A MarketPlace of Ideas                        

I keep getting the penis enlargement and other classic spams that you probably do.  Their subject lines are written in a random manner in an effort to thwart spam detectors.  A few are so good that I have to put them here.

Banana Fungus Finger Chocolates Family Bathtub Apple

Printer Jet fighter Passport Telescope Printer Spiral Hammer

Here in Brazil I have a couple of neighbors who are roomates.  One is from Portugal and the other is from Norway. The Brazilian call them Nor-Wegges which is pretty funny sounding.  His money quote is said with the forlorn voice of a guy who misses home.  “I - miss - snow” .  

It may not be all that funny to you but it is to us here.  Its sunny and the girls don’t wear too much.  And he misses snow! 

QUESTION: Democrat Party is the Party of the Rich-Who Would Have Guessed?

ANSWER = Anyone with common sense.  Don’t have common sense?  Let me clarify the situation for you. 

EXPERIMENT #1: 

Put 100 people in a room.  99 people get 100 dollars.  1 person gets 100,000 dollars.  Assume each person has the same levels of intelligence. 

Question:  Who has the economic power?  Who can afford to pay the money required to direct the actions of the other 99 people ? 

Answer:  If the guy with the 100,000.  Easy right? 

Observation:  If you have 100,000 dollars you can be king ? ….WRONG!  You only have power if YOU have money and the other people DO NOT!

EXPERIMENT #2:

Put 100 people in a room.  98 people get 100 dollars.  2 people get 100,000 dollars.  Assume each person has the same levels of intelligence. 

Question:  What are the relative levels of power in experiment #2 as contrasted with experiment #1.

Answer:  This is a little harder but still relatively easy.  Instead 1 person controlling 99 people, 2 people now control 49 people each.  Thus the ratio of the power is approximately  case1/case2= 99/49 = 2X.  Of course you can make the argument that the guy in experiment #1 is alot more powerful because he has a monopoly on power.  He can get his 99 minions to do much more drastic actions in contrast to the cheiftains of experiment #2.  This is because if Chief#1 asks something too outrageous then his serfs are likely to move to Chief#2.  However isn’t it likely that the chiefs watch each other and escalate behaviors to the limit. In the limit they group together into a defacto unitary chief that acts with one will.  In this case the power will be almost exactly divided by 2 again.

EXPERIMENT #3: 

Put 100 people in a room.  100 people get 100,000 dollars.   Assume each person has the same levels of intelligence. 

Question:  Who has the economic power? 

Answer:   They are all equal. No one has an advantage over the other.

Observation:  If we all have the same amount of financial resources we all have equal power given equal intelligence levels. 

What can be concluded from experiment #3 is that if we are all rich then no one will have alot of power.  Thus a political party interested in maintaining the power of the rich should follow policies that discourage and prevent people from climbing the economic ladder.   The best way to do this is to have taxes that increase with increasing income.  Enter the liberals vaunted “PROGRESSIVE TAX RATE”.  Thus old family money like the Kennedy’s is made much more valuable.  New money has to climb a steeper hill to get to the level where power resides.  Old money fought against lower tax rates in times when it was more easy to cheat on your taxes and I guarantee you they cheated on their taxes.  Afterall cheating on your taxes is not only right, it is your patriotic duty. 

Now that you understand the reality of PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES you can laugh next time you hear the phrase.  Its a short 3 word joke because it does anything but act in the name of anyone progressing.  The rich think its progressive because what they call progress is maintaining power !!!  NOW THATS A GOOD ONE!!!  Real knee slapper….NOT.

So when you see that more rich people are democrats its not because democrats are smarter. No not at all.  Its that these people want to maintain and possibly increase their power.  There are 2 methods to increase your power.  1- increase how much money you have.  2- decrease the amount of money other people have.  This is identical to thermodynamics.

Thermodynamics  says that heat energy is only transferred if there is a DIFFERENCE in temperature.  In this case amount of money directly translates into temperature.  Imagine each person having a temperature corresponding to the amount of money in their ownership. 

