Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah
Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah
Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah
Tony Baloney
Tony Baloney
Tony Baloney
Thinks that pepper spray's all right
Tony Baloney
peaceful women scream tonight:
Why did he mace me?
Has he no heart?
Police and the law are
so far apart.
But Tony Baloney
knows why
I cry
Tony Baloney.
Dum-dum-dum-capsicum spray
will burn your freedom away.
Strafing a woman's OK
to Tony Baloney.
Tony Baloney
has a hate-on, that's for sure.
Tony Baloney
knows his spray is premature.
Maybe Viagra
makes him that way:
Vicious Niagras
of fuming spray
you've got to take—
it's another outrage
from Tony Baloney.
Dum-dum-dum-where is the law?
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Good Guys
This morning I was thinking the plot of the Fox television series "24" is always a ticking bomb, and in every season, Jack Bauer is forced, forced, to torture someone, but that's OK, because there's this ticking bomb, and besides, we're the good guys. Aren't we?
Why do we think we are the good guys? Just because? For no reason, no matter what we do? Or do we think we are the good guys because we have boundaries, because there are things we would not do? If it is the latter, then at what point, if any, do the crimes we excuse on the grounds that "we're the good guys," cause us to to cease to be the good guys?
Why do we think we are the good guys? Just because? For no reason, no matter what we do? Or do we think we are the good guys because we have boundaries, because there are things we would not do? If it is the latter, then at what point, if any, do the crimes we excuse on the grounds that "we're the good guys," cause us to to cease to be the good guys?
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Drat Equation
In the spirit of the Drake Equation, I offer the Drat Equation: an attempt to estimate the number of future "China Syndrome" nuclear power plant meltdowns:
N is the number of meltdowns we can expect during Y, the total reactor-years until we shut down all fission reactors. To estimate N, Y is multiplied by the sum of all the risk-factors inside the parenthesis. We would like that total risk to be very, very small; if we plan to use fission as a bridge out of carbon, thus makng Y very big, we would like the total risk to be something like k × 10-macy's —a zero and a decimal with a Thanksgiving Day Parade of zeros trailing after, and all of the floats decorated with brightly colored zeros, then, at the very end, a small car full of klowns.
E is the probability, per reactor-year, of a catastrophic engineering failure—the chance that a properly built, maintained and operated nuclear power plant was unfortunately designed by a team of lunatics, and the design checked by an independent team of interior decorators who failed to notice that a giant propeller beanie, while certainly a brilliant use of space and color, is not a proper containment dome. We will set E to zero. As we shall see, it makes no difference.
G is the act of God factor. Any unforeseen circumstance, such as a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami when you were expecting pizza and beer. Thanks to Fukushima, we can estimate G: As of December 30th, 2004, total reactor-years was 11,695. Since then @440 reactors, and two new reactors coming on line added @3,090 reactor-years so, rounding up a bit, G≅3/15,000 or 0.0002, but as we shall see, it does not matter.
H is human error—not a bad hair day, but someone saying, "Hey, let's see what this baby can do!" We can derive it from Chernobyl: H≅0.00007, but as we shall see, it does not matter.
S is the sociopathy factor, the probability that somewhere, sometime, swinish self-interest will overrule sanity, or cut one corner too many. It represents the number of sociopaths, on average, involved in the design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants, weighted by their authority—their ability to do harm. For instance, a sociopath interior decorator might equal 0, while a sociopath CEO could equal 1,000 or more.
It might seem that S must be pretty small, since we've had only a few teensy incidents in all of the 15,000 reactor-years of nuclear plant operation. The trouble is, S varies by culture, and culture varies over time. A lot. So the past may not be a reliable predictor of the future.
Especially important is the number of sociopaths in positions of authority. Since the inception of nuclear power, average CEO pay has skyrocketed. In 2010, the CEO of GE received nearly $10,000,000 in "compensation." Chumming the water with money like that is not how you attract people who love the work (observe that they must be "compensated"). It is how you attract sharks. GE's chief bean-counter (who is paid to cut corners) was "compensated" even more. $14,000,000 is a lot of corner-cutting.
