Wild Bill's Blog: Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier

Wild Bill's Blog: Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier

From the days when character mattered.

An Allegorical Painting

Lady Liberty Driving Away Tyrants, Anarchists and Dictators

Monarchy is already defeated and Liberty fights on against the more hidden enemies. Note the shield with no stars (yet) but thirteen stripes and the eagle. The other elements of the picture all have meaning, too. This is on a ceiling somewhere; ID would be appreciated. Liberty is Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher or Elizabeth Wales. No others come close although most women Marines are equal in bravery. Anology: Christ driving the Moneychangers from the Temple

Truth, not Belief is the Gold Standard

So many gullible.


If Truth is so Valuable, Why is There so Much BS

Far away philosophically and spatially , in the wilds of San Francisco is a Public Radio affiliate that demonstrates an independence. Dominated by KQED, the thoroughly liberal powerhouse station, much smaller KALW (FM 91.7) has decided there is more to programming than Car Talk, Garrison Kellior, All Things Considered, and agenda. Aside from their country music emphasis, they are originators of a remarkable amount of self programming. And it works. (Yahoo them) Since January 2004, two philosophy professors have aired a Sunday morning call-in hour called Philosophy Talk, “The Program That Questions Everything - Except your Intelligence”.

John Perry, Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford U. is the originator of the program. He and Stanford Philosophy Department Chairman Ken Taylor discuss topics from Why don’t molecules fly apart? to Vegans. Even the doctrine of preemptive self defense is derided, not because it is bad or good but because it is not a doctrine (a systematic body of evidence and belief that is self reinforcing).

I was not privileged to hear their program on truth vs. BS but my two bits says they likely examined the other things in life we hold valuable. Well, gold is one but so is a child, a friend, peace, a happy time, and the satisfaction of a job well done. You can likely add more; please do. The quality all of these share is rarity.

Were gold as common as iron, its value would be the same or even less since iron is much stronger. Were a children to be lifted from apple trees by the dozen, they might as easily be discarded after a short period of enjoyment; say the first diaper change. That one special friend with whom you can share any of your experiences with empathy is beyond price. That peace time of rest and quiet between turmoil and worry is when we can regain composure and strength to overcome the next stressful period. Each is beyond price because of scarcity. And the work plus effort needed to overcome the previous problem.

In mining gold, the ratio of metal to ore is spoken in terms of ounces per ton. An ounce is 1/16th of a pound. 1/16th of a pound per 2000 pounds or one part per 32,000. You must separate 32,000 ounces to get 1 ounce of gold at this yield! Current economic yields are 2 - 5 ounces per ton. Takes a lot of money to get even 10% return on investment at this rate.

It is a very good thing the yield on children is not similar. Yet each child requires an immense effort to produce a mature adult. Gestation is considered a trial, particularly the last several months. At every stage raising a child requires substantial effort and expense. The “terrible twos” then teenagers are just two of the times that require even more intensive exertion. Then seeing them make their own mistakes was, for me, the most difficult of all. The kid must learn the lessons the outside world teaches and I must not interfere lest those lessons be devalued and the mistake repeated. So parents must put 20 years of work into the making of one mature adult. Of course less effort means less maturity so kids are like many things; what you get depends on what you put in.

It seems that many people do not know a friend. Analysts, advisors, counselors, therapists; many paid professionals but no friend. Perhaps Ophra or Dr. Phil or a politician provides an inferior substitute but there is no conversation or trust investment. Even many marriages have partners rather than friends. Here is the reason there is so much BS. There are so few friends. Lotsa acquaintances and entertainers and politicians but damn few friends. Friends can bare their souls, admit mistakes and stupidities without fear or rebuke. Friends understand and accept our weaknesses just as we theirs. Friends make each other stronger. Friends are not “discovered” but are, like a successful garden, cultivated. The friendship grows as more work and effort is put into it. Unlike a garden, friendship requires trust to grow. Trust is the fertilizer of friendship. And trust requires absolute truth. Any fraction less than total truth degrades trust therefore friendship. BS ranges from outright lies to “shading” facts with artful word use to using words of ill defined meaning as slogans to substituting belief for fact. BS is the opposite of truth. Trust is bestowed rarely. So BS, the common ore, must always greatly exceed in quantity the gold of trust. And be of almost no value. And that is why there is so much more BS than truth. The BS people cannot trust you with truth. The BS people attempt to convince you there is no truth by shoveling an overwhelming amount of what they do in hopes of creating confusion. There is always truth but it always requires effort. Otherwise it would be of no value.

