If You are a Patriot and Don’t Loathe RINOs…

Well this is the week my old McCarthy vs. Dungsmear question would have repeated.

We know the answer. Dungsmear.

But now let’s talk about RINOs in general, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.

Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.

Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.

I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.

In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.

Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.

The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”

Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.

We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.

And yet,

What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?

In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).

We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)

We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Loren Boebert).

That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.

Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”

If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.

That should make you good and mad.

The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.

I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.

In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.

In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.

So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.

We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.

What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*

We know it. What is going to be done about it?

*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.

If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.

RINOs an Endangered Species?
If Only!

According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.

Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.

I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.

But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.

The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.

Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.

I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.

This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?

In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting

One of the biggest obstacles to direly-needed change is RINOs, and one of the weapons in their arsenal is the “Wasted Vote” argument.

Periodically a third party has arisen, trying to hold RINOs to account by putting pressure on them from outside of the party, since doing so from the inside has historically done very little good. But, even if you find a third party candidate who perfectly reflects your views, you’re likely to vote for the RINO anyway. Why? Because if you don’t, the Democrat might win, and that would be even worse. So if you vote for that third party (that few will vote for), you’re throwing your vote away and increasing the likelihood of the Democrat winning. (It’s half as much a gain for the Democrat, as actually voting for the Democrat would be. Not as much, but half as much. Because although you denied the R your vote, you did not flip your vote to the Democrat.)

The Republican Party Establishment knows you don’t love them. But they know you hate the Democrats worse, and they use that to continue to herd you into supporting them. With gritted teeth you cast your vote, but your vote counts the same whether you cast it enthusiastically. And the other alternative, pissing on the voting apparatus to express your actual feelings, is probably a felony.

But what if you could vote for that third party without increasing the chances of the Dem walking away with the prize?

This is what ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, can do provided it is properly implemented. (And this includes the votes, and only genuine votes, being counted honestly, of course. However, I’m going to compare it to what we have today, and pretend that is honestly done too. RCV can’t work if it’s not honestly administered, just like our current system isn’t working because it isn’t honestly administered.)

The idea behind RCV is to vote by expressing your order of preference. You could vote for the Patriot Party, then for the RINO Party as your second choice (and ignore the Democrat, the Green, the Overt Socialist Schmuckmonkey Party, etc).

What does this do? It nullifies the wasted vote argument. Your vote will be counted for the Patriot party, first, then instead of it being “wasted” when the Patriot Party loses, it ends up going to the RINO. Actually, it’s just barely possible that the Patriot Party would actually beat the RINO, if people weren’t all individually afraid to vote for it.

It’s just like the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where your fear of other peoples’ actions prevents you from doing the optimal thing–and vice-versa. As long as Job Lowe is afraid to vote Patriot because he’s afraid you’ll vote RINO, you’ll have to vote RINO because you fear that Job Lowe will, because he fears you will.

So on the whole I like RCV. It gives you a no-risk way to vote against the RINO scum, and in favor of someone who deserves your vote.

The problem is, as done here in the US, it comes packaged with a “jungle primary.” A bunch of candidates get to put their name out there, and the top four (or so) candidates get onto the “main” ballot. This gives party establishments their way around the threat of a good third party bumping them off. Because they know that few people bother with primaries, and third parties don’t have the resources to run in a primary…so they throw two or three establishment hacks into the primary and they will probably beat the third party. The result is the RINOs end up with two of the four slots in the general election, and the Dems get the other two. Now there’s suddenly no third party candidate on the ballot at all.

If we were to combine RCV with the present system where each party could nominate exactly one candidate to appear on the November ballot, or at the very least, ensure minor parties could get onto the ballot with at least one candidate regardless of the primary, we would be getting somewhere, but the establishment is smarter than we like to give them credit for. They will support the jungle primary + RCV “solution” rather than the more appropriate one-candidate-per-party + RCV solution.

It’s not RCV that is the problem, it’s the primary structure grafted onto it.

Justice

It says “Justice” on the picture.

And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.

But what is it?

Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.

Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.

Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.

—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)

Justice Must Be Done.

Trump, it is supposed, had some documents.

Biden and company stole the country.

I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $1,982.10
Silver $23.82
Platinum $910.00
Palladium $1,080.00
Rhodium $5,000.00

This week, at Friday close:

Gold $2,003.70
Silver $24.42
Platinum $941.00
Palladium $1,094.00
Rhodium $4,900.00

Markets appeared to have closed at 11:45 on Friday, rather than 3 PM mountain time.

Silver is doing very well right now for some reason, it has busted $24.

Some people who analyze this stuff online are puzzled at gold’s recent climb, so it’s possible it’s being pumped and dumped.

Star Trek Was Often Clueless

As gigantic a leap ahead as Star Trek might have represented for TV science fiction (I don’t think it was beaten for almost 30 years, and that was by Babylon 5) it still had its forehead-smacking moments when it comes to the science.

Yes science fiction is considered by many to be arbitrary flights of fancy, but the fact is, when it is written science fiction, there are conventions to be followed. It should at least display an understanding of natural laws. This is even honored in the breach. By which I mean that oftentimes, the premise of the story involves a new scientific discovery, so of course there will be violations of current scientific principles. But the point is that everyone understands it’s a new thing–and the “new” science has to be internally consistent.

By no means is all, or even a majority, of science fiction about space travel, but when it is (especially in the sub-genre called “space opera”), it almost certainly will assume that some sort of faster-than-light travel is possible. Either there will be some sort of propulsion system that does it, or there will be some sort of wormhole or jump point, where you instantaneously jump from one star’s planetary system to another. (The wormhole is infinite speed, effectively…travel time involves getting to (or from) the wormhole, from (or to) some nearby planet or other location the action is going to be.)

Star Trek went with the former. A lot of other Hollywood produced stuff went the other way, or with some combination. It saves them from some opportunities to really be stupid.

In general, Hollywood doesn’t follow the convention I mentioned above; it regularly has ridiculous science howlers in it. The scriptwriters came nowhere near a STEM education and are a) clueless and b) usually don’t give a rip.

In particular, every single Hollywood production I am aware of that uses propulsion systems for faster than light travel simply doesn’t do the math and has no conception of what they’re dealing with. They don’t understand how fast light goes, and they don’t understand how big things are.

And that includes Star Trek.

When I remembered that bit about “What is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory” I blew the dust off my original Star Trek Blurays and watched that episode. Then I got sucked in; I’ve been lightly binge watching Star Trek (the Original Series, as it’s now referred to to disambiguate it from all of the spinoffs) since then. And it’s just appalling sometimes, on this score (but it must be said the main goal was to tell good stories, which it was much more successful at).OK so first things first. Let me explain the actual situation.