Much as you may not want to hear it you are ensconsed in an economic Carnot cycle heat engine.  Your physical universe in essence controls the architecture of your society. In this engine control resides in the domain of least entropy.  That is in locations where collections of money are greatest.  The great masses of people without much money transfer their energy to the efforts and ideas of the people with large amounts of money.   You already knew this but did not know you knew it.  Have you heard the old saying “shit rolls down hill” ??   That’s a natural result of this entropic model.

When thought of physically you can see that its impossible to violate this model.  Whether by perfect capitalism or communism all is ensconsed in the physical reality of this economic heat engine.  In this light you can see that communism is merely a perverted form of capitalism and capitalism in its ideal form is what the naive think communism is!

So next time you vote, if you want bigger better democracy think entropy.  Fairness is not to be found in equality of money resources but in allowing free flow of capital and therefore maximizing entropic characteristics of the economic system.   Great campaign slogan.  Think it will get me elected ?

Back in the 90’s I had an engineering technician named Jim Hinton that grew up in Cape Girardeau Missouri .  This happens to be the home town of Rush Limbaugh.  As recounted to me by Jim Rush went by the name RUSTY back then.  This name holds alot of mirth for me.  Its just an inherently funny name and its obvious why Rusty uses Rush now.  I don’t agree with Rush on totally everything but I do admire him and find him to be an inspiration when he talks about doing what you like to do and how that is the only thing you will be REALLY good at.  Alot of Limbaughs detractors don’t have the same soul he has and as such appear to me to be empty shells in comparison.  People like Limbaugh and James J. Cramer do not come along very often.  They are true American originals.  

The reason why I wrote this article is to attempt to ping Rush and see if I can get his attention.  I want to see him drive the Aptera electric car as mentioned near the end of this article.   So the secret is out Rush and I won’t take this story down until you drive the Aptera! 

The original GM effort with electric cars was the EV1.  This was an effort originally compelled by Californias zero emission laws in the 90’s.  What happened to it ?  It died because it was compelled.

When a government compells any sort of product the process is akin to rape.  They are forcing people to do something they do not want to do.  Why its magically alright to do this to a company and not to a woman is the eternal mystery.  Like a woman a company has its own good reasons for not wanting to consort with any given idea.  For this reason we men, although deeply in need of what a woman can provide, do not force ourselves on them.  How much better is it when a woman gives up the goods of her own volition when she wants to succomb?  Car companies are no different.

When did GM start an electric car effort of their own accord?  After the Tesla Roadster was announced. GM like many women is a competitive animal.  Just as when cosmetics were invented and then all women had to partake to obtain the “unfair” advantage GM found itself in the catty state of jealously guarding its mate in the form of the auto market. 

Thus it was demonstrated yet again that taxes invariably suck and are ineffective at anything besides swelling politicians pockets.  On the other had it demonstrated how competition is the best process every invented for true meaningful progress.

In previous articles its been noted that the GM Volt and Tesla Roadster from engineering prospectives appear to be relatively practical designs.  I have noted yet another company  aptera that appears to have a useful design on the way. Coincidentally it also has a 30,000 USD price point, the same as GM Volts estimated price point.

I would like to go on record as stating I think the 3 wheel design is a big mistake. 4 wheels are better stability wise and its not worth the perk of being able to be in the carpool lane to trade off stability.  However its aircraft like design is very appealing and a 4 wheel model should do well when they do the eventual safety induced re-spin of the design!

A final comical note:  I think with this car’s appearance for good or bad you seriously risk the nerd label.  I would REALLY REALLY REALLY like to have one wish granted if I had a magic genii.  That would be to compell Rush Limbaugh to drive this car for a day and have a recording of all his comments complete with explicatives.  I am absolutely sure that would be a true howler to listen to.  Come on Rusty….drive that car!  One further flourish on this idea. I’d like a photo of him driving it to blackmail him with.

My grandfather used to say this all the time.  He was born in 1898 so its an old one.

Terrorists with beards suck.

