Saturday, August 9, 2014

Giant storm on Uranus

Giant storm on Uranus



A joke is being mightily contained.




Calibrating the altitude on the handheld gps

Using the TopoQuest Map Viewer

My impression is that the device is a lot more accurate than what I thought.


Facts are stubborn things

One source of that quote that I can recall attributes it to Stalin of the Soviet Union.  Another attributes it to John Adams, the second president of the United States.

Whoever said it was right.  As of now, I'm having to deal with some stubborn facts that are not to my liking.  Just now, I've come home from the usual oil change that I reserve for Saturdays, since my time is so limited during the week.  I noticed some uneven wear on my front tires, which is trouble spot.  Sure enough, after checking out the front end, it looks like a thousand dollar repair job to set it right.

After all the money that I've been spending, this is most unwelcome news.  But not unexpected.  After all, the van has nearly 300k miles on it.  Stuff is going to start wearing out and that's going to take a lot of money to keep it rolling down the road.  On the other hand, replacing the vehicle with a new one will cost plenty as well.

If I keep the van, I will have to have a use for it besides making deliveries.  I've considered making an RV out of it.  I mentioned that to the repair shop proprietor and he offered to sell me his.  The price was a bit out of my range.  Besides, you have everything to worry about with an RV that you worry about with an auto.  Plus it is a living quarters.  It will have to be insured and so forth.

The van can be risked, an RV that costs plenty cannot.  That's an easy decision.

Another vehicle will cost significantly less than the RV.  You may have to insure both vehicles for awhile.  But upon renewal, only one.  The renewal will be nearly 10 months from now.  If I get a pickup truck, it will require a camper shell.  Those aren't cheap anymore.

Back to the van:  I was thinking of making it taller by cutting away the roof and putting a top on it.  Forget that.  More expense that I cannot afford.

One thing is certain:  the Van will have to be replaced in any event.  It won't last another 100k miles, which is what I need it to do.  Or could it?  Not without a lot of repair work.

The realities of moving out to El Paso involve a lot of stubborn facts like these.  It still takes money to make it in this world.  That is a stubborn fact that cannot be overlooked.


Muhammed Ali screwed up

The championship boxer changed his name from Cassius Clay, who he was said to be named after.  Even if he wasn't named after Cassius Clay, he should have been proud to have a name like that.  For Cassius Clay was one bad-ass SOB.

From Wikipedia these two excerpts as examples:
  1. His anti-slavery activism earned him violent enemies. During a political debate in 1843, he survived an assassination attempt by a hired gun, named Sam Brown. Despite being shot in the chest, Clay defended himself. He seriously wounded Brown with his Bowie knife and threw him over an embankment.[ comment:  You have to be pretty tough to throw somebody over an embankment, especially if you are wounded.]
  2. While making a speech for abolition in 1849, Clay was attacked by the six Turner brothers, who beat, stabbed and tried to shoot him. In the ensuing fight, Clay fought off all six and, using his Bowie knife, killed Cyrus Turner [ six to one, and he still came out on top!?!  He puts Muhammed Ali to shame.  He was the Greatest, and Muhammed Ali was just the latest.]
Yep, Cassius Clay was the better name to be associated with.  Who was Muhammed Ali?  The original Muhammed Ali was a slave owner.  If you don't like slavery, why have such a name?


Friday, August 8, 2014

Stockman's The Implosion is Near-Signs of the Bubble's Last Days

kitco.com Taylor-Stockman





We are indeed living in the most perilous times since I began writing this newsletter back in 1981. If ever there was a time to own gold, it’s now despite what Wall St. propaganda tells you. And it might also not be a bad idea to examine your belief in our Creator of the Universe


Sounds very serious and mostly is.  But nobody is listening, of course.



Homemade Drag/ Grader

Kudos for some creative thinking.

Update:

Perhaps I can make my own grader with some aluminum mesh screen and a couple weights rigged up like I saw on another video.  Not sure that it will be strong enough though.  It could rip quite easily.  I was thinking of nailing together a few 2 by 4's and make a scraper/grader out of the aluminum stretched across it.  The weight would fit on top of the 2 x 4's.

Hmm.  That may not work.  Not strong enough.  Worth thinking about though.  It may not have to be all that strong for what I intend for it.


Grasspave2 and Gravelpave2 permeable paving for grass and gravel surfaces

Gonna need something like this to have access to property.

Update:

Prev   Next

This will go on the list as the next entry in the off-the-grid series.

Related post  here.   Another not so related post here about solar power advances.





