How "Conspiracy Theories" Are Born

Justice Scalia died over the weekend. And they will NOT be doing an autopsy.

I have no idea what happened to Scalia, I assume it was natural, but that is the idea. We don’t know, and the government’s eagerness to break all the rules to avoid acquiring any evidence of what happened is hardly confidence-enhancing. They render the rules meaningless over probable trifles like this. Imagine if one of Obama’s ex-staffers had killed Justice Scalia in the restaurant that night, he called Valerie Jarrett who saw the potential for a scandal, and she called an agent in fedguv domestic intel which she installed in that agency for just such a purpose. Would they break the rules for that? Should they be able to, in a free society?

I can see in the time period between, say, now and the next few years, this will become a topic of everything from books to newsletters to Alex Jones' show.

This is how they start. Look at how botched JFK's autopsy was. No chain of custody. High level government officials in the room trying to rush it. That was 53 years ago, and still a subject of debate.

Hitler on Brian Williams

One of the great things about the modern world is being able to make Hitler rant about our first world problems and current events.

And somebody had Hitler take on Brian Williams "misremembering" whether he was in the helicopter that got shot at, or the one that safely landed unharmed.


I guess journalists assume since they never bother to check facts, nobody else does either. 

Wasting Time On The Internet Is Now An Ivy League College Class

It's true. Now you too can go thousands of dollars into debt in student loans and PAY to waste time on the Internet, something that is free for most of us.

Next semester at the University of Pennsylvania, students will walk into a classroom, pull out their laptops, their smartphones, their tablets, and sit there, for three hours, doing what they no doubt do pretty often: Waste time on the internet.

Or they could take classes that will benefit them in their careers, and waste time on the Internet for free.

"I'm very tired of reading articles in the New York Times every week that make us feel bad about spending so much time on the internet, about dividing our attention so many times," Kenneth Goldsmith, a world-renowned poet and the course's professor, told me. "I think it's complete bullshit that the internet is making us dumber. I think the internet is making us smarter. There's this new morality built around guilt and shame in the digital age."

So do what I do. Don't read the New York Times, or any other disconnected source of elite opinions.

As an intimate object, the Internet is what you make of it. You can use it to make yourself smarter, or you can mindlessly click on Buzzfeed articles and get dumber. It's all about how you use your mind.

I can't speak to this guy being a "world renowned poet". I've never been able to get into poetry, but I'm sure most modern poetry is as bad as modern art. About all the poetry I can stand is centered around limericks "There once was a lady from Venus..."

So, his students will explore what, exactly, wasting time even means. Is it a waste of time to tap out some forum posts or internet comments? Is it a waste of time to gchat with your friends? Is it a waste of time to click through YouTube videos? Can we consciously or even unconsciously channel the things we do on the internet to make a work of art or the next great American novel or an autobiography? 

His students will be tasked with trying. For much of the class, they'll be wasting time online, sure, but at some point, they're going to have to take the raw material of all that time wasting—browser histories, text messages, screenshots, who knows what else—and turn it into a "compelling and emotional work of literature."

A "compelling and emotional work of literature"? I'm sure being forced to read most of the output of this class would make me cry.

At this point, I'm almost forced to conclude that it's not the Internet that makes you dumber. It's college. That's why it's time for the majority of red pill, conservative, or libertarian men to abandon the modern university. Stop giving them your money. Do something to enrich your own mind and your job prospects. You can CLEP out of most of the lower level "Internet Time Wasting" and English classes and focus on the core curriculum for your field of study (which should be STEM). Or learn a trade through trade school or an apprenticeship.

This class is offered at UPenn (Ped State).

Facebook Manipulated Your News Feed To Screw With Your Emotions

I've seen this a few times lately in some email subscriptions I have. Facebook conducted an experiment where they manipulated people's news feeds to see what effect it had on their emotions.

I guess they showed either mostly (or all) positive or negative posts and monitored the user's posts to see if the user responded emotionally.

The part that makes me laugh is this:

Even the Facebook data scientist who led the study is now questioning its value: “In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety,” Adam Kramer wrote on his Facebook page.” (HT Wall Street Journal.) Kramer also wrote: “The experiment in question was run in early 2012, and we have come a long way since then.”

