Vakkotaur

I think I'll drive some people to distraction.

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:47:17 GMT

Nucular

What's in a name

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:18:20 GMT

I've seen the T. J. Birkenmeier Economic Plan in a few places and it's very interesting in how people look at it. The math is wrong, so you don't have to tell me about how it'd only be $425 and not $425,000 per adult. Look at the list of benefits...

The Birk Economic Recovery Plan

I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billion that equals $425,000.00. My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let's assume a tax rate of 30%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam. But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket. A husband and wife has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?

Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.

Repay college loans - what a great boost to new grads

Put away money for college - it'll be there

Save in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.

Buy a new car - create jobs

Invest in the market - capital drives growth

Pay for your parent's medical insurance - health care improves

Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean - or else

Remember this is for every adult U.S. Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG - liquidate it. Sell off its parts. Let American General go back to being American General. Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.

Sure it's a crazy idea that can "never work." But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC. And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Kindest personal regards,

Birk

T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen

PS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it's either good for a laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

Apart from the math error, it sounds pretty good doesn't it? Pouring money into the economy by giving it to people does tend to work like that.

Now let's make a couple minor changes. Only a matter of timing and name. That's all. Just change the timing and the name. Instead of "giving" the money to people, don't take it from them in first place. Now it's at the right end of the revenue system. Yep, it's a tax decrease.

Soda-pop semi-flop and ginger beer peculiar

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:46:36 GMT

I tried making another bottle of vanilla cream soda, but not the single-bottle method. Instead of putting the sugar and yeast in that bottle, I put them in another bottle (along with orange flavor) and connected the bottles with tubing glued into the caps. The idea was that the bottle of orange soda would use the sugar and yeast to produce carbon dioxide and pressurize both bottles. It didn't work. The air in the bottles and tubing was compressible enough that pressure never really built. I even put some Silly Putty around the tube-cap seal to see if the seals were bad - they weren't.

I gave up and removed the tubing arrangement and put normal caps on both bottles. The orange soda is coming up to pressure. As it sat out quite a while, it might well have a noticeable amount alcohol.

I chilled the vanilla cream bottle overnight and used the tubing setup again. This time with a baking soda and vinegar setup as a carbon dioxide generator. The whole works is in the fridge so that the seal won't be broken until the gas has hopefully dissolved.

Over a month ago I got adventurous and set up an arrangement inspired by this article. I stuck with the 2 L bottles and tubing I had, and use substitutes for almost everything. The fermenting bottles and such all got cleaned with bleach, to be sure of things.

I didn't have any beer or ale yeast. I didn't have any malted barley. I didn't have any hops. So instead of beer or ale yeast I used the champagne yeast. Instead of the malted barley I used sorghum. Instead of the hops I used ginger. Instead of the water... okkay, that would have been a real trick. I used ordinary water. This stuff would never meet the old German beer purity law, but it works (after a fashion) just the same.

I let the setup go for about a month and then filtered the ginger out, added a bit of sugar (I might not have had to - I think that's done to feed the yeast for the final carbonation), and poured the brew into some 8 oz. plastic bottles and let then sit for about a week. The little bottles firmed up nicely as the pressure built. I put one of the bottles in the fridge late last night.

We had that bottle at the start of supper tonight. For a first try, it's not bad. It's not what it should be as there is an odd feel to it that indicates I used too much sorghum for the amount of everything else. But it did smell like a beer. It had a noticeable alcohol content. It bubbled. And even with the excess sorghum defect (made it sweet and a bit slick feeling) it had some character and wasn't a forgettable thing. It's not what it should be, but it's certainly not a "pour down the drain" failure.

So I think I'll do it again, but I'll get one of those big 3 L soda bottles to use as the fermenting vessel and scale up the water, ginger, and maybe yeast - but not the sorghum. I'll also do the final bottling with soda bottles that are made to take pressure. The 8 oz. bottles held plain water.

Meanwhile, I have a few of those 8 oz. bottles of this stuff left. I did partly unscrew them today to vent them. One was hissing due to excess pressure and/or an imperfect seal. Another week might do them some good, but I'll be monitoring the pressure.

