Posts Made By: James C Chandler Jr

Thithy? Who's a Thithy?

Neglecting the question whether necessities should be socialized--

The [air,water,food,shelter,clothing] set-- In our heavy-populated world situation, supply of all except air will break down if there is insufficient energy. If you are hungry at location X and there are mega-tons of free food 500 miles away at location Y, then the food may as well not exist if you don't have energy for transport. Perhaps energy is a prerequisite need to make others on the list possible.

Wouldn't Civil Order be closer to a need than a want? It isn't impossible to grow crops or build shelter in a war zone or "road warrior anarchy" zone, but the task certainly is more challenging in a state of civil disorder.

Is it possible for a non-sociopath to be a successful politician? None of these folk seem capable of shame or embarrassment, and only capable of remorse at being caught, not remorse for their actions.

Uncertainty. Big uncertainty.

Folks don't know the new socialistic rules in the making, and are reluctant to invest time/money until they can think up reliable-enough strategies to game the new socialism.

Folks will game whatever system is put in place, so when you change the rules, it just puts everybody on the sidelines until they figure out new strategies to take advantage of the situation.

I've never been much a fan of Ayn Rand. Kinda tedious bombastic author. And the current situation isn't exactly Atlas shrugging. But the uncertainty has the same effect as Atlas shrugging.

Hi Donald

Folks would mock ole Ross Perot for his mannerisms and some of the opinions, but one idea he would 'harp on' is the pilot program, and IMO it makes a lot of sense.

If you have a design for something complicated like an automobile or computer, you don't go into mass production without fully debugged prototypes. Usually multiple successively refined working prototypes. You don't write new code and then install it on a full customer base without successive iteration alpha and beta testing.

Writing a thousand page law that changes everything to do with something like defense, healthcare or energy policy-- As soon as the law is passed it is like turning on a switch applied to the entire nation-- This is EXACTLY like manufacturing a million new pickup trucks off the CAD files without any testing. Or sending a completely untested software update to thousands or millions of customers. Except much much worse and much much more expensive.

If you write a software update on a million-line codebase, you don't go back and re-read all million lines, but you sure as heck test to make sure it still works, and that more bugs were fixed than were introduced. You don't send it out saying, "Well, this ought to be a lot better than the current version, because I thought about it a long time and the changes seem like a really good idea. I only changed a few thousand lines. How bad could it be?"

If the govt would follow the law-making equivalent of ANSI manufacturing standards-- Small pilot projects, then alpha and beta projects on selected counties or states, rigorous review and debug of the pilot projects. As soon as the pilot projects are debugged to the point that there are more intended than unintended consequences, then TAKE THAT EXACT WORKING DESIGN, and write it into federal law. As long as the design is not changed at the last minute, you would have excellent confidence of what yer voting on, regardless if you personally have read every single line looking for bugs.

Lee Spain said:

Is the Obama administration really stimulating the economy or are they simply moving funds to cover their priorities?

http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=751
http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=749

I'm thinking that the there are plenty of layoffs being caused by administration decisions.

No problemo. We just need to create more burger-flipper positions to absorb all the laid-off scientists and engineers.

On second thought-- Can rocket scientists learn how to install Made-in-China windmills and solar panels?

Hi Don

Unified billing might help some. It is especially annoying to get that $500 lab bill 3 months after you thought everything had been paid for.

I kinda like detailed bills, even if the bill would be 'unified' as you suggest. Not just a single piece of paper with one gigantic number at the bottom. Maybe some folks would prefer the single piece of paper with the big number, but I like seeing that every dern tylenol costed $25. Or it costed $100 for a disposable needle and plastic syringe. Or $500 for about 5 feet of cheap plastic tubing with a disposable clamp and two cheap fittings. Whatever.