We can infer from the "so-far-we've only had four catastrophes" safety record of nuclear power that when we began to build our first nuclear power plants, most people in the industry were responsible and careful. But the companies involved weren't chumming the waters for sharks in those days. The USA™ of 2011 is a very different place. The USA™ of 2011 is a kleptocracy. In a kleptocracy, the majority of people in power are sociopaths. In a kleptocracy, S could be huge. Frankly, I think it less dangerous to build a nuclear power plant on top of a giant pile of banana peels than to build one in Bedrock, Kansas, USA™, circa 2011.
In a kleptocracy, S swamps every other risk factor, all of the preceding calculations become meaningless mathisms, and the Drat Equation reduces to
As the US continues to descend into kleptocracy, S will approach 1.0.
I would like to suggest to GE's CFO that a great deal of time, effort and, most-of-all, money could be saved if, instead of trying to shave another corner off the next Mark I, GE simply hired the Chinese to build a pool of radioactive slag. In that way, the Chinese could choose the location, and it would save the President of the United States an embarrassing phone call:
If we could leave the dratted S out of the equation, maybe we could use nuclear power for a short time to shut down coal plants while we transition to a renewable grid. But we cannot do that. Not in this country. Because this country is a kleptocracy, and in a kleptocracy you cannot leave the S out of any equation.
Of course, in a kleptocracy, the people don't get to decide whether nuclear power plants get built, or by whom, nor how long or safely they might be operated, so all of this has been an exercise in pure mathematics: Unlike the Drake Equation, the Drat Equation has no practical application.
On the bright side, as S approaches unity, reactors will be melting down faster than new ones can be built, so the end of nuclear power is in sight.
N=Y·(E+G+H+S)
N is the number of meltdowns we can expect during Y, the total reactor-years until we shut down all fission reactors. To estimate N, Y is multiplied by the sum of all the risk-factors inside the parenthesis. We would like that total risk to be very, very small; if we plan to use fission as a bridge out of carbon, thus makng Y very big, we would like the total risk to be something like k × 10-macy's —a zero and a decimal with a Thanksgiving Day Parade of zeros trailing after, and all of the floats decorated with brightly colored zeros, then, at the very end, a small car full of klowns.
E is the probability, per reactor-year, of a catastrophic engineering failure—the chance that a properly built, maintained and operated nuclear power plant was unfortunately designed by a team of lunatics, and the design checked by an independent team of interior decorators who failed to notice that a giant propeller beanie, while certainly a brilliant use of space and color, is not a proper containment dome. We will set E to zero. As we shall see, it makes no difference.
G is the act of God factor. Any unforeseen circumstance, such as a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami when you were expecting pizza and beer. Thanks to Fukushima, we can estimate G: As of December 30th, 2004, total reactor-years was 11,695. Since then @440 reactors, and two new reactors coming on line added @3,090 reactor-years so, rounding up a bit, G≅3/15,000 or 0.0002, but as we shall see, it does not matter.
H is human error—not a bad hair day, but someone saying, "Hey, let's see what this baby can do!" We can derive it from Chernobyl: H≅0.00007, but as we shall see, it does not matter.
S is the sociopathy factor, the probability that somewhere, sometime, swinish self-interest will overrule sanity, or cut one corner too many. It represents the number of sociopaths, on average, involved in the design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants, weighted by their authority—their ability to do harm. For instance, a sociopath interior decorator might equal 0, while a sociopath CEO could equal 1,000 or more.
It might seem that S must be pretty small, since we've had only a few teensy incidents in all of the 15,000 reactor-years of nuclear plant operation. The trouble is, S varies by culture, and culture varies over time. A lot. So the past may not be a reliable predictor of the future.
Especially important is the number of sociopaths in positions of authority. Since the inception of nuclear power, average CEO pay has skyrocketed. In 2010, the CEO of GE received nearly $10,000,000 in "compensation." Chumming the water with money like that is not how you attract people who love the work (observe that they must be "compensated"). It is how you attract sharks. GE's chief bean-counter (who is paid to cut corners) was "compensated" even more. $14,000,000 is a lot of corner-cutting.
