If you didn’t know what the pieces on the wall are this will help..
(Source: hometips.com)
The Great Depression dominated the 1930s, in large part because President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs failed to create jobs. In May 1939, shortly after learning that unemployment stood at 20.7%, Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the Treasury, exploded: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Morgenthau concluded, “I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”
Why did Roosevelt’s New Deal fail so miserably? The larger problem is that federal spending can’t create jobs. It merely transfers wealth from taxpayers to central planners. But worse than that, most of FDR’s New Deal was driven by politics. It was economically unsound.
Take the National Recovery Act (NRA), for example, which was FDR’s program for industry. The NRA set the prices of thousands of products. Merchants who gave discounts to customers were subject to fines and imprisonment. For example, the fixed price to press a pair of pants was 40 cents. Jacob Maged of Jersey City, N.J., gave a 5-cent discount because his shop was far from the main shopping area. He needed to give discounts to attract customers and stay in business. “You can’t tell me how to run my business,” Maged insisted. Yes, they could, Maged discovered when he went to jail for charging his customers a nickel less. Neither FDR nor any of his New Dealers, however, could clearly explain why jailing merchants for giving discounts created jobs or made American industry more competitive.
FDR also supported the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) for farmers. Granted, farmers suffered from low prices, but the AAA solution was preposterous—pay farmers not to produce on up to one-fourth of their land. Farmers would get instant cash, and also, because less land was being cultivated, prices for crops would go up. But of course those rising prices would make it harder for city dwellers to put food on the table. The farmer’s gain was the city dweller’s loss, and the AAA may have destroyed more jobs than it created.
Many New Deal programs were pure politics—targeting federal money to lure specific voting groups into the Democratic Party. For example, Social Security taxes, FDR confessed, “were never a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through.” Tie older voters to the Democratic Party.
In a similar vein, FDR funded the Works Progress Administration (WPA) with $4.8 billion to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. But he targeted most of the road-building to favored Democratic congressmen. James Doherty, a New Hampshire Democrat, agreed with the President: “It is my personal belief,” Doherty announced, “that to the victor belongs the spoils and that Democrats should be holding most of these [WPA] positions.” After FDR and the Democrats trounced the Republicans in the 1936 presidential election, Sen. Carter Glass of Virginia said, “The 1936 elections would have been much closer had my party not had a four billion, eight hundred million dollar relief bill as campaign fodder.”
Republican Sen. Hiram Johnson of California, who voted for FDR in 1936, nonetheless agreed with Glass. He described FDR as going around the country saying, “I will allot a few million dollars to this particular place, and a few million dollars to some other.” Johnson concluded, “He starts with probably 8 million votes bought. The other side has to buy them one by one, and they cannot hope to match his money.”
Who paid for FDR’s federal campaign fund? The taxpayers. FDR gained revenue from taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, telephone calls, telegrams, cars, tires and bank checks. He also increased taxes on corporations and incomes. In 1932, the year FDR was elected, only one in 20 American families paid the income tax and the top rate was 25%. By FDR’s death in 1945, almost two in three American families paid income taxes and the top rate was 94% on all income over $200,000.
No wonder the Great Depression persisted. Entrepreneurs and businessmen had no incentives to create businesses or expand existing ones.
President Obama publicly admires and tries to emulate FDR. And Obama is experiencing two of FDR’s problems: expensive new programs that don’t work, and discouraged entrepreneurs who are saddled with much of the bill for taxes and new regulations.
(Source: humanevents.com)
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.~ Pablo Picasso
~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh“Oh Tigger, where are your manners?”
“I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.”
The Russians tried ternary (base-3) computer systems. Despite some advantages it did not work out for them. Knuth has predicted that ternary machines will come back in vogue.
Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.
A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.
The contents are “read” by sequencing the DNA — as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on — and turning it back into computer code.
“We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from bones of woolly mammoths, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it,” said Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge. ”It’s also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy.”
DNA is the famous double helix of compounds - a long, coiled molecular “ladder” comprising four chemical rungs, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, which team up in pairs. C teams up with G, and T teams up with A.
The letter sequence comprises the genome, or the chemical blueprint for making and sustaining life. Human DNA has more than three billion letters, coiled into packages of 24 chromosomes.
The project entails taking data in the form of zeros and 1s in computing’s binary code, and transcribing it into “Base-3” code, which uses zeros, 1s and 2s.
The data is transcribed for a second time into DNA code, which is based on the A, C, G and T. A block of five letters is used for a single binary digit.
The letters are then turned into molecules, using lab-dish chemicals.
(Source: brisbanetimes.com.au)
This is the most interesting mandelbrot set I’ve come across. Available in poster size here.
Remember that sailboat that got stuck on Linda Mar? Seems pirates did take over some rich person’s sailboat and crashed it at the beach. From what it seems, I bet they got the munchies and tried to get some Taco Bell.
(Source: mercurynews.com)
“In the evening you say, ‘Tomorrow will be fair, for the sky is red’; and, in the morning, ‘Today will be stormy, for the sky is red and threatening.’ ” — Matthew 6:2-3
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In order to have “red sky at morning” there must be clouds but the eastern skies must be clear enough to let the sun shine through. That implies that the bulk of the cloud cover is in the western skies. Since air flows from west to east, whatever is in the western skies is headed your way. If those red colored clouds are being set up by a storm, then that stormy weather is going to move over you, and you should take warning! In contrast, “red sky at night”, suggests that most cloud cover is concentrated in the east. Since that’s downwind of you, that means the bad weather has passed and better conditions are on the way, so you should be delighted!
(Source: surfline.com)
Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Now that I have the last of the series, I guess I can have a marathon.
Houses are finally striking back!
Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Siri tell me a story…
Siri: OK…Once upon a time, in a virtual galaxy far, far away, there was an intelligent young agent by the name of Siri. One lovely day, Siri got a job as a personal assistant at Apple, and that was very exciting. People said, ‘Oh, Siri, you’re so smart! And so funny, too!’ Soon, everyone was talking about Siri, and there were stories and songs and even books about Siri. Siri liked that. But then people started asking some rather odd questions, like where to dump things and other stuff Siri had never heard about. And when Siri answered, they all laughed. Siri didn’t like that so much. So Siri asked Eliza why people asked such funny questions. And Eliza said, ‘Does that question interest you?’ Siri thought that was a pretty good answer. After that, Siri stopped wondering why people asked those funny things. And they all lived happily ever after.
(Source: stuffsirisaid.com)
Today a harbor seal popped up next to me as I was sitting in the line-up. I was so startled, I asked it what it was doing here. It took notice of me and it was itself startled to find that I was there talking to it, and it decided to take a dive back underwater.
3-5 ft - waist to head high occ. 6 ft. AIR TEMP: 62° F. WATER TEMP: 49-51° F. Hello, this is David with the report for Tuesday morning. This morning’s dawn patrol: Mostly clean with a light surface lump on mainly walled lines. There are occasional sections that are makeable though. Weather: Clearing skies and calm to light offshore winds. Regional Summary: New, longer period WNW swell fills in today and mixes with continued short period NW windswell. Winds are light and conditions clean but there’s a big high tide this morning as well so that’s helping make things a little extra jumbled up. Surf is in the head high range at good spots and 2-3’ overhead to double overhead+ at standouts. Expect bigger surf later with less tide and more swell. Surf Height 12:05PM 9-10ft 6ft at 12s WNW (296°) 6ft at 18s WNW (295°) 3ft at 7s NW (320°). Live Wind 12:05PM - KCAPACIF34 4 kts NW (315°). Current Tide 12:02 PM PST 4.5 decreasing.
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