Awhile ago someone mentioned Moore's Law related to Automobiles or Health Care. Can't recall which. Which is a good question. Why doesn't Health Care (or automobiles) keep getting better and cheaper like each new generation of computers? Health Care and Autos arguably do keep getting better, but certainly not cheaper.

Perhaps the first thing Govt could do if its just gotta do something, is to fund research to determine why Moore's law doesn't apply to Health Care and Autos. Folks would DEFINITELY keep the auto industry busy making new cars if the dern things were not so expensive.

Maybe it is because they already know the answer and don't want to fix it. Both Health Care and Automobiles are heavily government regulated compared to Computers and MP3 players or whatever. Government regulation may be the primary contributing factor to the high cost of Health Care. If so, then Govt has caused the problem it now wants to 'fix' by taxing us out the yin-yang to pay for the problem.

I have sleep apnea (as do millions of folks, huge customer base). A CPAP machine with a simple microprocessor and small regulated fan typically costs $1000. If the same level of workmanship and technology was in a home appliance, it would be $100 off the shelf at walmart. Take a close look at the innards of a CPAP machine compared to the innards of a food vacuum sealer appliance, ferinstance. There are millions of CPAP customers. It ain't a problem of manufacturing scale.

When I concentrated more on hardware than software even decades ago-- Take down a catalog of electronic components from the finest manufacturers. The very highest quality parts would range from relatively cheap to relatively expensive, on a 'sliding scale' according to usage. You could get 'nearly the same part' rated for consumer (cheap), industrial (pricier), or mil-spec (if you have to ask, you can't afford it). There actually was slight differences according to price. Wider temperature ranges, slightly lower noise, slightly higher voltage specs, certified vibration resistance, etc.

But the MOST EXPENSIVE GOLD PLATED WONDERFUL QUALITY PARTS in the catalogs, perfectly suitable for aircraft or missiles, ALWAYS had the fine print "Not for use in medical devices." If you wanted to buy the exact same part to put it in a medical device, you basically paid a whale of a lot more money for the same part so the parts company could save up that money to pay the ambulance chasers lawsuits when one of the medical devices would inevitably fail. Everything fails eventually. Can't afford to sell the best parts in the world unless you can afford to pay the lawyers their cut.

I'm inexperienced and only have a CPC 1100, but have been very happy with it.

Maybe I'm more than the usual klutz, but find it nearly risky to fit the top-heavy and not lightweight CPC 1100 onto the tripod. Holding up that big heavy thing feeling around until the center pin drops down into the hole on the tripod head. Or however it works. Been a year since I did the task. I just remember that it seemed a difficult task to do.

With my level of klutziness, if I did that task routinely the odds seem pretty high I'd eventually drop the scope.

So I just home-made a scope cart (too cheap to buy one) and roll it out from the basement to the back patio.

Starizona now sells a landing pad attachment for the CPC 1100, which I'll probably buy if ever get non-lazy enough to tote the monster away from the house.

Another inexperienced comment which may be 'obvious' and useless--

For visual use, been very impressed with the rigidity of the tripod and mount. Even at high magnification, viewing seems quite 'un-wiggly'. If you touch the scope for focusing, you don't have to wait forever for vibrations to settle out, or hold yer breath hoping you don't knock the thing off-target.

The previous lighter-weight scopes&tripods were pretty wiggly at high mag.

Makes one wonder if alcohol was involved, though folks are easily capable of bad sober decisions.

There are surely a percentage of 'bad cops'. But even among white folk (the purported 'dominant race' in USA culture), some non-criminal ordinary folks somehow manage to collect multiple tales of bad cop encounters.

I personally only recall one instance of possible police harrassment, but one friend seems to get in trouble with police every time he meets one. I've never been around to personally witness one of those horror stories, and the feller ain't a criminal and he ain't violent. As far as I can see, my friend is a nice level-headed guy. Maybe he has a chip on his shoulder or a smart mouth or whatever, for a non-criminal to keep having bad experiences with police. Or maybe he is just extremely unlucky.