One year ago today: November 24, 2022, America must be kept.
Five years ago today: November 24, 2018, 7,735 miles.
Nine years ago today: November 24, 2014, I miss the Paraiso.
Random years ago today: November 24, 2008, Cakewalk, the software.
You may have to return on Monday for this post. Me and the boys drove out to Franklin to take the Reb to the chiropractor and some necessary shopping. Today’s treat is the addendum, where I blast a book that faked me out. I finally flipped through all the publisher pages and found it was, after all, a damn National Geographic production. If I had seen that, I would have left it on the shelf. This photos show I've discovered another of JeePee's favorites, sweet potato. As with most treats, this was by accident. I believe in giving all pets a variety and watching what they like best. And this little guy never had it so good.
By the way, the two biggest employers of coders, Google and Apple, draw much the same distinction between run-of-the-mill coders and real programmers. They use different terms, such as “elite coders” but they know well there is hardly any comparison. You might thing MicroSoft would be on the list, but nope. Coding at MicroSoft is done by consensus, not by agreement. Decades can go by with a major MicroSoft glitches never addressed, which blatant errors get amplified until they become permanent.
Highest-selling German beer.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
In a few days, I may post a short article I wrote a while ago on cybercrime. When I say I have no solution to that problem I mean no programming solution. More than once, I’ve tried to sketch out a method or two that keeps the bad guys out. It gets nowhere because the very open nature of the Internet means that access must be easy, and once you have that, you get the bad apples. But that is not saying I have no solution. The answer is the way I would deal with telemarketers. Go after the money.
Every financial operation, on-line or not, has certain chokepoints where the cash has pass through a legitimate stage. Bitcoins are not an exception, in case anyone mentions that. There are not enough vendors who accept it, but my point is sooner or later, the money has to get laundered. There is a quirk here, let me go on a tangent here. In regular money laundering, the dirty money has to get from the criminal into the legitimate system. In cybercrime, it is the opposite. The money has to get from the legit system into the hands of the criminals. So when you hear of a million-dollar cyberheist, it is unlikely the perps get as much as 15%.
The thrust here is that if you want to come down hard on these crooks, shut down the money flow. When the feds go after illegal gambling, they don’t charge them with gambling crimes, they charge them with money-laundering. Ah, now you see my point. Banks and credit cards and such should be held responsible for making sure they are not processing illegal payments. Some would decry that, as banks already have too much power. True, but that’s the wrong kind of power, where they hold everybody’s money ransom to catch a few bandits. Make if far cheaper for them to catch only the thieves, and they will empower themselves.
ADDENDUM
Dang, I got millennialized again, this time by a book. Having an interest in the Antarctic, I picked this second book up same time as the Karluk story. “ANTARCTICA The Last Continent”. As always, I skimmed through a few pages to determine it was new material and had something to offer. I picked out a few key words like “dry valleys” and “sastrugi”, so I took a chance. It was missing the dust jacket and that would have tipped me off it was a work of propaganda. In my day, we had a plague of “Born Again” Christians, meaning you knew how every conversation would end. Nowadays, we have millennials.
The second section delves into history, but the astute reader notices they are drumbeating known facts. It’s an obvious ploy used to establish a book as authoritative when it is not. But, the pages are full of fantastic and probably expensive photos, so carry on. The data is very accurate, such as the salty inland lakes with bottom temperatures (77F) higher than the surface, which are ice-covered.
As the chapter progresses, you detect a slight shift toward unwarranted opinion. I’m not so sure that the seal hunters were “arrogant”. The presentation of facts continues, but now accompanied by a short comment that gets just a bit less relevant. The ship anchored 497 days, the lifeboat was 22 feet long, the crew awoke at 3:00AM. It’s a need to appear as factual as possible.
Third section. It covers the wildlife and there is a subtle but evident change. This time, every fact is followed by a conclusion that does not quite fit. Many animals mate for life, but that is instinct, not an emulation of human-like pair-bonding. Skuas have dark eyes, not “unsuspicious brown eyes”. There is mention of pollution and I am against all forms of human pollution in Antarctica.
While scientific study is okay provided everything taken in is taken out (within reason), I would forbid most forms of pollution to get within 200 miles of the coast. This would include pollutants like militarism, politics, tourism, religion, and activism.
Section four, and the truth comes out. It’s the burn, the Al Gore chapter. They think they’ve suckered you in and here it comes. It’s all leading to climate change. They buggered up global freezing and warning, so now it’s climate change. The facts continue, but each now leads to some flimsy or vague supposition with the same crippled theme.
Part of what irks me is these people have plainly never studied any climatology. They lack the vocabulary and all you get is worn-out catchphrases. Trying to match millions of years of ice-core history against what’s happened in the past 5 or 10 years. The book degenerates rapitdly with the hope the reader has been lulled into accepting unstudied opinion a “science”. In my opinion, Al Gore is a buffoon and those who quote him are even more off-base.
They do go on, but the world did not end due to nitrogen oxides, the CFCs, which they claimed were the direct cause of ozone thinning. Gee, if it is a direct cause, then the ozone hole should have recovered when the spray cans were banned. Nature is a balancing act, yet we have not heard a single word about any changes in the ozone. Hmmm, maybe the cause was not so direct, after all.
The final twenty pages of the book descends into nonsense like quoting the “youthful appearance” of 30-year-old women who have modern “degrees” but are really Greenpeace mouthpieces. The population is only too aware that these days, the degrees are given not to those who learned anything, but to those who memorized the answers. I swear, if this book had mentioned AIDs of COVID, it was going straight into my burn barrel.
The ultimate example is the yarn about “international cooperation”. Six men from six countries (whoop-dee-doo) set out to cross Antarctica on skis and with sled dogs. Um, right there, they’ve broken the law and their own ethics because dogs are banned from Antarctica as they carry canine distemper they can pass on to seals. The book goes on how they “brave” wind, snow, storms, cold, and exhaustion, as if these took them by surprise. Why did they do this?
To protest, among other things, threats like “tourism”. This crossing had no scientific or education value and cost $11 million dollars. It caused other useless copycat crossings to follow on. I got one for you. What do you call expeditions that cost a fortune and produce nothing? Answer: tourism.
