Al Fin: "Cowboy Commentary", aka "Eat your veggies" The Flag banner is posted in order to defy those who would make patriotic symbols illegal or disreputable.
Sunday, August 16, 2026
The $10 billion dollar plan to waste taxpayer's money (Houston)
When it comes to bonafides, Houston's streets and freeways are in my wheelhouse. Know what I mean, Vern? Yours truly made a living driving on these things-- about a million miles worth of experience.
Houston's city fathers of old were smart to develop a city out of a swamp, and make it a powerhouse. But these people today couldn't plan their way out of a wet paper bag. All the big projects are huge wastes of money, and probably get approved for no other reason than to spend taxpayer money to "solve" a problem. These people couldn't fix a bowl of soup.
Some of the ideas in this video are probably not too bad. There are two that may make some sense. One of these is to make the water run faster out of the area when it rains. Another is to build a retention pond to impound water for awhile while releasing it slowly over time. These could be done relatively cheaply, while not upsetting the region with massive public works projects that are pretty useless.
Merging the Katy Freeway with the North Freeway-Gulf Freeway is about the most idiotic ideas I've ever heard of . Only a professional money grubbing bureaucrat would love this idea. It will make matters worse, not better. It won't cure flooding. It won't cure traffic ills. It won't yield any benefits that justify such an massive amount of taxpayer money.
The problem with traffic has a lot to do with human nature. People clash with each other, and there's no way to coordinate traffic so that it can move the most efficiently. People are individualistic in their preferences and habits. This is not necessarily conducive to efficient traffic flow in a crowded downtown environment.
To deal with traffic in a congested and crowded area would be to take this clash of human wills (and nature) out of the picture. Self-driving cars can do this. The technology is here to do it. Let me tell you, a machine can coordinate better with other machines a whole lot better than a bunch of folks hunched behind their steering wheels, and going into battle in an "arena-like" atmosphere reminiscent of ancient Rome's gladiators.
It may be a mistake to bring computers into this, as I am somewhat leery of relying too much upon machines. But sometimes this makes sense. An intelligent use of machines would be a good thing. Unfortunately, people do not always act intelligently. The solution would be an auto pilot feature to traverse the freeways during rush hour. You could work it like cruise control.
In any case, it would be a lot more efficient to do a few sensible things like those I've mentioned, than to spend billions on digging up a large part of the city, and probably not solving the problem at all.
Why won't it solve the problem? Because the ones they've already done didn't solve the same kind of problems. But some ideas are good. Among these were the construction of toll roads. In this instance, a toll roll COULD be built that would help out the I45 traffic congestion problem. It already exists, but stops at the "Loop", which is a few miles from downtown. The idea would be to extend the Hardy Toll Road right into downtown Houston.
Since the toll road doesn't do this now, it must dump its traffic on the already crowded streets. Why build this toll road as an alternative, and then end it before it gets to its destination? That's why I'm not optimistic about this next boondoggle. Human beings don't necessarily make the best decisions.
One more thing: This "problem" with Pierce elevated. In my view, it isn't the problem these boondogglers say it is. If you don't like the way it looks, make a suspension bridge out of it. It might beautify the city a bit, and I wouldn't make an argument out of that one.
To sum it up, do the following instead: 1) Build the retention pond, but make it DEEPER. Deeper than what they're probably planning. Make the water a RESOURCE, not an enemy. 2) Sraighten out the bend in Buffalo Bayou, making the waters flow better. 3) Build out the Hardy Toll Road so that it goes into the Downtown area. 4) Do what it takes to get people to adopt self-driving car tech that could manage your car during rush hour traffic. It would take a lot of stress out of driving, and the traffic would move better.
Here's the video, in case your interested. The dude isn't much of a thinker. Anybody can just repeat what they've heard.
Promethean Action Reviews Current State of the Middle East as it Evolves
CTH
Well, now. It begins to look like a plan to upend America's prominence, and replace it with China's.
But why would Kissinger do this? The left hated Nixon, but Nixon acted more like one of them than a real traditional Republican.