Update:  ( 9/19/2014):

Thought I'd relate the thought that this option is too expensive.  A home made idea is an improvement upon the concept.  The concept is to leave space for grass to grow.  The home made idea is to use posts and lay them side-by-side with space in-between them so as to allow the grass to grow.  The posts should be cheaper than this stuff.


Solar power efficiency advance

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/04/4050151/new-process-could-increase-solar.html

It is ironic that this is of interest to me.  However, since the purchase of land far away from an electricity source, it appears to be my best option.

Move it on Over - Hank Williams

Sumptin's up fo sho.  Sumptin's gotta give, and sumptin's gonna change fo sho, boss.




Lamb arguing with wolves again?

As a reminder, I have often written that to make a good argument is useless in and of itself.  "Force has the better of the argument" as the Aesop Fable asserts.

Could this article be another example?

Rand Paul is put in an image of a target and the suggestion is made that an assassination attempt is being encouraged.  The same people doing this are the same people who claimed that Gabrielle Giffords was targeted for assassination in the same fashion.  In other words, they are hypocrites for showing such an image of Rand Paul.

Of course, they are hypocrites.  Does that reform them?  You've got to do better than this.  More Tea Party losses.  The Tea Party is getting creamed.  But we are told ( by none other than Dick Morris ) that they are making a difference.  Yeah, right.

Update:

I don't want to make another post this morning, but I found something.  Yes, it may describe this country to the tee right now.  If you were truly religious, you'd be trembling with fear at the thought of how close we could be to absolute destruction.  I had that thought just now.  Is there anybody, anybody out there that cares about the truth?  Be afraid.  Be VERY afraid.  For I am not seeing it here.


"The Truth Is That It’s Republicans Who Have Been Waging War On Poor Whites"

politicus

A sure sign of fear mongering is putting words in other people’s mouths to incite suspicion and hatred against a certain group through the use of propaganda. It is nearly guaranteed that when fear mongering with racial propaganda comes to light, it is certain that Republicans are investing in racial divisiveness for political expediency.---Rmuse

If that is what Brooks was doing with his "war on whites" rhetoric, then I'm against it.  However, there's a lot of truth to what Brooks is saying.

This doesn't deny that Rmuse is making some valid points.  He points out that to cut these programs will hurt poor white people.  Sure.  But that is hardly a reason for their continuance as permanent part of the economic landscape.  What GOP'ers like to say is that they are against dependency, which is good.  We shouldn't have such a dependency on federal largesse.  But what the GOP'ers don't advocate is an honest to goodness alternative to leftwing big government dependence programs, like food stamps.

For that, I have suggested a return to the past.  Let's bring back homesteading.  The government owns millions of acres of land.  They can help poor people become independent and help the treasury at the same time, if they would just help get people out of the cities and back on the farm.

People are being herded into the big cities just like sheep.  They become dependent and fearful of losing their government benefits.  This is a perfect way to agitate them and the Democrats do that well---as this article demonstrates.  It is a dependable voting block for them.  All they have to do is to say that the GOP wants to take away their "rice bowl" and that's all it takes to get the people to go out to the polls and vote the Dems back in.  Thus, they will NEVER advocate a program that will reduce this dependency.

Too bad the GOP won't think of this.  But one GOP'er did---Abe Lincoln.


How the West Won—but “Western Civ” Lost

Intercollegiate Review

Forty years ago the most important and popular freshman course at the best American colleges and universities was “Western Civilization.” It not only covered the general history of the West but also included historical surveys of art, music, literature, philosophy, science, and other matters. But this course has long since disappeared from most college catalogues on grounds that Western civilization is but one of many civilizations and it is ethnocentric and arrogant to study ours....Thus, Stanford dropped its widely admired “Western Civilization” course just months after the Reverend Jesse Jackson came on campus and led members of the Black Student Union in chants of “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Civ has got to go.”--- Rodney Stark
If that isn't a war, what is it?

But Charles M. Blow of the New York Times denies it.

Whites are not under attack by Democrats; Republicans like Brooks are simply stoking racial fears to hide their history of racially regressive policies.

Blow goes on to enumerate a number of incidents to show how white people are racist.

No need to deny that some white people are racist.  But as Blow pointed out himself, Obama became president because white people voted for him.  Yet, they still play the racism card anyway.

We don't have the Jim Crow South anymore.  The left defends its war on the white man even though that era has passed a long time ago.

Why is it necessary to remove the study of Western Civilization from our universities if there isn't a war on white men?  Why the favoritism towards Islam?  Why is Western Civ branded as especially and uniquely evil?  They aren't going for racial equality and justice, they are going for some other goal of remaking the nation into something else.  Perhaps Obama said it best when he said America wasn't a Christian nation anymore.  That's not a statement of fact, but a statement of intention.

