Immigration reform - yet another crony-capitalist, progressive boondoggle

Let's be quite clear what's really at the root of the current push for 'immigration reform'.  There are two reasons.  First, it's a handout to big business, which wants more and cheaper labor.  Second, it's an attempt to create yet another group of reliably liberal/progressive/Democratic Party voters.  There are no other valid reasons for it to be pushed so hard right now.

You want evidence of that?  There's plenty.  Let's start with the Congressional Budget Office's assessment of the so-called 'Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013'.

CBO reports that S. 744 would have only a marginal impact in reducing future illegal immigration. According to CBO, S.744 would reduce the future inflow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. over the next two decades by only 25 percent. CBO estimates that by 2033, 7.5 million new illegal immigrants will have entered the U.S. and taken up residence.

. . .

The CBO estimate is in sharp contrast to the rhetoric of the bill’s sponsors, who have said the bill “contains the toughest border immigration enforcement measures in U.S. history.”

So much for the 'border security' aspect of the proposed legislation.  An attempt was made to mollify those opposing the bill on these grounds by incorporating the so-called 'Hoeven-Corker amendment', but this has turned out to be a 'smoke-and-mirrors' political deception, as Senator Rand Paul has noted.  Furthermore, the amendment incorporates major changes in the proposed legislation, so much so that it's 1,190 pages in length - far too long for Senators to read (let alone understand) it before they'll be asked to vote on it tomorrow.  Remember Nancy Pelosi's infamous words about  Obamacare?  Same old, same old . . .

As for 'economic opportunity', the West Virginia Gazette notes:

The assurances of the bill's proponents that the bill will somehow help the economy obscure copious evidence that the bill will wreak enormous damage to the employment prospects of American workers who have already seen their wages and employment rates plummet over the last several years.

. . .

Not only will the bill grant amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants, it will act as a magnet for future illegal immigration and substantially increase the number of legal immigrants ... The bill is structured so that most of the immigrants will be low-skilled. These immigrants will compete with Americans in the low-skilled labor markets.

. . .

Recent history shows that a grant of legal status to illegal immigrants results in a further influx of illegal immigrants who will crowd out low-skilled workers from the workforce. Contrary to the mythology promoted by some supporters of the bill, this isn't because low-skill Americans -- regardless of race -- are unwilling to work. It's because they're unwilling to work at the cut-rate wages (and often substandard conditions) offered to illegal immigrants -- a cohort highly unlikely to complain to the EEOC, OSHA or the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor. This inexorably increases the number of low-skill Americans depending upon the government for subsistence, swells the ranks of the unemployed and reduces the wages of those that do have a job.

There's more at the link. Worthwhile reading.

Since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, there have been numerous attempts - most of them successful - to liberalize and 'water down' US immigration law.  Many of these attempts have provided amnesties for illegal immigrants.  They include (but are not limited to):

• Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA), 1986: A blanket amnesty for some 2.7 million illegal aliens.
• Section 245(i) Amnesty, 1994: A temporary rolling amnesty for 578,000 illegal aliens.
• Section 245(i) Extension Amnesty, 1997: An extension of the rolling amnesty created in 1994.
• Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) Amnesty, 1997: An amnesty for close to one million illegal aliens from Central America.
• Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty (HRIFA), 1998: An amnesty for 125,000 illegal aliens from Haiti.
• Late Amnesty, 2000: An amnesty for some illegal aliens who claim they should have been amnestied under the 1986 IRCA amnesty, an estimated 400,000 illegal aliens.
• LIFE Act Amnesty, 2000: A reinstatement of the rolling Section 245(i) amnesty, an estimated 900,000 illegal aliens.

Again, more at the link.  During the same period, enforcement of penalties under the law against illegal immigrants has progressively declined.  Indeed, it appears the Obama administration is determined not to act against or deport illegal immigrants unless forced to do so.  In response, in April this year a judge ruled that the Administration is violating US law by ignoring it.  This ruling, too, appears to have been willfully ignored and/or disregarded by the Administration.

Some Republicans argue that unless they embrace immigration reform, their party will continue to lose at the polls.  Ann Coulter puts her finger on the fallacy in this argument.

... the Hispanic vote terrifying Republicans isn't that big. It actually declined in 2012. The Census Bureau finally released the real voter turnout numbers from the last election, and the Hispanic vote came in at only 8.4 percent of the electorate -- not the 10 percent claimed by the pro-amnesty crowd.

. . .

In raw numbers, nearly twice as many blacks voted as Hispanics, and nine times as many whites voted as Hispanics. (Ninety-eight million whites, 18 million blacks and 11 million Hispanics.)

So, naturally, the Republican Party's entire battle plan going forward is to win slightly more votes from 8.4 percent of the electorate by giving them something they don't want.

. . .

Who convinced Republicans that Hispanic wages aren't low enough and what they really need is an influx of low-wage workers competing for their jobs?

. . .

Big Republican donors -- and their campaign consultants -- just want to make money. They don't care about Hispanics, and they certainly don't care what happens to the country. If the country is hurt, I don't care, as long as I am doing better! This is the very definition of treason.

Hispanic voters are a small portion of the electorate. They don't want amnesty, and they're hopeless Democrats. So Republicans have decided the path to victory is to flood the country with lots more of them!

It's as if Republicans convinced Democrats to fixate on banning birth control to win more pro-life voters. This would be great for Republicans because Democrats will never win a majority of pro-life voters, and about as many pro-lifers care about birth control as Hispanics care about amnesty.

. . .

Listening to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus burble a few weeks ago on "Fox News Sunday" about how amnesty is going to push the Republicans to new electoral heights, one is reminded of Democratic pollster Pat Caddell's reason for refusing to become a Republican: No matter how enraged he gets at Democratic corruption, he says he can't bear to join such a stupid party as the GOP.

Quite so!

I'm an immigrant - a legal one.  I came here on a work visa, and upgraded it (at my own expense, not my employer's) to legal permanent resident status on the way to eventual citizenship.  I had to jump through all the legal, administrative and bureaucratic hoops, get medically examined on more than one occasion to be sure I wasn't carrying any strange disease that might threaten Americans' health, and get a security background check.  I also had to pay out a lot of money for the privilege of legally living here.  Why would I support amnesty for those who've done none of those things, and who are, by definition, already criminals, thanks to their illegal presence here?  What does that current reality say about the likelihood of their future presence among us being law-abiding?

I hope and pray this legislation will be defeated, hopefully in the Senate, but if not there, in the House.  If it passes, I predict it'll produce a demographic disaster in the long run.





Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Sarah Hoyt (also an immigrant) offers her own perspective on the immigration amnesty.  It's well worth reading.

Doofus Of The Day #710

Today's award goes to the director of a Nike commercial starring Tiger Woods.  You don't give instructions like that to someone like him!

The incident dates from 2006, but I only just came across the footage.  Still, better late than never!



Peter

Greedy governments . . . and a potential cure?

Janet Daley writes in the Telegraph about the rise of greedy governments.

David Cameron said something last week that was the precise opposite of the truth – by which I do not mean, obviously, that he told a deliberate falsehood. What he did was simply relay the perversely inverted logic that has become conventional wisdom. What the Prime Minister said was: “If you want a low-tax economy, you have to collect the taxes that are owed.” When what he should have said, of course, was: “If you want to collect the taxes that are owed, you have to have a low-tax economy.”

. . .

If people regard levels of tax as fair (in the true sense of the word, not the Left-wing sense, which actually means “vindictive”), they will not go to expensive and dangerous lengths to escape from paying. The more punitive and discouraging of wealth-creation taxes are, the more they are avoided by stealth or geographical relocation – or by the even more economically disastrous measure of people being disinclined to increase their own productivity. Ah yes, but isn’t this the problem that those heads of government are determined to address? Rather than lowering taxes to levels that those who are taxed find acceptable, they will simply close off all the avenues of escape. There is to be no more possibility, by international agreement (which is to say, the coercion of smaller, less rich countries), of geographical movement for tax advantage. It will not be acceptable any longer for large corporations, or even private individuals whose profits or income are global, to lodge themselves in places that charge low business or personal taxes. These wicked places, known as “tax havens”, are the criminal “fences” of the international financial world: accepting, and sometimes agreeing to hide, the wealth that rightly belongs to other governments.

. . .

What is at the heart of all this is the growth of governments: the treasuries of the world are becoming needier and greedier. And the most powerful countries are going to see to it that no little upstart island or remote corner of the earth can sit on a penny that they might decide is rightfully theirs – even if it resides in those outlying places perfectly legally. We are approaching a defining moment in the relationship between private property and the democratic state. Underlying almost all political debate on this matter now is the unspoken assumption that privately owned wealth is inherently evil, and that its only moral justification is to provide revenue that governments can redistribute.

. . .

To speak of rich individuals or corporations contributing their fair share to the cost of government services sounds reasonable enough but it raises the question of how much government should be spending . . .

There's more at the link.

Heaven knows, we've got more than our fair share of government greed in this country.  Sarah Palin came up with one potential solution to it that I really like.

On Saturday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said that the IRS–and much of the federal bureaucracy–needs to be abolished ... suggesting that it would undercut much of the cronyism rampant in Washington.

She said the tax code needs to be simplified with the adoption of a flat tax. "That way we can abolish the bureaucracy that is so burdensome and expensive, and it would allow some sledgehammering of the crony capitalism and the corruption within [government]," Palin said.

Again, more at the link.

I wish Ms. Palin would run for the forthcoming Senate elections in Alaska.  I think she'd have every prospect of winning, and we could use her brand of upstart politics in the Senate to upset all the stuffed shirts there!

Peter

Slices of ammo?

Photographer Sabine Pearlman has taken a series of images of 900 rounds of sectioned ammunition in a bunker in Switzerland.

I presume the rounds were sectioned by Swiss armament technicians, investigating their construction and components.

She writes:  "I was originally intrigued by the ambiguous nature of the subject matter.  The cross-sections reveal a hidden complexity and beauty of form, which stands in vast contrast to the destructive purpose of the object.  It's a representation of the evil and the beautiful, a reflection of the human condition."

There are more images at the link, and at Ms. Pearlman's Web site.  Interesting viewing.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  An interesting technical detail is that these pictures illustrate the difference between Berdan priming (used in most non-US military ammunition, and illustrated in the top picture above) and Boxer priming (illustrated in the bottom two pictures).  Note the different primer anvil and flash hole configurations.

Hello, vertigo . . .

Dassault mounted fore- and aft-facing cameras in their Rafale strike fighter jet for its display flight at the Paris Air Show last week.  The resulting footage gives a very different perspective on the usual airshow antics of such high-performance aircraft.  Embedding is disabled, but you can watch the video here.

I don't know how many g's he was pulling, but that's certainly vertigo-inducing to a novice like me!

Peter

Vietnam - gunfire in the night

In April 1970 James Hensinger took a series of photographs showing US troops engaging snipers on a hillside near Phu Tai in Vietnam at night.  He took them with a Nikon camera, resting it on the sandbags around his guard tower and using time-exposures, triggering the shutter with a cable release.  He sent the unprocessed film home, and didn't know what he'd managed to capture until he got home after his tour of duty and developed it.

The Guardian has now published a series of his photographs.  They're remarkably clear, lit by the gunfire and flames of the engagement.  Here's the first, to whet your appetite.  I've reduced it in size to fit this blog.

There are more images at the link.  Recommended viewing.

By the way, what's the tank in the foreground of that picture?  I presume it's an M48 Patton, because only bridge and engineer versions of the later M60 were deployed to Vietnam.  Can anyone confirm?  You'll probably have to consult the larger versions of his pictures at the link to be sure.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Thanks to commenter Lance R. Peak for pointing out that there are larger versions of these pictures, and a couple of additional images, at the Daily Mail.  The Mail identifies the tank as an M42 Duster, fitted with twin 40mm. Bofors cannon.

Upward mobility and the Nanny State

George Will has penned a remarkable opinion piece in the Washington Post, in which he postulates (in so many words) that the diminishing opportunities for upward mobility in US society are also diminishing the possibilities for limited government.  In other words, the less potential for upward mobility in society, the greater the demands for 'Big Brother' to redistribute rewards downwards in society.  Here are a few excerpts.

...expanding equality of opportunity increases inequality because some people are simply better able than others to exploit opportunities.

. . .

Lindsey cited research showing that “by the time they reach age 3, children of professional parents have heard some 45 million words addressed to them — as opposed to only 26 million words for working-class kids, and a mere 13 million words in the case of kids on welfare.” So, class distinctions in vocabularies are already large among toddlers. Parental choice of neighborhoods and schools mean that children of college-educated parents hang out together. Such peer associations may have as much effect on a child’s development as do parents. These factors, Lindsey said, explain why “people raised in the upper middle class are far more likely to stay there than move down, while people raised in the working class are far more likely to stay there than move up.”