Look at what Nixon did, and what happened during his Administration. He started the EPA. He ended the molten-salt reactor experiment, which would have supercharged the nuclear power industry. He closed the gold window, and gave us the current trading system we now have.
And what was the result? The kind of stuff being mentioned in this video. Massive trade deficits. Inflation. Energy shortages. The rise of leftism.
Once Nixon got into trouble, he would've given the Democrats nationalized health care. Nixon isn't looking to good to me right now.
But I really didn't like him anyway.
Well, now. It begins to look like a plan to upend America's prominence, and replace it with China's.
But why would Kissinger do this? The left hated Nixon, but Nixon acted more like one of them than a real traditional Republican.
Look at what Nixon did, and what happened during his Administration. He started the EPA. He ended the molten-salt reactor experiment, which would have supercharged the nuclear power industry. He closed the gold window, and gave us the current trading system we now have.
And what was the result? The kind of stuff being mentioned in this video. Massive trade deficits. Inflation. Energy shortages. The rise of leftism.
Once Nixon got into trouble, he would've given the Democrats nationalized health care. Nixon isn't looking to good to me right now.
But I really didn't like him anyway.
My Kingdom For A Horse
8/16/26:
The phrase is a little differently defined here than what I thought it would be. But this post has nothing to do with Shakespeare. The meaning I thought that may be applicable is this: if a king had access to this, he may really be wiling to trade his kingdom for it because it was so valuable. I use this phrase with respect to the idea that I've been batting about here: fusion propulsion.
The key here is recognition by way of little bits of pieces of information that convince me of its probable utility. I found another today while browsing the subject. A pdf file produced by none other than Robert Bussard himself. Perhaps the intuition came from listening to him speak on the matter before. At any rate, the Isp for such a rocket appears to be near 1 million- yes 1 million. An incredible number. Bussard's paper gives little detail to this propulsion method, instead describing two other types. Here is a snippet of the file here
Now, Bussard is referring to a polywell fusion device, whereas I am looking at a dense plasma focus. Also, I've been thinking about a less than net energy device. The thought occurred to me, why not mate it with an energy source as described above that will feed into the dense plasma focus in order to produce the reaction mass? A possible energy source: cold fusion device being worked on by Rossi Focardi. In a short time, a device like this may be possible for deep space missions.
The ability to travel at will throughout the solar system may be worth a king's ransom indeed.
Hmm. My "Kingdom" for a shower. After getting rather sweaty working on this latest project, I need to clean up!
Ok, I'll stop horsing around.
The phrase is a little differently defined here than what I thought it would be. But this post has nothing to do with Shakespeare. The meaning I thought that may be applicable is this: if a king had access to this, he may really be wiling to trade his kingdom for it because it was so valuable. I use this phrase with respect to the idea that I've been batting about here: fusion propulsion.
The key here is recognition by way of little bits of pieces of information that convince me of its probable utility. I found another today while browsing the subject. A pdf file produced by none other than Robert Bussard himself. Perhaps the intuition came from listening to him speak on the matter before. At any rate, the Isp for such a rocket appears to be near 1 million- yes 1 million. An incredible number. Bussard's paper gives little detail to this propulsion method, instead describing two other types. Here is a snippet of the file here
Now, Bussard is referring to a polywell fusion device, whereas I am looking at a dense plasma focus. Also, I've been thinking about a less than net energy device. The thought occurred to me, why not mate it with an energy source as described above that will feed into the dense plasma focus in order to produce the reaction mass? A possible energy source: cold fusion device being worked on by Rossi Focardi. In a short time, a device like this may be possible for deep space missions.
The ability to travel at will throughout the solar system may be worth a king's ransom indeed.
Saturday, August 15, 2026
How to play Red Rider Lunatic Fringe
Taking some advice perhaps I could return to the guitar after all. Nah! Just kidding... You know, I DID pick up my gitfiddle again yesterday. I remembered something I had forgotten. You need to get some callouses going on your finger tips. That will take time to build those back up again. Plus, you have to keep your finger nails short as possible. Otherwise it will foul the chords.
It's a thought though. Imagine wowing some folks with a performance of this song. Whoa!
