Today's Rock Band DLC announcement...

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “A Thing About You (live)”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “American Girl (live)”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Even the Losers (live)”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Here Comes My Girl (live)”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Mary Jane’s Last Dance (live)”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Refugee (live)”

For not being Surfer Rosa, that's a pretty damn good birthday present.

Great article on ZeroHedge sets a ceiling for the price of gold: $6,300/oz. if we went back to a gold-backed dollar.

Will we? I don't know, but I doubt it. In the case of a currency crisis, I think the first response would be an attempt to replace the dollar with yet another fiat currency. And of course, whoever controls that currency will be the de facto rulers of the world. So pay very careful attention to who proposes the new fiat currency, because whoever that is will be your new global hegemon.

A gold standard will not be the first option, because gold isn't political. It doesn't give the ruling class enough leverage. What do you mean, power goes to whoever can dig gold out of the ground or efficiently produce enough stuff to trade for it? That's boring! It doesn't allow enough room for manipulation and favoritism. The last thing they want is an economic meritocracy.

A return to a hard currency standard would require a revolt against hegemony.

Say you're India, or China, or an OPEC nation and someone proposes a new currency that isn't the familiar U.S. dollar. As of right now, you've got agreements. (ie. Providing a certain amount of oil to the U.S. in return for U.S. military protection.) As the U.S. loses power and wealth due to mismanagement, it's natural to want to renegotiate. You might want to seek another hegemon altogether. You'll only go back to using a hard currency if nobody offers you a good enough deal. But you might still buy a lot of gold before negotiations to use as a bargaining chip. And I think that's exactly what's going on now. Increasing national reserves of gold will be used to squeeze concessions from the next claimant to the throne. The world will only go back to using gold if no wannabe hegemon can close the deal.

Even if we went back to a hard currency, it would more likely be backed by a basket of commodities. Gold would only make up part of it. That would still put power in the hands of producing nations, but would not give any one nation too much of a monopoly. The makeup of the basket would determine the distribution of seats at the table. If you're an oil-producing nation, you're going to demand oil make up a larger proportion of the basket. If you hold a lot of gold, you're going to want gold to make up the bulk of it. Gold only has to make up 1/6th of the basket to support the current price, so I think it's still a good deal in the long term.

I think this is the best possible outcome we can look forward to. It allows nations to renegotiate a new cooperative world order while maintaining their individual independence. Actually, independence would be increased, as exchange would no longer be declared by fiat of a single ruler. The body that sets the makeup of the basket would be the true global government.

So here's what to look for...

1. Currency collapse.
2. Proposals for a new global reserve currency. (Whoever makes them should automatically be assumed to be power-hungry tyrants. Shoot them in the face.)
3. Pushback from nations with reserves and productive capacity.
4. Concessions. What form will they take?
   • Worst outcome: We get a global fiat currency, with behind-the-scenes deals between world leaders and the new hegemon with no public review, or even public awareness.
   • Mediocre outcome: We get a global fiat currency based on a basket of fiat currencies, so no one government controls all. The people can still influence it by influencing their individual governments.
   • Best outcome: We get a global currency based on a basket of commodities, the composition defined by some body with representatives from many nations. Still leaves a small amount of room for manipulation through that body, but the need for hard backing acts as a brake.
   • Fantasy outcome: Gold. A completely apolitical way for nations to settle their accounts.

The good news is, we currently have the worst option, although the U.S. is not the worst hegemon possible. We might actually come out of this in a decade with a new world order that is actually an improvement over what we have today! Both for economic stability and political freedom. Where gold goes from here depends on which outcome we get. In the best or fantasy outcome, the value of your gold goes up or at least holds its value. In the first two, it depends on whether nations continue to hold it as a bargaining chip or are so satisfied with the arrangement reached that they dump it back on the market. I doubt anyone will be feeling that secure again for at least another decade or three, so even in those circumstances, I don't see gold going down much.

...a three day party. I break the walls, and kill us all with holy fingers.

The download from the show went up tonight.

It sounds fucking great.

They're cutting a new live album every night, and selling it direct to the fans.

Every band ought to do this.

I really don't know what to say to zophine except I love you too!