Let’s discuss interplanetary travel first.

The distance between the Earth and the Sun averages out to about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. For historical reasons I’m not getting into now (but did in other posts), this is called an astronomical unit (AU) and is the “yardstick” we use inside the solar system. We in fact used it for a yardstick long before we had any idea how much it was…because we knew the ratios of planetary distances long ago. We knew, for instance that Jupiter was 5.2 times the distance from the Sun as is Earth, long before we knew how much in absolute terms either of those distances was. Today. of course, we’ve measured an AU to within a few hundred meters, and as of 2012 it’s now defined to be exactly 149,597,870,700 meters. (If we end up refining the measurement, we’ll end up with an AU not quite equaling the distance between the Earth and the Sun, because we’ve nailed the number in place.)

The furthest planet out is Neptune; its orbit is almost exactly 30 AU in radius. There are a lot of smaller objects further out; the furthest one that’s reasonably well known to science popularizers is Sedna. It’s in a very elliptical orbit with an average radius of 484 AU, with a maximum distance of 892. (It’s much much closer right now). Another body, Leleakuhonua, is at 1085 AU average distance, max is 2106 AU. It too is near its closest approach of “only” 65 AU. Right now it’s roughly 80 AU away. (We would never be able to see either body if it were at its furthest distance. This tells us there are almost certainly many bodies way out there, at or near the farthest extents of their orbits, that we can’t see.)

When we do start traveling between the planets of our solar system in earnest, we’ll probably spend most of our time inside the orbit of Neptune, or perhaps a bit outside it where Pluto is, but places further out than where Sedna is today, will be lengthy undertakings–expeditions.

What sorts of speeds will be needed? We’ll certainly want to move faster than the planets themselves do! The Earth moves 6.28 AUs in one year (i.e, 1 AU times 2π or times τ if you like using τ instead of π), or roughly an AU every two months. It’s moving at 29,785 meters per second or 107,230 kilometers per hour. If that’s as fast as we travel, Neptune is roughly five years away, one way. (And Earth moves a lot faster than Neptune does.) If you are thinking 5 weeks to Neptune is what people would put up with (similar to oceangoing ships crossing oceans), you need to be able to move 52 times faster, or at over 5 million kilometers an hour.

That, as it happens, is about one half of one percent of the speed of light, which is roughly a billion kilometers an hour. This is way, way ahead of anything we can do now, but much slower than light speed. And though it would require engineering we haven’t even imagined yet, it doesn’t necessarily bust the laws of physics (unless you insist it be done with souped-up rockets…like in The Expanse). One could write good stories with speeds and timespans like this.

And Star Trek got this nearly right, at least once. The Enterprise has “impulse” drives that push it at slower than the speed of light, c, and there was an episode, Elaan of Troyius, where the Enterprise was traveling from one planet to another…in the same planetary system. The command was for “speed factor point zero three seven”, which probably meant 0.037c. This allowed for a leisurely (several days) trip between two planets. It’s probably still about ten times too fast, but…maybe the star was bright and the planets had to be farther apart than (say) Earth and Mars would be. However, in spite of this rare moment of near-lucidity, this episode is no paragon of doing simple arithmetic to sanity check things, as there is a rather big blunder in it elsewhere. I’ll get to that.

OK, now let’s consider interstellar distances and travel.

It’s bigger. A lot bigger. And we’re going to need a bigger yardstick. There are two yardstick between stars. The one astronomers use amongst themselves is the parsec. How big is that?

A parsec is the distance at which, something an AU across will appear to only be one arcsecond wide. (That’s not how it was originally derived, but it’s equivalent…and a lot easier to describe.)

Those of you that shoot (and I hope that’s all of you) likely know that by happy coincidence, two spots an inch apart on a target that is 100 yards away are just about 1 arc minute apart. Which is to say the angle between the line from the first spot to your eyeball, and the line from the other spot, to your eyeball, is 1/60th of a degree. Almost but not quite parallel. Since a quarter is very close to an inch across, one MOA is how big a quarter appears at 100 yards.

One second of arc is an angle 1/60th as big as that. So it’s 1/60th the width of a quarter at a hundred yards…or you can move the object further away instead of making it smaller: it’s also the width of a quarter at 6,000 yards, or 18,000 feet…or about 3 1/2 miles.

Now put an object 1 AU across (some stars are actually that big), far enough away that it’s one arc second across.

An AU is BIG, so this has to be far, far away. In fact, it’s 30,856,775,814,913,673 meters away (almost 31 quadrillion million meters). That’s not an exact figure, and there can’t be one, because computing it from an AU (which can be expressed exactly) involves π.

The other yardstick, the one astronomers use talking to non-astronomers, is the light year. This is the distance that light (traveling at about a billion kilometers an hour) travels in 365.25 days. This is: 9,460,730,472,580.8 meters. Nine and a half trillion kilometers. Or a bit under 6 trillion miles.

The nearest star to our Sun is Proxima Centauri. It’s 4.2 light years or 1.3 parsecs away. The sun itself would be impossible to see without binoculars at about 75 light years’ distance. Many of the bright stars in our night sky are intrinsically much brighter than the sun and are hundreds of light years away.

Four light years is often taken to be a good average distance between stars (though I suspect it’s high).

The entire galaxy is a disc a hundred thousand light years across. Even as we gallivant around from star to star…getting outside of the galaxy is a long trip, unless of course you go perpendicular to the disk. The center of the disc is about 26,000 light years away. This is plenty of room for Star Trek to write zillions of episodes, especially given that the galaxy is estimated to have anywhere between 100-400 billion or even more stars in it, and as near as we can tell, a large percentage of them have planets.

Now that I have given you both scales, let’s relate the interplanetary scale to the interstellar scale.

A light year is 63,241 AUs. A parsec is 206,265 AUs.

Those are commas not decimal points.

Proxima Centauri, the nearest interstellar destination, is about 268,000 AUs away. And we can’t even do one AU yet!

If a single AU is likened to a mile, Proxima Centauri is about as far away as the moon. We can walk a mile. To get a man to the moon we need the biggest rocket ever built.

For our previously-supposed society that can travel around the solar system in a few weeks, to make the transition and be able to travel to the nearest star, is like going from a man who can walk 30 miles…to the Apollo moon rocket, all at once. It’s by far the biggest “jump” in capability we will ever make; it will make crossing the oceans instead of hugging the coasts in sailing ships look like a tiny innovation. It’s basically impossible without huge advances in technology.