It's a thought though. Imagine wowing some folks with a performance of this song. Whoa!
Some favorable political news for the GOP
President Trump doesn't enjoy great favorability numbers. So he needs a boost where he can find one. Even though Trump is not on the ballot, a popular president cannot hurt the party in control. An unpopular president might well hurt the GOP's chances.
Here's some good news for the GOP: There's a manufacturing boom that isn't getting much attention. That's not surprising, since the media won't report anything that might help the president.
Another snippet of good news for the midterms: Prescription drug prices have seen the largest drop in more than 60 years. Since Democrats are running on affordability, this should blunt their message.
The rise of the wacko element of the lunatic-fringe-left doesn't hurt either. The down side to that news is that there may be too many who no longer think these people are bad news. But they are.
Fusion Propulsion Post
8/15/26:
I meant to write about it today, but I can't think of anything to write about. It has already been covered. The only thing I haven't written about is... (blankout)
Look, the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics people are on to this, most likely. It would take only a minor modification of their device in order to make it suitable as a fusion propulsion device. How?
By taking away the coil which will be useful for electricity production, but not useful for spacecraft propulsion. But I covered that already. What next?
The thought occurred to me that if this device had sufficient thrust and ISP, you would not need to get to orbital velocity in order to escape Earth's gravity. But I covered that already.
Hmmm. Okay, so I went back into a Power Point file and picked out yet something else that I probably covered already. No, that was a different post. This power point pic isn't what Lockheed Martin produced, because I blanked out what I didn't quite understand or even agree with and came up with this
Now, the main thing to see is a picture of what I'm seeing. Here you have the Focus Fusion device (with the arrow pointing downward toward the magnetic nozzle), the tanks of hydrogen and boron that will comprise the reaction products that will fuse in the device and send out the alpha particles (mentioned in an earlier post) as thrust.
Lerner says that he can get 30,000 out of 100,000 joules expended. The rest is still in the device, not lost. This will demonstrate feasibility, says Lerner. But, let's just say (for the sake of argument) that we are just able to use the 30,000 joules. That is 30,000 Newtons, is it not? Is it not also true, that without slowing down the alpha particles (as would be the case if you were to convert to electricity), that you will get virtually all of this output?
It should be noted that
Why write all this? Haven't they already thought about this? Yes, I'm sure somebody has. What bothers me is that somebody could have something worthwhile and have it suppressed. There was a time when I thought that such a thing would not happen, but these days, I'm not so sure anymore.
Update:
I tried to confirm that 30,000 joules number by looking over a few of my posts. I know that I saw or heard that somewhere, but can't remember exactly where. Also, some of the energy production will come from the Xray emissions. Not all of it will come from the alpha particles. So, the potential thrust will be somewhere south of 30,000 joules. Don't know how far, but somewhat south of that number.
Yours truly has always liked this idea. It could be useful even if Lerner's device never reaches commercial value electricity production.
To recap briefly, all you need is SOME fusion going on. That part is relatively easy. A high school student once set up a lab apparatus to make fusion happen like this. HOWEVER, it is a different story when you try to get it to useful in a commercial sense. It has to produce more energy than it takes in. But in space, this won't matter for propulsion. You will need another energy production device in order to produce the alpha particles that result from the fusion.
There are two other posts on this subject, there are more on this blog...
-DPF Fusion Propulsion
-Focus Fusion as Propulsion, II
I meant to write about it today, but I can't think of anything to write about. It has already been covered. The only thing I haven't written about is... (blankout)
Look, the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics people are on to this, most likely. It would take only a minor modification of their device in order to make it suitable as a fusion propulsion device. How?
By taking away the coil which will be useful for electricity production, but not useful for spacecraft propulsion. But I covered that already. What next?
The thought occurred to me that if this device had sufficient thrust and ISP, you would not need to get to orbital velocity in order to escape Earth's gravity. But I covered that already.