. . .

Today, the dominant distinction defining socioeconomic class is between those with and without college degrees ... Soon the crucial distinction will be between those with meaningful college degrees and those with worthless ones.

. . .

“Most American kids,” Lindsey concluded, “are now raised in an environment that is arguably less favorable for developing human capital than that in which their parents were raised.” America’s limited-government project is at risk because the nation’s foundational faith in individualism cannot survive unless upward mobility is a fact.

There's more at the link.

I think George Will has struck gold here.  I highly recommend reading his column very carefully, and more than once.  There's a lot hidden between the lines . . . and it's bound to make those of conservative and/or libertarian persuasions very unhappy indeed.

Peter

NeverWet is here at last!

Back in November 2011 I reported on a new hydrophobic treatment called NeverWet, designed to not just waterproof anything, but make it actually repel water and moisture.  It's about to hit the market at last.  Here's a promotional video.  (No, they're not paying me to post it - I just think this is a darned good idea!)

I particularly liked the cardboard box beer cooler.  I'm going to be standing in line to buy this stuff.  If it works as well as advertised, it'll be a smash hit!

Peter

In praise of Ka-Bar knives

I've used blades in the military and as a civilian in Africa for many years.  Since coming to this country I've not needed to use them as hard or treat them as badly as I did in Africa, but a good blade still forms part of my everyday carry gear.  One that I learned to respect was the US Marine Corps fighting knife known universally as the Ka-Bar.  I saw my first one in 1976, in the South African armed forces, in the hands of a former US Marine who'd come to that country after serving in Vietnam because he couldn't settle down in what he called the 'peacenik' USA, and wanted to go on 'killing Commies'.  (He had plenty of opportunities open to him.)

I was intrigued to come across this promotional video for the company, describing its origins and its most famous product.  Yes, it's basically an advertisement for them, but their blades are iconic to American fighting men, so I don't mind giving them a bit of free blog airtime.

I'm glad to see they're keeping the old traditions alive.  The USMC somehow wouldn't be the same without the Ka-Bar fighting knife.  (Yes, I own one myself.  Why do you ask?)

Peter

Misogyny in the US Armed Forces

There have been far too many reported incidents of misogyny, discrimination and outright abuse of women in the US armed forces.  The most recent, reported yesterday, involves three midshipmen at the US Naval Academy.

In that light, I can only urge the top brass to follow the example of Lieutenant-General David Morrison, Chief of the Australian Army.  He pulled no punches in a recent televised message to everyone under his command.  As Salon reported:

In a video released Wednesday, a clenched-jawed, simmeringly furious Morrison says, “Those who think that it is OK to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have NO place in this army … Female soldiers and officers have proven themselves worthy of the best traditions of the Australian army … If that does not suit you, then get out … The same goes for those who think that toughness is built on humiliating others … The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” Holeeee. Efffing. Crap. It’s brilliant.

The words are powerful. But the utterly credible fury is what nails it. It is a validation of the frustration and anger a whole lot of people who have been on the receiving end of that “toughness” have been enduring for a very long time. And it says, yeah, you’re right. This is goddamn outrageous.

. . .

In the U.S. and Australia and around the world, the plague of abuse needs to be openly addressed and firmly dealt with. And in a culture of rampant aggression, it needs more leaders like Morrison, who are willing to express their contempt for offenders. Leaders who are willing to demand, of “every one of you,” to “Show moral courage and take a stand.”

There's more at the link.  I don't usually agree with Salon's point of view, but I'll gladly make an exception for this article.  Recommended reading.

Here's General Morrison's address.  It's worth your time to listen to it in full.

OK, US military leaders - how about following his example?

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #709

Today's award goes to a bakery worker in Zionsville, Indiana.

A Zionsville mom wanted a local bakery to draw a graduation cap on the picture of her daughter on the cake, but the worker taking the order heard something different.

. . .

When Gambrel picked up the cake for her Indiana University graduate daughter Laura, instead of a mortarboard style cap, they had iced in a cat.

Gambrel says the Marsh bakery offered to fix the mistake, and even gave her a plastic cap to cover the cat. It turns out everyone liked the cat picture better anyway.

There's more at the link.

I bet she - and her family - will remember that graduation cake for the rest of their lives!





Peter

Of mice and Star Wars

I'm sure most readers have heard that Disney acquired Lucasfilm last year, and plans to make a sequel trilogy of 'Star Wars' films.  One of my readers sent me this cartoon today, which made me laugh out loud.

I don't know who drew it, or where it was first published;  but I thoroughly enjoyed it!



Peter

A hair-raising invention?

I'm hugely amused at the brouhaha over 'hairy stockings'.  They were first revealed by a Chinese Web site, and have attracted horrified, sardonic and sarcastic comment all over the world.

I particularly enjoyed the Telegraph's perspective.  Here's an excerpt.

Perhaps their primary function is to put off the more unenlightened members of the male sex, who will be so repulsed by the sight of a nubile young girl with gorilla pins that they will forget to assault her, but maybe the truth is more subtle than that.

In fact what will happen is that all those nice, feminist men who pride themselves on being above their own cultural conditioning will be buying the drinks, and the old misogynists will leave the ladies alone – the successful suitors will be a pleasantly self-selecting group of males who are intellectual, lentil-eating, gentle and good at listening. The sex will be awful, of course, but it will be ever so respectful.

. . .

Let’s just admit what we are – great apes in cotton dresses – and live accordingly. It would all be so much more relaxing, and perhaps without the attendant neuroses and maintenance that we ladies have to endure for the summer months, men and women would get along much better – if you are covered in hair, you have nothing to hide.

The more I think about it, the more I think these hairy stockings could solve a lot of problems. Relationships will be more honest; flirtation truer to our animal instincts; al fresco sex will be … warmer. My only question is, where can I get a whole bodysuit?

There's more at the link.

On the other hand, they're sure to amuse Miss D.  She informs me that in Alaska, many women don't bother to shave their legs, because the weather is seldom warm enough to warrant wearing anything other than trousers, sometimes complete with long underwear.  She refers to such women as having "Skin like porcelain, legs like Chewbacca" . . . but I'm delighted to report that description doesn't apply to her!





Peter

Mercury as you've never seen it before!

The MESSENGER mission to Mercury has released this fascinating false-color image of the planet.  I've reduced it in size to fit here, but the full-size image makes great wallpaper for your computer screen (I'm using it for that purpose right now).

The mission's Web site reports:

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER's primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.

