Saturday, November 26, 2011

Science - this is what people use to predict the future

Opinions differ. But if I have to express an opinion based on my education as an egineer, I would say that science is a method of analyzing the facts and coming up with a theory that explains them and allows to predict the future. No more, and no less. A theory or a suggestion is not a science - but a method which is to discover that theory and test it against existing and new facts is science. Albert Einstein is famous for proposing a "Special Theory of Relativity" - a theory that nicely described existing facts. What is less known is that Einstein worked very hard to develop a set of experiments that could test his theory. The great scientist refused to conclude that his ideas were correct until they were compared with the results of 4 rather complex experiments.

And this introduction brings us to Paul Krugman, probably the most talented and famous among the liberal economists.

The Comeback Continent, 2008, Paul Krugman
Today I’d like to talk about a much-derided contender making a surprising comeback, a comeback that calls into question much of the conventional wisdom of American politics. No, I’m not talking about a politician. I’m talking about an economy — specifically, the European economy, which many Americans assume is tired and spent but has lately been showing surprising vitality.


In fact, however, tales of a moribund Europe are greatly exaggerated....



I don’t want to exaggerate the good news. Europe continues to have many economic problems. But who doesn’t? The fact is that Europe’s economy looks a lot better now — both in absolute terms and compared with our economy — than it did a decade ago....






Learning from Europe, 2010, Paul Krugman



In any case, the statistics confirm what the eyes see.










In the real world, the European paradise appeared to be built on sand. Apparently, Paul Krugman's theories are proven wrong - the European continent, instead of coming back, is taking it in the backside - and rather hard. Here is just the latest news about Europe...

Europe's Crisis to Overshadow U.S. Data in Coming Week, 2011







Does Europe circa 2011 look in any way like the Europe that Krugman described in 2008 or 2010? If I were cruel, I would say that Krugman's prediction of Europe's future is only matched by his marvelous ass kissing of Enron in 1999 (after all, he was Enron's paid consultant). But I want to be fair now, and I must concede that one of Krugman's statements was undeniably correct and struck into the heart of the European economic model: "...what European experience actually demonstrates is... : social justice and progress can go hand in hand."

In reality, social justice and progress always go hand in hand. There are no "ifs" or "cans" - one follows the other, like the seasons. If YOU take from the man who earned, and give it to the man who did not - YOU commit the social injustice. And when economic progress comes to a screeching halt - don't ask who caused it, because YOU did it, it's YOUR fault. We cannot achieve economic progress without social justice - and Europe abandoned all the pretense of the standards of justice when they decided to build welfare socialism. And now, the bell tolls for you, Europe - and for all the pseudo-scientists like Krugman. And if America does not wake up and abandon the road to serfdom - this country will be next and follow Europe into the abyss. Economic science had long discovered it - which is why conservative, libertarian and objectivist economists knew that Europe was about to fail, while liberal economists like Krugman were blind to this eventuality. If Krugman were a scientist, he would be brave enough to concede that welfare socialism was a failure. But Krugman is not a scientist, he is a left-wing ideologue who does not a crap about science. The poor shmuck is paid to to give left-wing spin to whatever news NYT chooses to publish - which is why he was never able to develop a theory consistent with the facts observable in real life. And this why nothing that he writes can be used to predict the future. The end.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

In search of cheap amusement: listening to Air America

When I drive the car, I normally listen to the progressive right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin or Lars Larson. If there is a commercial break, or my shows are not on the air, I switch to the NPR channel. And if NPR is boring (well, more realistically, when I get bored with NPR's prudish liberalism mascarading as objective reporting), I switch to the reactionaries at Air America. And these folks never fail to say something stupid in 5 minutes tops.

Today, I was driving to the car repair and I could not find anything on the progressive radio, so I switched to Air America. The AA host was talking about all kinds of stuff with some left-wing patsy.  I switched to AA when the guest was complaining about the medical insurance companies - apparently those evil capitalists for some reason don't want to give away all of their money to cure all diseases at once for all of mankind - unlike, say, Soros, Obama or Kerry who donated their riches to the poor.