In the 80’s I was working in Radar during the Reagan presidency.  My boss Ron and I went to the delta force headquarters in North Carolina to pitch a type of radar to them.  Did not sell.  Down in the bowels of the headquarters on the wall of the Delta force I saw on the wall a Rambo - Reagan mashup.  It was Reagan’s head on Sylvester Stallones body.  I’m not exactly sure what all it said but the important take away was  RON-BO. 

I remembered this because I immediately started calling my boss Ron-bo.  He in turn called me Fred-bo.  Which of course is better than the Boy-Fred another apellation a different coworker used to use for me in the same era.

A quick google image search turned up the RONBO art in question.

Deuceofclubs.com is a website that is run by a rather amusing fellow.  His site originally gained notoriety with a phone booth in the middle of the Mohave Desert.  This phone booth as popularized and people from all over the world started calling people who camped out by the phone to received the calls.  Can you say beneficial cycle ??  I knew you could.

He can be a bit cranky sometimes when people hotlink photos from his site.  It uses some of his bandwidth and thus causes him consternation.  Thus when he discovers a hotlinked photo he switches a different photo in to cause unpredictable result to occur to the hotlinkers webpage. 

On the other hand I find this sort of thing amusing so I’ll attempt to raise his ire and get the photo below swapped.  In return for my fun he’s getting a link to his website here.  amarketplace is only a google pagerank= 3 site but ain’t entirely all bad.

   Will deuce go postal ????            This is the original…sourced here.

I’m sorry I just can’t resist this sort of goof.  How long will it take?…. Don’t worry Deuce…if you swap the image I will leave the link above intact. 

4 days hence after posting this article no photo switcharoo from Deuce.  Dissappointing me Deuce.  Its a much more interesting article if the photos don’t match!!!  Come on…I won’t change a thing.  Great lead in to your website.

I’ve learned alot of lessons over the years on how to spot bullshit.  While reading an exerpt from the book that inspired the movie “The Sting” I saw alot of the called out.  See if you can avoid thinking about Al Gore or alot of other politicians as you read them.  Of course the title of this post has been specially selected considering the sub prime mortgage mess.

Big-time confidence games are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast except the mark knows his part perfectly

Stupid or “lop-eared” marks are often played; they are too dull to see their own advantage, and must be worked up to the point again and again before a ray of light filters through their thick heads. Sometimes they are difficult or impossible to beat. Always they merit the scorn and contempt of the con men. Elderly men are easy to play because age has slowed down their reactions.
Most marks come from the upper strata of society, which, in America, means that they have made, married, or inherited money.

— can you say HOLLYWOOD, Al Gore and Global Warming ? —-

it should not be assumed that the victims of confidence games are all blockheads. Very much to the contrary, the higher a mark’s intelligence, the quicker he sees through the deal directly to his own advantage 

The first thing a mark needs is money. But he must also have what grifters term “larceny in his veins”—in other words, he must want something for nothing or be willing to participate in an unscrupulous deal

— I figured this one out years ago.  Liberals have not or do not want to. Its this that allows the politician to promise to get votes.  Thus liberals may or may not be smarter than conservatives but they certainly have more larceny in their veins. —

If the mark were completely aware of this character weakness, he would not be so easy to trim. But, like almost everyone else, the mark thinks of himself as an “honest man.

The mark’s honesty is always a standing joke among grifters

Never be untidy or drink with a savage. There is nothing worse than drinking when you are trying to tie up a mark. You’ve got to have your nut about you all the time. You need what little sense you’ve got to trim him—and if you had any sense at all, you wouldn’t be a grifter

— and if our politicians had any sense they wouldn’t be grifters …I mean politicians —

In addition to grift sense, a con man must have a good deal of genuine acting ability, He must be able to make anyone like him, confide in him, trust him. He must sense immediately what aspect of his personality will be most appealing to his victim 

— Get more women, learn this lesson, they really have trouble with reality—

 If the insideman handles the blow-off properly, the mark hardly knows that he has been fleeced