Word For The Day: Undernews

Posted on June 5, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Undernews – (Noun) News that is widely available on the Internet (particularly blogs) but doesn’t get much (or any) attention in the Mainstream Media.

I didn’t coin the term.  It’s been kicking around for years.  What can I say; I don’t always keep up with the vocabulary of the cool kids.  Can ya’ dig it?

At any rate it’s a concept I use all the time.  I’ll bump into some tidbit on the intertubes and make a few checks to make sure I’m not falling for the next joke to be posted on Snopes.  Eventually I’ll bring the topic up in a conversation with a normal human being (as opposed to a newshound or blogger).  In general, folks will react as if I’ve got antennae coming out of my head (I’m used to it).  Other times they’ll say “oh yeah I heard that on the Daily Show” and I’ll know the “undernews” has made it to the “mainstream”.

Here are a few bits of “undernews”.  A few became too big to ignore, others are still in the “ignore it and it’ll go away” phase.  Consider:

That’s just a sample.  I think it’s a good way to calibrate the difference between “reality” and whatever the heck everyone is hearing from the talking heads on TV.  The gap between what is true and what people believe obviously ebbs and flows.  In particularly the proximity to a major or mid term election seems to widen it.  You won’t be surprised that the letter after the sitting president’s name (“D” or “R”) makes up a huge portion of the gap.  (One of the unexpected advantages of a Republican president is that “journalists” take off their cheerleader’s outfits and start mercilessly hammering the guy in the big chair.  I’ll take rabid hacks to fluffers anyday!)

Rather than flail around wishing for mainstream news which reports… um… true things.  I choose to be thankful that I’m no longer under their thumb.  We have the Internet; lucky us!  In 2013 a citizen’s degree of misinformation is partially self inflicted; in 1965 you had to hope Walter Cronkite wasn’t totally full of shit.  (Also, 2013 is when I enjoy the schadenfreude of watching newspapers that used have a stranglehold on my news lose money like it’s an Olympic sport.)

A.C.

P.S. Hat tip to a recent National Review article: A Delayed Public Reaction to Obama Scandals? Or No Reaction at All? and a 2008 Huffington Post article: Why Won’t The Media Cover Edwards? Because They Don’t Have To Yet.  (Backstory: For those of you that don’t recall, John Edwards was a long time senator well into his 2008 candidacy for president when the story gradually and reluctantly broke that he’d had an affair, fathered an illegitimate child, and allegedly used campaign funds to pay off his mistress.  The undernews had been around forever but it took, ironically, the National Enquirer, to finally print what everyone had been pondering.  After that the rest of the press had no choice to by follow up.  His wife, in late stages of cancer, legally separated from Edwards but died in 2010 before she could jump through the hoops to officially file for divorce. By 2011 Edwards was indicted on six counts of violating campaign finance laws.  The 2012 result was five mis-trials and one not guilty.)

Posted in Word For The Day | 1 Comment

Another Cool Idea That Won’t Happen In “Free America”

Posted on June 3, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Every now and then there is a brilliant idea or product that’s actually creative (as opposed to the usual “glue tailfins on the last model” incremental creep of mediocrity).  Some newfangled consumer goods really do transform the “way things are done”.  Examples that made it to everyday use:

  • Microwave ovens: “Welcome to the Jetson future where a common way to cook food is to jam frozen stuff in a box and blast it with space rays.”
  • Automatic transmissions: “No matter how unaware you happen to be, just point the lever at D and steer between the lines, the car will take care of the rest and never stall.”
  • Cell phones: “I shall pay many dollars per month to make sure I am never peacefully beyond the reach of a telemarketer.  Bonus: it allows law enforcement to track me and the government gives them free to people who (unlike me) are on the “get free shit” list.”

Other ideas run aground on established interests and bureaucracies.  They’re killed in their crib and never make it to prime time.  Here are a few examples near and dear to my heart:

  • Adaptive eyewear: (I’ve previously discussed “Crusader Product Inhibition” and how it was the Deathblow to Adaptive Eyewear.)  Adaptive eyewear are cheap simple glasses that can be easily adjusted (when needed and with no special training) to any person who needs them.  Stuff one in your backpack and you’ve got replacement glasses for anyone in your party.  Stuff one in your truck and you’ve got a backup for anyone who needs them.  Toss a set in the medicine cabinet and you’ve got a handy backup for the whole family.  Opposition: Cheap glasses!?!  Where’s the profit in that?  It’s better to force every American to buy personalized glasses at great expense and no small hassle every few years.  Also an optometrist has to tweak the prescription every time; as if spectacles are heart surgery. Result: Adaptive eyewear glasses are sold cheaply by the case to NGOs.  NGOs will only distribute them to peasants in the third world.  I, a rich, fat, indulged, American with money to burn can’t have what might be dropped by the crate on a village of mud huts in Africa.  Apparently I’m not worthy?  Ironically, I can charitably buy a crate for shipment to any one of several places of misery.  Yet I cannot have one for myself.
  • The Mahindra Truck:  A cheap, stout, 4×4, fuel efficient, diesel, workhorse of a little truck.  It takes a beating and works like a dog world wide.  Opposition: A cheap truck in America?  Where’s the profit in that?  A fuel efficient diesel in the nation that is host to California?  California is so schizophrenic about diesels that it’s easier to buy a behemoth than half the fuel efficient cars on Germany’s autobahn.  Money Quote from Car and Driver’s “Mahindra Pickup Failure Shows Difficulty of Launching New Brands in the U.S.“: “You think today’s politicians are petulant? In the 1960s, we got into a trade war with European countries because of an import tax charged on American chicken. In retaliation, we established the “chicken tax,” which survives to this day. Light trucks are smacked with a whopping 25-percent tariff.”  Result: I own a four ton truck that burns twice the fuel of a Mahindra, can tow an aircraft carrier, and makes Gaia weep while it shits the equivalent of a Fiat out of it’s tailpipe every time I start it.  California got what it wanted; good and hard!  Note: The same forces bludgeoned the cheap and fuel efficient Smart Car to death.

Now comes another transformative idea that is/was/and will always be unavailable to the theoretically free people of America.  The flat pack truck.  Americans can build kit tractors, “experimental” airplanes, and all the guns they can machine (or recently, print) but a flat pack truck funnels no money to middlemen so none will ever grace our roads.

It’s a shame because there’s no truck so ugly that I don’t want one.  Also I’m in love with the idea of building a kit.  Why should such things be limited to children’s toys and shitty Ikea furniture?  I’d love a kit for a Honda Fit but I could never match the quality of the OEM.  Maybe I could slap together a Ural Patrol with the quality that made Russia great?  Some things just sound like fun aside from their fiscal logic and a truck in pieces (provided it’s reasonably well thought out) sounds cool.

Hat tip to In the Middle of the Right.

Posted in Technology of Indignity | 6 Comments

Chiropractors

Posted on May 29, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Recent shenanigans with my tractor have hammered my back to death.  That got me thinking of chiropractors.  I’m of the opinion that some chiropractors are voodoo quacks and others miracle workers (provided your injury falls within their bailiwick).  The quacks annoy me but I’ll throw cash at the good ones if it can hasten recovery from whatever dumbass thing I’ve done.  Further, I’m of the opinion that yoga is an entirely logical physical fitness trend; of which I want no part.

I once had a chiropractor who was great.  Conversations went like this:

Me: “Hi doc.”

Good Chiropractor (Sighing): “Hello Curmudgeon.  So what’s the problem this time?”

Me: “Well I took a tumble on a talus slope last week…”

Good Chiropractor: “…And you show up now?”

Me: “It doesn’t hurt too bad, so I just sorta’ ignored it.  But now I cramp up when I’m riding my motorcycle.”

Good Chiropractor: “So stay off it a few days.”

Me: “Well I’ve got a big trip coming up and I don’t want to crap out mid-ride.”

Good Chiropractor: “Alright,  Hang tight while I do something terribly unnatural to your hip.”  Snap. Crackle? Pop!

Me: “Hey that’s awesome.  Well done.”

Good Chiropractor: “That’s going to hurt a bit tomorrow but the next day you should be ready for a full day’s ride.”

Me: “Um…”

Good Chiropractor looks out the window.  “Is that your motorcycle parked out front?”

Me (sheepishly): “Yeah.”

Good Chiropractor: “It appears packed for a trip.”

Me: “I’m leaving from here.”

Good Chiropractor: “Have I explained the theory of preventative medicine…”

Me: “Yep, you told me all about it after the sky diving incident.”

Good Chiropractor: “There are easier ways to get a t-shirt.”

Me: “My wife might have mentioned something similar.”

Good Chiropractor (sighing): “You’re going to ride all day? You might feel some discomfort.”