And, let me just remind of something. The furthest we have actually sent a manned mission is to the Moon. How far away is the Moon? Sit down and realize how puny we are: The Moon is 0.00257 AUs away. Roughly 1/400th of an AU. No, we haven’t begun manned interplanetary travel! We’ll need to go several AUs to get to Mars (the shortest route is under an AU but is much harder). Thousands of times further than we have yet gone.

OK with the stage set, let’s consider interstellar travel. If we want the ship to get there in less than years, we must have faster than light travel. Because light takes 4 years or so to get from one star to the next. For this the creators of Star Trek invented warp drive and wrote some word salad about how it works by warping space. (Interestingly, a serious physicist has postulated that if we could bend space a certain way, we could actually travel faster than light…and the press has called it a warp drive; you may have seen articles about it. He’s done the math to back it up, so it’s not word salad. All we need is a way to bend space.)

Warp drive speeds are given in Star Trek as “warp factors.” It’s never explained in the show, but in a book written by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, it’s stated that to figure out how fast a warp factor is, you cube it. So for Warp Factor 2, you’re traveling 2x2x2=8 times the speed of light. Which means getting to Proxima Centauri in just over six months. That’s too long, honestly. But you can go to Warp 6 and cruise forever without damaging the engines, and that’s 6x6x6=216 times the speed of light. And that puts Proxima Centauri 7 days away. It’s just barely possible that’s the sort of time Star Trek‘s Enterprise spends going from one star to another, but realistically, you’re not going to always be going from one star to its next door neighbor. The next crisis could be dozens or even hundreds of light years away.

In other words, even a few hundred times light speed is too slow for Star Trek to make sense.

Later on (and this is not official Star Trek as far as I know) it was posited that those warp factor multipliers apply in completely empty space, but interstellar space always has some dust and gas, plus the occasional actual star, and so warp factors get boosted…by over a thousand times, depending on how thick the interstellar medium is. (And even in a nebula, it’s actually a near perfect vacuum.) I’ll call this the “fudge factor.” And again, so far as I know it’s not “official” Star Trek.

The fudge factor does make things make more sense. Many episodes end with Kirk ordering the Enterprise on a course to the next episode (basically) at Warp 1 or 2. Unless you want the entire remaining five year mission to be taken up just getting to the next episode, you’ve got to move faster than 1x1x1=1 or 2x2x2=8 times the speed of light.

Sometimes the bridge crew actually says something is a parsec away (or so) and they can be there in minutes. Again, you need the fudge factor for this to make sense.

The problem comes in when Warp speed is mixed up with short distances.

That same Elaan of Troyius episode that I praised before, has another scene in it. A hostile ship is charging at the Enterprise at warp speed. I.e. as fast, or faster, than the speed of light. The problem came in when the bogie was 100,000 km away, and the bridge crew was counting down how far away it was.

At one times the speed of light, it would take 1/3 of a second for that ship to cover the distance. But it’s doing warp six. So the distance gets covered in 1/648th of a second instead. And that’s without the fudge factor, which makes it 1/1000th as long a time as that. The bridge crew would literally have no time at all to react.

Sigh.

But there is worse.

Another episode where the Enterprise is traveling within a planetary system is Paradise Syndrome. The Enterprise has to divert an asteroid heading for an inhabited, Earth-like planet. The asteroid is two months away. In our solar system it would be a “near-Earth object” traveling about the same speed as Earth…which as I mentioned is about 1 AU in two months. So the distance to cover is 1 AU or so. Since they are delayed on the planet (Kirk was missing, and of course they were searching for him), they have to get to the asteroid as fast as possible.

Spock orders warp nine. 9x9x9=512 times the speed of light (without fudge factor). How long will it take to cover that 1 AU distance?

Light takes 500 seconds to get from the Sun to the Earth…which is 1 AU. In other words, it should take less time for the Enterprise to travel that distance at warp nine, than it took for Spock to give the “Ahead warp factor nine” command. (That’s assuming, of course, the ship can accelerate from 0 to warp 9 in less than a second.)

Even if it’s two or three AUs away…it’s still going to take at most a handful of seconds to get there, even without the fudge factor. Since warp nine stresses the engines, it would probably have been okay to order warp six and take a few extra seconds. (Not that a mere one second of warp nine should cause problems!)

Instead this is shown as taking hours, if not days. And the engines are near the breaking point when they get to the asteroid. They end up frying the engines trying to divert the asteroid, and the Enterprise has to go back to the planet on impulse power, hours ahead of the asteroid…for two months…to try to find Kirk and rescue him before the asteroid destroys all life on the planet. (This too also ignorant, this time ignorant of orbital dynamics. The asteroid is in an orbit about the star, not under power. Therefore the Enterprise can be on the same trajectory without using power. If it is using any power at all, it should outrun the asteroid.)

Another episode that needs a callout is Space Seed. It wasn’t that famous an episode…until Star Trek II hit the movie theaters. Because Space Seed is the episode that introduced Khan Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban).

Khan’s backstory is that he and his band of merry supermen and superwomen escaped Earth in 1992 aboard a DY-100 ship…a ship far, far ahead of anything we can build today (anything interplanetary that can hold 3 people in it is…much less something with the big corridors we saw in Star Trek, holding dozens of people). The ship was meant for interplanetary travel but fortunately for the viewer (unfortunately for the Enterprise), they had suspended animation, and so the ship could travel for nearly 300 years…and somehow end up WAY out there among the stars for the Enterprise to find it.

Uh, but look at those numbers. Interstellar travel is tens of thousands times further than interplanetary travel.

We have sent objects out of the solar system, five of them. The furthest is Voyager 1, which after almost 50 years is a mere 152 AU away, and it will be tens of thousands of years before it gets as far away as Proxima Centauri (and it’s not headed in that direction).

There’s simply no way Khan’s ship could be at interstellar distances, much less far enough out that the Enterprise is only now stumbling across it, three centuries later.

Fortunately, I can usually ignore stuff like this for the sake of enjoying the story. But it would be nice if these TV shows would actually employ someone who can do arithmetic and use a calculator! Because that’s literally all it takes…that and knowing that distance equals speed multiplied by time.

I’m lucky that I can see all of this and still enjoy the show.

A couple of postscripts.

First, everything I’ve said applies to the original series. Star Trek the Next Generation (and Deep Space Nine and Voyager) are set a century after the original series, and the warp drive there is quite different…it’s probably the same as the “Transwarp” that was being tested in some of the movies made to go with the original series. Warp factors are much higher, and warp ten is infinite speed.