Young crater rays, extending radially from fresh impact craters, appear light blue or white. Medium- and dark-blue areas are a geologic unit of Mercury's crust known as the "low-reflectance material", thought to be rich in a dark, opaque mineral. Tan areas are plains formed by eruption of highly fluid lavas. The giant Caloris basin is the large circular tan feature located just to the upper right of center of the image.

There's more at the link.  The other side of the planet may be seen here, or there's this brief YouTube video animating the planet as a whole.  Try it in full-screen mode for a very impressive view.

Ain't science fun?

Peter

The frustrations of book setup . . .

If any of you are thinking of publishing a book in print format, be aware that instructions from companies like CreateSpace aren't always what they seem, and you may need to read between the lines to understand them.

Oleg's done a great job of producing a print cover for my first novel.  Last night Miss D. and I sat with him as he fitted it into CreateSpace's cover template, and made sure that everything was working as required.  Unfortunately, when I uploaded the cover, CreateSpace e-mailed back to say that it wasn't correct.  They want text and important images to be inside a 0.5" margin from the edge;  but we'd used a 0.5" margin from the outside edge of the paper, including the 'bleed zone' where trimming might take place.  They wanted a 0.5" margin inside the bleed zone, to allow for any over-trimming and make sure that everything remained readable.  That wasn't clear from their instructions.

I've just had to ask Oleg to put in even more work to modify the cover image, which really scrolls my nurkle.  He's worked hard on this at the expense of his own projects, and I hate to put him to any extra trouble.  Fortunately, he's a great guy to work with, and agreed to fix things at once - thanks, Oleg!

So, if any of you are planning a book project like this, bear in mind that there'll be a learning curve involved, and some of the instructions may be less clear than they seem . . .





Peter

Of whistleblowers and bullies

In the light of the fuss and bother over the NSA eavesdropping scandal, and the role of whistleblower Edward Snowden in its exposure, I found it instructive to read about the experience of State Department whistleblower Aurelia Fedenisn.  Here's an excerpt.

Fedenisn's life changed dramatically last Monday after she handed over documents and statements to CBS News alleging that senior State Department officials "influenced, manipulated, or simply called off" several investigations into misconduct. The suppression of investigations was noted in an early draft of an Inspector General report, but softened in the final version.

. . .

After the CBS News made inquiries to the State Department about the charges, Schulman says investigators from the State Department's Inspector General promptly arrived at Fedenisn's door. "They talked to both kids and never identified themselves," he said. "First the older brother and then younger daughter, a minor, asking for their mom's place of work and cell phone number ... They camped out for four to five hours."

Schulman says the purpose of the visit was to get Fedenisn to sign a document admitting that she stole State Department materials, such as the memos leaked to CBS. Schulman says it was crucial that she didn't sign the document because her separation agreement with the State Department includes a provision allowing disclosures of misconduct. Furthermore, none of the materials were classified.

There's more at the link.  Bold underlined text is my emphasis.

Here's the bottom line.  If any individual or organization makes threats and tries heavy-handed intimidation instead of handing over the entire affair to law enforcement right from the start, they know their case is weak and/or unsustainable.  They're trying to achieve by intimidation what they think they won't be able to achieve by due process of law.  Therefore . . . tell 'em to take a running poke at a rolling donut.

Peter

Endearing images

Oleg sent me a link to a series of photographs of a Japanese grandmother, Misao, and her adopted cat, Fukumaru.  They're part of a series (recently published in book form) by her granddaughter Miyoko Ihara.  I found them both cute and charming.  Here are a few examples, reduced in size to fit this blog

There are more (and larger) images at the link, and many more in the book.  Endearing viewing.  I think I'm going to have to add that book to my library.

Peter

Rube Goldberg meets the pinball machine!

I've never played with K'nex construction toys - they came on the market long after my youth - but I'm astonished to find this fully operational pinball machine constructed entirely of the little connectors.

Apparently it took almost four months to build.  Talk about dedication!  I think Rube Goldberg would have been proud of the builders.  All it needs is a bit of brass and steam, and it'd be steampunk!





Peter

Book plans - an update

As most of you probably know, I've been working on a print edition of 'Take The Star Road'.  It was delayed for a few days by computer problems, but I hope to receive the proof copy of the book from CreateSpace by the end of this week.  If it's acceptable, it'll be released for sale next week.

Book 2 of the Maxwell Saga, 'Ride The Rising Tide', is still on track for release in mid-July.  The print edition may be delayed a week or two, but the e-book should be out on July 15th.  I hope to release both of them simultaneously, if I can get all my ducks in a row by then.  Unfortunately, when one's doing everything oneself - writing, editing, changing, formatting, cover image selection, working with Oleg to finalize the cover, go through Amazon's Kindle and CreateSpace procedures to upload everything and prepare the final editions, and all that - it's pretty time-consuming.  I'll do my best.

Probably in mid-September, I'll be releasing a non-fiction book about my experience of prison chaplaincy.  I wrote it some years ago, and left it on the back burner until I felt confident enough in my writing to upgrade it and release it for publication.  The time has now come, I think, so I'm busy revising it.  Very few people today understand what really goes on behind the walls of a high-security penitentiary.  They get their information from Hollywood (The Longest Yard, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) or television (Oz, Prison Break), none of which are particularly authentic or realistic.  I think there's room for an accurate, unvarnished, factual presentation of life behind bars, and what it means to try to help those who find themselves incarcerated there.  I'm going to do my best to provide it.

While all these other projects are on the go, I'm trying to devote time to Book 3 of the Maxwell Saga, which is so far unnamed.  I hope to have it ready for publication by November 15th, but that may slip into early December, with everything else I've got on my plate.

So, if all goes well and I don't collapse, by Christmas I hope to have three novels and a non-fiction memoir available for sale.  I hope you enjoy them!

Peter

Watch China's economy very carefully

In recent days I've highlighted warning signs coming from Japan and Europe.  It looks like they're present in China as well.  The Telegraph reports:

China's shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned.

The agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying tougher times ahead.

"The credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style deflation," said Charlene Chu, the agency's senior director in Beijing.

"There is no transparency in the shadow banking system, and systemic risk is rising. We have no idea who the borrowers are, who the lenders are, and what the quality of assets is, and this undermines signalling," she told The Daily Telegraph.

While the non-performing loan rate of the banks may look benign at just 1pc, this has become irrelevant as trusts, wealth-management funds, offshore vehicles and other forms of irregular lending make up over half of all new credit. "It means nothing if you can off-load any bad asset you want. A lot of the banking exposure to property is not booked as property," she said.