In addition to the Pixies I got to spend time with my family in Colorado. It's like everyone there is just a sweetheart. Even the pets made me feel at home. I wish I could have seen lds too, but zophine and the girls kept me very busy and entertained. We did gun show and tell, went shopping, watched zombie movies, and played a lot of Rock Band. My little nieces can sing! It's so much fun to introduce them to the Beatles, and the Pixies, and even a little bit of opera. Hell, even helping them with their chores was fun.

I am totally blessed.

Cool! The USB drive I got at the show has some of the background videos the Pixies use for their stage show. daphnep should like this one.

That's Paris, the full show I saw won't be available for download until tomorrow night. Can't wait. It's a great idea. I'm glad to see that they're taking full advantage of the new media possibilities. I mean, stuff like the Minotaur boxed set is a naked money-grab, but a new box-set reissue with additional art is a hell of a lot nicer an offer to their fans than lawsuits. If you want it, you buy it, if you don't, you don't.

And it's not like they're not working for the money. On this tour they're going into towns and playing 2, 3, 4 nights in a row! Who else does that? It definitely keeps ticket prices down. So a kid who wants to see the Pixies gets a chance to see the Pixies. And those of us with a little more disposable income can buy an officially-sanctioned "bootleg" in a nice package, and show the band some additional appreciation. That's on top of old standbys like T-shirt and poster sales. And they were doing land-office business in those too.

There are lots of people who aren't as willing to put in sweat-equity and don't understand voluntary tiered pricing. To find those qualities alongside amazing artistic talent... these aren't just good musicians, they're exceptional people.

As much as you can generalize about any large group of people, I'll say Gen X is probably about as prepared for what's happening as it could be. Mind you, I don't think we're the most well-adjusted bunch of people. We're like dogs who were beaten as pups. Twitchy and slow to trust. Broken, actually.

But if you're headed into an environment where beatings are handed out regularly, and at random, that's actually not a bad trait to have.

Gen X is superbly adapted to this niche. So I'm hopeful... if not particularly trusting.

...but still not nearly as outrageous as the way he kneels before the bankers. If he's this much of a subservient little cocklicker in public, just imagine what he's like behind closed doors.

I defy anyone to watch these videos and then tell me that anyone who would mistreat a simple creature capable of such unadulterated joy and endless devotion doesn't deserve it.

It's not because I think dogs are more important or more valuable than human lives, it's because it tells you something about that human. Something that should be taken very, very seriously.

But they had them in stock, right there. So now I have a SIG 522 Classic to go with my SIG 556 Classic. I am impressed. Form factor is identical.

• Same ergos, except the bolt handle is moved behind the ejection port instead of at the front of it, and it has an ambi mag release, an improvement over the center fire version!
• The barrel is a wee bit shorter, and blued instead of parked. Unlike the catalog pictures, the barrel has the same cut-away profile behind the flash hider as the 556.
• The upper's cast aluminum in a single piece instead of stamped steel with a trunion. The lower receiver is polymer. That, plus the lack of a gas system makes it significantly lighter.
• The fake gas system is black plastic instead of a grey chrome facsimile, so it doesn't quite look right, but the tube actually serves as storage for a cleaning kit, with the gas selector as the cap. Clever.
• I understand the mags are SIG-branded Black Dogs, which means they'll be good. And it will be easy to find spares, since that's the standard for the AR-15 .22s as well.
• The ambi mag release is also extended back a little bit for shooters with short fingers. A nice touch I hope will show up on the 556. (Since the upper is the serial numbered part, a replacement lower won't be a hassle.)
• It didn't come with iron sights. (They are available as an option.) Undoubtedly a cost-cutting measure. But I still have the red dot I took off my 556. It's good to have a parts box.

That did mean I couldn't shoot it right away this evening, and I won't be able to this weekend because, y'know, I'm going to Colorado to see the Pixies! But I have something to look forward to. Will let you know how it shoots.

Is Ralph Wiggum's statement an expression of...

I had no idea this was a controversial subject. There is one obviously correct answer, and anyone who disagrees with me is a sub-human moron.

Why I have a love-hate relationship with the Call of Duty series of games.

Love: The graphics are amazing. It's hard to believe that it's the same Xbox that COD 3 ran on. We are on the other side of the uncanny valley.

Hate: The rest of the gameplay hasn't changed since the very first COD. No matter how pretty they get, there are just two types of mission.

