Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Dumb fever

2012-02-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, since JzB insists that Neko Case is a natural red-head, here she is in the early 90's as the drummer in a "cuddlecore" band (the name for a Vancouver pop-punk scene made up of girls). She stays in the background of the dancing girls and doesn't sing. A shame, because the girl who *is* singing sucks.

Maow, "Ms. Lefevre", off their one and only album Unforgiving Sounds of Maow from 1996.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

And speaking of dumbasses...

2012-02-21T22:30:00.001-08:00

An Indiana state lawmaker claims that the Girl Scouts are an evil organization because they include a condom with every box of Girl Scout cookies. Or spend their meetings giving each other free abortions and herpes vaccinations. Or something. It doesn't really make sense, but it doesn't have to, if you're a Republican.

BTW, does that photo of Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris make your Gaydar ping the way it makes my Gaydar ping? Want to bet that he's an advocate of the conservative gay agenda -- bigger closets -- and that sooner or later someone will catch him with his very own Rentboy.com rentboy? Just sayin'...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Dumbasses

2012-02-21T22:19:00.001-08:00

It seemed like half of Los Angeles was in the El Pasos (northern Mojave, Red Rock State Park & BLM land) last weekend, friggin' EP15 looked like the Ventura Freeway at rush hour, between all the sand rails, ATV's, motorcycles, minivans, Subarus, and Toyota Corollas. None of whom had the slightest clue, I had to tell at least four different people how to get out of there or they'd probably still be out there, turning into dessicated mummies. The second-worst thing that happened was when my line of Jeeps and 4x4's -- a round dozen or so of us caravaning through the park with maps and complete rescue and first aid gear - were sitting in Last Chance Canyon in the sand wash in front of the narrows with its rock garden, waiting for a medical emergency that had priority to go around us, and a Subaru came puttering along. "Is this the way out of the park?" "Uhm, no. Around that corner is a rock garden, and last time I went through it I got body damage in my *Jeep*. Your Subaru has no hope, go back to EP15 and take a left." "Darn." And he turned around and went back out the way he came in. I hope.

Average don't seem to be too smart nowadays, and 50% of all people are below average. And every single one of them appeared to be in the desert last weekend, surviving only via dumb luck and the ministrations of folks who took pity on them and sent them the right way despite our annoyance at all the unprepared idiots who were out there endangering themselves and others.

-- Badtux the Misanthrope Penguin

Red headed bells

2012-02-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

Neko Case, "Deep Red Bells", off her 2002 album Blacklisted.

Some things you probably don't know about Neko Case:

She got her start playing drums in the early/mid 1990's for various punk-pop bands in the Vancouver BC area while a college student.
Her natural hair color is black, as you can see if you dig up videos of her playing drums in those bands.
She loves old Detroit cars from the 1960's.
She's (probably) not gay.
And she just tweeted that of course as a lover of Detroit she loves Ted Nugent. Sigh. Nobody's perfect, I guess :).

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Invisible friends

2012-02-20T20:17:00.000-08:00

So you see this dude who, like, has an invisible friend. And maybe he's shuffling around under the freeway underpass, pushing a shopping cart, while babbling to thin air about strange rituals he has to do. Like this:

Now, here's the question: Are you offended by any of the nonsense that this crazy guy is babbling?

Which is why it is baffling to me why Jews are upset that the Mormons are "baptizing" Jewish victims of the Holocaust. I mean, look. Mormons "baptizing" dead people is just crazy in the first place, no different from that dude above having a fight with an invisible guy while babbling nonsense. It means the same when a Mormon says he "baptized" a dead person as it means when that crazy dude above goes "Blahahhahah blahahhh blahdbbeeeeblah buh baha!". It's just sounds, sounds that don't mean anything at all to anybody who isn't crazy. I mean, it's not as if the dead people care. They're dead. They can't get any worse off than dead!

But so it goes. You have crazy people who believe in invisible friends, and they get offended because the other guy's invisible friend wants to eat their dead people. Or something crazy like that. I don't pretend to understand, since I've never had an invisible friend. And no, the Great Penguin is not invisible, he's just very far away so you can't see him. Duh :).

