DrStephenCW

Vacation Time!

2011-11-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

It's time for the year end holiday for me and it's time for a long vacation for this blog - possibly forever!

I need to reallocate the few minutes a day I spend on the blog to my MediaWiki powered web page at Above the Garage. It's in dire need of help ... and I'd like to get more proficient at MediaWiki, which is one awesome piece of open source software.

So, thanks to everyone who has visited and TTFN!

(Note: during the week of 2011 November 26th we had our 100,000th visitor!)

Jingle Bell Rag

2009-12-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

Annual 'bump':

Happy Holidays from Above the Garage Productions

It's Jingle Bells played ragtime style and very fast, performed by yours truly.

Woot!

© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Nano-Plasm FTW

2009-12-17T20:48:00.000-08:00

There's still time to order Nano-Plasm and get it by Christmas if you use 2-day shipping!

Be the first on your block to find out what those spirographs are all about!

(More blog posts about Nano-Plasm...)
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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Dance with a Polygon

2009-12-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

I have a Google alert set on myself (who doesn't?) and I discovered this site that somehow has collected a few random bits of music by yours truly - and they have an embedded player! Too bad it doesn't work on Blogger.

(Link since player doesn't work.)

(Link that works: Dance with a Polygon)

This was probably composed in the early 1990s on cheap analog equipment and recorded to a four track cassette tape machine. It's generally inspired by this album:

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Paul A. Samuelson, Who Reshaped Economics, Dies at 94 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

2009-12-13T18:16:00.000-08:00

Paul A. Samuelson, Who Reshaped Economics, Dies at 94 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com: "The textbook introduced generations of students to the revolutionary ideas of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who in the 1930s developed the theory that modern market economies could become trapped in depression and would then need a strong push from government spending or tax cuts, in addition to lenient monetary policy, to restore them. Many economics students would never again rest comfortably with the 19th-century view that private markets would cure unemployment without need of government intervention."

Too bad this guy died. I wish he had lived another 10 years so he could see just how wrong he truly was. But I don't think it would have worked. Japan has been following this nonsensical teaching for the last 20 years and all they have to show for it is increased debt and stagflation. So even in the face of evidence that government can not spend its way out of a recession Dr. Samuelson would still have been a believer.

If you read the whole article you'll see that Dr. Samuelson advised President Kennedy to cut taxes to get out of a recession. No doubt, leaving money in the economy, even at some cost to the government in terms of interest payments, might actually help, as the economy grows enough to cover the additional interest payments.

But just because it works once in a while and at a small scale does not mean that a government like ours with tens of trillions of dollars in public debt with a constituency with another tens of trillions in private debt can spend its way out of the sinkhole of debt that has been created. Japan, which 20 years ago had a huge surplus, and was therefore in a much stronger position to potentially stimulate their own economy, has utterly failed at the task.

The reason is simple - governments don't create productivity. Governments can spend money and governments and print money but governments don't generally create much of anything except paperwork.

Unfortunately the die is already cast. When the stock market crashes again and everyone once again panics we'll be told that we have a liquidity crisis and only intervention by the central banks can save us. They will print another couple of trillion dollars and give it to the banks who will use it once again to buy their own stock offerings. More savings by the middle class will be wiped out and another 10 million people will be out of work. In the meantime, useless politicians will tool around in limousines and pat themselves on the back for the important work they are doing. Ugh.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Obama Lincoln

2009-12-12T00:57:00.000-08:00

Obama's Big Sellout : Rolling Stone: "What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside."

*Sigh*.

Obama says he admires Abraham Lincoln and that Team of Rivals was a huge influence.

I guess he paid particular attention to the part where Lincoln and his Secretary of the Treasury discovered a clever way to pay for the Civil War: print money.

I guess The Peace President needs to print a lot of money because we have a number of wars going: The War on Drugs; The War on Poverty; The War in Iraq; The War In Afghanistan; The War against THE CLIMATE; and I'm sure there are more.

Taken together, the rash of appointments with ties to Bob Rubin may well represent the most sweeping influence by a single Wall Street insider in the history of government. "Rather than having a team of rivals, they've got a team of Rubins," says Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "You see that in policy choices that have resuscitated — but not reformed — Wall Street."

In fact, Obama is doing what Lincoln did - appointing insiders. The so-called "Team of Rivals" was Lincoln's cabinet. It's "ex post facto" storytelling by Doris Kearns Goodwin that Lincoln hired his team because he wanted alternative views. In fact he wanted insiders to balance his own outsider status ... and if they had conflicts with each other then he resolved them - but Ms. Goodwin gets the cart before the horse.

It's the same for Obama. He's the outsider but 100% of the people around him are Washington insiders.

