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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, April 08, 2006
House Project: Learning to Debug System Problems I am beginning to get a little frustrated with my builder. He put in our mailbox a couple of weeks back--great! Then the mail carrier asked us to move it back so it was lined up with all the other mailboxes on our rural road. This way, he can just drive along, one box right after the other. Okay, the builder moved our mailbox--but didn't fix the self-closing doors in the house while he was up there. (He forgot his hammer--any mechanic's most important tool. "If it doesn't work it, hit it. If it breaks, it needed replacing, anyway.") There's been some settling of the house, and a few minor cosmetic matters need repair--a few places where some sealant and some paint are required. Not big, but he's a little too busy on new subdivisions, so we are waiting. The big stuff, however, is all water related. The pressurization pump in the garage is what takes water from the water tank (gravity fed) and pushes it up to normal house water pressure. The pump has been dripping some water the last few weeks, however--enough to be a concern. Finally, today, after I was able to describe the symptoms (pressure spiking from 65 psi to over 100 psi after running water in the house), the pump guy was able to identify and fix the problem for the second time. (The first time was a recall from the manufacturer.) So we go up to the house this evening to put in some more curtains, and I notice that there is no water. The pump is trying--but even the faucet that is gravity-fed has no water. I call the builder. He has me call the pump guy. The pump guy at least is able to tell me what to check. Now I know where the switch and breaker that feed the well pump that feeds the water tank are. I also looked into the water tank--the float that controls whether the well pump should be running either droops down, and starts the well pump, or is horizontal (as the water fills the tank), and that shuts off the well pump. The float was horizontal because it was stuck in a corner of the water tank. I reached in, pulled it loose--and about five seconds later, there was a whooshing sound from the pipe that leads to the water tank, followed about 30 seconds later by water. This is frustrating, but at least I am learning how to debug these problems myself. I have been a little concerned about the water color. It is perfectly safe to drink, and actually tastes pretty good--but it is yellowish to brownish--far too much to want to use for a bath. When I looked in the tank, I noticed that there is a good bit of dirt and mud that has fallen when the lid was off at various times. The builder was supposed to get someone up there to pump the tank out, let it dry, and then vacuum out all the loose dirt. But that was weeks ago, and he just hasn't gotten to it. I suppose that I could do this myself, and perhaps I will. Fortunately, I could use a siphon to get all but a small amount of water out, and then use a shopvac to finish the cleaning process. It might help to have a small child that I could lower down into the tank to finish the cleaning process, but I'm fresh out of small children at this point in life. Labels: house project Friday, April 07, 2006
Blogging From A Linux Box I'm blogging from a Linux box this evening. My daughter just bought a Dell laptop to replace a hopelessly messed up Windows desktop--and I have now installed SuSE Linux on it as a replacement for Windows. For a whole host of reasons, I am tired of Microsoft: 1. Reliability. Some of it is, I know, the enormous variety of hardware and software out there, but I have enough experience now with boxes where every piece of software came from Microsoft--and Microsoft's very simple Windows CE can't stay operational for more than a few days without requiring a reboot. 2. Security. Part of why Windows has been such a security problem is because it is so common, and hackers have therefore aimed at it. But some of it is that Microsoft has made some very, very poor decisions along the way. A co-worker, for a security class in his master's program, did a little digging, and found out that Microsoft at some point made the decision to allow some applications to run in system state as a performance enhancement. (The Intel processors have a nice multilevel security scheme--but you have to follow the scheme for it to work.) One consequence of this, and some of the other poorly thought out ideas (like startup macros in Microsoft Word documents), is that Microsoft Windows requires layers of other software on top of it to prevent viruses, adware, spyware, etc. from climbing on board. Running all that extra security software slows things down immensely--just watching Norton Antivirus intercept outgoing and incoming emails to scan them for viruses makes me want to cry. 3. I am tired of rewarding sloppy and careless work, and everytime I buy a Microsoft product, I feel like I am doing that. Have you ever wondered why you could run Windows 3.1 and actually get quite a bit