Magnifico) by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists, and poets. His life coincided with the high point of the early Italian Renaissance; his death marked the end of the Golden Age of Florence.


Filippo Brunelleschi(b. Florence, Italy 1377; d. Florence, Italy 1446)















Leon Battista Alberti (February 18, 1404 – April 20, 1472) was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. ^[1] Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori or 'Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects'.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( pronunciation (help·info), April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni^[1] (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer.
















Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian painter and architect, who is today famous for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.

[I know in almost every guide book
Vasari is painted as a mediocrity and
he should be the Polansky of the list, but
he was a busy hard-working person, who
instead of Painting over Da vinci's mural
in the palacio vecchio, it appears that he
made a new wall in front of it and painted
'cerca, trova' as a clue. If that mural is there
Vasari is going to zoom up in the fantasy
renaissance rankings for sure]

I guess my point was that I think Polansky
is a mediocrity in a group of mediocres. He
didn't break much new ground, 90% of the
invention was in the 1920's which makes the
current crop of filmakers more like 17th
century baroque painters. More like interior
decorators than artists.

Obama wins the heismann trophy!

I plan to vote every day for Barry Obama to win the heismann
trophy. We'll show the world that we have the real triple threat,
Nobel Peace prize, Heismann trophy and Formula F1 winner.
The real question will be is how will the secret service guys run alongside.


He does give a good speech though, If I wasn't an american I'd think
all of his policies look great.

from the acceptance speech:

But I know these challenges can be met, so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration; it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.

And that's why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity; for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard, even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometime their lives for the cause of peace.

That has always been the cause of America. That's why the world has always looked to America. And that's why I believe America will continue to lead.

Obama and the olympics

Bill Whittle has a good column at ejectejecteject, I like it a lot more than
his videos on pjtv just because I really don't like video on the internet yet,
too slow, too choppy and if you're watching a video on your pc everyone knows
you're not working. If you're reading a blog, who can say?

Anyhoo. He makes a great point that Obama's loss at the olympics
could be a good teaching moment for him at only a small cost to the
country. or in his own words:

This Olympic fiasco, I hoped, would be embarrassing enough and pointed enough to provide a clear data point that this is not always the case, and this lesson, had it sunk in, would come at very small cost to America. After all, the loss of the Olympics in a city is considerably less painful than losing the city itself… which is where this kind of naive ego-centrism can lead us when dealing with ruthlessly self-interested regimes like Iran, Russia and North Korea — expanding nuclear powers all.

I think it's interesting that after 9 months in office the Obama administration is
still floundering around looking like a bunch of monkeys flirting with a football. (nothing
racist intended) I am thinking thank goodness that nothing like 9/11 has happened to
this guy yet and I hope that the evil Joe Biden will step into the Cheney role soon.
("what do you mean ol' joe's not an evil genius, I've never heard of an evil twit before")

I remember after 9/11 there were a bunch of shrieking leftards shrieking that george
bush wasn't ready after 9 months in office, he hadn't picked up the signals and captured
bin laden when all the indications were there to stop 9/11. Right now I would imagine
that bin laden could be building a missile launch facility next to the reflecting pool and
our genius' in charge wouldn't notice.

Wheat, chaff

There's a lot to point to this week in the news:
obama lost the olympics while talking to the commander
for afganistan for 25 minutes, various jerks in hollywood support
a child rapist, david letterman was screwing his employees, etc,
but most of this news activity is fiddling while rome burns.

We need to start changing laws and throwing bums out so that
the country doesn't continue it's current slide. One idea that I can
support wholeheartedly is the idea that congresscritters have to
read every bill that they vote affirmative for.

from beldar's blog:

Every time I deal with a federal statute in the context of giving legal advice to a client — which is an utterly basic function of being a lawyer — I have to actually read and then understand the statute. My failure to do so would be malpractice per se — something absolutely indefensible, something never excusable under any circumstances. As soon as I admitted or it was otherwise proven that I didn’t read and understand the statute, the only question in a malpractice case would be the size of the damage award against me.

But if that’s an utterly basic function of being a lawyer who merely advises private clients on how the law may or may not apply, shouldn’t it be an even more basic function of a law-maker, a legislator, who creates the laws that apply to an entire country?

The queefs in charge of the congress don't even read bills now , the ravening wolves are
feasting on every bill. they don't even bother to lift their head from the trough now to
read the bills, as long as someone (lobbyists most likely) keep filling the trough then
everyone is happy, except the taxpayers.