We can infer from the "so-far-we've only had four catastrophes" safety record of nuclear power that when we began to build our first nuclear power plants, most people in the industry were responsible and careful. But the companies involved weren't chumming the waters for sharks in those days. The USA™ of 2011 is a very different place. The USA™ of 2011 is a kleptocracy. In a kleptocracy, the majority of people in power are sociopaths. In a kleptocracy, S could be huge. Frankly, I think it less dangerous to build a nuclear power plant on top of a giant pile of banana peels than to build one in Bedrock, Kansas, USA™, circa 2011.
In a kleptocracy, S swamps every other risk factor, all of the preceding calculations become meaningless mathisms, and the Drat Equation reduces to
N=Y·S
As the US continues to descend into kleptocracy, S will approach 1.0.
I would like to suggest to GE's CFO that a great deal of time, effort and, most-of-all, money could be saved if, instead of trying to shave another corner off the next Mark I, GE simply hired the Chinese to build a pool of radioactive slag. In that way, the Chinese could choose the location, and it would save the President of the United States an embarrassing phone call:
"…Well, we're not sure, but we think…Beijing…"
It's a win-win.
If we could leave the dratted S out of the equation, maybe we could use nuclear power for a short time to shut down coal plants while we transition to a renewable grid. But we cannot do that. Not in this country. Because this country is a kleptocracy, and in a kleptocracy you cannot leave the S out of any equation.
Of course, in a kleptocracy, the people don't get to decide whether nuclear power plants get built, or by whom, nor how long or safely they might be operated, so all of this has been an exercise in pure mathematics: Unlike the Drake Equation, the Drat Equation has no practical application.
On the bright side, as S approaches unity, reactors will be melting down faster than new ones can be built, so the end of nuclear power is in sight.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Stop the Leftist Propaganda Machine!
The funniest thing about this pathetic scam is the banner. Go ahead and watch the video. It's dull, but short, then have a look at the "far left loons" who made these terrible comments:
Notice something? About half of these twitter accounts are obviously hastily created shills: no details, few tweets—many of them random idle thoughts, except for the all-important death threats. None of them self-identify as liberal. The real people are mainly talking street, and that, with good reason, is a rough language. In short, all of the evidence is either trumped-up, or does not support the claim that anyone is actually calling for harm to Walker.
The Koch Brothers, their friends and front organizations are funding a huge disinformation campaign. Is this part of it? Hard to say, since the teaparty crowd will happily lie for free. But the shill accounts suggest paid coordination.
Notice something? About half of these twitter accounts are obviously hastily created shills: no details, few tweets—many of them random idle thoughts, except for the all-important death threats. None of them self-identify as liberal. The real people are mainly talking street, and that, with good reason, is a rough language. In short, all of the evidence is either trumped-up, or does not support the claim that anyone is actually calling for harm to Walker.
The Koch Brothers, their friends and front organizations are funding a huge disinformation campaign. Is this part of it? Hard to say, since the teaparty crowd will happily lie for free. But the shill accounts suggest paid coordination.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
How Can You Tell if There's an Elephant in Your Math Club?
By the pi on it's breath?
I don't understand it. Whenever I casually remark that pi contains an infinite number of elephant jokes, I get pitying looks. Since the prospect of endless elephant jokes would surely delight anyone, I can only suppose that I am not believed. Let me explain:
Those three dots at the end of this expansion of pi, the "ellipsis" aka "marks of elision" aka "naughty bits" (I suppose, since they are customarily left off) are what I'm talking about. That's where the elephant jokes are. In there, the "and so-on, ad infitum" of pi.
“And so on” what?
You know. Forever. Not lover's vows forever, but the real thing, the big lazy eight, infinity. Out of which, absolutely anything that can happen must happen, infinitely many times.
Moreover, if you try to guess the next digit hiding in that ellipsis, you have exactly one chance in ten of being right. and that's not just because you're guessing. Humans are good at recognizing patterns, if any exist. Almost as good as elephants.