Christianity has a primarily Western flavor to it.  Especially, and very especially a "white man" religion.  That's what the left doesn't like about it.  They want to stamp it out.  Yes, that very language is being used by these people themselves, yet according to Blow and perhaps others, there's no war against the white man.

The war exists and even a blind man can see it.  Blow doesn't prove anything when he cites instances of bigotry in Western cultures.  The charges of bigotry of the past is being used as justification for the continuation of their war.  Without it, the left has no reason to exist.  Western Civilization didn't rise because it oppressed others.  It rose on its own merits.  Scratch the surface of leftists and you'll see that they will never acknowledge this fact.  The white man has to be forever disparaged.

Yet Blow's leftwing ideas are another invention of a white man---Karl Marx.  He's just one of the house negroes that the left sends out to show us the error of our ways---and to make us feel guilty of the past.  The real villain isn't the black man, it is this vicious ideology of communism.  The communists don't give a damn about the black man, they are just using him.  Black folks and people of all colors would benefit if they would set this aside the way that China has done.  Capitalism and freedom works in all colors.


Thursday, August 7, 2014

If there is no 'war on whites,' what is the 'White Privilege Conference' about?

WashingtonExaminer.com

WPC organizers also insist on their website that their event is "not a conference designed to attack, degrade or beat up on white folks."
comment:

You can pretty much bet that is exactly what they are doing--- attacking, degrading, and beating up on white people.

"Racism is central to America. It's central to how the country was developed. It is central to how it operates right now," claimed Professor Adrien Wing of the University of Iowa. She also described President Obama as "the face of global white privilege." 
comment:

Even Obama isn't good enough for these people.  After all, Obama isn't even white, he's black.  Oops!  He's half white, and that's not good.


Battle cry of the white man

Dana Milbank, Washington Post Opinion

This piece shows the sickness of mind that's killing us.

the battle cry of the white man, particularly the Southern white man, who is feeling besieged.
It's the white man's fault for feeling besieged, even though that is exactly what's happening.  People in this country are constantly being bombarded with the destructive notion that whatever is wrong, white people are the cause of it.  You don't think so?  Just check out what these people say sometimes.  Even in this column, the premises are subtly mentioned.  It just proves, not disproves what  Brooks said.

Within 30 years, there will cease to be a racial majority in the United States. In a narrow political sense, this is bad news for the GOP, which is dominated by older white men such as Brooks 
Didn't he just prove what Brooks said?  He just cast the GOP as racist, even though it is the Democrats who practice racial politics and profit from it.  The GOP can't win when guilt is assumed from the get go.  No matter what the GOP does, it's guilty.  No matter what the white man does, he's guilty.  He cannot be allowed to continue, for he is at the root of the problem.  His very existence is the very definition of the problem.  That's what Milbank just said here.

This is not merely about a fresh labor supply but about the fresh blood needed to cure what ails us.

What ails us?  What is ailing is isn't specified, so it must be because we are white.  No other reasons are given.

“China does not want to or know how to take people from around the world, welcome them, and empower them to change the very fabric of their nation’s culture.” 

Yeah, but the culture is being destroyed in the process and becomes... what?  We have a non white president who IGNORES the Constitution that is written by "dead white men".  Is there any coincidence here?  You can check off any other items in the list of what "being white" means, if you wish.  Whatever is on the list is under attack.  At what point does America cease being America?  Isn't that the whole point?

The son of Chinese immigrants, Liu observes that American culture now has an excess of individualism, short-term thinking and prioritizing of rights over duties

Any "duties" that were once held to be customary are now branded as "racist" and are being discouraged.  Same sex marriage anyone?

That inherent advantage in the American system will continue — if we don’t get hung up about whiteness.

But they are "hung up" on whiteness.  They want to get rid of it.  See above.  Read it again and again until you get it.  This is an anti-white screed.  In short, the attempt to defend oneself against the onslaught is just more evidence of your paranoia.  It's all your fault if you don't like being destroyed.  Isn't that the whole point... to get you to disarm and stop defending your culture and who you are?

Same thing is happening to Israel, by the way.  Any attempt by Israel to defend itself must be shut down.  Israel doesn't have the right to exist.  Neither does the white man, according to Milbank.


Build your own water filter!

This looks like one of those kind of projects anybody can do, meaning none other than moi.

As an addition to this idea presented here on video, I'd look into running the filtered water through a swamp cooler, which would evaporate it.  This would take place in an enclosed area, which means the evaporated water would go into the air in that enclosure.  To retrieve the water, take a water condenser and then make pure clean water out of the evaporated and filtered greywater.  Is that a plan, or not?