1. Reach the objective. You must hustle your ass to a location while people are shooting at you. If you stop to shoot back, the game will simply supply them with an endless flood of reinforcements. You're better off not wasting the ammo and just running like hell.
2. Kill every motherfucker in the room. If you move without killing everyone you see first, you will be surrounded and killed in short order. But there is a limited number of enemies. Hang back and snipe until they stop coming and the path is clear.

So instead of thinking tactically, you're forced to think "Did the game designer make this objective a type #1 or a type #2?" Flip a coin. If you get it wrong, and choose the wrong tactic, you die. The whole game, you're being reminded that it is a game.

The saving grace of the series is that the online experience is as good as the single player is bad. It's just a matter of getting the single player out of the way.

Also...

Meh: They at least give you the option to skip the mission where you play a terrorist if you find it offensive. I do. I did.

Internet Virus Frames Users For Child Porn

In 2007, Fiola's bosses became suspicious after the Internet bill for his state-issued laptop showed that he used 4 1/2 times more data than his colleagues. A technician found child porn in the PC folder that stores images viewed online.

Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography, which carries up to five years in prison. He endured death threats, his car tires were slashed and he was shunned by friends.

Fiola and his wife fought the case, spending $250,000 on legal fees. They liquidated their savings, took a second mortgage and sold their car.

An inspection for his defense revealed the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute – an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half.

Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped – 11 months after it was filed.

It never ceases to amaze me that many of the same people I know who are never without a handgun will blithely surf the internet in the equivalent of "condition white".

And before you point out that this is just a handful of stories, I suspect it's more common than most people think. If it's a personal computer, you won't have a corporate IT department looking at it. All you'll notice is your internet being slow, and your hard drive being a little smaller. You may use the computer for years and discard it without anyone ever discovering what it's been used for, much less be accused of a crime. But it's still there. Are you an activist? Do you speak out against the government? Do you have any enemies? Would you like to get or keep a security clearance? What you don't know can hurt you.

Frankly, if you're white and don't use drugs and aren't in a relationship with a violent person, your chance of having to pull a sidearm to defend yourself is vanishingly small. We do it anyway, just in case. But if all that applies to you and you own more than one defensive sidearm, I don't want to hear any whining about how much a Mac costs. Sell one of your guns to make up the difference.

• Abortion will kill the future of the Republican Party

  Every upper middle class parent fears that their daughter would get pregnant and suffer a huge drop in social class because she is forced to bear the baby and become an unwed mother. Every unmarried woman with career and marriage aspirations fears that she could get pregnant and become a poor low class unwed mother if abortion were to become illegal.

  The Republican Party has the superior message on most issues, but the insistence on being the anti-abortion party is shutting out the nation’s smart people from listening to any of the messages. All they can hear is “CRAZY CHRISTIANS WILL FORCE ME TO BECOME A WELFARE MOM!”

• Fannie and Freddie Fire Their Own Inspector General

  There is no independent auditor overseeing the federal agency responsible for some $6 trillion in home mortgages, because the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel ruled that the agency's inspector general didn't have authority to operate, according to internal memos obtained by the Huffington Post.

• Stages of crisis

  Stage E: Crime is already something you got used to. It sucks, its stressful, and you want out, but its part of life and as we say here, every morning you know you’re going out, but you don’t know if you’re coming back. Jobs? The old social pyramid is no more. Those people from stage A and B? Either they found a way or they didn’t. If they didn’t they are now either poor or homeless. That’s the way it is.

  And yet the world does not end, you know?

• Close to Home FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel chronicles the recession's impact on one unlikely American neighborhood -- New York's Upper East Side.

• FedSpeak Translation - There Is No Recovery

  So why is the stock market up so much? ... Notice the near-perfect inverse correlation. The Dollar goes up, the market goes down. The Dollar goes down, the market goes up. The rally in the market has exactly nothing to do with the economy and the outlook for it. It is tied to one and only one thing - the decline in the dollar. A WEAKER, EVEN COLLAPSING, DOLLAR IS NOT COMMENSURATE WITH OR INDICATIVE OF A STRONGER ECONOMY.

• Major Hasan's Powerpoint: Can't say he didn't warn us

  Hmm, why would people doubt that Islam is a religion of peace when Muslims give professional presentations proclaiming, "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam"?