done on a 25 MHz processor with 16 MB of RAM--and today you need a 300 MHz processor and at least 256 MB of RAM to run one or two applications? There's been enormous software bloat, and I suspect that C++ has a lot to do with it. I am again working in C++, and while C++ does not require software bloat, it is surprisingly easy for it to happen with all the subclassing. Anyway, I would prefer to be running something like RedHat 9.0 (which I use at work). SuSE has a few rough edges to it compared to RedHat (like automatic installation of new software). But this is worthy of an experiment. Can We Expel San Francisco From The Union? I have asked this question before, and I am asking it again because of this latest expression of San Francisco governmental arrogance: SAN FRANCISCO - Mayor Gavin Newsom said Thursday that The City will not comply with any federal legislation that criminalizes efforts to help illegal immigrants.Can we persuade San Francisco to leave? Please? Massachusetts Mandatory Health Insurance Plan I'm sure that you saw some mention of it: BOSTON - Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday that would make Massachusetts the first state to require that all its citizens have some form of health insurance.The fifty states represent fifty laboratories; if this is really a clearly good idea, I expect that it will be obvious within a few years. If this is a really bad idea, it will be obvious also within a few years. I am not comfortable with forcing everyone to have health insurance. I am also not comfortable with having large nubmers of uninsured people, because in practice, the uninsured do get medical care--but it is often done in the most expensive, irrational, and often painful way possible--the emergency room that treats the uninsured kid when the cold has moved into pneumonia. It reminds me of the insanity of abortion as a form of contraception. Regardless of the morality of having large numbers of uninsured people out there, it is terribly inefficient to use an emergency room as a substitute for timely medical care. A lot of the uninsured are people who are too poor to afford health insurance--and whose employers either can't afford, or won't afford, to provide health insurance. There's no realistic alternative for this crowd but governmental assistance. The $295 annual fee paid by employers who don't provide health insurance has to be a lot cheaper for the employers than providing health insurance--and I rather doubt that many employers are going to be driven out of business by $295 per employee per year. There is one exception: businesses that employ large number of transient workers--the place that has lots of employees who are there for three or four weeks. They are going to get eaten alive by this, assuming that the news account is correct as to how it is calculated. I would not be surprised to see what little agricultural fieldwork remains in Massachusetts go away--and perhaps more than a few fast food restaurants, who are are notorious for seldom keeping employees for more than a couple of months. There are a lot of uninsured who can afford health insurance, and simply refuse to do so. These are often single young people who either just aren't thinking about what happens if they get really, really sick, or who have the cynical view that they can declare bankruptcy and stick other people with the bill. I am not terribly sympathetic to people in this category--they are demanding the right to not pay for health insurance--but they would be terribly angry if a doctor or a hospital refused to treat them. They want the benefits of freedom, but not the costs. Booming Economy Unemployment is down to 4.7%. As something of an anecdotal example, my son was looking for a new job--and he was able to turn down a job with Pizza Hut for one at Round Table because Round Table was going to give him an earlier shot at the tip-rich driver position. Consumer confidence is rising. Thirty year Treasury bond yields above 5% (although just barely) Lots of government agency bonds with yields above 6%--including some Federal Home Loan Bank Board bonds with 2026 maturity that have a yield to worst of 6.625%! UPDATE: An interesting variable rate bond. Variable rate government bonds (called TIPS) have been around for a while, but the yield isn't so spectacular to get my attention, and the method that TIPS use to protect you from inflation are somewhat complex. I see that SLM Corporation is now offering S&P A-rated bonds whose coupon adjusts monthly. The yield 2.45% + the CPI-U index--and this resets monthly, and pays dividends monthly. Right now, that gives a 6.44% yield--not bad for a bond maturing in 2013. This has the advantage that it should be immune to capital value of the bond rising and falling as interest rates change--although, of course, it is still subject to the risks associated with the health of the corporation. What Are The Republicans Smoking? I was watching Fox News this morning, and one of the talking heads was saying that Republicans are split about immigration because a lot of them are scared of losing the mid-term elections if they don't grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Then I look at the poll numbers and I scratch my head: How do Americans want to deal with illegal immigrants? Large majorities favor increasing the number of border patrol agents (80 percent) and imposing fines and criminal charges against employers who hire illegals (73 percent).There's a clear consensus, with a huge majority in support of: 1. Serious penalties for hiring illegals. 