One year ago today: July 3, 2016, eye-opening list of biases.
Five years ago today: July 3, 2012, a different universe.
Nine years ago today: July 3, 2008, Cracker Jack fails.
Random years ago today: July 3, 2010, Theresa goes ballistic.
Here I am in Winter Haven, a town I’m liking more than Lakeland for getting things done. The parking sign said no cruisers, so I asked around what it meant. Cruiser? Nobody else knew either. Way to go, town council. Then it was my turn, I didn’t know what this green thingee was. At the library coffee shop, which also serves ice cream, I guessed it might be the cheap-o way of giving samples. But the sprightly lass at the counter tells me it is a clip to stop your coffee from spilling, see photo.
Already interested in how the Mars robots will build structures, I was tipped off on this development by a report in Jimmy Ruska’s blog. Caterpillar has been losing ground to cheap imports for quite a while, so when they invested in this penny stock, now I’m listening. I should buy a thousand shares and sit on it. Nothing more, because one never knows which of these startups will be the next Jolt Cola.
The on-line topic this morning is the move toward pictures on credit cards. That means another layer of freedom about to be removed. The usual bull arguments are presented, that it is an anti-fraud measure, lah-dee-dah. But once again, they are not applying their massive resources to go after the few know fraudsters. Instead, they are spreading it thin in another layer of monitoring everyman’s daily activity. There is much more money to be made watching everybody than in catching a minority of criminals. Just ask Google.
Thus, in a wink, credit cards will become ID. This is what they’ve really been aiming for since the 1980s. But the population back then was not the mush-brained twinkledicks of today. These “protections” have to be phased in like a thief in the night, you know, for people who are too stupid to protect their own identities and treat their credit cards like cash. I postulate that the photo credit cards will be issued for two years rather than the normal five.
The defense against such advanced prying has always been in place over here. I make no card purchases, rather take the money out of single ATM in fixed batches and pay cash. One question raised was how these cards will be used on-line. There is no reader to confirm the picture on the card and so the holes in that system will be just as easy for the bad guys to circumvent as any other brand of picture ID. So, why are they adopting a known flawed system? Try answering that one without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.
If any readers have have time (around 8 minutes), this is a video worth watching. It is a robot arm building a house out of 3D printed blocks. This should scare the pants of anyone thinking of becoming a construction worker. Did you know that Caterpillar, the mega corporation, is investing heavily in this technology?
Falkland Islands.
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You might get some substitute photos here because I did not follow my own rule of always double-checking when you make copies with MicroSoft. Read my lips, “MicroSoft sucks”, they have gone progressively downhill for the past 17 years. This one time I didn’t check I lost a photo of a motorcycle saddlebag full of water, because MicroSoft sometimes make the copy, but sometimes it doesn’t. Can’t repeat the photo because I repaired the problem.
It’s been a while since I did a non-tool evaluation report, but today I bought something impressive. A few days back you saw the photo of the Tailgater, a battery powered amp, which I was eyeing for its capability as a portable bass amp. Well, I’m surprised and impressed. It is an extremely well-designed unit. The optimum bass setting is more than enough to be heard jamming with an acoustic player. That covers the majority of situation I would ever need a battery powered amp. Ray-B had one but it didn’t match this puppy. It is in an amplifier cabinet, with hand holds on the sides where they belong, and reinforced corners.
This one has built in Bluetooth, AM/FM with seek and last station memory. It has a 1/8th inch stereo input and comes with a complimentary stereo cable. Did you get that, SanDisk? There is a standard phono jack (1/4”) for connecting a microphone or as the case may be, an electric bass. This jack has a separate full size single-function analog volume knob. Are you listening, Sony? The amp is powered by a “computer” cable, not a separate bulky odd-voltage wall wart. Heads up, Behringer.
Wait, there’s more. The unit automatically charges the internal battery whenever it is plugged in, whether or not the power switch is on. Did you hear that, Kyocera? The battery is already charged out of the box. What’s more, the unit allows full use of all functions while being charged. Yoo-hoo, Vivitar. There is a recessed tray built into the lid, a nice touch. The advantage of the computer power cable is that you can get a longer one any time and the one you have is not likely to get appropriated by the guitar player when he forgets his own again.