The Financial Mess

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:54:31 GMT

First the simple stuff that you hopefully already know. Stocks are sold by companies to raise capital. The investor gets a share of the company in return and if things work out, dividends from a profitable company. If an investor doesn't care for the company any more or just wants to convert his holding to cash he can sell the stock to someone else. The stock is paper (or used to be, anyway) but the company is real. Land, buildings, equipment - stuff you can see. If stocks are overvalued, then they're worth more than the stuff backing them up. This is the bubble (non-real perceived value) that bursts (people catch on to the perceived value not being real, want to turn their bit real before it goes *poof*) in a correction (the perceived value drops back to the real value). This, roughly, is what happened in the late 1990s when many shaky internet startups were seen for what they really were.

That's not what is going on now. This is more complicated and I'm not at all sure I really understand it. It's a combination of things, of course. Underregulated or incorrectly regulated financial institutions, shaky mortgages, speculation, and maybe even an accounting rule that is having a more painful effect than expected.

It's easy to blame just about everyone in Congress. I've seen folks saying this started with the deregulation of the 1980s and claiming the Republicans are to blame. Fairly recently there was a vote in 2005 about giving a regulator that would oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac real power to put a stop to bad practice and every Republican voted for it, and every Democrat against it - that includes the Dodd, Frank, and Reid fellows who have been asking how did this lack of oversight happen. They really ought to know. However, there is plenty of blame to go around. That's just the recent history. If you really want to, you can probably chase a few threads of this to at least the Carter administration if not earlier.

For the last couple decades the money supply has been fairly closely regulated and the balance of inflation and interest rates, along with other factors, has worked out. A few years ago former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volker was asked how he'd handle today's (that was the today of a few years ago, mind you) problems and pretty much laughed as the "bad" numbers of that today would have been miraculous when he had the job, and certainly when he started. The result has been fairly low inflation, astonishingly low interest rates, and fairly low unemployment even if that number doesn't indicate what it seems to. There's nothing truly bad, by itself, there.

The low interest rates encouraged borrowing, which is what they were supposed to do. The problem is that not all of the borrowing (and therefore not all of the lending) was sound. A lot of people took on a lot of debt that they couldn't service (make the payments on) when the economy so much as hiccoughed. Some wasn't even that good and was based on the hope of being able to make it work later. That plenty bad, Kemosabe, but it get worse.

The big mortgage institutions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn't have proper oversight. Whether this is from simple lack of any oversight or from too many overseers to answer to with each assuming the others were taking care of things can be argued, but the result is the same: they did a lot of shaky lending. The 2005 vote mentioned earlier came and went and a deal was struck - they'd see what they could do to provide even more low income housing. It felt good, sure, but the end result was not more sound but even less sound lending. While Fannie & Freddie may be technically private corporations, they are governmental anyway. Just like the post office (work for the post office, you get a federal paycheck... after taking an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution) is a private business that's not really separate. That shakier lending was worse, but we're far from done.

With the two whales of mortgage lending making those loans, the smaller fry followed suit in order to be competitive. Maybe not every fish in the sea, but enough. They also made shaky loans, since if nothing else they could probably pass the loans along to Fannie & Freddie. Now that's even worse still, but we're still not close to being done.

A lender can take out what is basically an insurance policy on the loan. It's a sort of bet that the loan will fail and if it does, they get paid off. This is good for the lender, but a loss for the insurer. The insurer deals with the risk by spreading it out. After all, what are the chances of everything going to pot all at once? You can see the problem here, and yes it's happened or is happening but even that isn't the whole story. Because, so far, the property is still real. The land is still there and any property on it is still there, and the mortgage lenders loss is limited. Values can go down, but real estate isn't known for dropping through zero value. "Buy land. They're not making any more of it."

Those mortgage insurance policies? The ones that were a sort of bet that things would fail? They're not regulated. At all. Which means it wasn't just the lenders making the bets to cover their own risks. It was speculators who figured they could get paid when things failed. A lot of speculators or at least a lot of speculation. Now, there is nothing backing this bet. The shaky loans have started failing in enough number to get noticed and the insurers can't pay off everyone because they simply can't cover every bet made - all the same way. This is the Big Problem. And now we're being asked to bail out... not just the mortgage borrowers (which would get some objection - they ought to have known better - but not all that much).. not just the mortgage lenders (more objection, they really ought to have known better) but the incompetent bookies (no pity for them) and the gamblers trying to collect (less than no pity for them) from the bozotic bookies. The gotcha is that this affects the money supply, and thus the whole economy, whether we want it to or not and whether it should or not.