2. No amnesty. 3. A temporary guest worker program for illegals already here. 4. A more serious effort to stop illegal immigration at the border. I would guess that most of the minority that oppose these measures aren't going to vote Republican, anyway (although the Fox News poll finds little partisan difference on most of these questions). In any case, this isn't a hot button issue, according to the Fox News poll: Despite the high portion of Americans thinking illegal immigration is a serious problem in the United States, immigration comes in well behind other issues when voters are asked to think about what will be most important in deciding their vote for Congress this fall.Of course, if Republicans actually stopped dithering about this, there is a voting demographic that might actually stand up and cheer their actions--and who seldom vote Republican: Immigration experts disagree sharply over whether the newcomers help or hurt the American economy, especially black workers, but there's general agreement that low-skilled immigrants drive down wages for all native-born laborers who didn't graduate high school.I am just floored by the idiocy of Republican Party leadership. Here is an issue on which they could undercut the Democrats among working class Americans: "We decided that for reasons of national security--and because illegal aliens were driving down the wages of blue collar Americans--that America needed to enforce the existing laws. It's hard enough that you are doing dirty jobs that need to be done--you shouldn't have to compete for a job with someone who isn't even legally in the United States." Thursday, April 06, 2006
Trademark Infringement! San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, which recently found it necessary to adopt a resolution expressing disapproval of a group that one of San Francisco's representatives in San Francisco referred to as "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco" has now passed a resolution disapproving of the Catholic Church, because the Vatican doesn't want Catholic Charities to be engaged in homosexual adoption. Okay, no surprises there, and I guess San Francisco county government is free to express their opinion--although I would expect if the Butte, Montana city government passed a resolution praising the Southern Baptist Church, the ACLU would be looking through the precedents, looking for some way to turn this into an establishment of religion clause violation--but what is amusing is how Professor Volokh points to the language of the resolution--stuff that reads like some sort of nineteenth century tirade about "papists": Start with the old those-Catholics-are-controlled-by-a-foreign-potentate thing that has historically often been used to discredit American Catholic politicians, and that seems to me to have no relevance to the moral issues involved here. Opposition to same-sex adoption is right or wrong with no regard to whether the leaders of the opposition are in Italy or here.The comments on Volokh's posting have some amusing turns. Some are the sort of gay groupies that I have learned to expect at Volokh Conspiracy, ranting about how there's nothing improper about going after that evil, homophobic Catholic Church, but some of the other comments are quite amusing: I think the Vatican would revoke the City's right to use the name of one of their saints.This led to this amusing response: My friend Dave Hardy suggestsif that happened, what would be a good name for the now nameless city? I suppose that, in light of the Mohammed cartoon affair, it is now mandatory that Catholics riot and break things and kill people in order to get a little respect? Break all the windows in SF city hall by hurling cans of tuna? A flying wedge attack led by Old Nuns with deadly rulers? The Iraq/Bin Laden Connection What just amazes me is how many Iraqi government documents are coming out--in spite of the best efforts of the U.S. government--that give strong reasons to believe that Saddam Hussein's government had a working relationship with al-Qaeda. Stephen Hayes over at Weekly Standard has been pulling teeth for months trying to get copies of unclassified documents captured in Iraq. His first article about this pointed to what can only be called curious and suggestive links: One of the documents, "Iraqi Efforts to Cooperate with Saudi Opposition Groups and Individuals," had been provided to the New York Times last summer. Thom Shanker, one of the Times's best reporters, wrote a story based on the document, which was an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo. The Iraqi document revealed that a Sudanese