Me: “I’ll be on the road for two weeks.  Lets hope it’s only discomfort.  I can live with a little pain. You want a postcard from Virginia?”

Good Chiropractor: “Shall I book you for when you return.  After the bike has pulverized your spine?”

Me: “Of course.”

<Two weeks later>

Me: “Hi doc.”

Good Chiropractor: “My God you’re here?  Look at the weather!  I was going to close the office.”

Me: “It’s definitely nasty out there.  I think there’s a tornado watch.”

Good Chiropractor: “You’re soaked!”

Me: “No shit.  I just rode in.  Crossed the state line at dawn.  You should have seen the wrecked semi on the pass.”

Good Chiropractor: “I suppose your back is sore from the ride?”

Me: “Not much at all.  I think you did wonders.”

Good Chiropractor (beaming): “Well thank you…”

Me: “On the other hand my ankle…”

Good Chiropractor (sighing): “What did you do?”

Me: “There was a mechanical bull.  It’s harder than it looks.”

Good Chiropractor (sighing): “When I speak about preventative medicine I’m suggesting that sometimes you should refrain from…”

Me: “Check out the t-shirt I got!”

Good Chiropractor: “I give up.”

Me: “Don’t do that!”

Good Chiropractor: “Why?”

Me: “Elk hunting season is just around the corner…”

He was great.  I think he’d spent too much time dealing with whining desk jockeys and was a bit frustrated with um… “adventurous”… patients, but he was darned good.  Who says I don’t appreciate modern medicine?

Compare that to a lame chiropractor I once hired:

Lame Chiropractor: “Isn’t the music nice?  I have brie in the lobby.”

Me: “I got a huge deal on milsurp ammo.  Had a blast over the weekend but I think I should have called it quits after 200 rounds.  My shoulder is mush.”

Lame Chiropractor: “I’ll adjust your chi.  Why is your shoulder covered in bruises?”

Me: “Mosin Nagant, recoil, you know the story.”

Lame Chiropractor: “Is that a sports car?  I drive a Camry.”

Me: “While you’re at it my right leg is a bit tweaked.”

Lame Chiropractor: “Ha ha… From golfing I’ll bet.  I see that a lot.  Seriously, what’s a Mosin.”

Me: “The leg is from logging.  Scored some free trees after the blowdown!”

Lame Chiropractor: “Chainsaws are dangerous.  Let me light some candles.”

Me: “Candles?”

Lame Chiropractor: “Aromatherapy.”

Me: “Unless you’ve got the gentle smells of cordite and diesel, spare me.”

Lame Chiropractor: “Perhaps you should try Yoga.”

Me: “Yoga!  Can you refer me to another chiropractor?”

Lame Chiropractor: “I knew the pine candle wouldn’t suit you.  I’m so sorry.”

<After referral>

Me: “Hi doc.”

Sports Medicine Guy: “What’s the problem?”

Me: “I overworked a bit and my wrist is killing me.”

Sports Medicine Guy: “You’re walking ok.  How old are you?  The way you walk tells me you don’t play hockey.”

Me: “I don’t play hockey.”

Sports Medicine Guy: “Pussy!”

Me: “I’m here from chainsaw injury?  Isn’t that enough?”

Sports Medicine Guy: “That ‘aint an injury.  You got got tired.  Keep the saw time down to six hours a day.  You’re too old for twelve.  Got it genius?”

Me: “Ok.  Should I wear a wrist brace or something?”

Sports Medicine Guy checks out wrist. “Nah.  You’re fine.  Walk it off.”

Me: “Do you recommend Yoga?”

Sports Medicine Guy: “Yoga?!?  Are you shitting me!  If you want to wear a leotard that’s your business but don’t involve me.”

Me: “Should I stretch before exercise?”

Sports Medicine Guy: “Of course, but I know your type and you won’t.”

Me: “I’ll be back.”

Sports Medicine Guy: “Of course you will.  Suck it up and you’ll be fine in a week.”

Me: “Bye.”

Sports Medicine Guy: “Keep yer’ stick on the ice.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Tractor Yoga

Posted on May 28, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

It’s time to practice homesteading Yoga.

Step one is to start your tractor.  This might take a while depending on what piece of crap you have parked in your barn.  Exercise that doesn’t involve guns should involve piston engines.

Step two is to mount the plow.  The plow weighs a ton, the tractor’s three point hitch is all out of whack.  Did you bring a hammer?  It’s ok to swear.