There is an accounting rule that has come up, FAS 157 the "Mark to Market" rule. This rule says that in trading the insurance policies (bets) that they can only be exchanged at the value they could be sold for. "It's only worth what you can get for it right now." It makes sense, and not too long ago it was embraced as it let companies mark the value up. Now they have to mark it down. Far down. No one wants to buy the things. So the system is wedged as they can't sell them, can't afford to sell them, and can't afford not to sell them, and they claim they have to sell them. Or at least that this why the losses are so big. Some claim that the real losses might be only 15% but the perceived losses run to 50% and that that's a big part of the problem - undervaluation. They say that removing or suspending FAS 157 would get things moving again... though I'm not sure how. If there's no perceived value, putting a higher price tag on the thing won't make it sell any faster. Some have called not using FAS 157 allowing "Mark to Make Believe." Is it worth a try? I don't know. I've seen someone claim that doing that would cost $40 billion, which ain't chicken feed but it beats a $700 billion cost... if it works.

"Too Big To Fail"

We've all heard this a few times and it's tempting to disallow anything from getting so big that the country can't afford its failure. The problem is that there are many, many things that size and most are doing at least reasonably well. There is the matter of how to judge when something is too big to fail. Chances are that by the time anyone notices, it's already been that size for a considerable time. Also, who would get to decide that and just what would be done about it?

I'm not saying don't investigate or oversee things. AIG (and a bunch of others) ought to be investigated - but if the only "wrongdoing" is stuff that Congress left be legal, then let's not do anything stupid but just fix the real problem and just be done with it. If there was real, illegal wrongdoing then throw the book at them, certainly. The politics of jealousy and vengeance will not help anyone and are almost certain to make things worse.

The AIG loan (which isn't the $700 billion thing) is structured rather like the Chrysler bailout of the 1980s. The Chrysler bailout was a loan and an astonishing governmental involvement in private industry in the Reagan years. Here's the other surprise for many: it worked, and the federal government came out ahead on the whole thing. That's not a guarantee that AIG will work out that well, but it does mean that it isn't just "Here, have a bag of money."

$700,000,000,000 of... what? Or "Here, have a bag of money."

What do we get for that $700 billion? For the average citizen: nothing but tax burden and more national debt. For the federal government, assuming that the bailout gets them the actual mortgages and not just the bad bets, there is a potential for things to pay off. By one estimate, the payoff could be as high as 2 Trillion (yes, with a T) dollars. Sounds good, right? Double the money and use it to well, pay off the original $700 billion debt and pay off more debt besides. Except for one thing: When was the last time the federal government got money and didn't rush to madly spend it? Heck, I'm trying to recall a time when it didn't spend even the rumor of money - which means that by the time any profit is realized, it'll have been long spent. Not only that, but nationalizing a chunk of the markets is if not socialism, close enough to be worrisome. Creeping Socialism is bad enough, we shouldn't help it up so it can march. If you're not sure of that, think about why this line means what it does: I'm from the governement and I'm here to help. The silly "no oversight, review, etc. of anything" bit is also just plain scary. Lack of proper oversight is what caused the mess. Regulations should be no greater than absolutely necessary, but not nonexistant.

One suggestion was to then give the citizens of the country -- the taxpayers, the people who are really paying the $700 billion -- shares of the companies that the money bails out. This is another tempting but wrong thing. This is a redistribution of wealth on a massive scale - another bit of socialism. There might be a way to do this, but it's not to force people to do it. Forcing is bad; Allowing is good.

Set up a corporation (I don't relish the idea of another pseudo-private corporation of the federal government, but it seems a less bad plan than the ones I've been hearing) whose job it is to do the bailout and sell shares in it - those wanting shares of it can buy them. It's a voluntary free-market solution. And if doesn't raise enough? Maybe it's because the market is smart. The thing to watch is: are billionaires interested? If they want in on that deal, there's a probably a good reason for it. If they stay as far away as they can get, there's a reason for that, too. This is not next quarter type investment. This is buy-and-hold stuff as it will take at least a few years to pay off at all. Oh and ideally, add a sunset provision (this will be hard to get right enough that it can't be fudged) so that the new entity goes away when no longer needed - and it doesn't get to create or redefine the need.

