Month: May 2017

New! – Your Chicagoboyz Bicycle Safety Product Endorsements

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As the season turns to Spring, Chicagoboyz turn to wholesome fresh-air pursuits such as bicycle riding. Unhappily we must share the road with motorists including various drunks, hotheads, incompetents, text messaging fiends and other menaces. A friend of ours who is a lawyer has taken to yelling at drivers who buzz him, advising them of the law requiring them to give cyclists at least three feet of space when passing. We have great respect for the law but prefer more active measures. To somewhat improve our survival odds we now limit our hours of operation, have increased the proportion of our riding done on off-road trails and, when we do go on the road, light ourselves up like a Christmas tree. (To those who are troubled by bright flashing lights in traffic I can only say: Yes, such lights are troubling, that is why they are used on police and other emergency vehicles that are at high risk of collision.)

In this regard the following products are ones that I have used extensively and recommend:

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A Slow Motion Coup d’Etat.

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Here is a pretty good article about the Trump phenomenon.

I disagree with the premise that “Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job.”

The rest of the article is pretty much on target and follows Angelo Codevilla’s piece on the “Ruling Class.”

This is pretty much the way I see it.Then there is the spectacle of the country’s financial elites goosing liquidity massively after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied by massive bond buying called “quantitative easing,” proved a boon for Wall Street banks and corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer, was “the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind.”

The news now is 99% Trump 24 hours per day. 97% of it is bad or negative on Trump.

Analysis: Only 3 percent of reports on CBS, NBC positive for Trump

A new analysis by a nonpartisan media research firm shows that just 3 percent of the reports about President Trump that aired on NBC and CBS were deemed positive.

The data comes from an analysis by Media Tenor, an independent media research firm founded in 1993.

The firm’s analysts watched 370 news stories about Trump on the “NBC Nightly News,” “CBS Evening News” and Fox News’s “Special Report” between Jan. 20 and Feb. 17. Trump took office the day the analysis began.

Overall the analysis found that on NBC and CBS, 43 percent of stories on Trump were negative, while only 3 percent were positive. Fifty-four percent of reports were considered neutral.

I’m not sure I would agree on what is “neutral.”

I am not the only one who thinks a coup d’etat is under way.

Spengler, who is my #2 go to guy after Fernandez,
thinks what is going on is a coup attempt.

A ranking Republican statesman this week told an off-the-record gathering that a “coup” attempt was in progress against President Donald Trump, with collusion between the largely Democratic media and Trump’s numerous enemies in the Republican Party. The object of the coup, the Republican leader added, was not impeachment, but the recruitment of a critical mass of Republican senators and congressmen to the claim that Trump was “unfit” for office and to force his resignation.

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The Internet Rewards Crazy (Rerun)

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(This is a reposting of a post from five years ago. I think it holds up pretty well. The Internet seems to be changing human society in significant ways which are not yet entirely clear. Perhaps the nature of what is happening will become a topic of systematic research.)

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Crazy, overconfident; the opposite of the judicious, scientific, skeptical temperament.

Extreme opinions.

Stubborn.

Bombastic.

The opposite of thoughtful.

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An Archival Post: Texiana – Mr. Cannonball Was Not His Friend

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(A repeat post from 2012)

Thomas William Ward was born in Ireland of English parents in 1807, and at the age of 21 took ship and emigrated to America. He settled in New Orleans, which by that time had passed from French to Spanish, back to French and finally landed in American hands thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. There he took up the study of architecture and engineering – this being a time when an intelligent and striving young man could engage in a course of study and hang out a shingle to practice it professionally shortly thereafter. However, Thomas Ward was diverted from his studies early in October, 1835 by an excited and well-attended meeting in a large coffee-room at Banks’ Arcade on Magazine Street. Matters between the Anglo settlers in Texas and the central Mexican governing authority – helmed by the so-called Napoleon of the West, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – had come to a frothy boil. Bad feelings between the Texian and Tejano settlers of Texas, who were of generally federalist (semi-autonomous) sympathies had been building against the centralist (conservative and authoritarian) faction. These developments were followed with close and passionate attention by political junkies in the United States.

Nowhere did interest run as high as it did in those cities along the Mississippi River basin. On the evening of October 13, 1835, Adolphus Sterne – the alcade (mayor) of Nacogdoches – offered weapons for the first fifty volunteers who would fight for Texas. A hundred and twenty volunteers signed up before the evening was over, and Thomas Ward was among them. They formed into two companies, and were apparently equipped and outfitted from various sources: the armory of the local militia organization, donations from the public, and ransacking local haberdashers for sufficient uniform-appearing clothing. They wore grey jackets and pants, with a smooth leather forage cap; the color grey being chosen for utility on the prairies. The two companies traveled separately from New Orleans, but eventually met up at San Antonio de Bexar, where they became part of the Army of Texas.

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Worthwhile Reading – Science and Technology Edition

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It seems that octopuses have the ability to edit their RNA dynamically.

An interesting piece on FDA regulation and medical device innovation.

Zymergen has automated part of the drug discovery process via a combination of robotics and machine learning.

Was big data analytics (more specifically, excess faith in same) a major cause of Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss?

Is there an artificial intelligence misinformation epidemic?

Cotton spinning – a quintessential technology of the Industrial Revolution – returns to England.

But to what degree will spinning, as well as weaving, cutting, and sewing, be replaced by 3d printing of clothing?

James L Taylor Manufacturing, a 106-year-old company making clamps and other woodworking tools sold to producers of furniture, flooring, and cabinets, recently introduced a robotic nester…it replaces the work of a human nester who “snatches boards coming off a conveyer belt in random lengths, hastily rearranges them so that each row of one to five pieces is so long, and bundles the rows into a stack.” One mill in Mississippi placed an urgent order for 3 of these (at $115K each) with the explanation: “I have eight nesters and four of them just called in sick.”

What is especially interesting about this is that the robotics system was not developed by hiring consultants from MIT or Silicon Valley; the company’s chief engineer (also part-owner of the company) designed the machine himself and wrote the 7000 lines of C++ code to run it.  Reminds me of the cucumber sorting machine developed by a Japanese guy to help out on his parents’ cucumber farm..although that system was developed for the family’s own use rather than as a saleable product as with the robotic nester.