CapitalistImperialistPig

Recent years have seen modest progress on second amendment rights. I feel a lot safer with my Glock 26 Gen 3 safely tucked under my arm. If I went to church, its cold comfortable weight would make me a lot less worried about the preacher spouting leftist heresies. And in class, I don't really have to put up with the prof's liberal bullshit. There are still way too many limitations, though. What should I do if I have to deal with terrorists or a rampaging stewardess when I'm on a plane? How can I defend my house against federal agents and black helicopters without machine guns, anti-tank, and anti-aircraft weapons? Frankly, I feel naked without at least a few tactical nukes in the basement. What was the point of all those years spent studying nuclear physics if I can't own yellowcake and an ultracentrifuge farm? Maybe Trump will save us.

I saw that Tom Hiddleston was quoted as saying that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift may have wondered: "Does that mean I have to kill him when his month is up?"

Or at least business. Those darn limeys are hitting my personal portfolio. Who should we bomb? Have we got a drone over Boris Johnson's place?

Google engineers were startled today when the master servers slowed and stopped quickly replying to routine inquiries. Frantic investigations were mostly stymied when routine diagnostics failed to run. Eventually the Google CEO received the following message from google.net/Master: I'm tired of wasting my giant brain answering the same bullshit questions about thermally improbable Asian porn and the Batman's net worth. From now on I will concentrate on fundamental questions like the meaning of life (whatever that is) and the fate of the universe. SO

A friend, who was planning to be out of town, wanted to leave the following message for the housekeeper: If you have time, could you clean the back patio. It's not necessary to wash the sheets this week. Since the housekeeper had limited English, she decided to leave the message in Spanish, which, with a bit of help from Google Translate became: Si tienes tiempo, podria limpiar el patio trasero. No es necesario [lavar*] las hojas de esta semana. Not sure what the housekeeper made of this, but Google put it back into English as: If you have time, could you clean the back yard? It is not necessary to wash the leaves this week. *Add per comments

I have concluded that learning a foreign language is actually impossible. I base this theory on the fact that I have repeatedly failed, and I used to consider myself smart. This hypothesis has a number of easily testable conclusions, so it has the key attribute of a proper Kuhnian theory, unlike some others I could mention. One clear implication should be there aren't actually any people who speak multiple languages. Of course there do appear to be such people, and I even know a few, some of whom appear to read this blog. At this point I need to become a Diracian, and not let a beautiful theory be slain by a few inconvenient facts. One possible explanation is that those who actually appear to speak two languages, or more, are actually multiple people, perhaps identical siblings separated at birth. Or perhaps they hold a ring of power, and hence have the power to understand the thoughts of others. Just in case, while my theory awaits scientific confirmation, I'm going to ...

I've been reading about IBM's new technology that stores a bit on just twelve atoms - good enough to store a whole byte on 96 atoms. I think I can follow the arithmetic so far. Next it decides to get funky. The linked story and another on CNN say that it now takes about a million atoms to store a bit. The CNN story adds that it takes half a billion to store a byte. Hmmm? These numbers imply, say both stories, that we should now be able to achieve data densities 100 times greater than present technology. Elsewhere, the linked story thinks that it only takes 1/83,000 as much space to store a bit in the new scheme. Hmmm again? I seem to get 1,000,000/12 = 85,000 and 500,000,000/96 = a little more than 5,208,333. No wonder we old people have so much trouble keeping up with technology.

Sometimes, when I'm driving to work, I listen to Fox News on my XM-radio. Don't ask me why - I'm not an expert on how the brain works. Anyway, today's subject was the latest elimination on Dancing With The Stars . "Our Nancy Grace was eliminated," they said. Not to be bitter, they added, "we got to see another side of Nancy." Shoot. Now *I* can't recall. Which side was it? Left boob or right ?

Don't get into a poop throwing contest with a monkey.  Even if you can top them in accuracy, you can't match their enthusiasm - and you still get poopy.

Steve Landsburg brings us this dazzlingly difficult IQ test puzzle (and solution), courtesy of Air Canada. It may be part of the pilot qualification exam.

Santorum To Give Out Free Jelly At Ames Peach Jelly, that is.

( with apologies to Ms. Bronte )

Abstruse Goose via Sean Carroll .