Is that the solution? I have no idea. I don't even know if it's even a solution. I expect that I have some details wrong, at the very least, but this is what has happened as I have come to understand it so far.

"Exercise bikes should have generators."

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:33:47 GMT

I've seen comments of that nature for the powering of televisions or laptops and it is a neat idea - while you're burning calories you get to Do Something else. Or while you're Doing Something that usually Isn't Exercise you get exercise. I'm not sure it's entirely practical, but I can see the appeal. But there's something even simpler than that.

When visiting sistaur I used her stationary bike for exercise, but the batteries had run down so I didn't get any indication of speed or distance or calories burned. As I had not much else to do I started pondering that. There I was, burning calories (the whole point of the... exercise, yes) and generating motion which was then... thrown away. Okkay, the front "wheel" is a sort of fan so there is some self-cooling involved. But it seems that a small (even tiny) generator, a regulator, and maybe a rechargeable battery, would be the right way to go. Gadget not displaying? Throw some calories at it, it'll come right up! It's not as if you were going to be conserving those calories. They might as well be made useful even if only in a small way.

You Know It's Bad When...

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:16:06 GMT

When I visit sistaur we will generally go out to eat at least once during the visit and maybe she'll introduce me to some place to which I have not yet been. That happened recently, and in looking over the menu I noticed a beer that I had not tried before. Amstel Light.

Okkay, it's a Light beer, and Light beers tend to... well... suck. I knew that going in. I wasn't expecting much. I was expecting colored water that tasted vaguely like beer and wouldn't be very filling. If I was lucky, it might surprise and even that thing of fiction, the Light beer that doesn't suck.

As you have read the title, you know that like Ponce de Leon, I was unsuccessful in the quest for that particular fountain. Sure, failure was expected. Ah, but the degree of failure in this case is the thing. For sistaur is a veterinary technician and she worked that day. And she tried the Amstel Light. And it was rejected most brutally.

"This smells like a urine sample I ran today."

Now before you make horse-excretion jokes, which admittedly do come to mind, I'll tell you that she works in a city small mammal practice: dogs and cats with the occasional rabbit or ferret. No large or farm animals, no birds, no fish, no reptiles. This sample was from a Standard Poodle with a urinary tract infection. Make up your own name or joke, but don't feel obligated to tell me. I wound up drinking the Amstel. I will not be ordering that again.

Democrat vs. Democratic

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:14:28 GMT

I've seen folks say "Democrat Party" and getting told it's "Democratic Party." And seen them respond that they'll start using that name when it starts behaving that way. But the name is a problem. Who to believe?

You have a choice. You can believe the Democrats, or you can believe... the Democrats. Yes, they want it both ways.

[It's taken me longer than I care to admit to find the post linked to, but the content in it was memorable.]

Wile E. Reporter... super journalist.

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:35:45 GMT

Via michealmink:

Iowahawk tells the story that started One Day on an Alaskan Cliffside.

The Secrecy Problem: Telephone Game, Only Worse.

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:06:29 GMT

A few days ago I posted a link to a list of questions used in that "30 Questions" thing that's been going around LJ (and, I assume, other places) for a while. Last night someone pointed out another link to the questions. The interesting thing is a comment on that posting, pointing out that some questions had changed.

Did you get this one, which seems fairly innocuous:

05. Someone who seems easy to talk to.
21. Someone who you are grateful to.
22. Someone who makes you laugh.

Or this one, which implies different, not necessarily pleasant, things:

05. Someone who seems like a chatterbox.
21. Someone S-type.
22. Someone M-type.

And if you got one and someone else used the other, you wound up using the wrong key to decode the answers. The transmission was garbled, or rather, interfered with. That's at least two versions of the list. How many versions are there?

Since it's trivially easy to just copy and paste, this isn't just a transmission-reception or mis-hearing-mis-remembering-mis-speaking error as happens in the Telephone Game. This was deliberate. Someone decided to make things more revealing, perhaps more dramatic. And as long as the general secrecy was maintained, there was no way to verify that the set of questions or descriptors you had was identical to the list someone else had worked from.

