Indoors it is, but don’t you love these photos of the streets in my neighborhood? Y’all can’t get much deeper south and I love these leafy tunnels, whether walking, biking or on the scooter. The shade is so welcome. Today I spent the hottest hours in the library, mainly studying a type of integrated circuit called a “comparator”. I have my reasons, and one of them is that the sensors are the most expensive part of a robot and their utilization should be maximized. Want to be famous? Calculate a prime number greater than 2^30402457-1. We’ll talk about why later.
The theory is that prime numbers get every more scarce as they get bigger and that at some point there are no primes left. I’m of the other opinion, that if you keep going, there will always be more primes to discover. Primes are used to make “uncrackable” codes.So many people do not understand encryption when it comes to e-mail. Folks, e-mail is different that all other kinds because it is permanently kept on file. If history is correct, that situation will be used against you. Even if you write nothing significant, that will be used against you, too. E-mail demands special vigilance if you expect privacy.
In regular coding, both parties must have the key, which means the code can be compromised if one party is caught and blackmailed. Nobody is better at blackmail than the authorities. They even have their own name for it: “plea bargaining”. But public key encryption works differently, in that the two parties use different keys. If I have a public key, I publish it. That’s what makes it public. Anyone who wants to send me a private message needs only use that key. It locks the code, but cannot unlock it.
Anybody who intercepts the message can’t read it because it is enciphered. Only myself with my private key can decode it. This method has been around since 1976. These computer keys are heavy users of prime numbers, the higher primes being harder to crack, since the computer must test every prime. The code can be broken, but that takes years or a quantum computer.
Call me the guinea pig, but I’m undertaking a five-day withdrawal from one medication at a time to isolate if lower back pain is a side effect. This period is needed to completely flush all traces of the drug. Check back soon, this may have succeeded on the first round. I miss walking but I’ve got to be alive to do it, and I have been unable to lose weight when I can’t. Walking again would make my year. And maybe, as it were, give me my figure back.
This is an “armature”, a ball and joint construction made to scale for humans and can be made for most any animal. Commonly called “doll skeletons”, here is one used for its most common role, animation. Don’t leap off your producer’s chair, they cost $150 each and you’ll need two for a good battle scene. Here, I know you want to see another one. Oh yeah.Don’t we love those people who post some music or picture on the Internet and call it “rare”. It’s on the friggin’ Internet, alright? Or how about those menus for people on a diet? They try to go for variety, but that means the house is constantly full of tempting snacks. I mean, who eats only 25 pistachios? How do you even make 1 cup of popcorn? I’d want the house full of dull food like celery where I could eat all I wanted.
ADDENDUM
I feel like editorializing. I can’t add much to the predictions of economic collapse in 2012, but I observe most of those who say take measures don’t specify what measures they mean. Almost 90% of workers in their sixties say they must keep working past retirement age. Of course, they intend to keep spending $4,000 per year on gasoline. (I spend $220.)
If that isn’t bad enough, remember that the unemployment rate is a statistic. If you include people on welfare, etc, the total number of working-age adults in the USA without a job is roughly a hundred million. Since obesity is running at 35% and there is no evidence of mass starvation, you may properly conclude 99.9% of these folks are on the pogie.
But I do not see economic collapse as a catastrophe as much as a process of weeding out the unnecessary and overpaid. Thirty years ago I protested outrages such as garbage collectors and longshoremen making, in today’s money, $114,000 per year. Where is the justification that a top postal worker is worth $64 per hour? Who believes an airline pilot is worth $250,000 per year? Things had to change.
My view is that the entire North American economic system is bloated with these atrocious payscales. I leave the self-employed out of the equation, by definition they earn every dollar they make. I’m referring to thousands of occupations whose pay vastly exceeds their true net worth to society. Thus, it bothers me little if a crisis guts the paychecks of army generals, senators, baggage handlers, school “administrators”, civil servants, and oil rig laborers.
There is some argument that these jobs have traditionally had to be paid well to attract qualified people, but a cursory glance at the “quality” squelches such theories. The economy has to wring out this wastage along with the entire educational and social system that has been supporting it. There is a reason American factories are closing down. Even if the foreign worker is paid a fraction the money, he only replaces an American when he is more efficient dollar for dollar. Know what I’m sayin’?
Thus, I propose a list of what I think the top pay should be in the following fields:
1. Middle managers - $29,000
2. Pharmacist - $34,000
3. Civil servant - $27,000
4. Librarian - $22,000
5. Dentist - $36,000
6. Filing clerks - $17,000
7. Pastor/Minister - $21,000
8. Me - $50,000 because I’d be self-employed
Some of you may laugh, but what are you laughing at? Your predetermined notions? If the economy collapses, we’ll see what these people go back to work for afterward. I’m probably closer than you think. We are seeing the new crop of workers taking jobs at the low end of the pay scale, which is a pity because they had to go through the college meat-grinder at the peak of its degeneracy. Outfits like Broward Community College and Phoenix University who aren’t worth a plugged nickel calling themselves institutions of higher learning. Indeed. Pay the money, buy a degree.
Don’t worry, the income for tertiary jobs will drop dramatically when people’s ability to pay disintegrates. Surgeons, economists, anesthetists, psychiatrists, marketing directors, and even helicopter pilots will feel the heat or at least succumb to a closer affiliation with supply and demand.
Oh, and to those curious why pastors are on the list, do you realize they make an average of $85,000 per year? And no taxes. Holy mother of God!
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