Also, here is a video about a scale model of our solar system in Melbourne, Australia. Distances and planetary sizes are to the same scale, 1:1,000,000,000 or 1 millimeter = 1,000 kilometers. The thumbnail shows the sun. Pluto is almost six kilometers away.

But there is a little surprise. Proxima Centauri is part of the model…quite close to the Sun in fact! What is it doing there? Didn’t I just get finished trying to convey how ridiculously far away it is compared to planets?

Well yes. But it just so happens that at the scale of the model, Proxima Centauri is 40,000 km away…and that’s one trip around the earth! So start at the sun, go past Mercury, Venus, etc…and Neptune, and yes they included Pluto for laughs. Then keep on going…all the way around the world and you’ll hit Proxima Centauri just before getting to the Sun again.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

A Good Start

Speaker Johnson has released some of the January 6 tapes. From what I saw all of the tapes are from inside the Capitol building.

Apparently some 4,000 hours out of 44,000 hours are withheld.

It’s a good start, and thank you for that, but America needs them all.

And I want to see if I was targeted.

News Flash

Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.

I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.

But the past cannot actually be changed.

It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.

And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.

As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.

And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.

So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.

Let’s Go, Brandon!!

Hey China!

Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”

You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.

Hey BiteMe!
(Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)

[Language warning]

You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.

I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.

No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.

Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.

And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.

You’re LOSING.

You LOSER.

You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.

I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Tranheuser Busch

Those asshats either get the world, all time record for obtuseness…or this is deliberate somehow. And their namby pamby non-apology that amounts to a “We’re sorry you’re too much of a knuckledragger to appreciate what we did” simply underscores the stupid. It’d be like a 400 pound golfer wearing spikes tromping on your instep and being utterly clueless why you are screaming in pain.

Me

I wrote that months ago, and they are casting about now trying to figure out how to get people to come back. However the one thing that might work (an abject admission that they were wrong to even think of doing this) is the one thing they cannot do. Because the decision makers are woke and cannot conceive that they were actually fuckheadedly wrong to do this.

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $1,939.70
Silver $22.36
Platinum $853.00
Palladium $990.00
Rhodium $4,600.00

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $1,982.10
Silver $23.82
Platinum $910.00
Palladium $1,080.00
Rhodium $5,000.00

Gold’s weird behavior continues. One analyst I read (an amateur) says that he finds gold’s climb this week inexplicable given the direction other related things (like the dollar index) are heading.

It’s possible, I suppose (and this is me now) that “normal” behavior is changing as people begin to contemplate that we might soon end up in a fiscal death spiral. 30 percent of all tax revenue just goes to pay the interest on the existing debt. If that number hits 100 percent, we’re in deep kimchee.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

Speaker Johnson
Pinging you on January 6 Tapes

Just a friendly reminder Speaker Johnson. You’re doing some good things–or at least trying in the case of the budget–but this is the most important thing out there not yet definitively addressed.

We have American patriots being held without bail and without trial, and the tapes almost certainly contain exculpatory evidence. (And if they don’t, and we’re all just yelling in an echo chamber over here, we need to know that too. And there’s only one way to know.)

Either we have a weaponized, corrupt government or we have a lot of internet charlatans. Let’s expose whatever it is. (I’m betting it’s the corrupt weaponized government, but if I am wrong, I’d like to see proof.)

Armistice Day

November 11th was Armistice Day before we broadened it to be a day about all veterans, regardless of which war they fought in, or even whether they did their jobs the best way possible and kept us out of wars.

November 11, 1918 was the end of a war that was far more horrific than any war before it…and in some ways was worse than the next one.

I watched a lengthy series of lectures on World War I, and it was striking how the narrative concentrated on all sorts of advances and retreats until about the middle of 1915. Then after that, you don’t hear about a lot of changes of tide, until 1918.

That is because the war settled down into a defensive stalemate. As long as each side had machine guns that could mow the enemy down, people either stayed in their trenches…and the front line didn’t move…or they died. By the thousands.

The tank was ultimately to change this, and poison gas also had its effects (it was so horrific that even Adolf Hitler didn’t want to use it in battle, though nothing was too bad for the Jews). But until then thousands upon thousands died…with no net result.

And when things did change, they changed a lot. The map of Europe was redrawn. Germany lost much territory; Austria lost nearly everything. The Ottoman Empire collapsed and was almost completely occupied; present day Turkey managed to assert its independence and not be largely given to Greece (1920 is regarded by them as the year they became independent). And of course the Russian Empire…one of the allies…managed to lose its part of the war earlier and lost its monarchy, becoming after over a decade of turmoil and various subject peoples enjoying independence for a while, reunited under the communists.

As it happens my grandfather fought in the war…before he emigrated to America. (He was born in one of the Allied countries.)

World War One was a shock to the European psyche. There had been a century of comparative quiet since the massive disruptions of the Napoleonic Wars, the worst anomalies being the Franco-Prussian war of the early 1870s, and the Crimean War of 1855. Europe seemed to be pretty stable, with the main hazard being the fact that Ottoman Empire was clearly dying. (It was the “sick man” of Europe.)

And then suddenly the roof fell in, and battles that made the Battle of Borodino in 1812 (itself the second most lethal one day battle in history up to that time) seem like a picnic by comparison, became regular occurrences.

World War II wasn’t as much as a shock, even if it was deadlier. Horrific war was less unexpected that time around.

Europe was determined to remember, and two results of that stick with us today. We are not the only country that has a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Many European countries set such a thing up. I don’t know how many of them added a World War II soldier to their monuments, like we did. Or subsequent wars…like we did. And almost every country celebrated Armistice Day, November 11, complete with a moment of silence at 11 AM, the time the war ended (in this case we didn’t correct for time zones; it was 11 AM European time, and the moment of silence is always at 11 AM local time). In many countries men would wear poppies in their lapels (an allusion to Flanders Fields, where the poppies grow).

I don’t recall ever going through that moment of silence ceremony. That appears to be gone. And now it’s a moveable holiday in any case. And now it’s no longer specifically about World War I.

But, barely recognizable though it is, it’s worth keeping in mind this bit of history.

We did not have a World War I memorial on the Mall in DC until 2021–too late for any of the honorees to actually see it. It should have been a no-brainer, but people actually fought against it.

Our national monument and museum to the war is instead in Kansas City. I visited it many years ago. Just a few months prior, the last living American veteran of the war had visited the museum, and you can bet he was an honored guest!

Frank Woodruff Buckles, Feb 1, 1901 – Feb 27, 2011.