As aiglet said in a comment:

At least one person I know seems to think of it as an experiment in information-spreading, which tells me that this person has probably never had an entire social group implode under the weight of "he said she said you said that I said that X was a bitch" or "I heard that so-and-so is a horrible person so I'm not going to be friends with them even though I can't remember who I heard it from or what it was exactly that was said" type drama.

I do wonder who (person or group) started this thing. Or at least who modified it. It has a certain familiar, and bad, odor to it. And I don't mean just the obnoxious chain-letter style of the thing. It smells of troll.

Making sense of bad cartoons with modern technology.

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:13:08 GMT

Even as a kid some things bugged me about some of the Saturday morning cartoons. The big, obvious departures from reality weren't a problem. Hey, these were cartoons and like Bugs Bunny says, "You can get away with nearly anything-- in an animated cartoon." It was the cartoons that tried to emulate reality that ran into trouble. One example was the Flintstones which I mentioned a few years ago. (Short version: Why didn't the rear axle fall out?) But recently I realized that a couple other dumb things I'd seen in some cartoons can now be explained.

One annoyance was that a tiny radio transmitter could be placed on a vehicle and and the vehicle then tracked. Tiny transmitter, sure. Tracking, sure. But at the time it would have required triangulation from at least two receiving sites, if conditions were ideal. But the cartoon (it was probably one of the many incarnation of Scooby Doo but I cannot say for sure) showed a single receiver, with a big display and showing a dot to follow. It might have even showed the local streets - clearly nonsense... at the time. Today it can be and is done. The tiny transmitter has a GPS receiver and the tracking receiver might as well have the data that a GPS navigation has.

Another annoyance was the home computer or terminal that a kid had (this was likely Clue Club or another, similar cartoon) or had ready access to, that could be used to look up nearly anything, and quickly. Sure, like the kid would even have outside access - that would tie up a phone line, if it happened at all, and then it's just be to a BBS. And maybe 1200 baud. Maybe. This might have been the days of 300 baud (it's faster than 110, yay!) for the typical home/hobbyist modem. Of course we know that that changed. CPU speeds went up. Modem speeds went up, and then came broadband with DSL and cable. And then add real internet access, the web, search engines, and now "Google is your friend." The problem now is not getting access to information, but sorting it down to the useful pieces.

I'm sure there are other examples of modern technology making simplistic nonsense in old cartoons now an explicable or even expected thing. Those are just the two I recall bothering me, that can now be explained away as "being ahead of their time" rather than just being plot devices.

Creepy, but it works.

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:54:17 GMT

YAQ: key

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:53:22 GMT

If you've seen lists of thirty names and wondered what the photon it was all about, here's the key.

Vanilla Cream Soda: Bottle 5

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:52:42 GMT

This one seems to be a success except for my handling of it once it was finished. The yeast smell is way in the background, and with a whopping SIX tablespoons of vanilla flavoring it had better be. I used one half cup of sugar for the yeast, and the Splenda equivalent of a cup of sugar for sweetness. Jay said it seemed about right. I think this indicates just how much people (at least in the U.S.?) have gotten used to a lot of sweetness and a lot of flavoring.

My mistake was siphoning the soda from the chilled bottle into another. The intent was to have a bottle that could be treated as any other soda bottle, without having to extra careful to avoid stirring up the settled yeast. The result was a tremendous loss of carbonation, so the very final result wasn't the ideal. This has me pondering complicating things by seeing if I can set up one bottle with sugar and yeast to generate the CO2 and pressure and have another bottle be the actual soda mix. This would allow me to leave sugar and yeast out of the final soda completely, at the price of a more complex arrangement. Whatever I do, it won't be for a while. I don't want to start another bottle (or whatever) until the current batch is gone. That might be a while, as neither Jay nor I drink very much of it since it has sugar in it.

Meanwhile another 1 L bottle of anise soda is going. I started it the same time I started #5 of the cream soda, but with the last of the first packet of champagne yeast, which wasn't very much. So I'm letting it go for a rather longer time in hopes of getting more carbonation by simply waiting longer. It appears to be working, but I won't know for sure for a couple more days.