. . .

Fitch warned that wealth products worth $2 trillion of lending are in reality a "hidden second balance sheet" for banks, allowing them to circumvent loan curbs and dodge efforts by regulators to halt the excesses.

This niche is the epicentre of risk.

. . .

Overall credit has jumped from $9 trillion to $23 trillion since the Lehman crisis. "They have replicated the entire US commercial banking system in five years," she said.

The ratio of credit to GDP has jumped by 75 percentage points to 200pc of GDP, compared to roughly 40 points in the US over five years leading up to the subprime bubble, or in Japan before the Nikkei bubble burst in 1990. "This is beyond anything we have ever seen before in a large economy. We don't know how this will play out. The next six months will be crucial," she said.

. . .

Wei Yao from Societe Generale says the debt service ratio of Chinese companies has reached 30pc of GDP – the typical threshold for financial crises -- and many will not be able to pay interest or repay principal. She warned that the country could be on the verge of a "Minsky Moment", when the debt pyramid collapses under its own weight.

There's more at the link.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

That's precisely the problem.  In Japan, China and Europe - and, as we saw last week, here in the USA as well - we're dealing with numbers the like of which have never before been seen in human history.  The headline to that Telegraph article claimed that China's indebtedness was 'unprecedented in modern world history'.  It sure is!  Global indebtedness and worldwide financial shell games are so over-extended that no-one knows for sure what's going to happen next.  However, I'd hazard a guess that when the financial pigeons come home to roost, we're all going to find out . . . and it's looking more and more likely that they're on their way right now, or will be very soon.

Peter

Mad dogs and Englishmen - with pulse jets!

I'm sure many readers have read about the German V-1 flying bomb, the so-called 'doodle-bug' pilotless bomb of World War II.

It was powered by a pulse jet engine, with its distinctive on-off pulsation sound.  It was so successful that the USA copied it, producing the JB-2 Loon.  (You can see a 1945 film report about the latter here.)

Now an English inventor has built a pulse jet engine from scratch, and tested it in various ways - including powering a bicycle!  I wasn't sure whether to title this post as I did, or make it one of my 'Doofus Of The Day' series due to his suicidal courage in actually riding the thing!  Decide for yourself.  Here are four videos, covering respectively the making of, initial testing of, further testing of, and bicycle version of the pulse jet.

The inventor, Colin Furze, has his own Web site where you can read more about his projects. "Mad dogs and Englishmen", indeed!

Peter

A searing indictment of economists

In his latest newsletter, John Mauldin pulls no punches about economists and their failures.  Here are a few excerpts.

If you've suspected all along that economists are useless at the job of forecasting, you would be right. Dozens of studies show that economists are completely incapable of forecasting recessions. But forget forecasting. What's worse is that they fail miserably even at understanding where the economy is today. In one of the broadest studies of whether economists can predict recessions and financial crises, Prakash Loungani of the International Monetary Fund wrote very starkly, "The record of failure to predict recessions is virtually unblemished." He found this to be true not only for official organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, and government agencies but for private forecasters as well. They're all terrible. Loungani concluded that the "inability to predict recessions is a ubiquitous feature of growth forecasts." Most economists were not even able to recognize recessions once they had already started.

In plain English, economists don't have a clue about the future.

If you think the Fed or government agencies know what is going on with the economy, you're mistaken. Government economists are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Their mistakes and failures are so spectacular you couldn't make them up if you tried. Yet now, in a post-crisis world, we trust the same people to know where the economy is, where it is going, and how to manage monetary policy.

Central banks say they will know the right time to end the current policies of quantitative easing and financial repression and when to shrink the bloated monetary base. However, given their record at forecasting, how will they know? The Federal Reserve not only failed to predict the recessions of 1990, 2001, and 2007, it also didn't even recognize them after they had already begun. Financial crises frequently happen because central banks cut interest rates too late and hike rates too soon.

Trusting central bankers now is a big bet that (1) they'll know what to do, (2) they'll know when to do it. Sadly, given the track record, that is not a good wager. Unfortunately, the problem is not that economists are simply bad at what they do; it's that they're really, really bad.

. . .

Why do people listen to economists anymore? Scott Armstrong, an expert on forecasting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has developed a "seer-sucker" theory: "No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, suckers will pay for the existence of seers." Even if experts fail repeatedly in their predictions, most people prefer to have seers, prophets, and gurus tell them something – anything at all – about the future.

There's more at the link.  (Click the 'Download' button to read the entire article in Adobe Acrobat - i.e. .PDF - format.)

I regard economists in the same light as I do climate change alarmists.  Both disciplines work with models that attempt to predict developments in their respective field.  Unfortunately, in both cases, their models usually can't even duplicate past observations correctly, where outcomes have been measured and are known with certainty.  If they can't reproduce the past accurately, why should we believe the models' predictions about the future?

The only economists and financial commentators I trust are those who have, in the past, correctly - and preferably repeatedly - forecast economic developments that have, in fact, occurred.  That's a fairly short list.  They may be wrong in future, but at least their track record suggests they're likely to be less wrong than others in their profession!

Peter

Some amazing maneuvers

The video clip below shows one of the Russian Sukhoi PAK-FA stealth fighter prototypes executing some pretty amazing maneuvers during testing.  We don't have details of the relative speed and direction of the PAK-FA and the chase aircraft from which the maneuvers were filmed, but even without that background information, the sequence is pretty impressive.

According to Flight Global's DEW Line blog, the Russian commentary appears to suggest that the flight control systems are automated to the point they can land the aircraft safely if the pilot becomes disabled.  If so, that'll be an aviation 'first', as far as I'm aware.  If any readers are fluent in Russian, would you please let us know in Comments whether the announcer or newsreader makes that claim, and if possible provide more details?

Peter

Safely home

Miss D. and I got home late this afternoon, safe and happy after a relaxing couple of days with friends up north.  Both of us feel much better for it!  We'll have to do it again soon.

Thanks to all of you for your patience while we were gone.  Normal blog service will resume now.

Peter

Friends, food and fires

Miss D. and I are having a very pleasant and relaxing break in Brigid's company.  We went out yesterday morning to do a little shopping, visiting a dairy farm and creamery (yes, we loaded up with good things to take home with us), then went on to a brew pub for a delicious lunch.  On the way home we noticed a plume of heavy black smoke in the sky, which turned out to be one of the nastier fires of recent years.