One can only imagine the thoughts going through his head as he saw all of the photographs of soldiers from every country, from events he likely remembered very vividly…and to realize that every one of those people is dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Buckles

A Political Statement

One of my stock jokes is to say, as I head off to the bathroom or washroom or restroom, “I’m going to go make a political statement.”

It certainly seems like urinating is a good way to make a statement about the YSM, and defecating works for politicians. Or the other way around is good too, though “#1” just never seems emphatic enough.

Maybe “#1” is just being polite, and “#2” is telling the fixtures what you really think.

Anyhow, I pretty much do plan to be polite to RINOs that electioneer or fundraise. I’ll tell them, Sorry, but I need to GO Pee…

Language Warning

In the next piece I had to discuss a particular topic. Unfortunately, I couldn’t discuss it without naming it. Therefore I apologize in advance for having to do so, and apologize to anyone offended by the sight of the name.

RINO McDaniel

[Well, perfect timing for this one to pop up in the rotation again!]

RINO McDaniel continues to infest the GOP. But RINO McDaniel isn’t the problem.

Let me be crystal clear on this, RINO McDaniel is a lower-than-whale-shit, piss guzzling ratfucking shit eating traitorous rancid syphillitic cunt. Her worth as a human being is substantially less than zero, any oxygen sucked into her lungs is wasted, and it would be, no matter what job she had.

I fear I haven’t been clear enough, but that will have to suffice.

But she is not the problem…or rather, she would not be a problem were it not for others. She’d still be as I have described, but we wouldn’t know who she is and would not care, because she could do no damage. She’d just be anonymous human refuse.

No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.

In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party has deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, has deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, has diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.

However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.

RINO McDaniel would be powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They want this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.

If she were to drop dead this instant, it would solve nothing as someone just like her would be elected by those same pustulous people.

According to Charlie Kirk, about 55 people voted against her, 10-12 wanted something different but were too chickenshit to do the right thing, and roughly 100 people voted for her enthusiastically, and even had the unmitigated gall to complain to Kirk about US. Fuck ’em. Rusty 12 gauge bore brushes would be too good for these arrogant pricks and cunts.

Every single one of those hundred is just as bad as she is. In other words, they are all worse than I described at the beginning of this piece. And no doubt those people in turn have people who supported them to be state party chairs and whateveritis they call the other two people from each state and territory who were voting.

It’s time to face up to the fact that the Republican party is effectively owned by the shit-eating RINOs. We’ve got more work to do, a lot more work, to make the GOP an instrument for the restoration of the United States of America. And that’s in addition to cleaning up our elections.

There’s no point in cleaning up elections just to elect ratfucking RINOs.

OK, hopefully now you will have some inkling of my true attitude towards RINOs. Sorry that words were inadequate to give you the full picture.

The Real Fascist is His Fraudulency Joe Biden*

*Or whoever has his hand rammed up that meat puppet’s ass.

Brandon (which I will use as a term for whoever is the power behind the Porcelain Throne) has thrown down the gauntlet…but in a way where most of America will never see it. The networks didn’t carry his tirade. CNN air brushed it (or whatever you call editing the red background) for its five viewers (who aren’t trapped in airports).

Luckily for me I live in Colorado, and therefore, despite my best efforts, I probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump.

Of course, for this purpose who I actually did try to vote for will be essential, and they undoubtedly know.

Come and get us, asswipes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h6ZZ28QtX4

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Small Government?

Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.

This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.

No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.

World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.

So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.

Political Science In Summation

It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).

A Few Things We Cannot Blame on His Fraudulency

I am pretty sure Joe Biden had nothing whatsoever to do with the 30 Years War that ran from 1618-1648 and probably killed about a third of the people then living in what is now Germany.

Nor did he cause the collapse of either Roman empire (Western, 476 CE, Eastern 1453 CE). Nor the ignominious failure of most of the Crusades. Nor the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1200 BCE (including the collapse of the Minoans and the blowup of Santorini).

However, my utter lack of ability to imagine how he could possibly be responsible for these things is not a valid argument against them, so I await correction if appropriate.

His Truth?

Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.

I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.

But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.

Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.

But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

(Paper) Spot Prices

Kitco “Ask” prices. Last week:

Gold $1,993.20
Silver $23.31
Platinum $942.00
Palladium $1,142.00
Rhodium $4,525.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $1,939.70
Silver $22.36
Platinum $853.00
Palladium $990.00
Rhodium $4,600.00

WOW. An absolute hammering. Look at palladium. Down over ten percent in one week. Platinum bleeding too. Rhodium managed to eke out a net gain though lost a lot on Friday. And gold is basically on a yo-yo right now. I was visiting a coin shop and the individual I was working with expressed amazement at how volatile the markets are.

Tread cautiously if you are planning to change your position.

Infinities

No…not this.

And not this either…but it’s a little closer.

I am speaking of the mathematical concept.

There are really two variants. The one usually represented by the “lazy eight” (∞) is the end point of the number line. Which actually has no end point. It can also be thought of as the limit of 1/x, as x gets closer and closer to zero (but never quite gets there–more on that shortly). Or, when a function “increases without bound” ∞ is the symbol for that (non-existent) limit.

It’s commonly thought of as the biggest number. Unfortunately, that makes little sense when one thinks about it. It doesn’t behave like a number. If you add 1 to any number you get a different number (and the prior number clearly wasn’t the largest). Add 1 to infinity…and you get infinity.

The other concept commonly “bucketed” under the term “infinity” is more correctly termed the aleph number. Georg Cantor (1845-1918) first enunciated this concept and, apparently feeling we needed fresh meat for symbols, went to the Hebrew abjad instead of the Greek or Latin alphabets, using the symbol aleph (א).

Aleph numbers have a lot to do with set theory, they count the number of elements in infinite sets. And notice I am using the plural here. There is more than one aleph number.

The “basic” aleph number is aleph nought (or aleph zero, or aleph null), with a zero subscript:

(This is one of those things that over in Wikipoo is an embedded graphic, rather than character data.)

There are many sets of infinite size. For example, the set of all integers is infinite in size. The number of points on a line segment, is infinite in size. The set of all rational numbers (i.e., those numbers that can be expressed as the ratio of two integers)…again, infinite.

But it turns out that not all of these are the same size. Or to make noises like a mathematician, they do not have the same cardinality.

What does it mean for two infinite sets to have the same size?

Let’s consider the set of all whole numbers. 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., ad (ahem) infinitum.

And also the set of all odd whole numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7… and so on.

