My wife had a mini-vacation and spent most of it at home with me, because we haven't had a lot of time just to be together since our wedding. But today, one month after our wedding--to the hour, as I type this--she's gone to work and I'm in the bunker, waiting for her to come home.
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So, have you heard that GDP shrank last quarter?
By 0.1% annualized, which means the economy shrank 0.025% from Oct-Dec 2012. It's not much shrinkage but it is shrinkage. It's not growth.
The employment statistics continue to be flat.
Karl Denninger says, "...real gross domestic purchases were only up 0.1% .vs. 2.6% in the third quarter. That's real final demand -- and it collapsed. Note that this was into the holiday season and thus would be expected to be seasonally strong."
JayG talks about the economic effects of Obamacare.
It's not going to get better, either.
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Obama's EPA is mandating the use of E15 even though lots of vehicles on the road can't handle it.
Myself, I think the idea of adulterating gasoline with ethanol was a bad idea from the start, but if we're going to do it we should at least stick with the 10% limit.
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Don't worry, says the federal government. If you're attacked by a crazed gunman you don't need a gun to defend yourself; just grab a pair of scissors.
Sometimes I think it would help matters immensely if everyone played more RPGs, you know? The first time--the first time someone's character died because his character was melee-only facing a person with ranged weaponry, he might learn something.
Barring that, have these assholes never heard the old expression, "bringing a knife to a gun fight"? Eh?
Only government.
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Speaking of guns and government, most shooters in Chicago aren't prosecuted for gun crimes.
Why? Because most of the gun crime in Chicago is gang-related and the gangs do not deal lightly with snitches. And of course the average citizen of Chicago does not have the right to self-defense, so the law-abiding citizen faces being shot if he doesn't keep his mouth shut.
Chicago doesn't have a gun problem; Chicago has a gang problem.
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The federal government will fail your background check if you use medical marajuana in a state where it's legal to do so. Furthermore the federal government will consider you a felon and put you in jail.
I used to care about marajuana being illegal, but I've come to realize that prohibition didn't work the first time and it sure as shitting ain't working now.
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I'm linking this Karl Denninger piece because of the following, emphasis removed:
Why do you have cars where you can't change a crank position sensor without removing the engine, turning a $25 part into a $2,500 repair? Why have you bought millions of monitors and other electronic devices with exploding capacitors in them -- manifestly defective parts -- and yet you neither force the manufacturers to compensate you (by refusing to ever buy another product of theirs until they do)? Why is it that you will vote for a politician who promises that which is impossible, and you know it, and then you whine when your jobs wind up in China and gasoline prices double? Why is Ben Bernanke still chair of The Fed? Why have you allowed both Democrat and Republican to run more than a $1 trillion deficit for the last four years sequentially?That bit about the crank position sensor is what got my attention.
Why?
Because you are sheep. You refuse to demand that products you buy actually work. You refuse to expect basic functionality and repairability. You refuse to demand the truth and instead you continue to suck up the lies through a straw while you are being raped of your funds and freedom at the same time.
I won't buy a car I can't fix myself. I'm not going to buy a car that requires extensive disassembly to replace an essential part like that, not if I can help it.
I don't reward companies which do stupid shit with more business. I stopped buying Maxtor hard drives after they screwed me on a rebate. I won't buy Sony products because of the big rootkit fiasco a few years ago. I flat-out refuse to do any business at all with Charter One because of the various ways they dropped the ball with regards to my parents' estate. (One such issue being that we very nearly lost a parcel of land to a tax auction because Charter One couldn't be fucked to update an address in their database.)
I don't reward politicians and political parties with my loyalty when they consistently refuse to do the things they promised they would do if elected.
So I feel pretty good about not being a sheep, even if I am a lone voice shouting in the wilderness. *sigh*
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Even if this is true, it won't amount to anything. Even if Obama did authorize the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the press won't ask any questions about it because he's their boy.
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Suck it, union babies. See, the unions want government subsidies for their health insurance so union workers can remain "competetive" in the labor marketplace. Otherwise, union workers will cost too much, you see, and that will make employers less inclined to employ union workers.
Well, tough shit. You guys wanted Obamacare, and you got it. Now you get to pay the freight just like the rest of us do.
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Will someone explain to me how gamma rays are activating radiation? Okay, when you hit something with particulat radiation like alpha particles and neutrons, that is activating radiation--that is to say, the particle collisions can cause formerly stable nuclei to become unstable, and thus prone to radioactive decay. This kind of thing happens all the time in nuclear reactors, which is why you can't just break up an old reactor and cart it to the local dump.
But unless I miss my guess, gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation. A gamma ray is a very high-energy photon; and while photons have momentum they don't have any mass, and my study of physics led me to believe that electromagnetic radiation is therefore not an activating radiation.
Do these guys mean cosmic rays, which are even higher frequency photons than gammas? Or what? Cosmic rays are energetic enough that they can do all kinds of weird things, but I was under the impression that gammas are not.
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Me, too, Bluesun; me too.
I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.Heat melts wax. How hard is this to understand? You stay away from a heat source like the sun when your aircraft is a composite structure whose resin has an arbitrarily low heat of fusion. I mean, that's just elementary engineering, right there.
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It was very warm a couple of days ago; now it's going to be very cold, and I have to remind myself that tomorrow is the first of February.
Snow is in the forecast until Saturday, but it's been such a dry winter I don't know how much stock to place in that. It rained a lot on Tuesday, but you don't have to shovel rain and I don't mind at all.
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But my wife and I had a very relaxing extended weekend. Tuesday night Mrs. Fungus came home from a doctor's appointment with ribs and barbecue sauce, so I made ribs for dinner--and they came out better than I remember my parents ever managing.
Salt, pepper, and garlic powder, cook for two hours at 300°, cover with foil after the first hour, and baste with BBQ sauce at the 1 and 1.5 hour points; there were no leftovers. They were very good, not dry, and tasty as all get-out.
We managed to get some of her boxes gone through--that was Sunday evening--but otherwise we just spent the time together and relaxed, watching TV, hanging out, engaging in, eh, "newlywed activities" (hehhehheh). Last night she was complaining that she hadn't done anything at all, but I told her she'd needed the R&R time more than we needed to get anything serious done.
So, I'm sure everyone understands why I've hardly touched the computer at all since Monday. Heh.