Later that afternoon we met up with Tam and Bobby at another brew pub, then came home to a tasty Brigid-cooked supper.  Later in the evening Zercool showed up (with dog) on his way from New York state to Missouri, where he and his wife will be settling.  It was great to meet him in the flesh after several years of corresponding online.  (Barkley was delighted to meet his dog, as well!)

This morning we'll have a leisurely breakfast, then raid a local bookstore before packing up and heading homewards.  It's been an all-too-brief break, but a very welcome one.  I'll try to put up another blog post tonight, once we're home.  Keep us in your prayers for traveling mercies.

Peter

Old memories revived

An article in the Telegraph discusses the ongoing grinding poverty in Alexandra township, part of the Johannesburg metropolitan area in Gauteng province, South Africa.  Here's an excerpt.

Electricity has arrived in the corner of Alexandra township where Nelson Mandela came to live in 1941 - but that is the one and only physical improvement of the last 72 years.

The tiny redbrick house, which served as Mr Mandela's first home in Johannesburg, stands locked and empty, but otherwise unchanged since he rented its single room as a penniless 23-year-old.

All around the former president's old front door live ordinary South Africans who would have been his neighbours in that era. "Alexandra occupies a treasured place in my heart," he wrote in his memoirs. "Its atmosphere was alive, its spirit adventurous, its people resourceful."

Mr Mandela now lies in intensive care in a hospital 30 miles away. He rose from Alexandra to the presidency of South Africa, but the resourceful people he left behind still endure much the same privation and squalor.

They cheered Mr Mandela's release from prison in 1990, voted for him in the first free election four years later and celebrated his accession to power. Today, they will pray for his recovery as he endures his eighth day in hospital as a stricken 94-year-old.

Yet as Mr Mandela's life reaches the final pages of its last chapter, they also point out that Alexandra is just as troubled and as poverty-stricken as when he lived here.

At that time, Alexandra had no electricity and its squalid streets were popularly known as "Dark City". Today, the lights are on – but that change began under the apartheid regime in the 1980s.

Since Mr Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to power in 1994, there has, quite simply, been no improvement whatever in physical living conditions in the area near his old home.

There's more at the link.  You can read an extensive and very interesting article about Alexandra's history here.  I recommend it.

I entered Alexandra more than once during the 1980's, when ethnic, tribal and interracial violence was endemic in South Africa (enduring from the 1976 Soweto riots until the end of apartheid with advent of democratic rule in 1994).  It was the scene of some appallingly violent encounters between Government forces and resistance groups, and between different Black organizations competing for power and influence.  Add to that one of the most flourishing criminal environments in the whole country, and you had a recipe for urban disaster.  That's precisely what it produced during those evil years.

I recall one incident in particular.  A particularly nasty and vicious criminal had been shot and wounded by police, and was taken to the Alexandra Clinic for treatment.  (It's a well-known private charity institution that continues its work to this day.)  This man was notorious for having very seldom been convicted of his crimes, because witnesses mysteriously vanished or 'lost their memory' when the time came to testify in court.  Those (few) who gave evidence often ended up dead, or 'disappeared', which 'reminded others to forget' when necessary.

A policeman of my acquaintance knew that this criminal would probably get off scot-free, yet again, on the charges facing him.  He was determined not to let that happen;  so he went to see one of the senior nurses at the clinic, a Black lady from a tribe that was notoriously prone to violence.  He informed her simply, "Nurse, the man who raped your daughter three years ago is in bed number so-and-so.  We'll be along to arrest him in the morning."

When the police arrived the following morning, what they arrested might, charitably, have been described as human . . . but it was no longer capable of rape, or any other crime, or even of a pain-free thought.  It was an object lesson in the simple, brutal tribal justice of Africa.  Evil, you say?  Uncivilized?  Illegal?  Yes to all . . . but the same 'remedy' to extreme crime continues to this day in many parts of Africa.  That's just the way it is.  Life is cheap there, and 'civilized' standards are somewhat less than skin-deep.  (I'm not all that sure about those standards in the First World, come to think of it!)

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #708

Today's award goes to the official censors in China.  The Telegraph reports:

Following the recent California summit between Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping, Chinese micro-bloggers picked up on an uncanny resemblance between a photograph of the two presidents strolling through the Sunnylands estate and a cartoon image of A. A. Milne’s cartoon creations.

The two images were published side by side this week on the Twitter-like Chinese social media site Weibo.

But the posts were almost immediately “harmonized”, as censors appeared to take exception to the comparison between their president and a podgy bear who once roamed Sussex’s Ashdown Forest.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said over-zealous censors had “nipped in the bud what could have been a positive PR campaign tailor-made for President Xi Jinping.”

Earlier this month, authorities targeted a photo-shopped image ... of the famous Tiananmen Square photograph in which a lone protester faces down a line of tanks.

The image - in which the tanks were replaced with giant rubber ducks - irritated authorities enough that not only did they remove the picture itself, they also blocked all internet searches related to the squeaky bath toys.

There's more at the link.

When Big Brother proves to have no sense of humor at all, he makes himself into a figure of fun without needing anyone else's help!



Peter

Arrived safely

Made it safely through the traffic to Brigid's place.  Miss D. and I detoured to the meadery on the way here, and arrived with eight growlers of mead in four different flavors, which was (as always) well received.  I can see we'll have to stock up again on our way home!  They have a new 'seasonal special' mead made with strawberries and rhubarb . . . ambrosial!

Brigid tempted enticed forced us to partake of a delicious Thai meal for supper last night, and we came home via her favorite frozen yoghurt store, so to say we went to bed overstuffed is something of an understatement!  Barkley had his own carton of sugar-free yoghurt to keep him happy . . . strange, I've never seen a dog not only lick the container clean, but then try to eat it as well!  Clearly, frozen yoghurt and enthusiastic Labrador retrievers were made for each other.

As always, my fused spine has woken me after only a few hours of sleep, so I've made a cup of tea and I'm writing this to give y'all something to read.  I'll try to put up another post or two, then see about another hour or two of sleep before the others wake up.

Peter

He needs to buy a lottery ticket - NOW!

I'm amazed at the reported survival of a Nigerian cook for two days underwater after his ship sank.  Via Yahoo! News, Reuters reports:

After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.

Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.

Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a remaining crew member has not been found.

Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him.

. . .

Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of someone swimming along the passageway past the room.

"I went into the water and tapped him. I was waving my hands and he was shocked," Okene said, his relief still visible.

There's more at the link.  That man's the living definition of 'lucky'!