(One of the perennial arguments in math is whether “natural number” means 1, 2, 3… or 0, 1, 2, 3… I was taught the former but apparently that’s not a standard everyone abides by. Whole number is also ambiguous, but I was taught as seen here, 0, 1, 2, 3… Just to clear up any misunderstandings. If you are pretty sure this isn’t what you were taught…you’re probably right.)

You would think that the second set would somehow be half the size of the first. But no, not really.

The most primitive method of comparing the size of two sets is so simple in concept that it does not involve counting and checking equality. Rather, it’s to pair elements from one set with elements in the other. If you run out of one set before the other, it’s the smaller of the two sets. For example, consider {3, 17, 14} and {a, r, x, p}. Pair 3 with a, 17 with r, 14 with x and p is left over; the first set is smaller than the second.

You can pair the odd numbers with the whole numbers; every whole number, if you multiply it by two and add one to the answer, has a “mate” in the set of odd numbers. Pick any whole number, it has a mate in the other set, and the reverse is true…start with any odd whole number, subtract one, divide by two, and you have one of the whole numbers. In mathematician-speak, they map one-to-one.

So these two sets are considered to have the same cardinality, and that cardinality is called aleph-nought.

It has been shown (but don’t ask me how) that rational numbers (in other words, all fractions you can write with integers) have this same cardinality as well, and so do all algebraic numbers…numbers you can find as roots of polynomials with integer coefficients. This includes numbers like the square root of 2, the golden ratio, etc. but it does not include the transcendental numbers like e and pi.

But all real numbers, including the transcendental numbers, and points in a line segment, have a different cardinality.

Returning to aleph-nought, there’s a common misconception out there: If a set is of infinite size, it contains everything.

This is simply not true. For example the set of all even integers is clearly infinite, it just as clearly doesn’t include everything. It doesn’t include your dog. It doesn’t include your house. But more significantly and less wiseassedly (is that a word? It is now), it doesn’t include odd numbers.

OK, let’s get our feet on the ground.

I talked about infinity being the limit of 1/x as x gets closer and closer to zero…but was careful to specify you can’t set x to precisely zero. This seems like a bit of nitpicking, but there’s a very good reason you cannot divide by zero, and it’s not just to avoid infinity.

It’s fundamentally undefinable. If you can’t define it you can’t do it (not even if you’re Chuck Norris). Consider:

(Any number ) × 0 = 0

(Any number other than zero) × (Any number other than zero) = (some number other than zero).

But there’s no way to multiply a number by zero, and come up with a non-zero answer.

Division is the reverse of multiplication. If a × b = c, you can start with c and divide by b and get a. Or divide by a and get b.

But there’s no way for either a or b or both to be zero, and for c to not be zero. So there’s no reverse of this operation. Let’s say a is zero. Then c must be zero: 0 × b = 0. You can’t have a non-zero number on the right side. Since such a statement would be invalid, re-arranging it with algebra can’t give you anything valid either.

You can, however, legitimately divide by b, and have 0 = 0 / b.

But what if you divide zero by zero? That seems to be legitimate at first, because at least in converting the multiplication to a division, you’re starting out with a possible multiplication, not an impossible one. Take a look: 0 × b = 0 (legit) so b = 0/0 ought to be legit too.

The problem here is that in the original multiplication, b could be literally anything, and you end up with zero. If you try to reverse the process, you literally cannot tell what b ought to be. So 0/0 is considered undefined too.

OK, this turned out to be more “rambly” than I was hoping…and it’s nine minutes to midnight, ET. I’ll just post and hope for the best.

But one last point (which I’m adding shortly after this drops)

In physics, if the math for some theory leads to infinity or has a divide-by-zero in it, it’s called a singularity, and physicists consider that a sign that under those circumstances, we need a new theory, one that will look like the old one most of the time, but doesn’t have the singularity. This is so for black holes (that, it seems, must be of zero size and therefore of infinite density) and also for the time=zero mark under the big bang theory. No credible astrophysicist doubts that black holes exist or that the big bang happened…but these are nagging issues.

But if science had no nagging issues, it wouldn’t be science. We’ll figure these out someday…maybe a huge surprise lurks here. (Quantum mechanics came out of one such old singularity.) And then there will unimagined-by-us nagging issues to replace them.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

Speaker Johnson: A Reminder.

January 6 tapes. I hear you’re working it, but just in case you’re not, you did promise to release them. And surely you don’t want to be as big a shitweasel as KevinMcCrappy.

I have a personal interest in this issue.

Hey Ken Buck You Schmuck

I was so disappointed that I won’t get the chance to vote against you.

Well, no, I wasn’t disappointed at all.

You loser.

Maybe you won’t go to your grave before you figure out what an absolute asswipe you are, pretending to represent the people of Eastern Colorado while wearing one of the biggest RINO horns ever seen.

TABOR in Jeopardy

The one thing that has prevented the full Kalifornication of Colorado has been TABOR. That stand for TAxpayer’s Bill Of Rights, and it’s an amendment to the state constitution that was passed back in 1992. Not only does it forbid any kind of tax hike without a vote of the people, it even forbids governments to keep any surplus revenue if revenue should grow faster than inflation and the population.

In fact, TABOR is written such that if tax revenues are lower than expected because of a recession, that becomes the new baseline–you don’t get to return to previous levels just because. To the best of my knowledge it’s the only system in place, anywhere, where government revenues and spending (inflation adjusted and per capita) ratchet downwards.

COOL!! (Though unfortunately Referendum C in 2005 passed, and it eliminated the ratchet-down.)

Last year, in fact, I received a TABOR refund of $750.

This has done much to throttle the growth of government here. The effort to pass TABOR was spearheaded by a man named Douglas Bruce, who has to be the most hated man in Colorado politics.

Hated, that is, if you are in politics. Even Republicans don’t like him…but that’s because they’re stinking RINOs.

Bruce was careful to not just limit tax rates, but tax revenue, and he was wise to the tricks of government. TABOR mandates certain language be prominent in any referendum or initiative to raise taxes, and others in those that would allow the government to keep surpluses.

However, any amendment that can be passed, can be repealed and there is an amendment on our ballot this election, HH. It would gut TABOR.

Yes this isn’t the emotional gutpunch that the initiative in Ohio is, but if HH passes Colorado is in a lot of trouble in the medium and short term.

We’ll have to see what happens.

This Man is Pissed!

And if you aren’t…what the hell is wrong with you?

Is This Our Anthem?

Or at least our song to march to?

I’m sure most of you know I don’t believe in “devolution” or any variant of “we’re really still in charge” and certainly not the ones that come with “They’re waiting for everyone to wake up.”