government official met with Uday Hussein and the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 1994 and reported that bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan. Bin Laden, according to the Iraqi document, was then "approached by our side" after "presidential approval" for the liaison was given. The former head of Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with bin Laden on February 19, 1995. The document further states that bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative"--a comment that suggests the possibility had been discussed. (According to another Iraqi Intelligence document, authenticated by the DIA and first reported on 60 Minutes, the regime considered bin Laden an "Iraqi Intelligence asset" as early as 1992, though it's unclear that bin Laden shared this view.)A second article demonstrated that according to Iraqi government documents, they were funding al-Qaeda affiliates in the Philipines, and only backed off funding because one of these attacks was getting too much attention from the FBI: ON JUNE 6, 2001, the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines sent an eight-page fax to Baghdad. Ambassador Salah Samarmad's dispatch to the Secondary Policy Directorate of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry concerned an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping a week earlier that had garnered international attention. Twenty civilians--including three Americans--had been taken from Dos Palmas Resort on Palawan Island in the southern Philippines. There had been fighting between the kidnappers and the Filipino military, Samarmad reported. Several hostages had escaped, and others were released.There's a lot more there--enough to show that Iraq was funding al-Qaeda farmclub operations that were killing Americans. You aren't going to see this in local newspaper, obviously, especially if you live in California, where political homogenity takes precedence over everything else. This Guy Is Teaching English? Appropriately enough, the Houston school district suspended this guy from his job as a football coach for using school copy machines to reproduce a flyer intended for distribution to the students. I don't expect spectacular educational achievements from a coach--but according to this article, he was also an English as a Second Language teacher: Rudy Rios was stripped of his duties as junior varsity baseball coach at Chavez High School last week after using a district copying machine to make a flier encouraging Latino students to attend a rally protesting restrictions on illegal immigration.Gee, we wonder why Hispanic kids are lagging behind in their education. Look at who is teaching them English. Wednesday, April 05, 2006
A Person Too Stupid To Hold A Job More Important Than Garbage Pickup I realize that a deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security probably doesn't do anything all that critical to our national defense--but even if you are one of those lawyers prepared to rationalize a 55 year old trying to get together with a 14 year old for sex, you have to admit that this is someone too stupid to hold a job that requires discretion or common sense: LAKELAND - When he wasn't sending pornographic movies to and asking for explicit photos from a teenage girl in Polk County, a Maryland man was bragging about his job as a spokesman at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, law enforcement officers said.Someone please tell me that this guy didn't have a security clearance. Traditionally, certain sexual deviations were grounds to exclude you from sensitive government work because of concern that our nation's enemies might use such information to blackmail you. The Duke Lacrosse Team Rape Controversy One of the disadvantages of television news is that the full savagery of crimes they are covering can't be discussed in a family forum. I saw a defense attorney for some of the guys on the Duke Lacrosse team suggest that there was no real evidence that the "exotic dancer" was raped--that this was a "he said, she said" sort of matter. The Smoking Gun has the search warrant that includes not only a discussion of the physical evidence of rape (from the emergency room), but an email from one of the team members that was probably supposed to be funny--but the contents make rape seem positively normal and healthy. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but this doesn't make me chuckle at all, or even produce a slight smile. It just makes me wonder what sort of sicko would think that someone else would find this funny. UPDATE: In discussing this incident with my wife, she pointed out that both the description of what is alleged to have happened to the "exotic dancer," and the savagery of the email above, do fit in with a generation that is growing up drenched in hardcore pornography--a medium where women are wanton creatures who look forward to multiple sexual partners. My daughter and son-in-law relate stories of what goes on at the University of Idaho that suggest a generation of young men are growing up with porn-warped notions of the purpose of women, and what they want. My daughter had a roommate who had gone out on a first date. Well, of course, he expected sex on the first date. The roommate was having her period, and said "No," so his next request was...anal sex. There were fraternities at the University of Idaho where members kept whiteboards listing who had sex with which girls. Does anyone seriously think that soaking a generation in hardcore pornography and hip-hop music videos isn't having some deleterious effects on how boys look at girls? Americans Won't Pick Lettuce for $50 Per Hour At least, that's what Senator John McCain, the left's favorite Republican, said recently to the AFL-CIO: But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.It isn't very often that you will find me agreeing with the AFL-CIO, but McCain is clearly out of touch with reality. I would not want to pick lettuce for a living. All field work is physically demanding. But America is full of people who do similarly demanding and unpleasant work for a lot less money than $50/hour. Each week, the Discovery Channel television show "Dirty Jobs" chronicles all sorts of jobs that make picking lettuce seem downright white collar--and most of the people doing these jobs are clearly U.S. citizens, and I would be surprised if any of them are making $50/hour. Eric Muller's Obssession With Michelle Malkin's Work Habits My respect for University of North Carolina law professor Eric Muller started to collapse when I saw the implausible criticisms that he made of Michelle Malkin's book In Defense of Internment. Now, not all of his arguments were absurd--but it became increasingly clear, when he compared Malkin's book to Holocaust denial, that Muller and friends are more interested in defending the position that they have staked out than in pursuing the historical truth about the Japanese-American internment. Muller, a self-described liberal, has also argued for why certain books should not be allowed in public school libraries or in government operated bookstores. Muller even toyed with the idea of suing a publisher for selling a book to a public library that he found offensive, because it promoted Christianity. This is, of course, the essence of modern liberalism--it believes that the government is obligated to fund art projects such as "Piss Christ," but that it is completely improper for a publisher to sell a book to a public library because the liberal in question finds its religious content offensive. I am not surprised that Eric Muller is a law professor--a profession that seems to attract people with the morals of a lawyer ("99% of lawyers ruin it for the rest") and the common sense of academics. Muller's attacks on Malkin included a nasty little posting in which he implied that Malkin planted forgeries in the National Archives to make her book In Defense of Internment look plausible--a scurrilous claim that requires some evidence to make. Muller's latest attack on Malkin claims that Malkin doesn't really write all the stuff that she blogs--apparently on the theory that because Muller is unproductive and not very bright (he is a law professor, after all), that Malkin couldn't possibly be that much more productive. It is worth reading the comments on Muller's attack. Even people who identify themselves as fans of Muller tell him that he is all wet, and to make these accusations of dishonesty based on the fact that Malkin gets a lot done during the day is absurd: With all due respect .... this is indeed an embarrassing and somewhat petty posting.Some of the critical comments by Malkin's fans were riotously funny: Brilliant! You've unravelled Michelle Malkin's clever deception! There wasn't just one blogger, as any fool can see, there were two, three, maybe four or five or six! It was Karl Rove blogging from the Book Depository, Dubya blogging from the manhole cover, and Michelle Malkin was blogging from the Grassy Knoll! Who knows how many bloggers were involved in this vast right wing conspiracy!? But none of them all together could fool you, huh? You have unravelled their clever conspiracy with, with, with GEOMETRIC logic.And: Methinks thou dost protest too much...And this one: I'm just curious, did Michelle turn you down when you came on to her or something? Remember, you were both at the same convention, you invited her for a drink, she turned you down?And the best of all: Dear Ahab...er...Eric, No, It Isn't An April Fool's Joke The British government has decided that burglary, statutory rape, and a variety of other crimes should not result in arrests or court appearances: Burglars will be allowed to escape without punishment under new instructions sent to all police forces. Police have been told they can let them off the threat of a court appearance and instead allow them to go with a caution.I shake my head in amazement. This is liberalism carried to its illogical extreme. Approaching the End of Interest Rate Hikes? The 30 year Treasury yields punched through 4.9% the last several days, but today they are back down into the 4.8% range--partly because of this statement: NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Treasury prices jumped higher in Wednesday morning, putting a bit of pressure on yields, after a Federal Reserve official said he believes monetary policy is very close to its proper level.I was hoping for interest rates to get a bit higher, so that I could lock in higher yields after I sell my current house. On the other hand, if May is the end of the interest rate escalator, housing prices may start rising again, especially here locally, since Idaho now has the third highest rate of job growth in the nation. Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Flu Everyone in the house is sick with it. At least it seems to be short-lived; I expect to be well enough to go back to work Wednesday. Monday, April 03, 2006
Substance Abuse & The Teenaged Brain This isn't going to be very popular news in some circles, but adults who think it is so cool that their kids are smoking pot and drinking (and there are a lot of them, especially in evil cesspools like Sonoma County) need to hear it nonetheless: ST. LOUIS — Teenagers who drink, smoke and use drugs can derail their brain development and set themselves up for lifelong addiction.It isn't just addiction that is a problem: Recent studies show that teens who start using marijuana before they turn 17 are at higher risk of developing schizophrenia than people who didn’t use or started smoking marijuana later in adolescence or young adulthood.There's an interesting part of the article about the question of "gateway drugs" and the results of some twin studies: Marijuana has often been called a gateway drug, a substance that can lead to use of more harmful drugs. Most researchers agree that marijuana doesn’t necessarily set up the brain for further addictions, but does give kids practice in obtaining illicit substances and access to a subculture where harder drugs are available.There are good reasons for discouraging heavy use of intoxicants by adults (drunk driving, rape, murder, accidents), and even stronger reasons to discourage it among minors, whose brains are still developing. Here's a news story from the University of Idaho, where my daughter attends, that is part of why I think, along with the article above, that keeping the drinking age at 21 is probably a good idea--and while some people think that it would be so cool to lower the drinking age to 18, I am inclined to think otherwise: A University of Idaho student who fell out of a third-floor fraternity house window remained in satisfactory condition Saturday at a Spokane hospital.Apparently, tradition here in Idaho is that for your 21st birthday, you make a "21 run"--at which you go to bars and get drunk--and from what my daughter tells me about University of Idaho, many often end up drunk at the "puking in the alley" level. The rest of the story has a rather bizarre example of regulation: Neighbor's bed was located right next to an open window, and he apparently was disoriented and got up on the wrong side of the bed, Henderson said.Huh? Moscow, at some times of the year, is below zero at night. Of course, if you aren't rip-roaring drunk, having an open window might not be so dangerous. Illegal Guns in Gun Control Activist's Home This isn't the first time that police have found illegally possessed guns in a gun control activist's home, but it is still perplexing: When her son was shot dead five years ago, Julia Farquharson made it her life's work to keep guns off the streets. She rallied her community, pleaded with officials to effect change, and enlisted the media to help spread her message of hope. Improving Your Health By Regular Church Attendance I've mentioned previously a study that found a correlation between church attendance and wealth, I emphasized then that this was merely a correlation, and determining if there is a causal relationship there, and if so, what the direction is, was a rather large problem. Now there's a study that finds regular church attenders live longer: There are many things you can do to increase your life expectancy: exercise, eat well, take your medication and ... go to church.Unlike the wealth correlation, however, I can see some causality that just jumps out at you, of which the most obvious is that many of the things that cause premature death are frowned on by fundamentalist and conservative churches (and even some mainline churches): 1. Smoking. The health problems are obvious. 2. Drunkenness. Alcohol consumption in low doses has been shown to be a health benefit, but drink until you can't drive or operate heavy machinery safely is a definite no-no to many churches--and it isn't a way to live to a ripe old age, either. 