Later, the show condemned the evil conservatives who dared to have their programs on the AM-radio and thus broke the left-wing media monopoly. It's no surprise that the "democratic", "progressive" left wants to shut down the opposition because liberal ideologyis always crushed in the free marketplace of ideas. Every ones knows this, including the left-wing patsies. And this is exactly why all "people's democracies" maintain "people's" control over media - only NPR and PBS are allowed in the socialist paradise, no Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
The funniest part is that the self-proclaimed "progressive" Air America is as reactionary as the good old Brezhnev style communists - and for some reason even the host of today's show sounded like Brezhnev in 1981 - a man who could hardly pronounce a single word due to his mental and physical exhaustion. At some point, the Air America's General Secretary wandered into the discussion of the evil coal and oil companies and how renewable energy was a cheap and reliable way to sustain our civilization. A minute later he shared the following pearl of scientific knowledge (I quote him from the memory):

"Renewable energy sources like wind PRODUCE ELECTRONS, which they then put into the grid."

As an electrical engineer I was dumbfounded -  how could anyone who has finished American high-school (equivalent of a Russian middle school back in my days) say such an obviously stupid thing. I don't want to go into details, but wind-powered generators do not "produce electrons", nor do they "put them on the grid". What they do is generate the Electromotive Force, which pushes the electrons which are already in the grid into particular direction. The grid is made of conductive material (copper for example) - a material which already has an abundance of free electrons. In order to generate electric current you need a force applied to those free electrons - which is what the electrical generators do. To presume that the electrons are produced in the electrical generators is simply wrong. That's even dumber than Obama's promise that Obamacare would cut medical premiums by 3000% or Obama's discovery of the Austrian language. It surely is not as stupid though as when Obama told the crowd that he had already visited all 57 states of the Union, and there was only one remaining state he needed to visit - but then, Obama is a brilliant guy, so his stupidity is unbearably brilliant - Nobel Peace Prize level of stupidity.

But that is not all, of course. A few weeks ago, alas, there was a commercial break on the progressive radio talk shows, and I switched to Air America. I was confident that they would not disappoint me and I was expecting them to say something stupid. And boy, did they ever! The host was interviewing one of the Occupy Wall Street scumbags - and the scumbag explained what kind of food, blankets and stuff they needed people to donate to the movement (those folks always need handouts because they are useless scumbags - but it goes without saying, right?). At some point, the scumbag veered into more philosophical issues and he started complaining that Obama did not fulfill his election promises. And then he said something which was rather startling - apparently, what America needed was the return of FEODOR Roosevelt. He repeated this at least three times - FEODOR Roosevelt this, and FEODOR Roosevelt that. I assumed that the dumbass was talking about FRANKLIN Delano Roosevelt - but I may be mistaken, maybe indeed there was a Feodor Roosevelt who changed America during Great Depression, and the books will be written about that miracle maker, Feodor Roosevelt. But more realistically, I guess he heard a lot of times about FDR - and his feeble mind decided that the letters "F" and "D" stood for Feodor. After all - liberal education is not about learning facts and history - it's about brainwashing the students with politically correct propaganda. And who cares if the liberal saint who pushed through the New Deal was Feodor or Franklin Roosevelt - heck, it could have been Nadezhda Konstantinovna Kruskaya - who cares?

The last episode, of course, reminded me of Joe Dumbass Biden. Any time someone says something really dumb - I measure it in Bidens (Bd). It's quite rare though than someone reaches the level of 1 Bd - most of the time it's mBd or even μBd.

As you may recall, Obama thinks very highly of Slow Joe. Apparently, the two fit each other perfectly on the intellectual level - two mediocrities amplify each other's stupidity - a perfect lossless resonant circuit . As Obama proclaimed a year ago: "The single best decision that I have made was selecting Joe Biden as my running mate. The single best decision I have made. I mean that. It's true."