Step three is to size up your field.  You know how it hasn’t been plowed in decades?  You know how you meant to burn the waist high weeds this spring but didn’t get it done before the weather changed?  You deserve what happens next.

Step four is to crank the throttle as high as she’ll go.  Drop the clutch in lowest gear.  Lower the three point.  Slide along the grass.  Swear, get off and adjust the hitch.  Try again.  Try  again.  Try again.  Don’t you wish you’d burned the fields loser?  Try again until it looks like you got the angle correct.

Step five involves steering with your left hand.  Don’t hold the wheel.  Use the suicide knob instead.  Hang on tight… it’s a rough field.  Drop the plow and smash your ribcage into the suicide knob.  Oh… now the name makes sense.  Whoops she’s starting to stall and the wheels are spinning like you’re sitting in a giant unsafe Cuisinart.  Hear the mighty roar of the little WWII engine as you’re working it to death.  Dream fondly of a tractor with twice as much horsepower, front wheel assist, and an actual roll cage.  Payments don’t seem so bad right now do they?  Lift the hydraulics until everything lurches ahead, then drop it until the plow makes a cut.  You’ll know you’ve gone too deep when you smash your chest against the steering wheel again.

Step six, get off and kick all the weeds and sod out of the plow.  After you’ve kicked 100 pounds of crap down on the ground the plow will cut the sod instead of just sliding along making useless furrows.  Repeat this process then thousand times.

Step seven, since the plow either goes too deep and stalls the tractor or too shallow and pops out of the sod you’ll have to manually modulate the hydraulics lever.  This is conveniently located under your right ass cheek.  Hunch over like a pretzel.  Keep your left arm strong against the suicide knob and try to steer in (or at least suggest to the tractor) an appropriate direction.

Step eight, you’ve got to monitor whether the tractor is actually plowing or just lurching along with a big wad of weeds in the plow.  So twist 3/4 in the steel seat and look behind you over your right shoulder.  Do this while steering with your left hand and modulating the hydraulics lever under your ass with the right hand.

Step nine, do this hour after hour.

Step ten.  When you’re too tired to swear, call it a day.  As a farmer… you suck.

Step eleven.  Thank the lucky stars that this isn’t your only source of income and the world isn’t counting on you to feed the masses.  You totally suck at this.  Look up chiropractors in the phone book.  They don’t even make phone books anymore grandpa.  Grab a beer and lay on the couch.

Step twelve.  The next day do it again.  At this rate you’ll have all your fallow fields plowed by October.  Your dreams of acres of profitable crops have totally faded.  Now you’re just hoping to cultivate the fields so they’re more reasonable next spring.  It’s a race to see if you can accomplish this before your spine explodes or the tractor throws a rod.  The bar was low.  Now it’s lower.  Next time you see a farmer, buy him a beer.

Posted in Homesteading | 5 Comments

I Didn’t See That Coming

Posted on May 13, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I’m in a coffee shop in enemy territory a college town.  College towns make me nervous.  Is socialism contagious?  Will I forget my science background and be found years later smoking dope in a cult of global warming fans who genuflect while recycling?  Will I pawn my truck for a recumbent bike?  Will my student loans, killed dead and buried, ressurect and hunt me down like a fiscal zombie?  On the other hand the wifi is faster than my usual rural habitat and the coffee is good.  (No credit cards accepted…who knew hippies would take a stand against ATM card fees?)

Just now an earnest, young, conservatively dressed, polite, college student asked if he could take the unused chair at my table; “Excuse me sir, may I borrow this chair.”  I replied without thinking about it “Of course, go right ahead.”  In my mind I was thinking ‘what a nice young fellow’.

Oh hell no!

  1. Since when am I “sir”?  “Sir” is the name applied to me when a cop is about to issue  speeding ticket.  Shit!  I am so old!
  2. Since when do I think things like “nice young fellow“?  Who uses “fellow”?  Have I morphed into an 80 year old grandma knitting in a rocking chair?  I’m not going into that dark night!  I may be a grouchy Curmudgeon hunkered over a laptop simultaneously crunching numbers (because science!) and gritting my teeth over news (because freedom!) but I am not “Sir”.   It is my job to stand tall and bellow “get off my lawn punk”.  The words nice young fellow should not cross my lips in a non ironic manner.  Shit!  I am so old!
  3. On the other hand, the whole event is steeped in optimism for the future.  The nice fellow is studying what sounds like physics.  STEM baby!  ROI for college!  He’s accompanied by three young women (if I call ’em hotties does that make me a dirty old man?) and none of them seem like airheads.  Four (in my eyes “kids”) who are calculating mass and momentum instead of racking up loans to be a psychology prof’s fluffer!  Go team brain!  He was polite and none of them are acting like hooligans.  The scruffiest bastard in the room is… me.  Awesome!  At least a few members of the next generation are gearing up to kick ass and take names!  I’d stand up and give them a bow but they’d probably think I was having a coronary and whisk me to the hospital.