3. Changing sex partners more often than you change socks. Also strongly disapproved of by most churches--and in the age of AIDS, this is a definite health risk. 4. Drug dealing is also a no-no, and not conducive to living into your 80s (or even your 30s). Obviously, if you smoke, drink until you can't get off the floor of the gay bathhouse, and keep sharing needles when you aren't blazing away with your 9mm at other drug dealers while trying to not hit the other cars because you are so wasted, showing up for church on Sunday morning is unlikely to have any protective effects on your health. Of course, you probably aren't reading this blog, anyway. News From An Alternative Universe Yup! I'm convinced that these news stories are coming from some alternative universe where the U.S. government has banned all erotic materials: OS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The last time "Basic Instinct" man-eater Catherine Tramell prowled the big screen, the studio erotic thriller was hitting box office heights. The first "Instinct" took the top spot when it debuted in 1992, with an opening weekend of $15.1 million, the equivalent of $20.45 million in today's dollars.My mind just boggles at claims like these. The only efforts by the U.S. government to ban anything "erotic" are materials that are clearly far beyond anything that Verhoeven has produced: hardcore bestiality; hardcore films that depict rape, torture, and murder. There is no shortage of "erotic" films available; I have to set my cable TV controller to not display "adult movie" titles, because the titles alone are pretty randy. What Verhoeven is really complaining about is that the market demand has declined a bit, and the studios have recognized this. A screenwriter quoted in the same article at least understands what has really happened: Scribe Nicholas Meyer, who was an uncredited writer on 1987's seminal sex-fueled cautionary tale "Fatal Attraction," agrees, noting that the genre's downfall coincides with the ascent of the conservative political movement.But here's the real issue: Mark Damon, once dubbed the king of eroticism for producing such steamy classics as 1986's "9 1/2 Weeks" and 1990's "Wild Orchid," said he stopped producing sex-steeped dramas because "I didn't find any scripts that were worth producing. The genre had exhausted itself."This happens. For a number of years, the studios stopped making Westerns. No one came up with a script that was sufficiently fresh or interesting (at least to the likely movie audience) to justify making such a movie. These waves of boom and bust happen in many genres. Machining Lessons Learned Not only is it a mistake to try and remove too much material at a single pass; it can be a mistake to try and remove too little. "Facing" is the process of turning a piece of material in a lathe while running the cutting tool across the end. If the workpiece is close (with a couple of degrees) to being perpendicular to the direction of rotation, this cut produces a right angle face on the end. If you don't see why (and I confess that I didn't at first, either), imagine a cylinder spinning, even if it is not exactly at a 90 degree angle to the jaws holding it in place. When you cut across the cylinder, yes, one side of the cylinder will be farther out than the other--but as long as you take a deep enough cut, the rotation of the cylinder will cut both ends down to the same length. Now you have a cylinder with one end perfectly square. Reverse it in the jaws. Now, because the end now in the jaws is perfectly square to the rest of the cylinder, your facing cut across the other end will do the same operation--cutting both long and short sides of the cylinder to the same length. Now you have a cylinder with both ends perfectly square. As I mentioned at the beginning, trying to remove too much material at one pass can be a problem, especially with harder materials (like aluminum or steel). The material you are cutting bunches up, and resists cutting. But on relatively soft materials, like plastic, I've noticed that trying to make too thin of a cut during the facing procedure is also a problem. Because of the variation in length of the cylinder end, the cutting tool is only hitting the material some of the time, and the finish isn't very good. I'm speculating that the cutting tool is vibrating or shaking as it hits the plastic, then moves into an area where there is nothing to cut. Another lesson learned: on a vertical mill, a flycutter can only be used to take very thin slices compared to an end mill--but the flycutter produces a much more attractive finish. Yes, the end mill produces a surface that screams "milled," but at least what I am seeing so far has just a bit too much of an image of the end mill's cut to be satisfactory. At least on Delrin, the flycutter produces a surface finish that comes perilously close to something that I would imagine, not make. Sunday, April 02, 2006