Hah! Total bust.

If it creeps you out, remember, you did agree to their terms of service (so did I).  Remember, if you're given a service for free, you're not the customer. You're the product.

I was probably active on Facebook during that period. I always set my feed to "most recent", and I was going through the roller coaster of a dying bad marriage. So I have no idea if it affected me. I was mostly negative during that time anyway.

Malaysia Airlines Conspiracy People Don't Seem To Understand How Anything Works

Now Mike Adams, the "Health Ranger" is getting in on the act with a claim that a 777 doesn't disappear unless a government wants it to.

Mike follows with five "facts" about RADAR and RADAR signatures.

Mike should stick to writing about coconut oil, because he doesn't appear to understand how RADAR works. Fortunately for you, I do. This is one of the areas I have some expertise in.

Fact #1) Every modern nation tracks air traffic with military radar systems
All the key nations involved in Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 run military radar systems 24/7. This includes Malaysia and India, of course. These radar systems are operated for purposes of national defense, making sure each nation can identify aircraft entering its air space.

If you don't believe that military-grade radar systems can track the altitude, direction and speed of a Boeing 777, then you don't believe in radar at all.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044511_Flight_370_reality_check_government_involvement.html#ixzz2xj6DBDr9

No, military RADARs are not generally used to track civil air traffic. Civil air traffic will show up on them, but that's not the purpose. Few, if any airports have a "military" RADAR. Most are severely outdated, and it often takes a crash to get an upgrade. As late as the 90's, LAX was still using a World War II era RADAR. It took a Cessna colliding with a DC-9 to force an upgrade, but that's only because the NTSB concluded the inadequacy of the obsolete RADAR was a factor in the crash.

Nations, including this one, don't have blanket coverage with "military RADAR systems". There are civil RADAR systems, such as those at airports and air traffic control centers. These are not military RADARs. Not every RADAR is military just because it exists. Mike here is also laying it on the line with his "If you don't believe... you don't believe in RADAR at all." Get bent, Mike. Stuff the Appeal to Ridicule fallacy where you'd put your iPhone 5.

Also, Mike seems to be assuming that all military RADARs are somehow magical and can pick up every last inch of space. No. Actually, most military RADARs have short ranges and specific applications, which don't including Santa Claus like abilities to know if a 777 has been naughty or nice.

Mike then builds his case by mentioning the civil RADARs, the RADAR signature of a 777, then that a 777 can't survive a crash into the ocean and remain intact.

For every point he is fairly accurate on, he has at least one other point where he is talking out his ass.

Here's how a RADAR works: a pulse of radio frequency is sent out into space. It has to be a pulse, not a constant beam, because the RADAR then listens for the return. If that pulse bounces off something, it returns to the receiver. If not, it keeps going until it dissipates.

If the RADAR receiver gets a return pulse, it goes through a signal processor.and a computer to determine the distance to the object, as well as altitude. You can "track" a plane through this process because as the RADAR goes around, it gets multiple returns close together. The computer displays a "blip" on the screen. But each RADAR has a filter, because there is a lot of noise. Rain has a RADAR signature, which would clutter a screen.

RADARs also do not work around the curvature of the Earth. The signal goes in a straight line. At ground level, you personally might be able to see about 3 miles because the Earth curves. A RADAR on a tower can "see" a little farther, but not all that much farther. They also have limited range.

We have not yet managed to cover every last inch of the globe with RADARs. Planes out over the open ocean are not tracked on a RADAR, because none of them are out on the ocean. Sure, a ship has a RADAR platform, but we don't have that many ships with Air Search RADARs.

A plane crashing into the ocean would leave a debris trail, but you still have to find it. That's not as easy as it sounds. And oceans have currents that start moving the debris almost immediately.

If in fact a government, or a collection of governments, for whatever reason wanted the Malaysia Airlines flight to disappear, I'm sure it could happen. But I have yet to see any evidence or even reasonable argument supporting it. All I see area  bunch of people talking out of their asses on subjects they know nothing about. They know nothing about planes, RADARs, search and rescue operations, crash investigations, or even covert government ops.