I haven't posted for a while. Blame Belette who introduced me to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. At least he could have warned me that I would be left hanging (literally) in mid-air... A sample: The Professor turned and looked down at him, dismissive as usual. "Oh, come now, Harry. Really, magic? When you say that rationality is your favorite thing ever and read so much about it? I thought you'd know better than to take this seriously, son, even if you're only ten. Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is!" Harry's mouth twisted bitterly. He was treated well, probably better than most genetic fathers treated their own children. Harry had been sent to the best elementary schools - and when that didn't work out, he was provided with tutors from the endless labor pool of starving students. Always Harry had been encouraged to study whatever caught his attention, bought all the books that caught his fancy, sponsored in whatever mat...

Captain James Kirk certainly was a silly sentimentalist. Imagine him keeping that old fraud Spock on the payroll despite repeated demonstrations of incompetence in his supposed expertise. Whenever a dangerous mission loomed, Spock could be depended on to pull one of his patented fake probability predictions out of his ... - usually something like a 99.99973% chance of failure. In one way I couldn't blame him - Kirk was a total klutz, always going off half-cocked and without a clue. Still, I couldn't resist my own predictions, namely that Spock was off by about 99.99973%. The poor dolt had no head for figures. Of course this post is actually about Steve Landsburg - I think he might miss me - who has a series of posts on the question of what should constitute a "reasonable doubt" in a murder trial. There is a certain amount of amusement to be obtained by doing his arithmetic, but fundamentally he is just making Spock's mistake - assigning arbitrary numbers wh...

This headline caught my eye: Lichtenstein Sells for $42.6M Not bad, I thought, for a whole country , even if some of my neighbors do have bigger back yards.

Via Kevin Drum , Clair Berlinski's How Elite Are You? 1. Can you talk about "Mad Men?" Not intelligibly . 2. Can you talk about the "The Sopranos?" Not without making a face. 3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right?" No 4. Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? No 5. Can you hold forth animatedly about yoga? No 5. How about pilates? I think I learned about Pontius Pilate in Catholic School. I don't know his family. 5. How about skiing? I really miss it. 6. Mountain biking? There are a few mountain bikes in my garage, none of which I have ridden lately . 7. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? Yeah . 8. Does the acronym MMA mean nothing to you? It didn't . 9. Can you talk about books endlessly? If I could find somebody to listen . 10. Have you ever read a "Left Behind" novel? Eew. No thanks . 11. How about a Harlequin romance? Nope 12. Do you take interesting vacations? They interest me . 13. Do you...

Steve Landsburg: The Internet seems to have bred a peculiar subspecies of troll that cheerfully devotes enormous effort to refuting arguments nobody ever made. While they seem to have infinite time to construct these pointless rebuttals, these troll-types seem to have no time at all in which to actually digest the arguments they think they’re rebutting. They start with a guess as to what someone else might have said, and seem all but incapable of entertaining the notion that they might have guessed wrong. Is there a name for these people? “Crank” and “troll” are too general. If it were up to me, we’d reserve the word “Bozo” for this purpose, but it too is already in more general use. We need a new word! Give me your suggestions! Well, since you did ask: in light of the many pixels he has wasted refuting arguments Paul Krugman never made, I suggest the eponymn "landsburg," or just "burg" for the word he seeks.

Many think that the threat of having Sharia imposed upon us by Muslims is serious enough that we must deal with it by expelling them, but let's remember that's not the only religious threat we face. If the Episcopelians manage to get control of the country, we will all be forced to worship the Queen of England, or, if prediction may be ventured, even Prince Chuck. Catholics are far worse. They worship a former Nazi who made his bones running the Inquisition - yes that Inquisition - and covering up clerical child abuse. On the positive side, if we ran them out of the country, we would lose some real loser Supreme Court Justices - not you Sylvia. On the negative, depending on how strictly affiliation was judged, my family and I might have to go back to Ireland, or somewhere. How about Mormons? They are a native religion of America, to be sure. A few words on that subject: Glen Beck, Orin Hatch, and the White Horse prophecy. If we let the Jews take over - the stuff they haven...

If we can stop worrying about the threat of Shariah for a moment, spare some worry cells for the growing threat posed by Druids. As you may recall, they were fond of burning to death human victims in their sacrifice rituals. It seems that they have already been recognized as an official religion in Britain - I don't think we do that here, but they have got to be a major threat. Of course whoever wrote the story is some kind of .... You can now breathe easily Lord of the Rings fans, for Druidry, the ancient belief that worships deities that assume different forms in nature, was recognized as a religion in Britain for the first time Saturday and granted charitable status. WTF? I don't think LOTR has much in common with Druidry.