No, I don’t think the good guys are in charge. But that makes it even more necessary that people wake up.

This might be the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of our age. (Or perhaps the recent trafficking movie was it. Or maybe both.)

Certainly there seem to be a huge number of people who are finally having the light bulb turning on when they hear this song.

Joining The Herd Of Lemmings

I’ve had cause to consider a few things. Maybe we’re going about it the wrong way, and we need to ditch Trump

Yeah, NO

Trump all the way! Why? Because being hated by the people who hate him is a sign of impeccable character, that’s why.

The haters can go fuck themselves with rusty twelve gauge bore brushes. I’d prefer ten gauge but that’s kind of scarce, so…I’m willing to compromise.

The RINO’s Dilemma

The RINOs who who have burrowed in and taken over most GOP organizations, from the state down to local organizations, have quite a dilemma on their hands, and most of them have their heads too far up their asses to realize it.

OK, I’m not talking about the liberal in a Republican area, who knows they’re in the wrong party, but is there because it’s the only game in their town; they hope to capture a nomination someday, at which point they’re guaranteed to be elected…otherwise, they never will be. These people are a hazard in any heavily conservative area.

No, I’m talking about the guys who are a little bit conservative and want to do some good by going into politics, and they’re in a closely matched area, closely enough that they can join the party they are most aligned with and still have a chance. They think the Democrats…particularly the ones who end up running for office…are nuts.

They don’t think much better of the Deplorable types, either. A bunch of bumpkins whose hearts are in the right place, mostly…OK a bit extreme. But they think Deplorables can’t understand that first you have to get elected, then work within the system to change things…a slow process. They genuinely want many of the things Deplorables want…just not as much. The government is spending too much. Or they need to spend money on highways instead of welfare for illegal immigrants. But they want to work within the system to get these things done.

Or maybe they think things are pretty close to ideal right now, and they want to nail it in place.

The problem is, that means they don’t stand for anything in particular. And it shows. They’re about as unappetizing to the electorate as a puddle of dog vomit. The folks in the middle, who they think they are appealing to because they themselves are not extreme, would honestly prefer a clear-spoken radical to someone who qualifies everything they say to the point where they sound like they don’t believe anything at all.

The problem these “Mild RINOs” have, is they just can’t see that. And the reason they just can’t see that, is their entire sense of self-worth is tied up in not seeing that. In their minds, they’ve worked tirelessly for their party, to keep those crazy Democrats out…only to have to constantly fight with a small number of crazy Republicans–who are only liabilities if they end up as candidates. They’ve fought the good fight, and if they can just find the right candidate, someone with some charisma, they might stop the crazies…without being too beholden to the OTHER crazies. In the meantime it’s not working. What’s a responsible guy in politics to do?

They simply cannot understand that the Republicans can’t succeed as the party of nothing in particular. Not really in the past, and certainly not today when people are starting to realize that no matter what they do in the voting booth, the country is still about to fly off a precipice. If they did see it, they’d suddenly have two choices: Go away and let the GOP succeed, or stay and fight. But “go away” isn’t really an option, because what’s the point of having a party now owned by the crazies, win?

Well, they have a dilemma…and WE, therefore have a problem. And we would have that problem even IF they realized that they had a problem…that they were the problem.

No one ever thinks they are the bad guy. Even Epstein probably thought he was the good guy. Right up to the moment where he didn’t kill himself.

So if you ever wonder why these unappetizing dufuses cling on even when their fingernails are being left behind…that’s why. They don’t understand no one wants them, and can’t imagine that no one should want them. And oftentimes their greatest pride is in all the hard work they’ve done for the party. They’re not going to give that up; it’d be psychological suicide.

If you’ve worked with these people, there’s a good chance you like them and consider some of them your friends. But even if so…we’re going to have to give them a good, hard shove. Because America is more important than those milquetoasts’ egos.

Justice Must Be Done

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot (i.e., paper) Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,006.60
Silver $23.19
Platinum $914.00
Palladium $1,148.00
Rhodium $4,650.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $1,993.20
Silver $23.31
Platinum $942.00
Palladium $1,142.00
Rhodium $4,525.00

Silver and platinum up while gold is down. Seems like perhaps gold spiked a bit hard and other metals are catchingup.

Large Bills: Setting The Record Straight

A few days ago the subject of large denomination paper money came up. And by large, I mean $500 bills and higher, up to $10,000

The assertion was made that we aren’t allowed to own them.

That is almost completely false.

What is actually going on?

Let me tell you where it is actually true. In 1934 (post Roosevelt Gold Theft), the US issued gold certificates in $100, $1000, $10,000, and $100,000. But these were not issued to the general public; rather the Fed used them for internal transfers. THOSE you cannot have.

But other types of large denomination bills were issued, from 1862 until 1969. (Yes, nineteen sixty nine). As it happens the last time any such bills were printed was December 27, 1945 (and they bore a series date of 1928 or 1934); but there was little actual demand for them so over twenty years later, we were still issuing them from that stock.

July 14, 1969 the bills were officially discontinued. The $5000 and $10,000 denominations hadn’t actually seen any use for years before that time.

The government did not demonetize the bills, nor did it confiscate them.

If you happen to have a $500, $1000, $5000, or $10,000 bill, you can keep it, unlike your doctor under Obolacare.

You can even spend it; it’s still legal tender–though that would be a dumbass move. But let’s say you were determined to spend it. The cashier wherever you are might not believe it’s real, but that’s not a legal barrier, that’s a practical one. You can certainly take it to a bank and they’ll give you the nominal number of benjamins for it.

(Far better, though, to take it to a coin shop. Because these bills invariably have collector value. More on that below.)

What happens to the bill at the bank? The bank is under strict orders not to pay that bill out but rather to turn it in to the Fed; the Fed will of course pay for the bill…and then destroy it. This is known as “passive retirement.”

Items like these are expensive enough that there are some hobbyists who like to track them (and having serial numbers makes that easier than with expensive coins). So as of May 30, 2009, there were 336 $10,000 bills out there, and 342 $5,000 bills. (And this includes older series back to the Civil War, so there are multiple varieties included in those numbers. Elon Musk can try to collect them all, if he is so inclined.) Many are in museums. All told, those two denominations are rare.

In many cases a $5,000 or $10,000 note is unique, the only one remaining of that design, or maybe two are known. Or none. And in a couple of cases (the $5K and $10K Legal Tender notes of 1878) they have all been redeemed, so none exist unless the government kept a sample.

$1000 bills are much more common, with 165,372 remaining.