That's what happens when you hire lawyers

Viacom to get vast Google information

Privacy advocates are alarmed

So a judge rules that Viacom gets to go on a fishing expedition with several years of viewers ID and videos. You stupid yerks obviously do not understand how statistical sampling works. They don't need all our IDs to reach a valid conclusion. You hired lawyers when you needed experts in another field: mathematics!

But all is not lost. You blew the hearing badly. Go back before the judge and demand that all the data be reviewed; nothing may be discarded or otherwise ignored. Every last little tiny bit must be reviewed and reported on. Should keep the fishers busy for the next ten or twenty years. See a mathematician about this. Hold their nose to the grindstone.

No thanks needed. That's what engineers do. Make the job work in spite of management.

Get outta my way, Giggle

Google Obstructs Search for Conservative Site

Welcome. You are now a member of a very small group who knows about this site. Actually there are three of them. All with the same name, p'word, etc. Have been going two months and still get either no direction or mis-direction from Giggle or Yoyo.

FYI their censorship by obstruction won't work. Will keep pestering the dings until they get the message. I won't quit!

It's about damn time

Seems we cannot learn from our media or educational establishment so we must look abroad. Took thirty years but here are facts we ignored then. Thank you Internet, the resource liberals forgot, the electronic samidzat. Yahoo for that and the article mid section.

July 2, 2008

Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations

by Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer

Nuclear power is gaining momentum in the United States as the nation seeks environmentally friendly and affordable sources of energy that can meet growing demand. As the U.S. deliberates the possibility of building new nuclear power plants, other nations have already begun the process.

A Domestic Source of Energy

France is an example of a country that developed nuclear energy to reduce foreign energy dependence after the oil shock of the 1970s. [France acted while US dithered and liberals obstructed] It now receives nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is a net exporter of electricity.[1] Germany, alternatively, decided to phase out nuclear energy for political reasons and now imports some of this energy.[2]

Japan is another country that has looked to nuclear power as a clean, safe and reliable form of energy. Nuclear power already provides 30 percent of the country's electricity; however, Japan is working to increase this to 37 percent by 2009 and 41 percent by 2017.[3]

Finland, ranking fifth in the world for per capita electricity consumption, has a significant incentive to secure long-term energy solutions. Embracing nuclear energy as part of an effort to decrease the nation's dependency on foreign energy sources, Finland has begun constructing a modern 1,600-megawatt reactor, which will likely be a model used throughout the United States. Finland already gets 28 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, and a possible sixth reactor would increase that amount substantially.

Presently, the U.K. has 19 reactors that provide about 18 percent of the nation's electricity. Because the U.K. is already a net importer of energy and all but one of its coal-fired and nuclear plants are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2023, building new reactors is a must for the U.K. if it is to avoid creating increased energy dependencies. The British government, while providing long-term politically stable support for nuclear power, has made it clear that it would not subsidize the industry. The U.S., on the other hand, continues to squabble politically about nuclear power but has offered some subsidies to the industry. As a result, the British model should provide a sustainable environment for nuclear power moving forward, while the U.S. model could create a politically tenuous dependency relationship between government and industry.

Environmental Concerns

Nuclear energy is attractive to many countries because of its impeccable environmental record. Burning fossil fuels releases an abundance of elements into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy, to the contrary, fully contains all of its byproduct in the form of used nuclear fuel. Such waste is safely managed throughout the world in countries like France, Finland, and Japan.