Adaptive Curmudgeon (a.k.a. “Sir”)

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

The Possibility Of Ridiculous Outcomes: Part II

Posted on May 8, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Once something has been done once, it can be done again.  This time in Valley Springs California.

“A region of oak-studded hills in California, where big-city dwellers come to get away from crime, was on lockdown Monday, two days after a mysterious intruder stabbed an 8-year-old girl to death.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Possibility Of Ridiculous Outcomes

Posted on May 8, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Discussions about current events and how they’ll play out in the future tend to  blunder into the concept of “slippery slope“.  The counteracting idea is “relax, nobody is going to go crazy“.  I, being a cautious Curmudgeon, tend to place more emphasis on “slippery slope“.  I’m skeptical of arguments based on the rationality of people in groups.

The reason I don’t assume that trends will self modulate is because I’ve seen lunacy happen far too often.  Sometimes it’s funny.  Sometimes its tragic.  Sometimes it causes erratic outcomes never envisioned at the outset.  In most instances we’ve been promised at the beginning that things wouldn’t go overboard.  (I honestly think most people who say such things truly mean it.)

The key when you’re looking for a slippery slope is to consider (or experience) a long time frame. Over years or decades (or longer) that which is “impossible” slowly, gradually, incrementally, evolves into “possible” and sometimes “unremarkable“. Society would never make the whole trip at once but it can be led inch by inch virtually anywhere.  Here’s an example:

On April 20th 1999 two murderous raging assholes went on a rampage.  (You’ll note that I refuse to apply politically correct terms.  I won’t pretend that Harris and Klebold were disturbed youths, domestic terrorists, or shooters.  “Raging asshole” is, in my opinion, a superior descriptor.)

During the tragedy, which was entirely constrained within a single building, the school was placed in “lockdown“.  That day was the first time I’d heard the phrase “lockdown” applied outside of a prison.  Maybe I’m sheltered.  Maybe I was naive.  Regardless, I heard the word “lockdown” and my frame of reference was a prison.  Something like this; “Inmates in ‘Federal Bad Guy Prison’ rioted until the warden ordered a ‘lockdown‘ while guards restored order“.

I couldn’t make up my mind about it.  On the one hand I don’t like the idea of innocent children being “locked down“.  On the other hand, children are not adults.  When I was in school I was not free to leave.  Precocious kid that I was, I tested the concept by occasionally skipping school.  I didn’t always make it out of the building.  Having read the last sentence you won’t be surprised to know I sometimes found myself in detention which is just what it sounds like.  You are detained and not allowed to leave.  (I’m not trying to sound overwrought.  To the disappointment of my teachers, I never considered detention a big deal.)  My point is that you or I cannot legally detain an American without the force of law but a math teacher can do it to an eighth grader.

In the end I decided that “lockdown“, regardless of its efficacy against a shooter, wasn’t a bridge too far; provided it applied to minors within a school for a couple hours. However, I foresaw the “slippery slope” and was concerned.  If you can “lockdown” innocent children, what else can you do?  To whom can you do it?  For how long? On who’s authority?

Three weeks ago two raging assholes set off bombs.  During the manhunt the entire city of Boston was placed in “lockdown“.  The public more or less accepted this as reasonable.  The slippery slope of “lockdown” had taken its next logical (and disturbing) step.

Thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-six days.  That’s how long it took.  “Lockdown” had drifted from “prisoners“, to “minors“, to “everyone in Boston“.  Comparing Columbine to Boston shows it expanded from “a school building” to “a metropolitan area” and from “a few hours” to “a full day“.

There couldn’t have been a better demonstration of “slippery slope“.  I didn’t make it up.  It’s not my paranoid imagination.  You got to watch it on TV just last month.  I’m not saying the folks at either Columbine or Boston were motivated by anything other than the best intentions.  Yet the first event which was mildly disturbing set the conditions for the next event which went much further.