Hmmm. Okay, so I went back into a Power Point file and picked out yet something else that I probably covered already. No, that was a different post. This power point pic isn't what Lockheed Martin produced, because I blanked out what I didn't quite understand or even agree with and came up with this
Now, the main thing to see is a picture of what I'm seeing. Here you have the Focus Fusion device (with the arrow pointing downward toward the magnetic nozzle), the tanks of hydrogen and boron that will comprise the reaction products that will fuse in the device and send out the alpha particles (mentioned in an earlier post) as thrust.
Lerner says that he can get 30,000 out of 100,000 joules expended. The rest is still in the device, not lost. This will demonstrate feasibility, says Lerner. But, let's just say (for the sake of argument) that we are just able to use the 30,000 joules. That is 30,000 Newtons, is it not? Is it not also true, that without slowing down the alpha particles (as would be the case if you were to convert to electricity), that you will get virtually all of this output?
It should be noted that
- I am relying on memory about the 30,000 joules
- That there isn't anything significant that I am missing
- There could be something significant that I am missing because I am not trained in this area
- My energy conversions could be wrong
- The device mentioned has not demonstrated continuous firing. It would have to fire continuously in order to be useful for power or propulsion. I am assuming that Lerner has this figured out.
Why write all this? Haven't they already thought about this? Yes, I'm sure somebody has. What bothers me is that somebody could have something worthwhile and have it suppressed. There was a time when I thought that such a thing would not happen, but these days, I'm not so sure anymore.
Update:
I tried to confirm that 30,000 joules number by looking over a few of my posts. I know that I saw or heard that somewhere, but can't remember exactly where. Also, some of the energy production will come from the Xray emissions. Not all of it will come from the alpha particles. So, the potential thrust will be somewhere south of 30,000 joules. Don't know how far, but somewhat south of that number.
Friday, August 14, 2026
This is what prompted my last post
8/14/26:
How I became the poster girl for liberal agitprop
The author repeated the lie about the GOP almost causing a default.
Quote:
Comment:
There are two problems with the GOP. One is that they won't fight back. Two, that they don't really believe what they claim to believe, for if they did, they would fight back.
Either they start fighting back, or we get rid of them. But that's not happening. They should be screaming about what Limbaugh once called the "biggest lie in American history".
Senator John Cornyn, representing my state, is running some ads on radio. He didn't support Cruz, so now he is trying to claim that he is a conservative. My ass!
If nobody will run against him and primary his ass, then I will not be voting for him in the general election.
Somebody has got to do something. I can do this much. I'd run for Senate myself, but that is an absurd idea.
If there's anything that I've posted here that I regret, it is likely this post. The idea of running for office is something I never should've mentioned.
So why did I do it? It was the exasperation in this post. Why can't the GOP field some decent candidates who will actually DO something???
I'm glad that Cornyn is gone. They aren't being removed fast enough, in my opinion.
I'll do my part here. Running for office is defintely not the ticket. Call that my General Sherman statement. Even if people wanted me to, I wouldn't. It's for the same reason why I would never be a cop. Why?
I'd be a Dirty Harry type cop, that's why. Dirty Harry types get creamed in this culture now. But that's why you do it, some will say. Yeah, but not me. I'm a keyboard warrior, and that's it.
Only in an emergency would I consider it even in the remotist sense. I hope that's clear.
How I became the poster girl for liberal agitprop
The author repeated the lie about the GOP almost causing a default.
Quote:
After a month of news coverage focused on an extremist and dysfunctional Republican Party that shut down the government and brought the nation to the brink of defaulting on its debt, the media had found its new scandal: the troubled rollout of the website where uninsured Americans can purchase health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.[ emphasis mine]
Comment:
There are two problems with the GOP. One is that they won't fight back. Two, that they don't really believe what they claim to believe, for if they did, they would fight back.
Either they start fighting back, or we get rid of them. But that's not happening. They should be screaming about what Limbaugh once called the "biggest lie in American history".
Senator John Cornyn, representing my state, is running some ads on radio. He didn't support Cruz, so now he is trying to claim that he is a conservative. My ass!
If nobody will run against him and primary his ass, then I will not be voting for him in the general election.
Somebody has got to do something. I can do this much. I'd run for Senate myself, but that is an absurd idea.
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