Machining Is A Lot Like Cutting Hair You can always cut it shorter; you can't cut it longer. The particular lesson was that I dialed in a little too much on the cross-slide to turn a piece of plastic down to 2.355"--and ended up at 2.349", which as far as I am concerned, means it goes into the scrap pile. You have to turn stuff down to the required size in a couple of big steps, then several very small steps. Today's good news was three orders: one for some casters for a Losmandy G-11, and two Quick Release Toe Savers--all three are manufactured and ready to ship! (I have just reserved space for my first print advertising.) Delrin (or acetal) vs. UHMW polyethylene: I've complained intermittently about what awful stuff UHMW is to machine; soft; stringy; prone to grabbing on the tool, sometimes sending the workpiece flying across the workshop. But really, the problem is that UHMW requires a very sharp cutting tool and very high cutting speed. I've resisted going entirely to Delrin for parts because it is about three times as expensive as UHMW. For some parts, there's really no realistic choice. If a part has to be very rigid, or high tensile strength, or if I have to bore it out to a particular diameter, Delrin wins over UHMW. But some of the parts that I use don't need remarable rigidity or strength--and UHMW is not only cheap, but with a sharp tool and enough speed, I can just fly through this stuff! (And I confess that I cringe a little when I think of the chemical composition of Delrin--I always machine it with the garage door open, to get a good breeze through.) One of today's orders required 2.355" diameter leg inserts, but since I was all out of 2 3/8" rod, I thought I was going to have wait until I could buy some locally. But because UHMW cuts so fast (with the right speed and tool), I took three 2.75" UHMW scraps that I thought I was going to have to throw away, and turned them down to size in about 20 minutes. Unlike Delrin, where you have to remove relatively small layers at a time (typically 20/1000ths of an inch at a pass), the UHMW tolerates cutting 50/1000th of an inch at a time, and even more. It is rather entertaining as fragments of plastic going flying everywhere! House Project: Customizing The Roof Rafters We had the builder install one of those foldaway ladders that open into the ceiling of the garage, with the expectation of using it for long-term storage. We bought some 24" x 72" x 1" pine laminate at Home Depot Saturday morning, and put three of them across the rafters, thus creating a 6' x 6' platform in which to store stuff. It isn't a real DIY ("Do It Yourself," or as they say in Britain, "Disaster Is Yours") project unless you spill some blood, and this wasn't difficult. The rafters are constructed from various long pieces that are held together by these indescribable spike plates which are much sharper than they look! Ouch! Labels: house project Real Estate Bubbles, Speculative Insanity, & Regional Markets They have a saying in real estate that there are only three things that matter in determining prices: location, location, location. I've mentioned previously that rising interest rates will eventually choke off this booming economy, and in some regions, the insane speculative fever of last year has already cooled off--partly because of rising interest rates, but also partly because prices had reached unsupportable levels. I recall reading one article that pointed out that rents in San Diego were as much as 20% below the house payments--an indication that speculative excess has blown a rather large bubble. From reading Professor David Bernstein's occasional discussions of the Washington DC housing market, it sounds like this one is cooling off as well--although there hasn't been a free fall in housing prices. California is one of those places prone to unusually strong boom and bust cycles in real estate prices, and this has been going since at least the 1870s. I'm sure that there's some good reason for this, but it is something to watch for, if you are currently invested in California real estate, and aren't sure that you want to ride through the next downturn--you probably want to be selling soon, and take your money off the table. (California real estate: yes, it's much like a casino, except that you can't live in the casino, and most casinos are closer to real life than California.) One regional market that is still doing very well--even with rising interest rates--is Boise. News stories like this one about Micron Technology's bright and shining future are part of why. Micron has been hiring lots of engineers over the last few months, and unsurprisingly, NAND flash memory going into camera phones and iPODs ends up moving money from consumers worldwide to Boise, and into our local economy. I have enough confidence in the future of the Boise real estate market that, even though I think the national economy and national real estate market is going to cool a bit over the next several years, I am looking into buying a house with my daughter and son-in-law if they ended up going to Boise State to work on their MSW degrees. What they would pay in rent here would just about make the mortgage payments on a small house. (You can still find two bedroom one bath houses below $130,000 in Boise--some much nicer than I would have expected.) I make the down payment and the property taxes; they will be technically paying rent to me to cover the mortgage payments; we'll share the appreciation in the house when it comes times to sell it. Even if it turns out not to appreciate, at least they should be able to get most or all of what they would otherwise have thrown down the renthole back out. |