Our presidential elections are a no-win situation. The president is a figure head. Washington is run by the insiders who have formed a bureaucratic cesspool of toxic insider deals. I guess as figure-heads go Obama is doing a fine job - he just got the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush.

Today, the great enabler, of course, is the Federal Reserve, working jointly with the banks and the politicians to ensure both groups have plenty of scratch. Lincoln was on top of the situation in that regard as well, as he created a central bank that printed money to fund the war. Luckily that bank eventually failed just as the Federal Reserve will. All paper money eventually fails just as all Ponzi schemes eventually fail. Figuring out the timing is pretty tricky but one day the people in Bernie Madoff's fund were millionaires and then five minutes later they were completely broke. When it happens, it happens fast. Anyone with something called a dollar is a participant in the Federal Reserve Ponzi scheme and when it collapses it will happen very quickly.

It's best to be prepared. If you can figure out how, that is. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Stephen Colbert on the Federal Reserve

2009-12-09T21:15:00.001-08:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Fed's Dead

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Apparently there are parts of the media that are not under the control of the monetary elite!

(Click on "Fed's Dead" title in case the movie won't play.)
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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Elizabeth Warren on TARP

2009-12-09T09:15:00.000-08:00

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Tivoli One

2009-12-07T21:10:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to listen to a Tivoli One and last weekend I got to do it in a decent, quiet listening environment. (That really is one, isn't it? Don't tell me it's a knock-off ... I couldn't stand the truth! I can't find that exact model online.)

.. and indeed ... it sounded wonderful.

(And that's not my book: the spouse was reading it.)

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Winter Sunset

2009-12-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Overnight case

2009-12-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

The W Seattle

2009-12-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

The W in Seattle has very dark hallways with multicolored lighting.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Burt Rutan - Global Warming ... Isn't

2009-12-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

"The more complex or uncertain the data, the more
judgment is needed to interpret and the more susceptible
the conclusions are to bias."

Rutan.AGWdataAnalysis v11.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Read the charts. Carefully. Then tell me Global Warming is a real problem.

(ht John C. Dvorak)

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Mahalo Is Kicking Butt

2009-12-02T00:22:00.000-08:00

CHART OF THE DAY: Mahalo Is Kicking Butt: "Jason Calacanis' startup Mahalo's traffic has been chugging higher and higher since June, when the company shifted to a new model, creating a Wikipedia-for-profits that incorporates crowd-sourced content and revenue sharing.

In the chart below you can see Mahalo has 12.2 million global unique visitors, as directly measured by Quantcast (meaning it's a relatively accurate measurement of traffic). That's way up from up from June, when Quantcast says Mahalo had around 4 million uniques."

Well, congrats to Calacanis. I became interested in Mahalo when he hired Veronica Belmont to host Mahalo Daily and I lost interest when he chose the wrong winner in his contest to find a replacement.

Now Mahalo Daily is ... weekly? ... and I'm still not interested in Mahalo, although I like hearing Calacanis' views when he is on TWIT, although I don't listen to that anymore either.

So, okay, I totally lost interest. But still, congrats!

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Sarah Palin

2009-11-30T19:55:00.000-08:00

I was admiring my bubble of blog tags (which should be to the right somewhere) and I noticed the Sarah Palin is notable enough to deserve her own tag.

And yet ... I have no pictures of her!

Shocking.

(Okay, there are links to a couple of funny videos.)

My wife and I went on a cruise to Alaska last summer and we visited the Governor's Mansion in Juneau. When I tell the story I mention that Sarah Palin would come out and model a new outfit every day at 2:30 p.m. for about a half hour and ... many people buy it!

Instead of adding a picture of Sarah Palin to the blog I thought I'd give you a Google Image Search of Sarah Vowell, who is a true super hero.
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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Bernanke - too painful for Nassim Taleb

2009-11-30T19:54:00.000-08:00

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Good Bye! The Reappointment Of Bernanke Is Too Much To Bear: "What I am seeing and hearing on the news -- the reappointment of Bernanke -- is too hard for me to bear. I cannot believe that we, in the 21st century, can accept living in such a society. I am not blaming Bernanke (he doesn't even know he doesn't understand how things work or that the tools he uses are not empirical); it is the Senators appointing him who are totally irresponsible -- as if we promoted every doctor who caused malpractice. The world has never, never been as fragile. Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific."

Wouldn't be awesome if Obama read the writing on the (Great) wall (of China) and fired the whole bunch of misfits he has in charge of our economy?