I can't help but grin at the thought of the shock the diver must have experienced when someone touched him in the blackness of the wreck.  Two days after the sinking, he must surely have assumed that everyone still aboard was dead.  Could that be described as a 'brown-wetsuit' moment?





Peter

On the road again

I've been getting very tired lately.  Getting my first novel out the door, and frantically rushing to complete the final edit on the second (due out in about five weeks), have seriously exhausted me.  I've found myself perilously close to burnout this week;  so I'm going to do something about it.

Miss D. and I are heading out tomorrow morning, en route to spend a couple of days with Brigid, Barkley and sundry other friends.  Good food awaits, as does our regular visit to the local meadery - always a highlight of our visits.

Blogging will be light for the next few days, but I'll try to put something up at least once per day.  Say a prayer for us for traveling mercies, and for a safe journey.  I'll be back at work next week, hopefully with my batteries recharged!

Peter

Individual responsibility versus statism

A perfect example of how statists clash with those who believe in individual responsibility is playing out over a recent newspaper column by Bill Cosby.  He's been speaking out for many years about the lack of individual and parental responsibility in the black community, most famously in his 'Pound Cake speech' to the NAACP in 2004.  Here are some excerpts from that occasion.

His latest article is titled 'A Plague Called Apathy'.

I’ve said it 100 times, the revolution is in the house. Now if you don’t want to be a part of the revolution, you say to the school system, “I want you to raise my child.” No, the revolution is at home.

Earl Lloyd, the first black NBA basketball player, tells a wonderful story of coming home and his mother said, “Where have you been?” He said, “I was out.” “No, no,” she said, “where have been?” He said, “Momma I was just . . .” She said, I asked you a question; he said, I was on the court. She said, I told you not to be out there with those boys. He said, I wasn’t doing anything.

And she said, “Look, when you’re not in the picture, you can’t be framed.”

Now, that’s the kind of stuff parents need to be doing. Stay away from the guys on the corner fighting to be nothing. The revolution is in the home.

It even happens with celebrities. People knew what Michael Jackson was doing, people knew what Whitney Houston was doing, and then they became addicts.

Michael should have been kept in rehab. Where was the family? Why weren’t they making sure Whitney and Michael got help? Michael, well, why is it that his family stood by and allowed him to have a Dr. Feelgood when they knew Michael had sleep, drug and other problems? Why didn’t Whitney’s family take the crack pipe away from her?

There's more at the link.

In response, Marc W. Polite has written an article on Time magazine's Web site.  He claims that "Bill Cosby's 'Tough Love' Is Counterproductive".

“Personal responsibility” is a theme frequently drawn upon by people addressing the social problems of the day, including problems that black communities face. Public figures issuing calls to action often challenge the role of the individual, although whether it works in better reaching the individuals who need to hear these messages is debatable. The bigger problem is that a message that exclusively focuses on personal responsibility without an accompanying clarion call for society itself to improve gives us only half of the answer.

. . .

There are a great deal of problems in black America and our American society in general. But if Cosby is really interested in combating apathy, it’s important for him to realize that there are larger, outside forces that can cause a sense of hopelessness in affected areas. Without a total picture of what certain communities have to contend with, Cosby’s supposedly well-meaning advice is not just tone-deaf but useless as well.

Again, more at the link.

Mr. Polite's problem is that he can't see the trees for the forest.  He sees the 'big picture' in terms of society, group, race, whatever - but he completely ignores the fact that those larger conglomerations are made up of individuals.  A brick wall is built of many hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands, of individual bricks.  Each has to contribute its own strength to the wall, and the mortar that binds them together has to play its part as well.  Only if all the components are sound will the wall itself be sound.  To the extent that its components are less than sound, the wall will be less strong and less well suited to its purpose.

Those who adopt a statist viewpoint - that it's government's job to cater to the needs of individuals, and groups, and 'society' as a whole - ignore this reality.  Dr. Cosby doesn't.  He sees that a society is built up of individuals, and if care is taken over and attention is paid to the raising and education and formation of those individuals, the society that they form will be sound.  Ignore those steps, and inevitably the society they form will be as shallow, disheveled, decaying and meaningless as they are as individuals.  (Detroit is a living example.)

This, too, is where Hillary Clinton went wrong with her argument that 'It Takes A Village' to raise a child.  It does, indeed, take a village - a village of strong, principled, reliable individuals, each of whom can be relied upon to bring their part in the joint enterprise.  No-one needs to check up on them or supervise them - they're trustworthy people.  Without such constituents, the village will soon become nothing more than a useless agglomeration of demanding, whining, petulant self-seekers.  (Again, see Detroit.)

That's the way it is.  Statists have helped to ensure that it stays that way through their misguided emphasis on the group, rather than the individual.  Unless and until that changes, we're going to be stuck with the problem - and we're going to need more Dr. Cosby's to keep on pointing that out to us, in no uncertain terms.

Peter

Now those are scary numbers!

Writing in National Review, Jonathan Strong points out that the entitlement spending deficit is far, far larger than has previously been acknowledged.

... the true size of the problem is staggering, and surprised even many of the seasoned budget negotiators involved.

... Try $106 trillion, the medium estimate. That’s $106,954,000,000,000. Even the lowest, extremely conservative estimate comes in at $72 trillion; the highest is over $120 trillion.

The amounts are so large that some controversial reforms appear inconsequential in comparison. Take Obama’s “chained CPI” proposal: it would save an estimated $89 billion over ten years, or 1.3 percent of the total deficit over those same ten years.

Part of the difference is time. The Congressional Budget Office pegs its cost estimates of bills to ten years. Not only has that led to a sort of CBO-score arms race on Capitol Hill, where legislation — Obamacare being the best example — is designed to exploit the ten-year window to produce a lower cost estimate. It also obscures the scope of the long-term entitlement crisis and the savings of reforms that would compound in the second and third decade.

The Senate GOP projection is for 30 years, which encompasses the retirement of the baby boomers — a far more significant problem than the deficits of the past few years.

“In all of these budget negotiations, we’re really trapped by this ten-year budget window, which, truthfully, minimizes the problem,” Johnson observes.

Another difference is the assumptions behind the projection. CBO’s long-term budget outlook, for example, offers two estimates: the “baseline” scenario and “alternative fiscal scenario.”

Baseline is according to current law, including all of the gimmicks Congress has put in current law to game their CBO scores. According to that, we’re totally fine — the debt will slowly go down without Congress’s having to do anything. It’s also fantasy.