They probably don't even know the 777 had a fuel filter problem. The altitudes jet liners fly at are very cold. Moisture in the fuel tank freezes. The way the filters on the 777 were built caused ice crystals to form, blocking the flow of fuel into the engines. When the pilot tries to increase throttle, nothing happens. A 777 crashed on the runway at Heathrow Airport because of this. Supposedly Boeing fixed it.

This Malaysia Airlines Stuff Is Getting Ridiculous...

As best as I can render this "report" without resorting to a lot of logical fallacies, somebody received a blank photo with some EXIF coordinates from Diego Garcia (called a "secret" base in the post) and somehow this photo is tied to an IBM employee on the flight who somehow stuffed an iPhone 5 up his ass (do these people even understand the dimensions of an iPhone 5 AND a human anus?) and used a voice assistant to text somebody while he was while blindfolded.

They can tell he was blindfolded because of a misspelling in the text. Like people need Siri to misspell a word.

So this somehow proves the Malaysia Airlines flight was hijacked by military personnel and flown to a "secret" base (it's so secretive, everybody I knew in the Navy knew about it) and the plane is in a "Faraday Cage" hanger.

Since the writer doesn't understand the dimensions of an iPhone 5 or a human anus, I'm assuming he also has no clue what a Faraday Cage is. A commenter on the article said "At least he didn't have a Samsung Galaxy Note".

When I got divorced, I brought my ex-wife's EZ-Pass back to Virginia by wrapping it in a Faraday Cage: Aluminum Foil. Since I had my own EZ-Pass, I didn't want to get charged twice at every toll. I didn't. Wrapping it in aluminum foil and throwing it in the glove compartment of my car did the trick.

The site is called "Intellihub" which you'd assume had something to do with intelligence. But I don't think it does. I could register a similar domain name, which doesn't mean I have anything to do with intelligence (and I did do Naval Intelligence for a little while in the Reserves).

I have yet to see any speculation about the Malaysia Airlines disappearance that convinces me.

UPDATE: Since I made a comment on that Intelhub post, I've been getting the Disqus digests. This post is so stupid, most people thought it was an April Fool's prank.

More "Conspiracy Theory" on Malaysia Arlines

There appears to be a new theory on the Malaysia Airlines plane, which I don't yet buy. I'll do the best I can to render it accurately, but to me it seems like a bunch of datapoints that may or may not be related tied together.

Apparently, there were some engineers on the plane heading to a conference in China. These engineers were patent holders of some military technology. They worked for Freescale Seminconductor.

There are also some big name tie ins to the story, such as Lord Rothschild and the Carlyle Group.

As best as I can tell from these blog posts,

http://qasimism.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/who-benefits-from-missing-flight-370/

http://www.westernjournalism.com/real-reason-flight-370-disappeared/ (Video included)

the flight going down and the engineers dying means that those shares of patents revert to Freescale Semiconductor and Lord Rothschild.

I still don't buy it when there are plenty of reasonable explanations for the disappearance of a plane over an area of water that is several times larger than the land mass of 'murca!

Believe it or not, flights go down mysteriously all the time. You just don't hear about it because you're not into aviation, and the media is too damn busy covering Miley Circus to tell you about it. I'm not even sure why this particular flight got any media attention. It was probably a slow news day and Congress hadn't done anything stupid yet.

Often when a plane goes down over water, it can take years, if not decades, to find the wreckage and determine the cause. Here is a flight that went down mysteriously over the Mediterranean. A journalist got a call from somebody claiming it was shot down by a missile. It took them many years to figure out what caused the flight to go down, which they ultimately determined had to be a bomb. They'll never know who planted it or why:



There are too many real world conspiracies to keep me busy without manufacturing my own. If the Malaysia Airlines flight was a conspiracy for some reason, fine. We'll get the evidence eventually. But tying in a bunch of datapoints with logical fallacies, such as Questionable Cause and Appeal to Fear, is not going to help.

The Malaysia Flight Probably Has A Good Explaination

I've been reading about "conspiracies" like the Illuminati, Bilderberg, Skull and Bones, Kennedy Assassination, 9/11, and so on for more than a decade. There's a lot of good information, a lot of disinformation, and a lot off bullshit involved.

Use most of those words, and people accuse you of being a "conspiracy theorist". I'm sure most people who use those words together have no idea what either word means.