An unusual event. Well, it seems like it now.

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:34:28 GMT

I bought a couple incandescent light bulbs. One of the small bulbs in the fridge went out and since it was a physically smaller bulb, there wasn't a ready replacement in the big box o' bulbs in the basement from when we converted to CFL. Given the size requirement and environment, a switch to CFL wasn't an option. So a direct replacement was bought and made. I think it's also been over a year since I changed any bulb.

Fly here, fly there.

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:05:33 GMT

jmaynard and I spent last weekend or at least a significant chunk of it at a fly-in up in Sidnaw, MI and had a good time away from pretty much everything. Cell signal, what's that? I enjoyed the dark skies and someone brought a nice Celestron 6 inch telescope and we got a look at a few things. The fly-in lasted a couple days, or at least was spread over an evening, another day, and a morning so it was an extended thing as fly-ins tend to go.

Today there were a few in the area, two in the morning and one in the evening. We flew to breakfast in Jackson, MN and then home. Later we fly over to Blue Earth for supper as unlike most such gatherings, they had theirs in the afternoon and evening. We got back before the bad weather arrived, but it sure looked threatening to west. Sometime after we got home the wind shifted, and became gustier, so it seems we timed things fairly well.

Poll: It's not political, at least.

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:39:44 GMT

View Poll: #2281

YAQ: No surprise

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:30:15 GMT

Via hakeber:

Your Issue Profile: 20% Obama, 80% McCain

The results are in, and John McCain is definitely your choice.

You're probably not surprised. It's possible you've had your eye on McCain for years.

Popular or not, you will likely stick by McCain. For you, it's a matter of principle.

And besides, there's something exciting about rooting for the underdog!

Should You Vote for Obama or McCain?

Poll: Presidential Election

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:30:12 GMT

Here and here are a couple guides to or lists of various political parties.

View Poll: #2270

More BS BS

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:35:44 GMT

I mentioned that show that Penn & Teller have a week or so ago. Today I found out just a bit more about it. The person in it still hasn't actually seen the episode, so there is no direct commentary on that. There is something mighty interesting about the release he signed, however. His words (emphasis mine):

The program started several years ago as a semi humorous debunking action, but I have only seen one of them. Last Fall, a crew was taping at the Carolina Ren Faire, and I happened to be one of the interviewees. Well, I should have known: The release form stated up front that they might edit, dub, or even fictionalize my appearance (and all the others, of course). But, I got assurances from the crew that, since Penn & Teller had got their start at a faire (actually the Minnesota faire), they wouldn't shaft us. I have received notes from several people who saw the program who state I was heavily edited, and essentially used to make us look bad. Since I haven't seen the program yet, no further comments, but it is clear that I was used, in some manner.

At least they were honest about their dishonesty, huh?

More political humor

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:30:10 GMT

Whatever you might think of McCain's VP selection, certain things just shouldn't be taken too seriously. The Sarah Palin Facts site, for instance.

They want(ed) to what?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:24:44 GMT

Reality can be a mighty strange place. Or people can be mighty silly. Or the one leads to the other.

There is, or at least was, a group calling itself "Recreate '68" pushing an antiwar agenda. What amuses me is that they scheduled things around the Democrat's Convention in Denver. Luckily for Denver, the 1968 Democrat's Convention was not re-created. But don't they realize what else happened in 1968? Humphrey lost.

Murder on a Stick

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:29:44 GMT

I've only been to county fairs, never to any state fairs. Thus I have not been to the Minnesota State Fair. I do know that food on a stick is common, and that Minnesota takes it quite a ways (hotdish on stick?). So when there is to be an anthology of murder mysteries set at the Minnesota State Fair, there could be only one name for it: Murder on a Stick.

Again with the soda pop

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:39:47 GMT

The fourth bottle of vanilla cream soda turned out pretty good. There's still a hint of yeast, but it's way in the background and probably unavoidable with this carbonation method. Compared to a commercial cream soda (Wildwood from Kwik Trip) it's still not as flavorful and is not nearly as sweet. The Wildwood is 120 Calories per 8 fluid ounces. Mine is 45. The next bottle will have yet more flavoring, and have the sweetness boosted with Splenda. This reminds me of something I heard at Penguicon. At least one of the people who mixed up the syrup for OpenCola wouldn't drink it or at least not very much of it, having seen the huge amount of sugar that goes into it.

