Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Death to DST! *heh*

OK, I’m sure some “old Indian” somewhere has said something similar, since I know both my grandfathers uttered similar observations about DST, but it’s a decent graphic presentation of an old, old truth: government is best at screwing things up, or at least at its normative “best”.

(Just CLICK the pic if it doesn’t display correctly in your browser/display resolution)

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy

The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.

Anything else we want to leave in the feds’ hands? Charity? The cost of so-called “welfare” as exercised by the feds–excluding the societal costs of having the feds thumb their noses at the Constitution–are well known, both the upfront excesses and the backend societal costs of breeding more irresponsibility and a leisure, entitlement-minded “welfare class”. Meddling in the marketplace? The “compassion industry” in the “feddle gummint bureaucrappy” as specifically empowered by serial Congresses and presidents gave us the housing bubble and mortgage collapse that led directly to our current economic woes. Want more of that? Border security? An oxymoron.

Oh, and one acronym: TSA. Thugs Standing Around has to stand as the most blatant “feddle gummint” exercise of Security Kabuki, Theater of the Absurd that puts Beckett, Camus and Albee in the shade. It’s nothing but a full-employment program for low-brow dumbasses and thugs designed to train those who were once citizens into becoming “good subjects” (that is, docile sheep).

I think DST stands as a good example of the simple fact that the more the feds–congresscritters, executive branch, ALL “feddle gummint bureaucraps” (and even many–few though their raw numbers may be–decent bureaucrats caught up in the monstrous federal bureaucracy) and the federal injudiciary–intrude into citizens’ lives, the worse off we as individuals and the country as a whole become.

Death to DST! *heh*

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Was It Good for You, Too?

Supposedly felt in Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri, as well as in OK, where it occurred, yeh, well, I slept through the thing. What can I say? It was almost 11:00 at night, and I’d gotten to bed at a reasonable time, tired from “Chores Saturday”–mostly working on deck maintenance.

So, here in America’s Third World County, a wee tad off the beaten path in the SWMO Ozarks, what may well be the largest earthquake in the State of my birth went unnoticed by me.

Can’t really say I missed it all that much. *heh* Still, I know folks who live in the area, so I’ll probably get an earful as time goes on.

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I Just Hate This Kind of Stuff

Got an email from a politician. OK, I don’t mind that so much, since I solicit comments from politicians. What I disliked so intensely was the subject line:

Can I send you my book?

*feh* This is a politician who will not get my support. Of course someone on this pol’s staff actually wrote the email and that stupid subject line, but the pol’s responsible for the stupidity of “its” (my fav “gender neutral” pronoun *heh*) staff.

My answer, should the pol or its stupid staff care to read my reply email is, “Of course you CAN send me your book. You already have my contact information. You don’t NEED to ask if you CAN send it, dumbass. But since you ask such a stupid question, I’ll answer the question you ought to have asked instead. You MAY NOT send me your book, and if you do I’ll burn the thing rather than read something written by (or for) such a dumbass.”

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Stupidity Cubed

I’ve not said a lot about the recent Herman Cain flap–and nothing here, as far as I can recall. A couple of observations, though:

Every (and I do very specifically mean EVERY) case of workplace “sexual harassment” that I have been personally aware of, and near enough to know the players, has been bogus. Not just questionable: B-O-G-U-S. I’m not saying that sexual harassment in the workplace does not take place, just that I have no personal knowledge of ANY legitimate sexual harassment charges made based on workplace (or even remotely work related) behaviors. My own take, based on the cases I know personally, is that in each case, the women involved deserved and needed a whipping for having made their slanderous accusations, but in at least one case (and maybe another) some sort of “settlement” was made to make them go away. Very away.

That sort of shakedown really offends me.

And then there’s this comment in an ABC “story”:

Cain has already denounced the two previous allegations of sexual harassment against him as false, and suggested at least one of the women was a poor worker. But an ABC News investigation found that both women are highly respected professionals who have gone on to successful careers in and around government.

I hate to break it to the idiots who wrote that, but “Cain… suggested at least one of the women was a poor worker,” and “both women are highly respected professionals who have gone on to successful careers in and around government” does not form any basis for contradiction. Success in a “government career” isn’t necessarily based on being a good worker. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy hints at part of the reason for this:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

As far as I’m concerned, since the women have “gone on to successful careers in and around government” anything they have to say now is worth less than a bucket of warm spit.

And then there’s the “substance” (such as it is) of the accusations I read. Cain made NON-SEXUAL “inappropriate gestures”? WTF is that, and how does something like that constitute sexual harassment in the mind of anyone but a seriously disturbed person who’s just itchin’ for a fight?

Still, I’m willing to suspend judgment–on the unnamed accusers (and the one woman whose lawyer has spoken). As Professor Jacobson says,

Let’s sum up the “facts” as they are known right now. Mostly unnamed people accused Herman Cain of unspecified conduct which some people who will not specify the people or the conduct have deemed “inappropriate.” And one of the unnamed people received a piddly $35,000 severance package almost 15 years ago for unspecified conduct which included conduct unrelated to Cain.

Now that they’ve got themselves a noose made of a bunch of hooie, the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind looks like all it’s waiting for is a bit of gasoline to get on with the lynching and cross burning…

Update: Yep. I’m right. The media’s giving plenty of time and “ink” to someone claiming to be a lawyer of one of the women who was an accuser. “She’s not going to affirmatively make any public statements or public appearances about the case, everything will be through me,” the guy is quoted as saying. Sorry bubba and whiny baby claimed as client. Faceless accusers are worthless in my book. Worse than worthless. Using intermediaries to make proxy attacks while remaining in the shadows doesn’t even rise to the level of Tawana Brawley hoax “legitimacy” in my eyes.

Continue reading “Stupidity Cubed”

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Passing “Notarecipe”

Had the munchies a few mins ago. Still shedding pounds, so gave in and made a quick “comfort food” snack: “Christmas Grits”.

OK, full disclosure: I didn’t really. I used some instant (A/K/A/ “not real”) cheese grits as my starting point, since I just didn’t want to wait around. It’s why I keep some of it around, after all. *heh*

Instant cheese grits, prepared
Minced red and green seranos
Cream

Yum. Yes, it’s instant (“not real”), but I don’t care; it was still yummy.