But then, when other things happen, the same people who say "there's no such thing as conspiracies" go batshit with stupid theories and speculation.

When the Malaysia Airlines plan disappeared, Facebook was filled with stupid memes like "They can track your phone, but they can't find a plane?"

Then people start going nuts with silly ideas like it was hijacked, the pilots killed each other, and so on.

But it probably has a VERY simple explanation.

According to a pilot who's article was republished by Wired, it was probably a fire.

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah¹ was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

The profile of the flight and events we know all fit the profile of a fire on board the plan. They start shutting off circuit breakers in an effort to isolate affected systems, smoke fills the cabin, you can't go on oxygen with a fire on board, and eventually everybody succumbs to smoke and dies. The autopilot does its job and flies the plane as long as there if fuel on board and the control systems aren't affected by the fire.

The pilot suspects a landing gear fire, which happens occasionally. An underinflated landing gear and a takeoff roll on a hot runway can cause the gear to catch on fire.

It's all very simple.

As for why they can't track the phones on board, well, phones don't work in salt water. And while the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder are built tough, there are some crashes that render them inoperable and unrecoverable.

Why Do People Still Do Business With Banks?

Vox Day blogged about a story I've seen pieces of in other outlets, about a man in the UK who tried to take HIS money out of HSBC and was declined for the full amount. They wanted a reason why he needed to take out so much of his own money, and apparently weren't satisfied with his reasoning.

I've pretty much always dealt with credit unions for my banking. For a brief stint in New Jersey, I had accounts with Commerce Bank, now part of about three different mergers into a large soulless megabank. I can't keep track of which one it is now. I only went to Commerce Bank because I'd just moved there, needed a place to put my paycheck, and my credit union hadn't moved into south Jersey yet. Also that was back in the dark days of writing checks, and nobody would take a check from my credit union because it wasn't local at the time.

Infowars Caught Being Reactionary and Incorrect

I know, the headline is as obvious as one about me caught with a glass of cold beer.

I saw something on Facebook the other day about Chase stopping international wire transfers. I've been occupied with some other things, and I don't have any Chase accounts or money (much less money to wire overseas), so I ignored it. I saw it both in Alex Jones' and one of his writer's feeds.

John T Reed, a journalist and expert in these matters, looked into it. He found that Infowars was wrong.

The issue had to do with levels of accounts. Chase went from a "one size fits all" account to small business and large business. The small business accounts don't have the ability to wire money overseas, but have smaller minimum balances. The larger business accounts have a higher minimum balance and the ability to wire money overseas.

I used to listen to Alex Jones. I stopped about a year ago. Mostly it had to do with time. His 3-4 hour podcast was a huge commitment. Plus, he had a buttload of commercials that had to be skipped. Also, as a radio show, it seemed like he wasted so much time just restating himself after every single commercial break. I don't have anything against Alex Jones other than his reliability. There are some amusing YouTube videos about failed Alex Jones predictions. In July 2010, I was listening to him on a drive from New Jersey to Virginia for a job interview. That day, he was predicting an imminent war between Israel and either Syria or Iran within two weeks. We're still waiting.

About Downloading A Car...

A while back, I dashed off a quick post about the recording industry's category error logical fallacy "You Wouldn't Download A Car, Would You?"

Well, this has become a meme unto itself. Behold (oh, yeah, language warning after the break):

Two Sacred Cows

There are many sacred cows in this world. But lately, there are two that are causing me a little bit of trouble.

1. Police
2. Public school teachers

Let's start with police. Recently in a group I meet with, I was told that my offhanded comment that "police are being used for revenue generation" made somebody really angry. Apparently, this person was afraid if I made the comment again, the situation would escalate. I've been making that comment for years.

I'm not a fan of anonymous cowards. And I would welcome the fight. It would help me blow off some steam from other issues I'm dealing with. But I agreed for the sake of the group not to bring the topic up again.

Cargo Cult Riches

Over the last few weeks, we've seen gold drop. We've seen Bitcoin ramp up then drop a little bit.

I have an idea of one of the forces behind things like this, besides deliberate manipulation.

Most "investors" seem to be working from a cargo cult mentality. They don't understand what they're doing or why they're doing it. They only have one or two data points from which to figure "I better do this!"