Statisticians say we are right; there is no pattern. No, the elephants did not intimidate them. (OK, a little) They counted. Any digit 0-9 has an equal chance of being the next to pop out of the ellipses. It's as if there was a random digit generator in there.
Except there isn't. It's pi. The unpredictability disappears as soon as you know that and where you are in the sequence. But you have to know where you are, or no dice—I mean, yes, dice. Die. One ten sided die. But not—I want to emphasize this—made out of ivory.
I understand that among mathematicians it is good form to say “pi is normal,”(meaning the digits in pi are normally distributed) because if you say “pi is random” it's apt to start a food fight. On the other hand, one time I said “pi is random” and got laid.
Since pi is random and endless, we can very easily answer such questions as, “Does 0123456789 appear anywhere in pi?” The answer is yes, infinitely many times. “Oh yeah? Well, what about a hundred zeros in a row?” Same answer. And, before you ask, 314195265… is there, too, in sufficient length to have mathematicians biting their nails until some digit finally strays and there is a great sigh of relief. Infinity is like the old joke about a totalitarian country: anything that is not forbidden is mandatory. None of the above is forbidden, just highly improbable.
To go from digits to the all-important elephant jokes, we could make up a substitution cipher. But we don't need to make up our own. Let's use the one you're looking at now. We can easily expand pi in binary and, voila! Gibberish…and some of it not printable. OK, let's expand pi to the base of the computer's unicode character set. Still gibberish. But printable.
An infinite string of printable pi, and somewhere in that gibberish will be the treasure we seek: elephant jokes! Not just one or two, nor thousands nor millions, but an infinite number of elephant jokes! Elephant jokes in every language on earth, living, dead, and yet to be. Elephant jokes in Klingon. (The Federation could avert tragedies…or possibly cause one) And since we have them in a form computers can work with, we can seek them out efficiently. World—nay, universal—peace would ensue.
Would it surprise you to learn that I have already written a program that does this? Of course, by the time an ordinary supercomputer—or even a game box—could find even one elephant joke in pi, politicians would have stopped lying, so I had to build a quantum computer. Off to the hardware store.
Writing the software was the worst part I don't recommend quantum debugging at all. Still, one night last week, the reward for my all my hard work was nigh. The program produced its first output:
I just flew in from Nairobi, and boy are my ears tired.
This wasn't even the correct form, but the algorithm is heuristic. It learns. I pressed the punishment key and it tried again.
Take my wife's fleas.
Punish.
Knock, knock…
Punish! Punish! Punish!
How can you tell if there's a fruit bat in the bath with you? They hog the soap.
Classic, as to form, but fruit bat? Still, I pushed the reward key.
How does a fruit bat hide in the jello? Are you kidding? It's a fruit bat!
This "fruit bat" fixation might be leading it astray. Reward, punish.
What did the elephant say to the fruit bat? Nothing. Fruit bats can't talk.
Hm. Reward, reward, punish.
How does an elephant get in touch with its higher power? By ringing it up.
Weak. But a real elephant joke. Success at last! Reward, reward, reward! I celebrated appropriately. The next day, appropriately hung over, I looked at what the program had been churning out.
How can you find an elephant in pi? Follow its tracks.
Can elephants calculate the millionth digit of pi? They don't have to. They'd just remember it.
Wow. How many digits of pi can an elephant remember? About 314,159,265.
OK. But could an elephant calculate pi? Sure. It would just use circular reasoning.
Are elephants good at math? Weren't you paying attention just now?
How can you tell if there's an elephant in your math club? Ask it to recite pi. If it's still talking at the end of the meeting, its an elephant. If it says nothing, it's a fruit bat.
So, are elephants good at math? To a degree.
Then I suppose they must be educated? To a degree. Quite a few, actually. It's why they're good at circular reasoning.
How do you keep an elephant from walking in circles? Move the decimal.
How do you keep two elephants from walking in circles? Move it two places.
Can you tell if there's an elephant in your house? Yes. There will be one elephant circling your house. Unless you moved the decimal, then no.
Where do elephants go when they die? To the elision fields.
How do you know if an elephant is saintly? By the radians.