There is even a USB charging port, but sadly this port will not play a flash drive. The FM antenna picks up all Tampa stations, though I’m really not that much into Beiber, my being a musician and all. The unit is the ION Tailgater. For reasons unknown, it dropped in price $40 since I first reported the find. And I got the last one off the shelf. Every major function has an indicator light and it even ships with a Karaoke grade microphone. Reading the box says up to 50 hours on a single charge, but Sony taught us what “up to” means. I’ll be satisfied if it lasts a 4-hour gig.
The volume on the MP3 input isn’t up to par, but that could be that new European Union nonsense about limiting headphone jacks to 92 dB. Like teens aren’t going to figure out how to sidestep that. It helps to understand the government over there knows an awful lot about how people go deaf in their old age. Just ask Nigel Farage.
Mr. Bluejay has figured out how to get under the nuisance bird bar. He can’t balance there for very long but the net result is my feeder is emptied in three days instead of four. Strange how little the Internet can tell you about this problem other than to spend money on a factory made gizmo. Like the one that closes the feed door if a heavy bird lights on the perch.
“She’s got a lot of baggage
and nobody wants to help her unpack.”
~ Unknown
What a day, either too hot or raining. I bought some novels for the month, I’m getting close to the end of “Wounded Knee” and have long since lost track of the chiefs and medicine men and which of the tribes was what. It seems they although they could track buffalo, they never posted guards around their villages. They were constantly being surrounded and attacked in their sleep. They never grasped that to the white man, they were all one. If renegades from one tribe attacked a fort, the punishment would often fall on some other tribe.
For them [the Indians] to fall for the same traps years on end remains an unknown. Their “apprenticehip” system of teaching their young anything could have a lot to do with slow adaptation. Even in major battles, their force consisted of uncoordinated groups, although toward the end they did show some imagination at disrupting dismounted cavalry detachments. Their upper management was not getting it. Even when they had repeating rifles and outnumbered the whites ten to one, every battle was a close run thing.
The Little Big Horn chapter is over, it was given cursory treatment, possibly on purpose. The Indians who described the battle said that nobody saw or recognized Custer. It was later, when they became aware that the newspapers made his death famous that four or five different Indians claimed to be the one who killed him. So, there’s your proof they can learn the white man’s way after all. They just couldn’t be bothered learning the ones that made much difference.
ADDENDUM
This new Clancy novel, “Every Man A Tiger”, departs from his usual format in that it is more of a documentary on fighter pilots. He retains his nagging tendency to present the military as just another job and I skim over the passages where he goes on about military wives. I repeat my objection to married men going into combat. Ten thousand years of history have proven that is a foolish thing and America is not going to change that fact with all their advertising.
The plot is the career path of a jet jockey. This starts back before the Korean War so a lot of the weapons and such fall into the realm of my associate studies in military history. To be specific, I studied the weaponry and major events. That means I did not study the justifications, the politics, or the hyperbole behind it all. So I recognize much of what he says. There is also the confirmation of what, back in my day, were only controversial theories.
For instance, the F-105 “Thud”. Today it is known the airplane was unsuitable to fly at low level because it was not that maneuverable. Back then, the frequent crashes were attributed to pilot error. There are dozens of other instances that in my time were inchoate observations over barely understood topics. The only aspect of my studies that held my interest along to today was the advanced weaponry, so it is not surprising this book is the first time I’ve learned about what’s happened since.
What this and all such books avoid comparing is how little these new-fangled weapons and tactics have changed since they were invented in war-time Germany. If I singled out one airplane that was the most studied in my time it was the Messerschmitt 262, the first true jet fighter. Except for specialty units like the jump jet, today’s combat aircraft have no significant features that were not pioneered by the Me-262. Even the most modern jet engine is barely distinguishable from the 262’s Jumo. Next, I’ll take another opportunity here to point out a misconception that has persisted for years.
The Me-262 had swept wings, but it was a subsonic aircraft. The wings were not swept back to improve high speed performance. That is wrong. What really happened is the engines turned out to be somewhat heavier than planned. The wings were shaped backwards to maintain the aircraft’s center of gravity. The other myth is that Germany had stealth aircraft. Not so, they were really designs based on pre-war gliders that had nothing to do with radar signatures.
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