The small bottle of anise flavored soda sort of worked out. Predictably, any yeast note was drowned by the anise and I figure I can cut back on the amount the flavoring. (jmaynard says I need to cut it back to zero as he claims including any just makes "yuck soda.") The carbonation seemed a bit weak, perhaps more time was needed as I cut everything in half for the lowered volume and perhaps the time needed to double.

I also tried making ginger ale. This worked, though it either needs a bit more ginger, or I need to find a finer cutting grater. It's decidedly ginger ale, just not quite ginger enough. Also, the warnings about keeping a closer eye on ginger ale than other sodas is true. Yeast loves something in ginger and the pressure builds fast. A day or maybe a day and a half is plenty for ginger ale while three or four days are needed for everything else.

And I really need to be patient and only do one bottle at a time or per week or such. Even cutting back on the sugar, I don't need more than one bottle of fizzy sugar water around at any given time.

Poll: Drunk as skunk?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:28:15 GMT

View Poll: #2241

Lack of interest can be a good thing

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:01:59 GMT

A fellow I knew some years ago was, and presumably still is, fond of saying, "When we're rich and famous..." I'd often reply that I would settle for rich and not famous as it would be less hassle. I can't confirm the rich part, much as I might like to, but having seen what jmaynard initially went through and some of the lingering nonsense, I think I can confirm that relative obscurity is less hassle than relative fame.

The City Pages article was the first time I'd been mentioned along with Jay in regard to the Tron Guy stuff. As Orvan was revealed (I simply replied truthfully when asked if I had any costumes beyond renfaire attire as it's just easier that way) and then it Fark, I was bracing for a flood of st00p1d in my journals and e-mail. If not from Fark directly, then indirectly as it filtered through the net. It didn't happen.

Oh, it filtered through the net alright. Links to that article show up in several places. But most seem to just be links to the Fark entry, and the others have little if any comment. I have a couple examples. A link to the article was posted on a site called Snarkfest. In a thread with Julia Child being revealed as spy for the Allies in WWII, modern science bringing invisibility cloaks grudgingly into reality, a couple people in costumes just aren't very interesting. Another site, vivisector, that claims to be a sort of anthropological study of furry in all aspects, good and bad, also had someone point out the City Pages article. That person is either more furry-aware (understandable given the site) or did the truly basic level of internet research needed to find a couple images of Orvan and Orvan's journal. And... that thread is empty save for the initial post. And it's been bumped down as a particular web site experienced another outage and that's more interesting.

I am not displeased by the lack of attention. While I believe there are plenty of jerks around, it's nice to not have to deal with them. It amuses me to see a couple potential pot-stirrers get no followup. Evidently Jay's schoolyard classification is about right as the other sites seem a bit more mature and nothing much happens. Why should anything? As malterre said about an earlier post, "I see stranger shit taking public transportation."

And then there is also the benefit of the doubt. I don't like to believe that most people are idiots. That doesn't mean I can't be convinced that someone really is an idiot, however. Reading though the Fark comments, I found myself wondering how many of the people posting stupid things really believed the stupid things they were posting. Were they that stupid or gullible, or were they trolling each other, or was it all one big in-joke that anyone looking in might mistake for real rather than fake idiocy? Faking idiocy seems to be one of those things that's only amusing to the one doing it, so when it isn't amusing it just seems stupid, or at best ignorant.

The misspelling of Orvan's name in the City Pages article reveals something interesting as well. If I do searches using the correct spelling, I get the ACME Delivery site, Orvan's journal, and mentions of him by other folks in a generally positive way. But if I do a search for the misspelling I get the City Pages article, the Fark entry, and various folks linking to one or the other, often with a "more than you wanted to know" comment that seems to asking for OMGWTFICBM responses. The difference seems to be a simple enough one. The folks using the correct spelling have met or seen Orvan at conventions and found him friendly or amusing or at least mostly harmless, while those using or copying the misspelling have only seen the short mention in one article - and then either jump to conclusions or hope for others to do so. In way, though probably not the one intended, it manages to be a bit amusing.