Do all of the elephant jokes in pi reference it in some way? You should ask an elephant. They're good at math, you know.
You see the pattern. It led me to an unexpected and exciting result, mcwbr's first, last and only theorem:
All of the elephant jokes in pi allude to pi.
Theorem, I say, because I have found a simple and elegant proof of it, which, however, is too large to fit in the margins of this blog.
I don't understand it. Whenever I casually remark that pi contains an infinite number of elephant jokes, I get pitying looks. Since the prospect of endless elephant jokes would surely delight anyone, I can only suppose that I am not believed. Let me explain:
3.14159265…
Those three dots at the end of this expansion of pi, the "ellipsis" aka "marks of elision" aka "naughty bits" (I suppose, since they are customarily left off) are what I'm talking about. That's where the elephant jokes are. In there, the "and so-on, ad infitum" of pi.
“And so on” what?
You know. Forever. Not lover's vows forever, but the real thing, the big lazy eight, infinity. Out of which, absolutely anything that can happen must happen, infinitely many times.
Moreover, if you try to guess the next digit hiding in that ellipsis, you have exactly one chance in ten of being right. and that's not just because you're guessing. Humans are good at recognizing patterns, if any exist. Almost as good as elephants.
Statisticians say we are right; there is no pattern. No, the elephants did not intimidate them. (OK, a little) They counted. Any digit 0-9 has an equal chance of being the next to pop out of the ellipses. It's as if there was a random digit generator in there.
Except there isn't. It's pi. The unpredictability disappears as soon as you know that and where you are in the sequence. But you have to know where you are, or no dice—I mean, yes, dice. Die. One ten sided die. But not—I want to emphasize this—made out of ivory.
I understand that among mathematicians it is good form to say “pi is normal,”(meaning the digits in pi are normally distributed) because if you say “pi is random” it's apt to start a food fight. On the other hand, one time I said “pi is random” and got laid.
Since pi is random and endless, we can very easily answer such questions as, “Does 0123456789 appear anywhere in pi?” The answer is yes, infinitely many times. “Oh yeah? Well, what about a hundred zeros in a row?” Same answer. And, before you ask, 314195265… is there, too, in sufficient length to have mathematicians biting their nails until some digit finally strays and there is a great sigh of relief. Infinity is like the old joke about a totalitarian country: anything that is not forbidden is mandatory. None of the above is forbidden, just highly improbable.
To go from digits to the all-important elephant jokes, we could make up a substitution cipher. But we don't need to make up our own. Let's use the one you're looking at now. We can easily expand pi in binary and, voila! Gibberish…and some of it not printable. OK, let's expand pi to the base of the computer's unicode character set. Still gibberish. But printable.
An infinite string of printable pi, and somewhere in that gibberish will be the treasure we seek: elephant jokes! Not just one or two, nor thousands nor millions, but an infinite number of elephant jokes! Elephant jokes in every language on earth, living, dead, and yet to be. Elephant jokes in Klingon. (The Federation could avert tragedies…or possibly cause one) And since we have them in a form computers can work with, we can seek them out efficiently. World—nay, universal—peace would ensue.
Would it surprise you to learn that I have already written a program that does this? Of course, by the time an ordinary supercomputer—or even a game box—could find even one elephant joke in pi, politicians would have stopped lying, so I had to build a quantum computer. Off to the hardware store.
Writing the software was the worst part I don't recommend quantum debugging at all. Still, one night last week, the reward for my all my hard work was nigh. The program produced its first output:
I just flew in from Nairobi, and boy are my ears tired.
This wasn't even the correct form, but the algorithm is heuristic. It learns. I pressed the punishment key and it tried again.
Take my wife's fleas.
Punish.
Knock, knock…
Punish! Punish! Punish!
How can you tell if there's a fruit bat in the bath with you? They hog the soap.
Classic, as to form, but fruit bat? Still, I pushed the reward key.
How does a fruit bat hide in the jello? Are you kidding? It's a fruit bat!
This "fruit bat" fixation might be leading it astray. Reward, punish.
What did the elephant say to the fruit bat? Nothing. Fruit bats can't talk.