-- Badtux the Baffled Penguin

Greece: No Way Out

2012-02-17T00:35:00.000-08:00

Greece is melting down. Right now the Eurozone is kicking the can down the road while Greeks die from austerity. The other choice is for Greece to default on its debt, leave the Eurozone, and go their own way, financing their deficit by printing their own currency.

So why don't they do that? Three words: 1) Medicine. 2) Fuel. 3) Food.

Greece is not self-sufficient in any of those. Greece doesn't have overseas assets like Iceland had when Iceland defaulted that can be used to import these items. And they certainly aren't going to be able to buy any of this from the EuroZone, since they just kicked the Eurozone into a new Great Depression due to the collapse of all the banks that are invested in Greek debt.

The only other alternative is to leave the Eurozone but go hat in hand to the IMF for a bailout, where the IMF funds the imports of medicine, fuel, and food. Thing is, the IMF isn't going to do any such thing unless Greece has a government willing to make the hard choices. Pretty much every asset that Greece has needs to be repurposed towards bringing in sufficient foreign currency to pay for the medicine, fuel, and food that Greece needs to survive, which isn't going to leave a lot for the Greek people.

So what's the end game? Well, the German proposal -- lots of dead Greeks due to starvation, exposure, and lack of medicine -- isn't going to pass political muster, the Greeks might as well default at that point since default is going to have the same result. IMF bailout isn't going to happen until the current government collapses and a new government is in place, and given that the Greek police are out of tear gas (and lack the cash to buy more) this might be sooner rather than later unless they resort to live bullets, in which case game over, there will be government officials hanging from street lamp posts shortly thereafter. What it looks like to me is going to be the messy default scenario, where a revolutionary government ends up taking office and imposes a hard-core socialist reallocation of the nation's assets to bring in the foreign exchange needed to keep the country from freezing and starving to death. Eurozone or non-Eurozone? 50-50 chance, my guess though is non-Eurozone. How many Greeks will die for Germany before all of this goes through? I suspect fairly few -- low tens of thousands -- because the government is already teetering on the edge of irrelevancy and collapse so this farce cannot go on for much longer. And then? Well, we'll see. They'll either create a new model for how to handle an economy in a time of depression, or they'll become Somalia North. Either way, Greeks are in for some interesting times...

- Badtux the Economics Penguin

Taking a break

2012-02-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

It's President's Day weekend, and for a change I have Monday off. I'm spending this three-day weekend away from the computer. So no music and no posting until Tuesday. Enjoy your 3-day weekend!

-- Badtux the Relaxing Penguin

Firing customers

2012-02-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Some customers are just more trouble than they're worth. They're always complaining, they're always threatening to sue you, they demand far more of your time than they're willing to pay for, and they think they know your business better than you do and demand that you act in ways that violate your professional ethics. In the end, you're better off firing them, because not only are they time-wasters, they're also much more likely to sue you -- and defending against even the most frivolous lawsuit in Federal court will cost you at least $100,000.

So now I hear that pediatricians are telling parents who refuse to vaccinate their children to find another doctor, and I understand completely. We now know that the only study to ever show a connection between autism and vaccines was a complete and utter fraud, and that removing mercury from vaccines had no effect on autism rates -- that is, there not only isn't a connection between vaccines and autism (other than the fact that vaccines tend to be given at the same time that symptoms of autism become evident), but the only theories about how vaccines might cause autism turned out to be either balderdash or outright fraud, while vaccines have saved millions of lives over the past fifty years.

So basically, if you have a parent today insisting that you don't vaccinate her child, what you're facing is basically a kook who believes she knows better than the entire medical profession, a kook who, because she thinks she knows more medicine than you do, will sue you in a heartbeat if you don't treat her little darling in ways that violate your professional ethics. This is the same sort of patient who would insist on treating her child's cancer with herbal remedies that have been proven to be ineffective and become extremely upset and sue you when you reported her instead to Child Protection for endangering her child's health via neglect by refusing to allow a pediatric oncologist to treat her child.

Given that, it's amazing that *only* 30% of pediatricians will fire customers who refuse to vaccinate their children. Those customers are lawsuits waiting to happen, and the fact that 70% of pediatricians will gulp and do their best to care for the child despite a parent who is an utter abusive loon pretty much is proof that the majority of pediatricians are saints. Because they're certainly not in it for the money (I make more money than the typical pediatrician and work nowhere near as hard)...