---

Meeting Higher Demands for Energy

U.S. electricity demand is projected to increase up to 40 percent by 2030, and other countries are projecting similar increases.[4] The rapid industrial development of both China and India is already placing great pressure on global energy supplies. And because energy sources, especially fossil fuels, are global commodities, growing demand in one part of the world affects the global economy. As a result, higher prices and tightened supply have some nations, such as China, experiencing power shortages.[5] While the U.S. has, for the most part, been able to keep the lights on, with the price of gas breaking the $4 barrier and natural gas prices increasing, every American knows full well the pain of increasing global energy demand.

Nuclear energy can help meet this growing demand. Most directly, nuclear energy can be used to generate electricity. If that demand were not met by nuclear power, then it would likely be met with natural gas. This would put additional pressure on natural gas reserves, driving up the price for electricity as well as all the other goods that use natural gas in their production.

Although natural uranium is a finite resource like gas, oil, or coal, it can be recycled and reused. The French, Japanese, and British all recycle their used nuclear fuel. The French, for example, remove the uranium and plutonium and fabricate new fuel. Using that method, America can recycle its 58,000 tons of used fuel stored across the nation to power every U.S. household for 12 years.

China, India, and Russia are already building new nuclear plants. Even smaller countries, like Vietnam and countries in the Middle East, have begun exploring nuclear power as they too are facing demand shortages and feeling pressure from the industrialized world to reduce CO2 emissions.

What the U.S. Could Learn

With the U.S. entertaining the idea of building new nuclear plants, the country can learn a great deal from other nations further along in the process. Electricity demand is skyrocketing in many parts of the world; purported human-induced climate change has the entire globe in a panic. Nuclear energy has become a focal point for countries trying to meet these needs, and some believe that it can provide an economic boost at the same time. It creates opportunities to electrify portions of the economy that today rely almost entirely on fossil-fuels, like transportation.

Other countries seem to understand the potential benefits of nuclear power and have either commenced constructing, or have developed projections for, new nuclear plants. The time has come for the U.S. to stop squabbling, remove regulatory impediments, and allow nuclear energy to continue helping this country to meet its growing energy demands.

Nicolas Loris is a Research Assistant and Jack Spencer is a research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

"Here he co-om-mes, that's Daffy's clown."

Djimmy Carter's Second Term
By Paul Miller

It was a cold and rainy October night when my mother and I stood outside a Skokie, Illinois Synagogue to hear and hopefully meet Georgia Governor James Earl "Jimmy" Carter. My parents and most Americans were still sickened over Watergate, President Gerald Ford's unconditional pardon of Richard Nixon and the disaster of the Vietnam War. They hungered for "change" and "new hope". Many Americans believed they found what they desperately yearned for in a peanut farmer turned politician from Georgia.

Four years later Jimmy Carter's name couldn't be uttered by my father without being proceeded by four-letter expletives. My mother cried herself to sleep believing that Carter's school-busing program was going to take me from my elementary school down the block to a school and hour away on the southside of Chicago. Supporters of Israel began to distrust him as he began showing signs of an anti-Israel bias. The economy was devastating families with double-digit inflation and the Iran hostage crisis made Americans ashamed of their President.

Today there is an eerie similarity to the election that led up to the disastrous Carter administration. All the Presidential candidates are speaking the rhetoric of "change" and "trust" in government. However, assumed Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has based his entire bid for the White House with Carter-style ideas and campaign policy advisers stemming directly from the administration and school of thought of the Carter Presidency. {Yahoo: Carter's Second Term}

Carter had the stupidity and gall to attempt to blame the American people for his own failures. "I am reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what is wrong with America." (July 15, 1979) B. Hussein blames others for pointing out his failures, too. Blames ... Others. When you're weak and inexperienced, blame others.
B. Hussein has mostly Carter and Clinton retreads as advisors which shows just how inexperienced he is.

BTW our Constitution Limits The Government. The citizens get their rights from God not as a check from Washington. Limits on government are the historical, important part.