Update:

This was covered already in my off-the-grid series.  You can use a Review of the LIFESAVER® Jerrycan 10000 Water Filter System.  The inventor gave a TED talk here.

I'd still like to run it through a swamp cooler though.  Gets rid of salts.


Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Back to basics time



Wall Street Isn't Fixed: TBTF Is Alive And More Dangerous Than Ever


This is controversial?

If this is controversial, it pretty much proves the point doesn't it?

But in the "head up its butt" popular culture these days, that's precisely what it is---controversial.


Tiny house movement?

This is a movement that I never heard of.  Unless it was what I had in mind for myself with my off-the-grid brainstorm.

Doesn't matter who thought of it first.  It should be simple and inexpensive, which is its attraction.





Another video here describing a downsized home.



Update a short while later:

I priced their floor plans.  $57k for the smallest unit.  I'd say that's a bit pricey.  I wouldn't buy one of these, but maybe I'd consider building one myself according to my own preferences.


Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Links for Texas' state standards on septic tanks

Prev   Next

Not much prose to look over, but chock full of reference material for the off-the-grid series.

info.sos.state.tx.us/pls/pub/

a composting toilet that meets standards mentioned on this page  :    Sun-Mar
information about grey water disposal
common greywater mistakes

Update:

An idea on how to process grey water.


Nicaragua’s President: 'Netanyahu Appears to be Possessed by the Devil' | CNS News

Nicaragua’s President: 'Netanyahu Appears to be Possessed by the Devil' | CNS News



That's funny coming from him, of all people.



The communists tried to wipe out religion, in case anybody remembered to read their history books.  Or if the history books haven't been wiped clear of that fact.  So, here's the communist pot calling the kettle black.  Even so, the communist pot seems to be color blind, or just plain evil himself.



I have always thought that communism is the most evil thing ever sprung from the minds of men.




Spaceflight Now | Falcon Launch Report | AsiaSat 8 ready to ride SpaceX launcher into orbit

Spaceflight Now | Falcon Launch Report | AsiaSat 8 ready to ride SpaceX launcher into orbit



No attempt is planned at recovering the spent first stage, as it will need all of its fuel to achieve the mission.




Rep. Mo Brooks: Dems wage ‘war on whites’

Politico


“This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else,” Brooks told Ingraham.--- Lucy McCalmont
A rarity in politics---the truth.  It's probably much bigger than a war on whites.  It's a war on western civilization.  White people are synonymous with western civilization.

How well this works politically is beyond me, but if truth matters anymore, it should be pushed as hard as possible.


Monday, August 4, 2014

Market rally in lockstep with Fed balance sheet expansion



Deutsche Bank "Raises The Warning Flag": What The Most Important Chart For The Market Reveals


If only

It has been a long refrain on this blog that if you had enough energy, you could do almost anything.

So, what if I had a molten-salt reactor on my property?  What could I do with it?

One thing I think that I could do would be to make a helluva lot of water.  I don't know how much exactly, but a lot.  You can simply condense it out of the atmosphere.

How much energy?  Well, one about the size that they tested in the lab in the seventies.  About 10 megawatts or so.

It may use up a golf ball size piece of thorium every decade or so.  The nuclear waste that would have to be stored would be about a sixth to an eighth of that.   Doesn't sound too dangerous, does it?

I'm guessing one of those machines that condenses water would use about 1 kwh of electricity per day.  It could produce about 6 gallons or so.

One of these reactors could power hundreds of them.  In turn, they would generate hundreds of gallons of water per day.

You could do plenty with that much water.


I must have disengaged

From politics, that is.  The disengagement allows me to step back and look at it without passion nor emotion.

A perusal of the political news looks crazy to me.

Have people really lost their minds?  Could be.

My verdict has long been that these people are serving their own interests, not the public interest.  Their arguments arise from that.  It is really an argument over who controls what.  There's no problem solving going on at all.


Sunday, August 3, 2014

Mystery solved? Palma Pita may be its name

The mystery plant I've been referring to looks a lot like this:

Spanish Dagger, Palma Pita, Don Quixote's Lance
Now, I'm reading more about it.

There is a relative to this plant that has fruit that resembles a banana.  Also something to look for in that part of the state.



Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of Our Common Natives

Been reading this book for most of the day.  By the way, I mentioned the book yesterday.

Despite all the references to plants which are native to the state, I still haven't located the identity of that plant that I referred to.

Reading is a time consuming process.  Sorry for the light posting, but there's just so much that I can do.