-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

Sad gold

2012-02-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

Another jazzy torchy song from Devics. This is "Gold in the Girl", off the 2001 album My Beautiful Sinking Ship.

It's even sadder when you realize that it's a true story...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Color me unimpressed...

2012-02-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

Apologists for student misbehavior march on school board office to protest their students' punishments.

One of the things that annoyed me greatly when I was teaching was just how many of the school's resources went to deal with kids who didn't want to be there, who weren't interested in learning, and whose parents weren't interested in learning, who sent the kids to school for lunch and entertainment. It short-changed the kids who *were* interested in learning -- who were the vast majority of kids. It appears that Noble Network, a group of charter high schools in Chicago formed by former high school teachers, had that same gripe. They found a solution: the misbehaving kids (or their parents) pay the extra money needed to run detention, pay for the out-of-school suspension class, and so forth.

Look. We're not talking first graders. These are high school kids. They have money of their own, they know what they're supposed to do in a classroom (i.e., *not* talk and chew gum and talk back to the teacher), they just choose not to behave, that's all. Well so be it. And while the $140 evening class is a lot of money for a poor family, it only happens after *TWELVE* detentions. And look, if you've been in detention twelve times, frankly I don't have any sympathy for you.

So what's the solution of those who dislike this discipline policy? Just suspend the kid, send the kid home to hang around on the streets and get dumber? Because that's the "traditional" discipline policy for dealing with kids who repeatedly misbehave. Yeah, that really works well at making sure kids stay engaged in school and learning... sorta like gasoline really works well for putting out fires. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Former Teacher Penguin

Bad hair ghost

2012-02-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

Widowspeak, "Ghost Boy" off their self-titled debut album released in 2011. Just continuing the psychedelic trippy music thing...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Thought for the day

2012-02-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

-- Badtux the Thoughtful Penguin

The TSA Follies

2012-02-14T19:36:00.000-08:00

So, fresh from their victories over the cupcakes of mass destruction, deadly hair weaves, and colostomy bags of terror, the TSA has a new target: Girls. Seems that of the passengers that are "randomly selected" to go through the "porno scanners", a disproportionate number are women. Usually *attractive* women. Because, y'see, the porno scanner operators are mostly male.

But you can refuse to go through the scanner and opt for a pat-down instead. Of course, given the bull dykes that the TSA hires to do the patdowns of female passengers, I'm not sure whether, if I was a straight woman, I'd find that any more acceptable...

Is it any wonder that over 500 Americans per year die because they drove long tiresome distances rather than subject themselves to this indignity?Congratulations, TSA -- you've killed more Americans over the past six years than the 9/11 attackers did, all without capturing -- or even *detecting* -- a single terrorist. Way to go, gang! (And I do mean "gang", since you TSA gang-bangers have killed more Americans than the Crips and Bloods combined, and have just as distinctive a uniform).

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin

Tripping Jesus

2012-02-14T16:06:00.000-08:00

San Francisco jam band The Brian Jonestown Massacre, "Jesus", off their 1996 album Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request. I understand it sounds a bit more interesting if you have some, err, herbal, remedy...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Thought for the day

2012-02-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

If forcing Catholic hospitals to pay for "morally offensive" birth control is wrong, why is forcing me to pay for bombs and bullets, bombs and bullets that my religion holds are moral abominations, just fine and dandy?

- Badtux the Friendly Penguin

Every Sperm Is Sacred

2012-02-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

The above is apparently the theme song of Rep. Steve King (R-dumbass), who apparently believes that birth control is the same thing as abortion.

98% of women use birth control at some point in their adult lives. So somehow I can't see this as being a winning issue for Republicans. So hey guys, keep pushing the "birth control is evil!" thing, yo! 'Cause that's good news -- for Democrats.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Experimental Dreaming

2012-02-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

Jesca Hoop -- "Dream Into Me", off the sound track to the 2007 movie Whisper.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Definition of the day

2012-02-13T09:23:00.001-08:00

Libertarian: A Republican who owns a bong.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

And so?

