The Old Dog Barks

Well, to explain I have to start with a basic attempt at an explination about how real life economics work.

Ther are two things in a modern society that people have to do even when times are hard, eat and wear clothes! Now the people who do planning for corporations are tasked with trying to read the Looking Glass of political futures.

I do not know what they are seeing or what they are thinking but, I do know what they are doing. They are getting ready to setup distribution and inventory systems that can handle higher rates of throughput and be more accurate.

In todays modern world that means barcode tracking systems and wireless readers for those barcodes!

I think I have mentioned before that my PCP involves Network Engineering!

Now throw in that they would like to have their plans in place before the start of the Fiscal Year and the crowd we are dealing with now all have their FY fall on 1 Jan.  Thus they want their Engineering and Cost Estimates in time to plan BEFORE they have to implement.

The end result of this is the Dawg running so hard his tongue is hanging out.   I have mentioned that like almost every other Infrastructure Company in the US we have been running on hards times in this economy so this is not bad news.

If we get half of the jobs I am working on our poor Installer Section will be working their rear ends off in the coming year.  Assuming I can stay sane long enough to finish all of this!

Hopefully this will explain my lack of input around here lately!  It has to end sooner or later!

Let's Get Rael

If you are looking for a religion that deals directly with the implications of UFO’s (and aren’t we all?) then this one is for you! From their web-page Raelia Press: Will Research about Speed of Light be forbidden?

“LAS VEGAS, Nov. 27 – After an international scientific team studying neutrino particles in Italy found the CERN results about neutrinos traveling faster the speed of light to be incorrect, Rael, spiritual leader of the Raelian Movement, pronounced their conclusion to be greatly biased in favor of prevailing theory.”

“After all, it’s only a theory, but the physics community obviously isn’t ready to change this Einsteinian dogma that lies at the heart of all current cosmic science,” commented Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, spokesperson of the Raelian Movement. “Hopefully, they won’t forbid the experiments already planned to reproduce the CERN results, which is what they did when they forbade human cloning experiments.”

For a wiki overview of Raelism go here. For more RaelNews click this link.

The Daily Caller had this a few days ago: Fort Hood victims’ families seek $750M from feds.

“More than 80 family members and victims of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s jihadist shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas on Nov. 5, 2009, have filed a claim seeking $750 million in damages from the United States government.”

“… The 86-page official U.S. Army investigation never once mentioned the words “Islam,” “jihad,” or “Muslim,” even though he shouted “Allah-u Akbar” as he opened fire on his victims. The report referred to him as an “alleged perpetrator.”

I think the Army bears responsibility for the shooting but I also think that $750 million paid to those who suffered due to Hasan’s actions is not the way to address the problem. Should there be some payment? Yes. But $750 million is too much and penalizes taxpayers and not the responsible parties. The ones to pay should be the politicians and officers whose policies made this attack inevitable. They should lose their jobs along with a portion of pension or other benefits and be banned from working for the government in the future.

The idea that diversity is our strength must be acknowledged as the lie that it is. Take care of the surviving family members, but making them instant multi-millionaires is excessive and wrong. A more fitting memorial would be a revamp of the policies that lead to the shootings.

Little of what I propose or would propose is likely to happen, and that is the larger tragedy.

The Instapundit links to this: Obama Goes Book Shopping, Buys “Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia” a book he bought after taking his daughters to a local Washington DC bookstore.

I remember on his vacation to Martha’s Vineyard he also visited a bookstore. In a way I am surprised that an author of his renown and personal experience is reading this story rather than writing it but he should have time to write in another year or so. I also hope there is some kind of a presidential educational fund to cover such purchases and would be very happy to see a review explaining his take on the books he reads.

The larger question is, given the requirements of his job–signing bills into law–does he read those bills, the books he buys, or does he have ghost readers do the work and then tell him what he thinks?

From Ares: Russia To Train With German Know-how.

“Russia is using German know-how to build a state-of-the-art training center in the Volga region. The Russian Ministry of Defense has awarded a €100 million contract to Rheinmetall and its Russian partner, JSCo Oboronservis, to build the training center in Mulino, Russia, by 2014. The simulation-supported training center will be the most advanced system of its kind in the world, according to Rheinmetall.”

“Based on the Bundeswehr’s Gefechtsübungszentrum Heer (GÜZ), the German army’s training center operated by Rheinmetall, Mulino will be able to train 30,000 troops a year. The 500-square-kilometer training center will be designed to train a reinforced mechanized infantry or armored brigade.”

It is nice to see friends working towards a common goal. What could go wrong? Next up a mutual defense pact to guard against attack from Poland.

The Old One posted a video showing the result of Iraqi mortar fire. I have one showing their anti-tank and ground-to-air work from 2008. It has a musical sound track that will keep you humming for days.

One thing to remember is that even a direct hit from a shoulder fired weapon on an Abrams will only rarely slow it down, and the number of times a US tank was destroyed by such means can be counted on the fingers of one foot.

No guesses yet for last week’s Mystery Girl (was it too easy?) so I will post a couple of more pictures. Take a look then take a guess.

