My review on the Meccano-Erector kit again gets top ratings [on ePinion], but that never seems to translate into big money. I wonder if I should fire my marketing department. Actually, I am quite aware my writing style will never appeal to the masses. My paragraphs contain too little entertainment and too much information to appeal to the masses. On the other hand, almost 70% of my readership are repeat viewers. So there's more smart people out there than it seems. Here is a composite photo showing the fancy box on top and the contents of that box on the bottom. Visible are maybe ten of the 190 pieces. What a waste of money.
Who likes a mystery? One that I’d still like to hear explained was that Israeli attack on the spy ship Liberty during the Six-Day War. It was a classic attack, first pass shooting off the radar antenna, second pass with napalm, then torpedo boats to keep things off balance, and a little machine gunning of anybody on deck. There is absolutely no way the Israelis didn’t know what they were doing. But why? The two stories are cover for the attack on Syria and a cover-up for massacres of Egyptian prisoners. I don’t buy either. The ground war had switched from Egypt to Jordan and the whole world knew the next score to settle was the Golan Heights. And if any prisoners were mistreated, this is a low-level inland op that could hardly have been monitored by a boat twelve miles off the distant coast. What was the real story? Anyone? The surviving crew call it “the best planned accident I ever heard of”.
My opinion is an Israeli attempt to get the Americans involved in their war. The attacking aircraft had no markings, so they knew what they were doing. Israel has a long history of such activity, for instance the fake radio transmitter that framed the US attack on Libya. It was a set-up. Somebody out there knows the facts.
Congratulations Kansas, the first state to require drug and alcohol tests of welfare recipients. The lame counter-argument is that many other people and organizations also receive government money so why are the welfare people targeted? Because you lamebrains, welfare is for children, not the parents. The public recognizes that guardianship is a unique case. Substance abuse is irksome to all society, so in that sense, nobody is picking on welfare. It was never "your" money to do with as you please.
It won’t be long before the liberals play the race card. Another counter-argument is that the tests cost money. Not if you make the abusers pay. Besides, several sources report they need only catch 1,400 swindlers to break even. I drove through the nice parts of Kansas last year, but downtown I’ll bet they could nab that many with a dollar bill on a string. No controversy there.
The sequester is finally turning off the cash tap, particularly to the pork barrel states. I smile to learn the jobs lost will be primarily administrative. It’s been thirty years that I’ve lambasted America’s obsession with middle management, the most useless and bloated bureaucratic incompetents in the universe. Anyone who does not know a fat, useless nincompoop in the command chain is lying. Most middle managers are leeches on society and it’s high time the lot of them were let go. Those self-infatuated twits sent America on the road to decline long before any bubbles.
The media say devastation is to follow. I doubt it. In the absence of the Peter Principle, the workplace reverts to doing the right thing. Which is simple money rewards for doing a good job. I’m ever reminded of Captain Bligh after the Bounty mutiny, where he went to Australia and caused a rebellion. He was caught hiding under a bed, some Captain, but he was never demoted or punished. Today he’d be a Wall Street banker.
And such bankers are keeping 64% of housing foreclosures off the market. I finally see reports asking what happened to ten million houses. The same question [that was] asked here two years ago. The newest bank strategy? They are buying the houses back at rock bottom prices and renting them in anticipation of the market coming back. Rents are soaring because the same bankers refuse to write any new mortgages. Besides, renting keeps the house occupied and off the bank’s back. Imagine having to pay exorbitant rent to the bank on the same house they just repossessed from you and wiped out your life’s equity. I feel, however, it only gets that bad for the truly deserving.
My vote for retard of the month is the dork who programmed the back arrows on youTube. If you return from any side, the damn thing starts the old video playing again. That is so thick-head retarded we don’t have to wait until the 31st to elect this month’s knob-gobbler. A close second is his brother-cousin, who made those web pages with only one text box—but you still have to click on it. Third place goes to bed and breakfast sites that don’t quote the price.
ADDENDUM
Lots of research today thanks to the seasonal cool. Learning electronics the hard way is also the only effective way, although I mean that by comparison. I’m saying the other learning methods, like textbooks, are even worse. Part of my study today involved registers and drivers. These are easy to understand but darn, the way they are presented is a mess. I, on the other hand, will do something the bastards won’t. I’ll describe the simple way these two integrated circuit chips work together as a unit toward a logical purpose.
In fact, if you walk through this with me, chances are we’ll both be smarter in a few moments. Data is a stream of electronic pulses, which humans cannot read. The register divides this stream into groups (usually eight at a time), and now the name “register” make more sense. It then sends this logical batch to a driver, which recognizes the pattern and turns on some lights that we recognize as a digit. Notice how when I explain it, the names of the pieces and their association in the circuit make more sense? Input, accumulation (register), translation (driver), output. In my imitable style, I'll explain it again right away, and we'll nail it.
You need a register and a driver to make input readable. There is no commonly available chip that takes data directly from input to output, so don't go looking. In fact, right here is one of the few places you’ll see beginner’s material associate these two components together as a working unit. Mind you, I could be wrong because I had to figure all this out from bonehead texts that over-explained the stuff I didn’t need. Worse, they explained each chip in isolation, which does hardly anybody any good. What a brilliant bunch. Be aware, this is a simple case, most circuits need many more circuit chips. The register and driver are integrated circuits, which I've placed on this breadboard for your examination.
If I'm nice, I'll actually build this circuit and show you, keeping in mind I am far more likely to use a programmable micro-controller (Arduino Uno) rather than the integrated circuit chips shown here as a learning tool. Both methods are theoretically identical.
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