One year ago today: January 4, 2024, reading Arduino code.
Five years ago today: January 4, 2020, Sammy with gate.
Nine years ago today: January 4, 2016, sampling of meet-ups.
Random years ago today: January 4, 2004, my first (US) traffic ticket.
Aha, the latest theme on social media is the emerging disasters caused by inability of today’s best & brightest to maintain the complex infrastructure they took for granted. I promised a look the news and this frozen morning seems like the best opportunity. Look, there’s Biden handing out the “Medal of Freedom” like Halloween candy. An old quote by Adam Smith is gaining traction, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” I’ve often said the same about equality and averages. More than a few of the English are now wishing they’d let Hitler invade. This morning’s pancakes did not turn out. I ate them anyway. I watched a short video on how to do calculus. Now I’m more convincec than ever the experts themselves don’t know. What to do the answers mean? No straight answers, meanwhile the only problems calculus seems to solve are themselves. You want the big event of the morning? Here it is, a brass handle for one of my boxes. Not bad, from the Dollar Tree. They are door pulls and great if you can find the ones big enough for a grip.
Still cold by late morning, did a mock Oxford Admissions test. I failed. What? That’s correct, where one time I was scholarship material, today I flunked. Why? Several reasons that a I know of. Top of that list is the tests have changed. I’ve always told you I am bad at certain types of puzzles. Those include grids, those that have to do with family relationships, certain math puzzles. Just simply never develop any interested in any, but I have tried enough to know I’m not good at them. So imagine my reaction to see a contemporary Ivy League test has changed to almost entirely these forms of questions. A real shift from how well you think to how much you know. Scary.
I did score in the gifted range, which leaves a bad taste. The questions I got wrong were like who was the 23th President (who cares), what is the diamond capital of India (Surat), and I would argue some of the word association tests were geared to favor dumb-bunnies. Bullet is to gun as ball is to what? I chose cannon. They say the answer was bat. The eerie part was the nature of the other questions. More than often, I got the correct answer by inferring what they wanted to hear, often without any knowledge of what the answers meant. Where not were not sure, choose the answer that was most left-leaning.
Here, you pick the left-wing answer. Who did Mary give half her cookies to? Her mother, her brother, or her transgender lesbian live-in girlfriend? That was not the question but it conveys the message. The next question should have been do you even want anything to do with this college?
Something new, today I learned why the original V-2 rockets were painted in chessboard designs. Fifty years I’ve been satisfied with the explanation that it was to make the rocket easy to photograph. It never crossed my mind why. According to recent info, the reason was to make it easy to determine if the rocket was rotating on its longitudinal axis. The early rockets used accelerometers for aiming and this was a factor. Later rockets used radio beams which terrified the English. For some reason the standard radio jamming technique is not mentioned. Maybe the Germans invented a homing device.
And a quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Those who turn their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who kept their swords.”
Cable-laying vessel.
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Boxes, that was my day. This is not an assembly line for each box is different. If I was going to build a series of anything, I’ve learned how to make jigs, which is new for me. Today I put some “Old American” stain on the little box from last day. It is a dark, almost grey color. I also opened the can of “Barn Red”. It’s sort of nice and I tried it on the paint handles. It’s okay but for me suitable mostly for bottom panels and maybe smaller boxes. I applied it to a cigar box which I found can be upgraded a bit with scraps. By themselves, the wood is too weak for much other than cigars.
Yikes, late afternoon was a reminder I now live above the “frost line”. That’s not true because it never really freezes here. But 45°F is well below my comfort zone and the weather broad says another cold spell late tomorrow. That got me up the ladder to mount the “chicken coop” heater bracket. The signs of a cold winter are unmistakable, so the only thing to prevent it is me getting that heater up and ready. For our information, that’s not why the bracket made headlines, but that his is the first time in ages I have decided to stay home because it was cold outside. Sure, other times I stayed home, but this time it was deliberate. So admire the bracket a moment before continuing.
I’m nearing the end of “Computronicon”, still hoping something will redeem it. It is well-written but at times strains to be too contemporary. Some techie parts are amusing and it is great for some historic passages. Example, how nobody warned the Japanese that Banzai attacks did not work because all the people who could have warned them are dead. The premise of the book is code-breaking, but no code gets broken. Valid points are made about the process, so that much is engaging. I’m aware of how impossible codes have been cracked, not by computers, but from people just looking at the cipher text. The bottom line is computers cannot read what they are processing. Computers can’t read English. I regularly solve tricky cryptograms by word position and context.
It works because I know if the quotation is by a person with two names, it is likely a White actor and the quote is going to contain two phrases with the word “people”. If there is a middle initial, the person was likely a dead politician. Three two-letter words in a row means a history quote and if you find any word with two double-letters, you are probably dealing with a quip about money or greed. I’ve found patterns in the length of messages and even a sense of the big word to small word ratios.
The book continues with the tradition of counting the number of Chinese ships now “challenging” the US in a bid to dominate the South China Sea, much as the US does with the Gulf Mexico. This gives me a chance to do my usual commentary of the inferiority of Chinese copycat technology. They have a long ways to go before they can do their number on the high seas. The US isn’t building new boats anything like they used to, which more likely means a change of rules. And I say that means combining A.I. with drone tech.
One principle I’ve never changed that the side with the cheaper weapons will have more of them. So I figure the US has adapted guidance systems to work with ordinary bombs delivered by drones. No, I have no sources, this is just what I conclude on my own. I’ve read that one strap-on package called “quick sink” (don’t quote me) can take an ordinary air force bomb and use artificial intelligence to guide it to specific parts of the enemy ship. Ouch! The most vulnerable spot easy to reach with a free-fall explosive is just below the waterline somewhere near the center of the vessel. The name comes from the way a hull breach at this point makes the ship sink almost instantly.
If China gets ambitious, it could cost them. They are investing in billion-dollar aircraft carriers and large fleets. Right now, they have to operate near base as China lacks the massive logistics to supply a blue water navy. They’ll close that gap in ten years, twenty if Trump gets his way.
My knowledge of the prison system is minimal. Mostly from guitar players I know who have been there. Pssst, Hippie, that’s you. I did not know the system charged prisoners but I’m not surprised they are billed $2 per day. Probably not worth the paperwork. The connection here is that a complete search of the Florida inmate database does not return the hillbilly. Yet we know he is there. There are two large prisons nearby but no, I’m not going asking. That’s like putting yourself on yet another watchlist. While looking, I read over some of the other things they charge prisoners for. I know you can send them commissary money, but you have to find them first. Since he is buried pretty deeply, the neighbor and I have contacted somebody who knows the system.
The bottom line here is I suspect he may have committed suicide. He had started a job at the boat place a few weeks before they came to get him. He has two brothers in the area and neither has come by to pick up his things, he was crashing in the small dorm area upstairs in the barn.
ADDENDUM
In one of the more sordid displays of blatant corruption, Biden gave one of medals mention earlier to none other than Hillary Clinton, who would not know freedom if it bit her in the ass. Upon hearing that, I logged on to Gab and here are my favorite responses:
Who's next? Satan?
Freedom from prison where she belongs.
How much did she pay Biden for it?
Hang the bitch with it.
The medal has become meaningless.
Her Benghazi participation trophy.
The medal’s now worth a beer can tab.
Vomit-inducing.
Well, she did stay out of prison . . .