2012-02-12T20:16:00.000-08:00

I understand that a washed-up pop diva has died. In other news, around 250,000 other people also died yesterday. I'm failing to see why one woman who had it all and threw it all away is worth more attention than the other 249,999 people who died yesterday, but apparently I'm alone in that opinion.

-- Badtux the Numbers Penguin

Non-shrinking Violet

2012-02-12T16:20:00.000-08:00

What do you do if your drummer doesn't show up? Well, if you're Canadian folkies Madison Violet... watch and see.

This is "The Good In Goodbye" off their new album by that name.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Sixties Cult

2012-02-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

Cults is an up-and-coming NYC indie band that seems to be beloved of hipsters, who will embrace anything up until it becomes popular then drop it as "over". They seem to approach things from an updated 60's pop perspective. This one is "You Know What I Mean" off of their first (self-titled) album, which is available only via iTunes.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

A Republican speaks out on gay marriage

2012-02-11T15:20:00.000-08:00

Transcript:

You know I was married for 23 years to the love of my life, and he died six years ago. And I think of all the years we had, and the wonderful fringe benefit of having three beautiful children. I don’t miss the sex, you know? And to me that’s kind of what this boils down to. I don’t miss that. I mean, I certainly miss it, but I don’t, it’s not — (Laughter from chambers) — it is certainly not the aspect of that relationship, the incredible bond that I had with that human being, that I really, really, genuinely wish I still had. And so I think to myself, how can I deny anyone the right to have that incredible bond with another individual in life? To me, it seems almost cruel.

You know, years ago, my daughter went to, she was in elementary school. Many of you have met my daughter. She’s a fabulous girl. She’s wonderful. My boys are great too, but my daughter is just something special, and she was the light of her father’s eyes. And she went to school and there were some kids that were, a whole group of kids that were picking on another kid. And you know, my daughter stood up for that kid, even though it was not the popular thing to do. She knew it was the right thing to do. And I was never more proud of my kid, knowing that she was speaking against the vocal majority on behalf of the rights of the minority.

And to me, it is incumbent upon us as legislators in this state to do that. That is why we are here, and I shudder to think that if folks who had proceeded us in history did not do that, frankly I’m not sure I would be here as a woman. I’m not sure that others would be here due to their race, or their creed. And to me, that is what’s disconcerting.

And someone made the comment that this is not about equality. Well yes it is about equality. And why in the world would we not allow those equal rights for individuals who truly were committed to on another in life to be able to show that by way of a marriage?

You know, my daughter came out of the closet a couple of years ago. And you know what? I thought I was going to just agonize about that.

Nothing’s different. She’s still a fabulous human being, and she’s met a person that she loves very much. And someday, by God, I wanna throw a wedding for that kid. And I hope that’s exactly what I can do. I hope she will not feel like a second-class citizen involved in something called a ‘domestic partnership’ — which frankly sounds like a Merry Maids franchise to me.

-- Rep. Maureen Walsh, R-Washington

Ron Paul's economics

2012-02-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul is a big fan of the gold standard. The problem with the gold standard, which caused every nation to have to abandon it during the Great Depression (no nation began to recover economically until after they dumped the gold standard), is that it is fundamentally deflationary. Productivity rises over time -- we learn new ways to increase the amount of goods and services that each person in the workforce can produce. Population also rises over time -- people have kids, immigrants enter the country, and so forth. The end result is that the amount of goods and services in the economy grows over time -- but gold doesn't. The amount of gold is pretty much fixed, and grows only slowly, as new sources of gold are discovered then exhausted.

So why is deflation so bad? First, let's look at price deflation. Price deflation is so bad because it makes businesses unprofitable. They can no longer sell their goods for more than the price they paid for their goods because price deflation has reduced prices in the meantime. The goal is to buy low, sell high. If you're instead buying high, selling low, you're a former business.

Which is why there's price stickiness during monetary deflation (a reduction of the money supply) -- but that means businesses have to lay off people because their goods are now more expensive relative to the now-scarcer dollars, and thus they sell fewer goods. So basically the gold standard artificially reduces economic activity to match the amount of gold in the economy. Which is a great thing if you're wanting to reduce people's standard of living and create lots of unemployment, but *not* a great thing if you want jobs for people.