• Episcopalians v. Jews on IQ Interesting. Mennonites actually show up moderately high on these lists. But check out the big brain on Brett Unitarian Universalists and Quakers.

• How inductors work I love this guy's videos.

• Brook & Hunter Mo-Tool Axe They also have a claw hammer.

• Bailout Wars: iPhone App Lets Users Kill Bankers To Save Taxpayer Money. I consider this a positive development.

• IEA whistleblowers and our energy future

  In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

  We've been stuck at ~85 million barrels per day since 2005. Peak oil is already here, and is the underlying cause of our economic difficulties. We keep creating more and more credit, and filling the planet with more and more people, but energy isn't rising to match. So we're just getting poorer in real terms. And the wealthiest among us are using the resulting confusion and panic as an opportunity to loot, making the rest of us even poorer than we'd otherwise be.

• Is China headed toward collapse?

  The China bears could be dismissed as a bunch of cranks and grumps except for one member of the group: hedge fund investor Jim Chanos.

  Chanos, a billionaire, is the founder of the investment firm Kynikos Associates and a famous short seller — an investor who scrutinizes companies looking for hidden flaws and then bets against those firms in the market.

  His most famous call came in 2001, when Chanos was one of the first to figure out that the accounting numbers presented to the public by Enron were pure fiction. Chanos began contacting Wall Street investment houses that were touting Enron’s stock. “We were struck by how many of them conceded that there was no way to analyze Enron but that investing in Enron was, instead, a ‘trust me’ story,” Chanos told a congressional committee in 2002.

  Now, Chanos says he has found another “trust me” story: China. And he is moving to short the entire nation’s economy. Washington policymakers would do well to understand his argument, because if he’s right, the consequences will be felt here.

This morning I heard an interview with the head of an Indian pharmaceutical company that makes a Tamiflu clone on NPR. The interviewer asked him to comment on other pharma company execs calling him a "pirate", and he pointed out that he follows the law in India, in Europe, and in the U.S. I'm sure those other companies would prefer that he not be allowed to reverse engineer their products at all, but they simply haven't made the legislative case in all the relevant jurisdictions. Fortunately, they can't just globally outlaw their competition by decree. But boy, would they ever like to.

Entitlement.

Then one of my friends posted about food stamp recipients buying $6 organic milk at her local grocery, dumping the milk in the parking lot, and bringing the glass bottle back for the $2 deposit. An inefficient way to convert food charity into cash for cigarettes and beer and whatever. One of the commenters pointed out that food stamps don't cover everything a person needs. Well, no shit. It's a program instituted to keep people from starving, not a general welfare program. We have other programs for that. And if those aren't enough, we have a legislative process to go through to get money allocated for other purposes, from housing to medications to whatever. But this commenter automatically assumes that if the law doesn't go her way, it just exists to be circumvented. Not changed through the democratic process.

Entitlement.

I remember the same attitude during the assault weapons ban. The anti-gun politicians couldn't get enough votes to just outlaw semi-automatic rifles completely, so they created and passed a cosmetic bill that banned guns on the basis of appearances. Then they got all pissy when gun manufacturers made cosmetic changes to comply with the law, and continued to sell semi-autos. Didn't they understand that they were supposed to follow a law that was never written or passed?

Entitlement.

I even see the same thing in the gay marriage debate. Now, I'm all in favor of gay marriage, but let's face it: it is a huge legislative and social change. But instead of going out there and making the case to voters, they propose laws and then just resort to invective when the voters don't automatically side with them.

Entitlement.

I think it shows profound disrespect for the concept of representative government. Things aren't always going to go your way, and even when they do, it often takes years of hard work. I often joke about how when I am Emperor of the World, things will be done differently, but I hope it's clear that I am joking. Even if we had a dictatorship, I wouldn't be the one dictating. The system protects me as much as it frustrates me.

But I'll take that as long as it frustrates some of those other jerks too.

So It's Official: IMF / Carry Trades

I hope everyone here in The United States takes a moment to understand what this means. Let me lay it out for you:

• When the global economy truly recovers oil will skyrocket up to or beyond the $150 where it was in late 2008. If the dollar is indeed still "overvalued" and going to 40 as many technicians predict, oil will likely reach $300 a barrel. This will in turn drive gasoline prices north of $6, heating oil will reach $7-8/gallon, and diesel will be commensurate with heating oil.