The slippery slope hasn’t come to it’s end. If Bostonians had ignored the lockdown order  the idea would have run out of steam.  They didn’t so the next step will happen when the conditions are right.  (Actually I’m not really sure it was an “order”.  Nobody seemed concerned with defining the authority under which a local government imposed something very much like martial law. That too is a slippery slope.)

At any rate the “order” was not rejected.  It demonstrated that Americans can, will, and do accept the premise.  Shutting down the subway system apparently made perfect sense to them.  They accepted orders telling businesses to stay shut.  They willingly stayed indoors.  They did not protest or resist meddling in their affairs.

I’m not going to make dark predictions and dire warnings.  Folks going overboard in Boston is not cattle cars and concentration camps.  It is, however, a step in that direction.  Each time the “unthinkable” becomes “acceptable” we are diminished.  The next time someone says “we’re just going to do this, but just for this emergency so trust us” remember the thirteen years between Columbine and Boston.  Implementing a “lockdown” on a rural village in Kansas would have been inconceivable in 1970; it actually happened to a city of a half million in 2013.

The Columbine / Boston progression is why slippery slopes matter.

Posted in Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight | 5 Comments

The Shafted: Paul Kevin Curtis (2013) and Richard Jewell (1996)

Posted on April 29, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

If forget my shopping list there’s no chance I’ll remember its contents.  However, I tend to remember the shafted.  In my eyes, the latter is more important.  Today I want to mention two of their number.

Lets start with Richard Jewell.  His story is covered quite nicely in Richard Jewell Cannot Accept Our Apology at Popehat.

Richard Jewell’s story played out in 1996.  The Olympics in 1996, like the Boston Marathon in 2013, was bombed.  Eric Robert Rudolph was the asshole who planted the bomb and he’s in jail now. (Sadly, he wasn’t drawn and quartered but jail will suffice).  Rudolph is convicted, guilty, and evil.  We know that now.  We didn’t know it then.

Richard Jewell was a earnest and slightly goofy mall cop who discovered the bomb, called it in, and got folks out of the way.  Everything he did was the right thing to do.  Law enforcement thought Jewell’s quick discovery of the bomb was “too convenient”, decided he must be the perpetrator, and (as is common) leaked their conjecture to the press.

Jewell was pilloried by the media, jailed and questioned by law enforcement, and generally treated by everyone as if he was bomber scum.  I still remember it.  Eventually level heads prevailed and Jewell was exonerated.

By then Jewell was a wreck.  By most accounts he was never quite the same until his death in 2007.  Tragic!

Suppose you did a heroic thing and found your life, honor, and reputation in shambles.  Would you recover?  Remember, Jewell heroically saved lives and they ran him through the meatgrinder.

……………………………………

Now lets talk about Paul Kevin Curtis.  Several days ago poisonous ricin was mailed to President Barack Obama, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and Sadie Holland a judge in Mississippi.   Paul Kevin Curtis was accused, jailed, and questioned.

You might have heard about it?  It was shoehorned in the news between reports about Boston’s tragedy and their subsequent experiment with martial law (I’ll comment on that some other time).

Mr. Curtis sounds like a bit of a fruitcake.  He has a theory about medical malfeasance (which may or may not hold water) and he’s an Elvis impersonator to boot.  Much like Jewell, he’s an easy mark.

I’ll bet dollars to donuts you heard about the crazy Elvis impersonator with tinfoil hat theories who got all evil and terroristic.  One sure sign of his manifest evil was a quote taken from his Facebook page and plastered all over the Internet:

“To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner in its continuance”

Apparently the ricin perpetrator used the quote too.  You could therefore presume Curtis is a poisoning monster and indeed the quote was formally mentioned as part of the charges against Curtis.  From my point of view it’s no more proof that Curtis is a bad guy than an indication he’s a deliberately moral fellow.  Ironic eh?

Here’s the part that is inconvenient.  Curtis didn’t do it.  Ricin isn’t the simple baking of evil cupcakes that journalists who failed chemistry make it out to be.  Eventually everyone agreed that Curtis could no more make Ricin than he could build a lunar capsule.  Shortly thereafter Everett Dutschke was arrested and charges against Curtis were dropped.

So tell me.  How many of you have heard news of Curtis’ vindication?  I found it buried on the web but I sure as heck didn’t see it widely broadcast.  Curtis is fortunate that he wasn’t pushed deeper down the rabbit hole like Jewell.  In a way, we are all fortunate too.