And speaking of Biden here is the quote from him that would make you laugh until you realize that this imbecile is a heartbeat away from the presidency: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.” Granted, he got the name right (it's Franklin, not Feodor - so well done, Joe), but the rest of this statement is utterly wrong. FDR was not, of course, the US president when the stocks crashed in 1929 - nor did the television exist during the Great Depression.

Mind you, that Biden is also the same foreign policy expert who in 2008 debates with Sarah Palin managed to say the following: “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” Apparently, US and France kicked out Hezbollah form Lebanon - which must be a huge surprise to Hezbollah and Israel and everyone else in the Middle East.

The same Slow-Joe Biden said in 2008 that the reason why republicans didn't like Obama was simple - they were not used to someone who was very smart and educated and they didn't know how to handle it. Yes, Joe, you are 3000% right. God love you, Slow Joe, and I hope Air America will help you with all those electrons that they put in the grid. Just follow the one in a big yellow hat - and it will get lead you to all the 58 states of the Union so you could spread the message - and people won't mind if you speak the Austrian language, which came from the countries like Europe.

Once more, we need to hear Feodor Roosevelt talk on the TV - party like it's 1929. All the smart folks support you.

P.S. On my way back from the gym today, I turned on Air America again. One of the occupistas was breathlessly explaining all the wonderful things that the occupy-wall street mob was achieving. Here is a passage that made me laugh out loud (I quote from memory):

I am sitting there with people I would have never met otherwise and we are discussing things. It's quite amazing that we together are changing American democracy.
Can you imagine the arrogance and stupidity of this girl? This poor creature seriously believes that because she was having a chat with a smelly hippie - she somehow changed America. "That's one small chat for a liberal girl, one giant leap for mankind". At least, I hope it won't become the "Great Leap Forward" - although with those cretins you never know - sometimes things spiral out of control.

I can only imagine the amount of disappointment that this liberal patsy will feel when someday she understands that she achieved nothing, that her talks in the park were worse than useless and that her brain is filled with mush. But then, the real question is - does she have or will she ever have enough grey matter to comprehend this? What really bugs me about those fools is their complete and utter lack of humor and self-awareness. And yet, I can tell you that these creatures remind me of myself - when I was younger, much younger. I think I was about 5 years old when I draw a picture of a car, and I was very proud because I also included my ground breaking ideas on the actual car design. I came to share my geniosity with my Mom, and according to my parents, the following dialogue ensured:

HA, 5 years old: Mom, look at this, I've designed a car.
Mom: Very interesting. Explain to me how it works.
HA, 5 years old: There is a button, you press it, and the car goes faster. And when you need to slow down, you press another button. And then there is a button to turn left, and a button to turn right.
Mom: Hm. And how do the buttons do all that that?
HA, 5 years old: It's very simple - there is a mechanism inside the car that reacts to the button.
Mom: How does this mechanism work?
HA, 5 years old: I haven't figured out this yet, but I think that's not relevant - my invention is to use the buttons for the car. Isn't it cool?

Granted, I was 5 years old back then, so I have a valid excuse. But what excuse do those 25-30-50 year old occupistas have for proposing essentially same stuff I had proposed when I was 5 - and applying it to the American society?

If you listen to those guys, you will realize their plan is even more primitive than my ingenious invention - at least my plan could not hurt anyone. And what do these guys propose?

Question: How do you propose to make America better?
Answer: Hell, let's spread the wealth around, abolish capitalism and declare free love. And let's not forget the most important part - pass the joint, comrade.

That's all it is to the Occupy Wall Street movement - and Air America and the entire Democratic Party. It's nothing more complex than that. It's sad - but funny. Very funny indeed. As Karl Marx famously said: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” I believe the occupistas are that farce, the comic re-do of the 1960-70ies left-wing movement which lets us all have a good hearty laugh before the hard work starts in 2013. We need to clean up the country we call "United States of America."