...

When? That's a big assumption. Part of the reason the economy is in such bad shape is the lack of cheap oil. This imposes its own limits on economic activity. One we can try to get around by creation of credit, but you can only play that game so long. The previous spike was the credit-fueled American economy running full speed into the wall of reality. It resolved itself by coming to a halt, reducing consumption and quality of life. After that, I don't think we'll see any economies come roaring back, much less the global economy. We'll see some try to start up again, but oil prices will go up just enough to slow them down again. It will be difficult to build the kind of momentum you'd need for a really big crash again.

Remember, oil peaked in the U.S. in the early '70s. Since then we've been running on credit. It took about thirty years to build up the speed needed to cause the spectacular housing and oil crash of 2007.

So rather than another big spike in prices, we'll just see a slowly increasing squeeze on consumers. Prices will go up, they may even reach $300 eventually. It just won't happen over night. That gives you time to prepare. Buy a fuel-efficient vehicle now, and arrange your life so you won't have to use it much.

Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.

It was the latest in a series of "red flags" about his state of mind that have emerged since the massacre at Fort Hood, America's largest military installation, on Thursday.

Hasan, armed with two handguns including a semi-automatic pistol, walked into a processing centre for soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he killed 13 and injured more than 30.

Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a "Muslim first and American second."

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

Unfortunately, I don't think that deference to Islam will change any time soon. The news media is already writing headline articles about how Muslims "fear backlash". Mind you, the only backlash we've had after 9/11 is the killing of a single Sikh by a guy who was too stupid to know the difference. In the meantime we've had what? Half a dozen Muslims go off on rampages? In this case, a highly-educated doctor. And don't forget that Muslims make up a tiny percentage of the population. If backlash was happening at anything like the same rate that Muslims were instigating violence, hundreds to thousands of Muslims would already be dead.

But they aren't. And that's not newsworthy. Fear—of something that steadfastly refuses to happen—is. Meanwhile, the rest of us aren't allowed to be afraid, or even cautious about something that happens over and over again. See, that would be discriminatory.

The Met opera broadcast season has been good so far, but even at the Met real magic only happens once in a while.

Yesterday's Turandot was magical. Normally, it's a tenor's opera. How could it not be when Puccini gives him a great aria like "Nessun Dorma"? Well, I'll tell you how. You put Maria Guleghina in the title role. "Yeah, yeah, you will win. Bring back the bitch."

Next weekend I'm flying to Denver to see the Pixies.

They're doing a 20th anniversary Doolittle tour. Playing the whole album plus b-sides. It's old, I'm old, so it seems appropriate. Unfortunately they're skipping Phoenix, but one of the great things about being a fan of an under-appreciated alternative band is that even after airfare and a rental car, it's no more expensive than going to see a bigger act at a local arena.

boffo thinks V is a sign that it's finally ok to criticize Obama, and the V cult does have a lot of similarities to the Obama cult, but that's mostly because they're... both cults. A show like this doesn't come out of nowhere. It had to be in production for quite a while, probably in planning before the election. So I don't think it's directed at Obama in particular, however striking the similarities.

I think it has more to do with another angular letter: X.

It's a faithful remake of a show from 1983. The formative years of Generation X. Watching it now I realize that our popular culture—the stuff everybody talked about at school the next day—was teaching us that appearances were deceiving and that visitors bearing gifts really just wanted to eat your pet hamster. It wasn't a political message, it was just the spirit of the age. And now it's back. Over a quarter century later, it's really quite bracing. I'd forgotten what it was like to see basic skepticism portrayed in a positive light. The effects are cheesy, the acting is wooden... and I'm loving every minute of it.

I hope lots of kids are watching.

That Showtime reality show about the gun store? Turns out to be ok. Just a bunch of ordinary people shooting guns and talking about guns. I've seen some bad gun handling, and a few people who are so lost - both in shooting and selecting guns - that I just wish I could be there to help them out. But in that respect it's more real than a lot of other reality shows.

And the last episode, where the host took a couple of kids to the range, was great. Almost made up of the Penn & Teller episode where they did the same thing. The kids got safety instruction and proper shooting instruction, and ended up with big smiles on their faces, not tears. And some nice looking targets.

Whatever else I may see on the show, that makes it all worthwhile. Good job, Showtime.