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Dubai [World]

2009-11-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

Abu Dhabi’s Silence Raises the Heat on Dubai - NYTimes.com: "Many here had assumed that Abu Dha bi would bail out Dubai’s flagship company, Dubai World, which set off a swoon in global markets last week when it said it was seeking to delay payments on $59 billion in debt. But so far there has been no announcement, and insiders suggest that Abu Dhabi — which already bailed out Dubai to the tune of $10 billion earlier this year — is seeking greater economic or even political control over Dubai as the price for any further assistance.

To make matters worse, the Dubai government distanced itself from Dubai World on Monday. Abdulrahman al-Saleh, the general director of Dubai’s Department of Finance, told Dubai TV that Dubai World was “not guaranteed by the government,” and that creditors needed to take some responsibility. “They think Dubai World is part of the government, which is not correct.”"

So I'm not the only person that's confused about what's what. In my earlier posts I said that Dubai was defaulting. It's actually Dubai World, a separate company. But everyone (including me) assumed Dubai World was basically part of Dubai.

In our country, there was a bank called The Bank of The United States that failed, but everyone thought it was the government that failed. This caused a huge bank run.

Having said all that, it's still the case that there are tightly interwoven relationsips in Dubai since nearly all relationships are blood relationships.

In the US, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Administration (FHA) have implicit government guarantees, but as Market Skeptics points out, these are not real guarantees. So it'll be interesting to see who is left holding the bag when those agencies finally and completely implode.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Dubai - Incredible

2009-11-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

Dubai is in the news because it's defaulting ("postponing") payment on $60 billion in loans.

So I though I'd fly over the place in Google Earth.

I recommend you do the same. Just fly to "Dubai" and zoom out and you'll quickly find the man-made Palm Islands. Hunt around for the monorail track, the aquatic park, the giant hotel, and the range of homes/apartments, and ... lots of still empty sand.

It's unfrickin' believable.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Key Fact

2009-11-29T14:10:00.000-08:00

Legendary Financial Historian Ed Griffin on the Economic Crisis, the Monetary Elite and the Future of the Internet: "Daily Bell: Has the stimulus helped? Why or why not?

Griffin: Has the stimulus helped? I guess the question is has the stimulus helped whom? Or What? The general idea is that the stimulus is supposed to stimulate the American economy and help the American people and in that I don't believe that there is any reason to think that it has helped at all. I don't think it was really designed to do that at all. It was designed to be sold that way but I don't think that anyone in Washington thought that it would actually accomplish the end objective. Now I suppose that some people did think so, I would have to backtrack on that, there are some collectivists that believe the government can solve all problems, that the government can take everything from the citizens and redistribute it back to them in a more efficient manner. There are people like that out there and they thought the stimulus package would help. Surely everybody understands that the money that is being spent is coming out of the pockets of the very people it is supposed to help."

[Emphasis added.]

Actually, I'm pretty sure most people do not understand where money comes from. The value of a dollar has been so greatly cheapened by the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies that an entire generation (especially the politicians) think that money can be called into existence at any time without any cost.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Writing Nano-Plasm over a seven year period

2009-11-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

I posted a short article about writing Nano-Plasm over a seven year period.

I compiled some size data by looking at the size (in bytes) of the various backup copies I made. Unfortunately, the history for the first year was lost.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Great Hatchet Job on Benjamin Bernanke

2009-11-28T18:36:00.000-08:00

From The Black Hats Strike Back (Bernanke) - The Market Ticker:

I made most of these points in April of 2008 - but of course you won't pay attention to anyone who gets it right, yes Ben? Nor will you answer those critics, except through Goebbels-style repetition of bald-faced lies.

Or should you read my August 2008 missive in which I cited specifics:

Just like you said 'subprime is contained'? (3/07)

Or 'we do not expect spillovers from the subprime markets to the rest of the economy or to the financial system'? (5/07)

Or 'monetary and fiscal policies are in train that should support a return to growth in the second half of this year'? (4/08)

Or 'our baseline forecast is for moderating inflation'? (7/06)

Or '.... expect energy and other commodity prices to flatten out'? (7/07, right before the insane run in these prices began!)

Or if you prefer, you can read about them right here:

Chairman Bernanke before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on March 28th 2007, just a few days later: 'Although the turmoil in the subprime mortgage market has created severe financial problems for many individuals and families, the implications of these developments for the housing market as a whole are less clear. The ongoing tightening of lending standards, although an appropriate market response, will reduce somewhat the effective demand for housing, and foreclosed properties will add to the inventories of unsold homes. At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.'

Chairman Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s 43rd Annual Conference on Bank Structure and Competition, May 17th, 2007: 'We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.'

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke speech to the 2007 International Monetary Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, June 5th: 'The troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system.'