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I found the link to the .zip file over at WUWT, and down loaded it.  The following is a collection of excerpts found in the attached “readme.txt” file. A more damning parcel of evidence of fraud and conspiracy, could scarcely be found. Thinking on it,  aren’t fraud and conspiracy felonies?  Could this pack of hoodlums be prosecuted under the RICO act?

FOIA 2011 — Background and Context

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and
related causes.One dollar can save a life” the opposite
must also be true.”Poverty is a death sentence.” Nations
must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030
to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable
levels.
“Today’s decisions should be based on all the
information we can get, not on hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from
keyword searches.  A few remarks and redactions are
marked with triple brackets. The rest, some 220.000,
are encrypted for various reasons.  We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.We could not read
every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics
such as…

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Forbes has this: Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate
Some money quotes:

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

So much for transparency in the scientific process. These worms are discrediting all Science, and smearing all sensible and honest researchers. So where’s the call to unfund these lying, crooked leaches? Not from the current Administration, I’m sure.

UPDATE:

Anthony Watts lays it on thick and heavy over at Watts Up With That?

#4101 – Edward Cook tells Phil Jones that Mike Mann is “serious enemy” and “vindictive”. Mike Mann had criticized his work.

Apparently Mann went “a little crazy” over a paper showing the MWP exists.

Now this here’s the funny..
 

 
Gratuitously pirated, stolen, lifted, er, borrowed; yeah, that’s the word, from Stormbringer

I learned of a search application tied to the Climate Gate e-mails at a site named Ecowho.com. Naturally my investigative reporter instincts kicked in and I had to try it out. The first word I entered was alien, hoping for the hidden UFO files. I came up with nothing. They must not have been released yet.

Not giving up I wondered if they knew in advance about Obama’s Solyndra fiasco. The e-mails are ten years old and the Solydra solar cell manufacturing scheme wasn’t mentioned. For my third try I just typed in solar cell — and I hit pay-dirt.

First up was this: “1265.txt:AstroPower [13] solar cells and panels”

Using insights derived from years of searching the internet I clicked on the 1265.txt link and saw the message in it’s entirety. It was from the Institute for Global Futures Research (IGFR).
P.O. Box 263E, Earlville, QLD 4870, Australia. It was a pitch for socially responsible investment, Green Power, just like Solyndra but an earlier version. Here is the part that mentions solar cells with the footnotes removed.

“Since 1995 the DJSGI has outperformed the global equity index.
The share price of Ballard Power Systems, manufacturers of new fuel
cells, for example, rose 229% in the first six months of 2000.”

“Other promising companies in the DJSGI include:
Fuel Cell Energy, Inc.
Calpine power generation – combined cycle gas and geothermal
Vestas Wind Systems
AstroPower solar cells and panels”

I had never heard of AstroPower before and did a Google search. This is what I found from February of 2004: AstroPower Declares Bankruptcy, Sells Assets.

“The horizons have dramatically darkened for what was once a bright light in the solar photovoltaic (PV) market. AstroPower, which has been plagued by financial difficulty since early last year, has filed for bankruptcy and reached an agreement to sell “certain” of its U.S. business assets to industrial heavyweight, GE Energy.”

“The proceeds from the sale will be used to repay some of the Company’s outstanding obligations,” said Carl H. Young III, interim CEO of AstroPower. “We anticipate that the proceeds will be sufficient to allow at least a modest return to the Company’s unsecured creditors, although it is unlikely that there will be any return to the Company’s shareholders.”

GE Energy one of President Obama’s favorites. I felt that there was more to this story and a little more digging in order. Sure enough there was more. In March of 2009 we find: SEC settles with ex AstroPower CEO Allen Barnett and CFO Thomas Stiner on financial fraud charges.

“Barnett and Stiner agreed to permanent injunctions; payment of civil penalties in the amount of $65,000 and $40,000, respectively; and other sanctions.”

“…made material misstatements, engaged in fraudulent accounting practices, and signed filings made with the Commission that they knew, or were reckless in not knowing, contained materially false and misleading financial statements. The Commission alleged that at the direction of Barnett and Stiner, and in contravention of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles…”

These guys got of easy, I expect the guilty parties in Solyndra will receive the same treatment. In this same e-mail is a thinly veiled pro socialistic screed — part of which reads:

“Democratic regimes are now seen to be more stable than autocratic
regimes where the rule of law, rather than the whim of autocrats,
prevails. This is important for foreign investment interests.
Democratic stability reduces uncertainty and allows more accurate
assessment of risks etc. In this way transnational capital may have
made some contribution to expanding democracy.”

“For numerous reasons, we may not wish to talk in terms of Revolution
today, but we may find that the events of 1992-2020 will be recorded
as Revolution in the historical texts of 2070.”

I should look further into all this but Investigative Reporting is Hard.

We all could use some good advice from time to time, guys. So here’s some from a Tibetan Monk.

 

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On another thought, if we all gave each other a crack-whore for Thanksgiving, would it be Skanksgiving?
(Dives under desk, reaches up and grabs drink.)

This is just weird. The Voice of America reports this heart rending story — Obama Pardons Thanksgiving Turkeys:

“President Barack Obama has carried out one of the more unusual duties of the presidency, the annual pardoning of a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“Mr. Obama and his wife and daughters were later delivering less-fortunate turkeys to a food bank serving the hungry in the Washington area.”