They see people "getting rich" in stocks and think "OK, I just need to get into stocks, and I'll be rich too!" Or they see people "getting rich" in real estate, and think "OK, I just need to get into real estate, and I can be rich too!"

But they don't know what the people "getting rich" in stocks or real estate (or yet another investment) are doing or why they're doing it. All they see is people "getting rich".

Gold is about the same. People listen to Glenn Beck and other gold pitchmen and freak out and buy gold. I used to listen to Alex Jones. He pitched for gold almost hourly. Wouldn't shut up about it. Now he's in some  MLM pyramid scheme selling overpriced vitamin powder.

Let's look at stocks. People buy stocks to "get rich", but don't understand why stocks might make them rich. As I said above, the same applies in real estate. People have a flipper mentality. They think "I buy the stock (house) low, and I sell it high! Preferably within 15 minutes." They don't understand that the reason people in stocks and real estate "get rich" is not because they buy the "right" stock or house and flip it right away. People in both "get rich" through long term holding. You aren't supposed to buy a stock you're going to sell in the next 15 minutes. You're supposed to consider stocks based on what kind of dividends they'll pay you.

For this part, I'm talking out my ass because I don't really own any stock so we're going with my limited understanding of the theory. My employer sponsored retirement is in "funds". Lets say you buy a single share of stock for $15. Your $15 in your bank account has been transferred in value to the single share of stock, so your net worth remains the same. You can sell the stock for $15 and walk away even. But this share of stock pays $.15 in dividend. Over the course of a year, if the stock holds steady, your net worth is still $15 in the stock, but over the course of the year, you'll have earned $1.80 in dividends. So next year, you buy another $15 share of stock int he same company, and now you're earning $3.60 in dividends. By the way, this dividend income is only taxed at 15% because Warren Buffet.

Obviously, a serious investor will buy enough shares of stock to at least get a cup of coffee at Starbucks (after taxes). Let's say you could pull off enough stock investment to ensure approximately $60,000 per year in dividend income. Your income taxes on this are 15%. In some areas of the country, you could live on this alone. That means no commute; no job; none of that BS.

The same principle goes for a house. Say you purchase a house for $100,000. You put 20% down like a SMART investor. At 5% interest, $80,000 financed over 30 years will come to about $550 per month. Tack on taxes and let's say we're at $900 per month, which is probably unrealistic outside a shithole like New Jersey (where I own an upside down house that can't sell that charges me $5500 per year in property taxes on a four bedroom cape cod on .18 acres).

You rent the place for $1000 per month. That's $12,000 per year.

Now lets say you "flip" the house rather than rent it. You put $20,000 worth of work into it and "flip" it for $130,000. I doubt that's possible, but this is theoretical. Which option gives you more? A one time theoretical $10,000, or $12,000 per year in rental income?

Most investors don't think that far, which is why I call them "cargo cult investors". They scream bullshit like "I just have to find the RIGHT stock." "I just have to find a house and flip it!" "I have to buy gold 'cause Glenn Beck says so!"

Yet they don't understand why. And when prices go south, they flip the hell out and sell off. They are incredibly prone to market manipulation. On one hand "I have to buy gold! You need gold too! If the economy collapses, gold will save us!" On the other hand "Oh, crap! Gold is dropping. Sell! Sell! Sell!"

That's what happened in 2008. The stock market dropped, so people dumped their retirement plans. And lost a buttload of money. Those who stayed in saw their plans come back up. A friend showed me the Excel graph he keeps of his retirement account. There was a drop in 2008, followed by a SHARP increase in 2009-2010. Not only did he maintain the monthly retirement contribution; he upped it. So while the price of shares were down, he was buying more for the same amount. Then when they came back, his value soared.

Today's lesson is, don't be a cargo cult investor. If you don't know what you're doing, ask somebody. Preferably somebody outside of your family and social circle. Don't take advice from people who can't demonstrate success in the area in which they're offering advice in. Just smile nicely while you say under your breath "You're full of shit. You've never done this. You just read it in a mass-market paperback bestseller aimed at idiots like you who will eat this up and never act on it. I'm not going to listen". 

So Who Has the Copyright?

A subject I'm gearing up to tackle is intellectual property (IP). I don't feel ready to engage this subject from an educated position yet. I've had several thoughts on it, but nothing I'd consider coherent or that I could present from a position of authority.

Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property" is on my reading list for the near future. Like the majority of their great literature, it is available as a free download from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute.

Also available as a free download is a book I just became aware of, Michael Boldrin and David Levine's "Against Intellectual Monopoly".

Intellectual Property makes for an interesting subject. Physical property is one thing. If I am a producer of cars, a physical object, then I make the car and I sell the car to you. We can't both have the same car at the same time. This would violate logic and physics.

Fractional Reserve Gold?

I saw this yesterday. One of the ways for goldbugs to store their shinies is to have them stored somewhere else, like this Dutch bank. It looks like they were using this bank as a broker to buy and store their gold.

Gold is very heavy, and probably not easy to store. A book on my list to read is Anna Eisenmenger's diary, Blockade. In it, she says people in Austria who had gold stored had it stolen from them. I do not believe gold to be the safe investment/value store it's made out to be when an emergency strikes.

In any case, for those who wish to maintain a vast store of gold, paying somebody else to store it is probably best in normal times. I don't think we're in normal times anymore. For those who wished to buy gold through this Dutch bank, it isn't.

That doesn't mean they can't just buy their gold somewhere else.

I can't discern from the article why the bank will no longer deliver gold to customers, but instead will pay them the value of their gold in a fiat currency, probably the Euro. My first thought was they're treating gold the same way they do money, through a fractional reserve system. The article doesn't give enough detail though. Just that if you bought gold through them, and want your gold delivered, you'll get paper instead.

The Toilet Safety Administration Lives!

I think of Mark Dice as sort of an old testament prophet. Always doing kooky stuff to try to make a point. Lately, he's been walking around San Diego dressed as a city worker pulling pranks and making points. In a recent video, he walked into restaurants and convenience stores, placing fake (foam?) surveillance cameras and "If you see something, say something" posters. Nobody questioned him, even though he apparently had a friend with a camera following him around:


I have to wonder how many people went into those bathrooms before somebody FINALLY asked a proprietor "Why is there a camera, a pro-police state poster, and a Big Brother picture in there?" Hell, how many employees didn't bother to ask?

I have two of Mark's books, although I haven't read them yet. I'll post reviews when I do, but they'll probably be on my conspiracy and esoteric blog, since they're a better fit over there.

Perspective From History

We just dodged yet another apocalyptic prediction. Like any of them are likely to happen. I've wondered what will be next. Apparently, people are predicting solar flares in 2020 that will wipe out all our electronics.

I love to read history. One of the greatest gifts history gives me is perspective. A lot of us in America seem to imagine we're the first society ever to collapse. Sure, we know about Rome and plenty of other empires throughout history, but that's all far and away.

Christians in particular (disclosure, I count myself as such) get a lot of mileage from apocalyptic scenarios. The decline of our society (the west in general and America in particular) surely signals the end of days.

I came across this gem earlier. From "The Last Days of the Romanovs" Chapter 12 " Something has happened to them in there" which accounts for the events of Sunday, 14 July, 1918. Page 167:

Consoled and reassured by Father Storozhev's service, and confident of the resurrection to come, Alexandra spent the rest of the day lying on her bed making lace and having the scriptures read to her when the others went out for their walk. Her choice of extracts from the 12 books of the Minor Prophets offered appropriate parables for the present state of Russia. Olga and Tatiana had read to her from Hosea- a book of dark and melancholy prophecy about the sins of Israel that had brought the country great national disasters. The apocalyptic tones of chapter four seemed to mirror what was now happening in their own country - a place where there was 'no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God'. In Russia, just as in Israel, 'blood toucheth blood' as the country descended into internecine strife. Russia was a land in mourning where the people had rejected 'knowledge' - i.e. religion - and were now suffering for it. Further gloom and despondency followed in the readings from Joel, which prophesied a cataclysm over a land of Israel faced with desolation, plague and famine as punishment for its sins. God soon would swoop down in vengeance and sweep it all away: 'Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is night at hand'.

So the Tsarita (Empress- or the wife of the Tsar) saw the decline of Russia in the WWI days similar to how many of us see the west in our present day 94 years later and on the other side of the world. She linked parallels in Russia to the prophets of the Bible.