The other scenario is more realistic. In it, debt begins to really ramp up around 2025, and quickly becomes unwieldy — even insurmountable — by 2040, when the graph ends.

There's more at the link.  Bold underlined text is my emphasis.

Those are absolutely staggering numbers.  Even if the true figure is only half of the minimum estimate above, that's still $36 trillion - a sum so vast as to be incomprehensible.  Forget partisan politics.  Ignore the fact that different parties produce different figures.  The reality is equally bad, no matter what the source of the bad news.

There's an old saying that tells us "What can't be done, won't be done".  We cannot - I repeat, cannot - afford to pay such sums.  The money simply isn't there.  The only way in which it will ever be there is if our currency is deliberately and cynically inflated to such an extent that we pay those promised benefits with dollars worth a tenth, or less than a tenth, of what they were when the promises were made.  If you're trusting the promises of politicians about your future Medicare and Social Security benefits, I have news for you.  You've been had.  They saw you coming, and played you for a sucker.

At this rate, I don't see myself retiring at all!  Better get back to writing more books . . .

Peter

WARNING - latest Windows update may cause problems

Obviously, one swallow doesn't make a summer, and one user's experience doesn't indicate a trend:  but I installed the latest Windows updates this evening, and my computer went bonkers!  Ultra-slow, buggy, stumbling . . . very bad news.  I tried three or four fixes before giving up and restoring to a pre-update version of the operating system.  I'm currently running Spybot, Ad-Aware and a few other utilities to make sure I didn't pick up anything nasty from somewhere else, but they're clean so far.

Just a word of caution to those of you who haven't yet installed the latest Windows updates;  they may cause problems.  Make sure you create a system restore point before you update!

I won't put more blog posts up tonight, until the update/re-update/system-check process is complete.  Check back for more tomorrow morning.

Peter

Talk about a headbanger . . .

I remember reading about a heavy landing by an ANA Boeing 767 in Japan last year, but I hadn't seen images of it until I came across this video clip this morning.

Just looking at that creased fuselage makes my head hurt!  I'm very glad I wasn't on board at the time . . .

I was surprised to hear that the aircraft has since been repaired, and returned to service in late December last year.  I'd love to know how much work went into fixing it!  I suspect the front fuselage would have had to be virtually rebuilt from scratch.

Peter

The 'Intelligence-Industrial Complex'

President Eisenhower famously warned about the 'military-industrial complex' in his farewell address in January 1961.  Now, in the light of the NSA scandal, Time magazine adapts that label to what it calls the 'intelligence-industrial complex'.

The Edward Snowden-National Security Agency leak case raises anew the balance between means and ends that has been simmering on the back burner of the nation’s consciousness for a decade or so.

The terror attacks of 9/11 generated a predictable push to do everything to ensure such a thing would not happen again. When that’s the government’s mission, there can be only one outcome: cash, and lots of it.

It’s something tangible that the nation’s leaders can point to – “Look – we’ve created a Department of Homeland Security!” Perhaps some of it was even necessary.

. . .

The nation’s over-reaction to 9/11 has led to the widespread surveillance to which Snowden, and a fair share of Americans, object. That’s fine: let them work through the political system to change it.

But make no mistake: there will be a lot of opposition to paring back the post-9/11 security state not because of the threat, but because of the billions of dollars pouring into the intelligence-industrial complex every year.

There's more at the link.

This is a very real problem.  For over a decade we've poured money into the intelligence establishment on the principle that 'we've got to do something to prevent another 9/11!'.  Today it's burgeoned beyond all recognition.  It's become a self-sustaining machine, bloated, unmanageable.

Unfortunately, the simple truth is that the government and its organs and agencies can't protect us 24/7/365 against all hazards.  A terrorist will always find ways to sneak through our defenses, no matter how elaborate or sophisticated they may be.  Consider, for example:

• The Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995;
• The London bombings of 2005;
• The Boston Marathon bombings of 2013;
• The murder of a British soldier in May 2013.

All these incidents took place in heavily patrolled cities, the latter three after 9/11 heightened security awareness all over the world.  Security organs, authorities and sources could not prevent any of them.  They will not be able to prevent all future attacks.

We need to trim back the 'security-industrial complex' to where it can be managed, and where its operations don't spread their tentacles into every aspect of our lives:  but to do so, we'll have to accept the fact that government can't always protect us.  The complex, on the other hand, will scream to the heavens that any cuts in its funding will expose us to precisely that risk - notwithstanding the fact that we aren't safe even with that level of expenditure.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #707

Didn't anyone tell this guy that when ships are launched, waves usually result?

(No, he wasn't hurt - but someone nearby broke his leg in the rush to get out of the way.)





Peter

Wow!

NASA has released new video footage of 'sun tornadoes', vortices of plasma moving across the surface of the sun.  It's hard to imagine these things are millions of miles tall!

Last year more footage of this phenomenon was released, including this 'close-up' of a plasma tornado.

That storm, on September 25th, 2011, was said to be 'as wide as five Earths'!

I'm irresistibly reminded of Psalm 8:3-4 . . .





Peter

My second book is almost ready!

I've been hard at work on getting the print edition of 'Take The Star Road' ready to roll.  It should be available late next week, pending the arrival of a test copy to check formatting, etc.  I'm very pleased to report that sales of the e-book edition have already exceeded 2,000 copies - far better than I'd hoped to accomplish after less than a month on sale.  Thank you all very much for your support!

I'm also finalizing the manuscript of the second novel in the Maxwell Saga, which will be titled 'Ride The Rising Tide'.  Miss D. has been helping me do final revisions (she's becoming an excellent alpha reader and story critic), and I'm incorporating 'lessons learned' from reader feedback about the first book.  (I really do value your reviews, you know - if you identify something that needs improvement, it allows me to implement that in subsequent books, while your words of encouragement keep me hard at work on the sequels.  Sincere thanks to everyone who's left a review at Amazon, or here on the blog!).

I've been working on the cover for the second novel with Oleg Volk.  He's a genius at this sort of thing.  I sit in awe as I watch him, with a few mouse clicks and keystrokes, accomplish tweaks and fine-tuning that I'd never even have thought of!  That sort of professional assistance is absolutely invaluable.  I think he should do more book covers - he seems to have a gift for it.  Here's a preliminary draft of the cover for 'Ride The Rising Tide', to whet your appetite.

The white bars at the bottom are where I hope a few words from another author will appear, just as they did on Book 1, where novelist Sarah A. Hoyt was kind enough to endorse my work.  Look for e-book and print editions by mid-July!

Peter