Chairman Bernanke to Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, April 3rd, 2008: 'Clearly, the U.S. economy is going through a very difficult period. But among the great strengths of our economy is its ability to adapt and to respond to diverse challenges. Much necessary economic and financial adjustment has already taken place, and monetary and fiscal policies are in train that should support a return to growth in the second half of this year and next year.'

Is it possible to be more wrong Mr. Bernanke? I think not.

Of course, the ultimate goal of all our efforts is to restore and sustain economic prosperity. To support economic growth, the Fed has cut interest rates aggressively and provided further stimulus through lending and asset-purchase programs."

Please read the entire article. Our "crisis" is so simple - too many bad loans brought on by artificially low interest rates created either by the Federal Reserve or implicit and explicit government guarantees (which mask risk and drive rates lower).

I highly recommend Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. The book does a terrific job of explaining how artificially low interest rates lead to what Austrian Economists call "The Business Cycle" (but which should more accurately be called "The Banking Cycle"). It's a pretty easy read and you'll understand why it's nothing short of disastrous to have a central authority set interest rates.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Global warming ... still a crock ...

2009-11-25T23:36:00.000-08:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: global warming is a crock.

Here's a song someone made about the recent emails showing the data was frabricated.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Upgrading your PS3 hard drive - what they don't tell you

2009-11-25T12:52:00.000-08:00

The online tutorials I found for upgrading my PS3 hard drive were a huge help but most of them left out one crucial fact.

All tutorials mention the fact was that you need a FAT32 file system based external disk for doing the system backup but they don't tell you that you can't make one bigger than 32 gigabytes under XP. And XP will check the drive for about an hour before telling you it can't do it.

So you need a third party app to do the job. I ended up using (with some trepidation) Fat32Formatter and as far as I can tell it didn't add a key logger to my system.

But here's the thing ... why doesn't the PS3 have an option to format an external hard drive as FAT32? Then I wouldn't need a PC.

(The PS3 will format your new internal drive for you so don't worry about that.)

But eventually it all worked out and for a mere $65.00 I went from 40 gigabytes to 320 gigabytes. w00t.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

The banksters can be defeated

2009-11-24T17:28:00.000-08:00

Judge Slams Indymac, Sets Aside Defendant's $292,500 Mortgage: "Inequitable. Unconscionable. Vexatious. Opprobrious.

These are just a few of the choice words a New York state judge used to describe the behavior of Indymac in a decision in which he wiped out the $292,500 sub-prime mortgage owed by a homeowner to the bank."

If you default on mortgage payments to your bank, they take your house. But if your bank fails, is your loan forgiven? No, it is sold off by the FDIC to another bank. It seems lopsided. But now, a judge has forced a bank to eat 100% of a loan.

w00t.

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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Corporatism

2009-11-22T18:26:00.001-08:00

From zero hedge:

Watch the full program or select from the following clips. We would like to draw your attention to clips 2, 7, 11 and 13

01.    Introduction
02.    Flawed Economic Model
03.    Economic Power and Ideology
04.    Collapse of Trust in Legal System
05.    Legal Means of Assistance
06.    Effects of Bailout
07.    How This Crisis Came About
08.    New Unregulated Markets
09.    Modern Capitalism Separates Ownership and Control
10.    Control
11.    Government Controlled by Banking Interest
12.    Property Information System
13.    Protection of Wealthy and Powerful
14.    Documentation of Who Owns What
15.    New Orleans Troubles
16.    Foreclosures are Economic Katrinas

Hits	Link
3,143	Deer Chaser (really!?)
1,345	Fantasmic Part 3

Hits	Link
863	Spawn the Dragon (Matthew Moore)
470	Jingle Bell Rag (Stephen Clarke-Willson)

Hits	Link
28263	Cinderella Castle Tokyo
23240	Disneyland Paris with Tinkerbell via Google Earth
6543	Krogroth Gameboy
6277	Sleeping Beauty Castle Paris
3032	Sleeping Beauty Castle Disneyland
2818	Cinderella Castle Walt Disney World
2781	Japan at Night
2477	Supreme Commander (NOT)
2171	Frozen Water 6
1766	Sleeping Beauty Castle Paris (Model-like)

Hits	Link
13880	Tokyo Disneyland Cinderella Castle
5789	Japan (Tokyo) at Night
4626	Kogroth Game Boy
4294	Disneyland Paris Sleeping Beauty Castle with Tinkerbell as seen through Google Earth
4068	Walt Disney World Cinderella Castle
3835	Disneyland Paris Sleeping Beauty Castle
1920	Disneyland Paris Sleeping Beauty Castle - looks like a model
1914	Frozen Water #6
1569	Cind-E hair flip
1524	Cind-E with short hair
1247	Disneyland California Sleeping Beauty Castle with Walt and Mickey in front
1161	Manhattan Beach at Twilight