Remember that back in those days, these were a lot of money, and there was simply no pressing need on the part of the man in the street for such bills. Even $1000 was likely more than a month’s pay. Between that and the great likelihood that a bill that size would be counterfeit, so few felt safe in accepting them. So they would be hard to spend, and you’d not want to carry one in your mad money. So these bills mostly got used by banks, for money transfers to other banks.

Binion’s, a casino in Vegas actually had a hundred of the most recent $10,000 bills, arranged in a horseshoe display to suggest luck, from 1966 to 1999. This casino eventually decided to sell the bills, and they did so slowly to avoid glutting the market.

I’ve seen some of those bills, a certain dealer in US paper money had a couple of them at a show I went to recently. I just looked at his web site and he has one of them (this one is not from the Binion hoard, though) for sale for $125,600.00. He has another pair of them, exceptionally well preserved (Gem 65 grade), consecutively numbered, that are from the Binion hoard, for almost a half million dollars but that pair has apparently been in inventory for about ten years. Many other notes are shown, but are marked SOLD (the site doesn’t show the price on those).

That same dealer is apparently fresh out of $500 bills (other than ones with stars in the serial numbers, and those will give you a nosebleed pricewise), but has a $1,000 in high grade for $11,500.

This guy tends to carry high-end examples. A more typical well-circulated $500 note is probably a lot cheaper (but I’d be surprised if they are less than $1000 in today’s market).

So: Yes we are allowed to own them. But you cannot go to the bank to get one, you have to buy it from a collector. You will pay through the nose.

And please, please, never, ever, deposit it at a bank.

Below: Pictures of the other series 1928 bills–the ones you are likeliest to see. The $10,000 appears to be from the Binion hoard.

Spring Forward, Fall Back, Hurl Into The Wastebasket

Yep, it’s that time again. Set your clocks back and stop pretending the day is an hour longer.

I get an extra hour of sleep this weekend. But it will be ducking fark when I leave work to go home.

I know I’ve talked about this before.

Time zones are based on something called “Mean Solar Time.” Midday can be defined as the moment the sun crosses from being somewhere east of south, to somewhere west of south. Or alternatively, you can draw an imaginary line from due south, through the sky to a point directly overhead, then continue on to due north. This line is called the meridian. When the sun crosses it, it’s noon.

So, trick question: How long does it take for the Earth to rotate once?

The correct answer to that depends on your frame of reference. If you are situated way out in space and you’re looking at the distant stars, timing the Earth’s rotation, you’ll get that it rotates once in 23 hours, 56 minutes and about 4.0905 seconds.

Not 24 hours.

This duration is called the sidereal day.

So how is it that we consider a day to last 24 hours? It’s because during the course of that sidereal day, the earth has moved through part of its orbit. As seen from the Earth the sun seems to have moved a bit, so the earth must rotate for almost another four minutes, in order for the sun to be “centered” on that meridian line again.

But there is another complication. The Earth is in an elliptical orbit. Sometimes it’s farther from the sun than at other times. If you were to assume the Earth’s velocity were constant, then when it’s farther away from the Sun, it’s not going to travel as far in its orbit (measured as an angle from the sun). So it will take less time for it to “re-center” the sun. Likewise when close, the sun will appear to move faster and the Earth will have to rotate a bit more than normal to re-center the Sun.

Now the Earth does not move at a constant speed, but that just makes things worse because it moves faster when it is closer to the sun and so this effect is magnified.

The end result is that the average noon-to-noon time is 24 hours, but rarely is a particular noon-to-noon interval exactly 24 hours.

Hence the concept of “Mean Solar Time.” If you imagine a sort of “average sun” that traverses the meridian every 24 hours, the time based on that average sun is “Mean Solar Time.”

And that’s great, if you don’t travel east or west.

The problem is at noon, your Mean Solar Time, someone a quarter of the way round the world (to the east or west) will be at or near sunset (or sunrise) depending on the direction. You can in fact measure this distance in degrees longitude (east or west), and with there being 360 degrees in a circle, and 24 hours in a mean solar day, that means if you travel 15 degrees longitude to the east, the mean solar time is an hour later than it was at your starting point. But even one degree of longitude makes a four minute difference.

[And you can reverse this. If you have a very accurate clock, you can set it to your Mean Solar Time. You can then travel, and then check where the sun is with instruments. It will be off from where your clock says it ought to be. How far off will depend on how far east or west you are. Thus you can use a clock as a navigation instrument. Once we had sufficiently accurate clocks (that wouldn’t be thrown off by a rolling deck), we could determine longitude at sea almost as readily as latitude.]

This didn’t matter all that much when you had to travel by foot, or on horseback. You’d travel to the next town, they’d have the town clock set to their mean solar time, and you’d adjust a little bit, assuming you even had a watch. If not, you wouldn’t notice that noon seemed to be coming a bit early or a bit late, because it would be only a couple of minutes’ difference.

But once railroading began, travel was faster and railroads had to deal with this to make their schedules accurate.

So ultimately, it was deemed more convenient to have a large area set all their clocks to the same thing, even if that wasn’t the mean solar time for everyone. And timezones were born.

There is, for example, a timezone which is based on the mean solar time for Greenwich, England, and that is where the longitude is zero. Our Eastern time zone is based on the mean solar time at 75 degrees west, which is five hours behind Greenwich. Central time? 90 degrees west, 6 hours behind. Mountain time? 105, and 7 hours. All fifteen degree/one hour intervals and who cares about 120?

If your town is somewhere about midway between two of these longitudes, your actual mean solar time is going to be off from what your clocks say by about half an hour, and you can pick whether you want to be half an hour ahead of mean solar time, or behind.

Such locations usually choose to be ahead, giving them a permanent half hour of “daylight saving time.” And in some places like Alaska the boundaries of the time zone are off at least 15 degrees, so they have built-in DST, even in winter.

But now we are saddle with the custom of moving our clocks forward for the summer and back in winter (which means places like Alaska get a double dose of DST during the summer; it’s noon on the clock when the sun would indicate 10 AM or perhaps even earlier.

But people seem to prefer it that way. Look at timezone boundaries. They are almost always east of where they should be.

So as much as I would like to kill DST, it’s never going to happen, and if anything does happen, we’re likely to just go to DST permanently, even if it means waking up and commuting in the ducking fark in the winter (also the coldest time of the day).

Fuck Joe B*d*n

Due to complaints about foul language, I’ve censored the most objectionable word in the title of this section.

B*d*n, you don’t even get ONE scoop of ice cream today.

(Please post this somewhere permanent, as it will continue to be true; the SOB will never deserve a scoop.)

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!