So anyhow, Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and even our very own Jazzbumpa have all produced graphs showing that the #1 indicator of economic recovery during the Great Depression was abandonment of the gold standard. When the gold standard was abandoned and the printing presses fired up to produce enough currency so that prices were rising again rather than falling, businesses could make a profit since they were no longer buying high and selling low -- and profitable businesses can hire people, and hired people can buy more, which in turn causes *more* economical activity, a virtuous circle that keeps going upwards until you have near-full employment again, at which point you have to stop printing so much money otherwise you start going Weimar.

So anyhow, to summarize the effects of Ron Paul's economic policies if adopted: If Ron Paul got his way, it would be legal to buy weed -- but you wouldn't be able to afford it. Which means the Ron Paul Youth who support Ron 'cause, like, they wanna be able to buy weed without The Man arresting them, are sorta barking up the wrong tree. What good is it to have weed be legal, if you can't afford it (and can't afford food, for that matter)?

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

A geek rant

2012-02-10T19:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I found the source code to a Windows program that I wanted to make some slight modifications to in order to enhance it. Not a problem, I just download Microsoft Visual C++ Express, their free "for home and educational use" C++ compiler, and compile it. Except... it wouldn't compile, because Microsoft *DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MICROSOFT FOUNDATION CLASSES IN THEIR FREE PRODUCT!*

Now I hear the majority of you sayin', "what does that mean?" Well, basically what it means is that *basically no existing Windows code on the planet can be compiled by Microsoft Visual C++ Express*. I.e., it is utterly *USELESS* if your intent is to make slight tweaks to existing Windows code as part of the process of learning how to write Windows code.

What's Microsoft's excuse? "Visual C++ Express is for people who are just learning C++, and people just learning C++ shouldn't be using MFC." Excuse me. I learned C++ years ago. I learned C++ years ago for *free* by simply installing Slackware 95 Linux and wiping out the Windows 95 on my desktop computer, which was an Intel Pentium 233 with 16 megabytes of memory and a low-end video card, this was about five months after Microsoft released Windows 95 and I wanted to learn C++ but I wasn't going to pay hundreds of dollars for a C++ compiler when Slackware was *FREE*. I don't need to learn C++, I know C++ just fine, thank you very much, I've been programming in it for over 15 years now. What I was curious about was learning Windows programming, not because I need to learn Windows programming -- I make a very, very, VERY good living writing Linux software for embedded applications, thank you very much -- but because I like learning new things. And hey, maybe I'd write a program or two to release as free software for Windows, there's a few things I'd like to see that don't exist because there's no market for them but for which existing code could be modified fairly easily -- if I had some way to compile it.

But apparently Microsoft is intent upon death. Because look. What I did 15 years ago? It's what *every* kid is doing today. *No* entry-level programmers learn how to program using Microsoft's API's. They all learn Java -- which runs everywhere without modification, without even a re-compile, on Java's own virtual machine which completely disguises the underlying operating system from view. Meaning that all the new software coming out runs on Linux and Mac as well as on Windows. And Linux is *free*.

The only way Microsoft can "win" this war is by getting people to use their API, and then they don't provide any way for people to *learn* their API, instead saying "you can't learn our API unless you pay us a buncha dollars"? What the fuck? Do they really expect the majority of people interesting in learning how to write programs that run under Windows to *pay* to learn their API?! Talk about a company with a death wish!

So anyhow, I'm back to writing Java code. Which runs just fine on my Linux box, my Windows box, and my Macs. Way to go down the road to irrelevancy, Microsoft! What next, you put a time bomb into Windows 8 that destroys everybody's data after six months? It's about the only worse thing you could do to destroy your future...

-- Badtux the Geeky Penguin

The Mighty Fang's Nemesis

2012-02-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

I finally got a good look at the cat that The Mighty Fang spends so much time yowling at. When I got home, he was on top of the fence looking at me. So I very slowly and carefully readied my cell phone camera and attempted to take a photo through the windshield. Didn't work. So I very, very slowly opened the door and crept out, doing my best to be unthreatening. And then...

Yah, I basically got mugged. FluffyTail sniffed, started winding around my leg, let me rub his head a little, and finally laid down on the concrete and started wiggling around and flopping over from side to side in ecstasy.

I've heard that penguins have magnetic personalities, but this is just ridiculous...

-- Badtux the Cat-mugged Penguin