I'm not saying we're wrong to read the prophets and say "wow, that sounds just like today!" I'm just saying we're not the first. We may or may not be the last. Let's just keep our heads on straight and keep our perspective about history and the rest of the world, which apparently exists outside of U.S. borders.

By the way, the ENTIRE ROYAL FAMILY, that is the Tsar, his wife, their four daughters, and their son (the heir to the throne) and several of their servants were EXECUTED in cold blood by the Bolsheviks just 3 days later, on 17 July 1918. Bastards.

Do Rules, Regulations, and Standards Really Matter?

Recently, I was listening to an interview with James Randi. James commented on why he stopped visiting high schools. One reason given happened at his last visit to a high school. He commented to the principal that the clocks were several minutes fast. The principal said that's because if they set the clocks to the right time, the students would all be late to class.

It made me wonder two things:

1) Do the students have adequate time between classes?

2) Does it actually matter that they get to class on time?

This came back to me recently. I was watching a documentary on coal last night. It mostly takes place in West Virginia. In one scene, a lawyer from an environmental group said that every time they try to sue the coal companies for being in violation of a law, the Bush administration changed the law so they weren't in violation of it. (This documentary was apparently finished in 2006). What the...?

This documentary is free to watch for Amazon Prime members.

So again, does the rule matter? Why would we put rules in place if they can be changed whenever somebody breaks them?

On the coal issue, I'd say the rule damn sure matters. Same for nuclear power, another industry in which the rules are changed every time somebody fails an inspection. Then when a meltdown happens, people will whine and cry about how "we need rules! If only the government made us follow rules, this never would have happened!"

For the high school, again, if being on time to class actually matters, then enforce the rule. My high school tried a policy once where as soon as the bell rang, the doors were shut and locked. If you weren't in a classroom, you had to go to the office and get a pass. If this happened too often (like 2 or 3 times), you got detention.

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Goldline Executives Charged With Fraud/Why I Don't Buy Gold

If you traffic in some of the intellectual circles I do, sooner or later you're going to hear a whole bunch of crap about why you need to buy gold. You need to buy as much gold as you can, and you need to get started now.

Why?

Well, I guess if society collapses, you can somehow use gold to buy stuff. I'm not quite sure how. Will you be able to shave gold dust off of your bullion to pay for gas? Will Exxon and BP and Giant Foods roll out gold scales? I don't think so. So how exactly are you supposed to use gold to buy stuff if the economy collapses?

So why not just buy the stuff you need and skip the gold? That's what John T. Reed advises in his book "How To Protect Your Life Savings From Hyperinflation and Depression". Reed also documents from history how useless gold actually is during a financial collapse.

RIM To Attract Customers With Adult Content?

I posted a couple weeks ago about Haliburton ditching RIM for iOS. I predicted the demise of RIM once government and corporate customers figure out how to use iOS and Android within their security requirements.

I have nothing against RIM. I just don't like their phones. I've seen very little improvement in the BlackBerry over the years. I'm also not a fan of their single point of failure system. If RIM develops a problem with their own proprietary messaging network, BlackBerry users all over the world lose service. I've been caught in this a few times over the years.

While there are a few people left on Earth who will buy BlackBerries for personal use, they are few and twisted. I don't think I personally know anybody who still uses a BlackBerry unless it was issued by work.

I didn't expect RIM to take this lying down. Their approach was a little different though. Apparently, they'll be attracting customers, not with better graphics and a User Interface (UI), but with porn and gambling. On a BlackBerry sized screen, no less. From CIO Magazine:

A couple of months ago, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) told its developer base that it would soon be instituting application ratings to "improve discovery and safety" in its BlackBerry App World software shop. Those ratings, which have since been rolled out, are broken down into four categories: General; Teen; Mature; and Adult.

While this doesn't explicitly say "porn and gambling", come on, what else is an Adult rating for?

I don't think RIM is going to survive if it doesn't come up with bigger screens and better features. The BlackBerry can't survive for long while it's just a text based email thing with a half-assed browser and an app store that bends over backward to implement corporate and government security requests.

What I find funny is when government and corporate customers approach Apple and ask "Can you lock this thing down beyond the point of practical usability so we can meet our security guidelines?" Apple simply says "No".