Let us pause a moment to honor Jewell and Curtis.  One a hero that got shafted mightily and one a bystander that was spared some (but not all) of Jewell’s fate.  Neither gentelman deserved to be shafted.

Posted in The Shafted | 10 Comments

The Best ISP / Cable Ad Ever

Posted on April 24, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

This video is hilarious (NSFW language):

It reminded me of a post I wrote a couple of years ago: The Unbelievable Lightness Of Kicking Jackasses To The Curb.  It was about telephones because I won’t pay for cable, ever.  (Since I’ve never paid for cable I’ve never had to bitch about it.  Thus the cycle of cable suck self-perpetuates without me). Back to the subject of cell phones this is what I said:

“As far as I can tell everyone hates their phone company.  The only reason folks keep doing business with them is because people put up with obnoxious companies like they are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome.”

Stockhlom Syndrome explains a lot.  I stand by that assessment.

Hat tip to Never Yet Melted.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

There Is No Monopoly On Stupid: Part III

Posted on April 21, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Ok, I’ve been dithering through two posts to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that:

  1. The Chevy Volt sucks so bad that even the craptacular Edsel (formerly considered the wheeled definition of unmitigated total automotive/financial disaster) was a resounding success by comparison.
  2. At least one guy thinks the Volt is totally awesome and we’re all missing out by rejecting what he perceives as the best car going.

I felt pretty smug that I, Curmudgeon extraordinare, would never hold an opinion that simply wouldn’t budge given real world experience.  I pride myself on putting mind over wishful thinking.

Then one recent day the news reported that the DOW had cranked out a record high to close at 14,673.  “Holy shit” quoth the Curmudgeon, “I smell inflation afoot!”  It’s true, I was mightily displeased with that report.

I don’t see the DOW hitting nosebleed numbers as a necessarily good thing.  With a federal debt of $16,806,987,247,849.34 and the Fed printing money literally faster than any physical printing press could muster… I see gains in the DOW as losses in the green paper I keep (when I can) in my wallet. It’s like when your get a brutal stomach virus for a week and wind up standing on the scales marveling that you’ve lost 5 pounds. Yeah, it’s cool to lose weight but the bathroom scale is missing the part about you running a 101 fever and vomiting. Such is my paranoia about the economy.

But wait! If I, Curmudgeon that I am, think a rising DOW is a bad thing wouldn’t I be pleased with a sinking DOW? Actually I wasn’t. Back in 2008 when everyone lost their shit and pushed the DOW to 7,552.29 (November 20, 2008) I was livid.  “Are they insane?” I ranted in that fateful year, “Every building, factory, bulldozer, and forklift what was around last week is still here.”  I interpreted a DOW at 7,500 as proof positive that everyone had taken leave of their senses and we’re valuing stocks based on whatever the hell floated into their empty heads.

Which brings me to my conundrum.  When the DOW went down I interpreted it as a bad thing; a disconnect between the true value of assets and the securities we use to trade them.  When the DOW went up I interpreted it as a bad thing; a disconnect between the value of assets and the green slips of paper we use to monetize them.

There’s the rub.  I think were screwed when the DOW goes up and when the DOW goes down.  Thus my opinion is not affected by a metric that I observe everyday.  In effect, I’m just like the guy who thinks a Volt is just groovy despite ample evidence to the contrary.  He thinks his Volt is groovy.  I think were screwed.  Neither of us are responding to outside information.  (Or at least I am unwilling to accept the DOW as a rational valuation.)

Now is the time when I’m supposed to wrap it all up with some pithy comment that proves I’m intelligent and Hippie Mc.Volt is a moron.  I can’t do it.  He and I both have opinions that are resistant to outside information.  I haven’t figured out a clever way to either get with the rainbow people and love our new Obamaconomy or think my way past hating rising and falling stock prices simultaneously.

Ah well, perhaps a conundrum of human existence is being aware you’re thinking foolishly yet doing it anyway.

A.C.

P.S.  Regardless of the DOW, I’m definitely certain that the Volt is horse shit.  I’m bitter about that.  I’ve been waiting for a real electric car since the Carter administration and apparently it’s not coming.  (Side note, the armed flying drones of science fiction are now real and blowing people away right now.  How could a decent electric car and predictions of housekeeping robots have been eclipsed by the Terminator?)

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