Hm. Reward, reward, punish.
How does an elephant get in touch with its higher power? By ringing it up.
Weak. But a real elephant joke. Success at last! Reward, reward, reward! I celebrated appropriately. The next day, appropriately hung over, I looked at what the program had been churning out.
How can you find an elephant in pi? Follow its tracks.
Can elephants calculate the millionth digit of pi? They don't have to. They'd just remember it.
Wow. How many digits of pi can an elephant remember? About 314,159,265.
OK. But could an elephant calculate pi? Sure. It would just use circular reasoning.
I could see a judicious application of the punishment key might improve the output, but a pattern was beginning to emerge…
Are elephants good at math? Weren't you paying attention just now?
How can you tell if there's an elephant in your math club? Ask it to recite pi. If it's still talking at the end of the meeting, its an elephant. If it says nothing, it's a fruit bat.
So, are elephants good at math? To a degree.
Then I suppose they must be educated? To a degree. Quite a few, actually. It's why they're good at circular reasoning.
How do you keep an elephant from walking in circles? Move the decimal.
How do you keep two elephants from walking in circles? Move it two places.
Can you tell if there's an elephant in your house? Yes. There will be one elephant circling your house. Unless you moved the decimal, then no.
Where do elephants go when they die? To the elision fields.
How do you know if an elephant is saintly? By the radians.
Do all of the elephant jokes in pi reference it in some way? You should ask an elephant. They're good at math, you know.
You see the pattern. It led me to an unexpected and exciting result, mcwbr's first, last and only theorem:
All of the elephant jokes in pi allude to pi.
Theorem, I say, because I have found a simple and elegant proof of it, which, however, is too large to fit in the margins of this blog.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Before and After
The top picture is from six hours after the top hat was seated on 6/3/2010, before BP had begun to capture any oil. (You can just see the fins of the top hat extending from the gusher). BP hadn't begun capturing any oil yet, and the official maximum estimate of the flow, after cutting the riser, is 23,000 barrels or 966,000 gallons per day, all of which is escaping the vents in the top hat. (Cutting the riser was supposed to add "up to" 20% to the official estimated flow of 19,000 barrels)
The bottom picture is from today, 6-8-2010. as BP is pumping, they claim, 14,800 barrels per day. It looks as though the flow escaping the top hat is actually larger. Certainly, it is not 64% smaller. In fact, it doesn't seem to be smaller at all. Either BP is not capturing as much as they say, or the actual total flow after the riser was cut (and, we can suppose, before it was cut) was vastly more than the official high estimate.
So move that slider way over to the right.
I can't post before and after pictures of the Gulf. We don't yet know what after is going to look like.
The bottom picture is from today, 6-8-2010. as BP is pumping, they claim, 14,800 barrels per day. It looks as though the flow escaping the top hat is actually larger. Certainly, it is not 64% smaller. In fact, it doesn't seem to be smaller at all. Either BP is not capturing as much as they say, or the actual total flow after the riser was cut (and, we can suppose, before it was cut) was vastly more than the official high estimate.
So move that slider way over to the right.
I can't post before and after pictures of the Gulf. We don't yet know what after is going to look like.
Monday, March 29, 2010
How Capitalism Self-Regulates
In a capitalist economy, each choice you make is a vote. The following are some tips every responsible consumer should know:
- When your car accelerates uncontrollably and kills you, don't buy that make any more.
- When the banks wreck the economy, take what's left of your business elsewhere—to a sock, or a shoebox, perhaps.
- When the health care oligarchy organizes mobs of bellowing idiots to cripple reform, write a blog post.
- When Appalachia is turned into Mordor; when every stream is poisoned; when every city reeks; when the ice-caps are melting; when the biosphere is unraveling, ride your bicycle to work. Put a bell on it.
- When you are run over by an SUV, ring the bell.
- When General United owns everything…um…
- When all wealth and power are concentrated in a ruling elite; when the courts, prisons, police, spies, and military serve them alone; when due process has gone the way of habeas corpus; when the walls have ears; when you will confess, accept your chains. (Only $19.95)
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