Slop is what you feed to the hogs. And there are usually hogs on most Az farms if they are north enough. Hogs also need shade.
Do you know how many acres of hay you need to feed a cow and some goats? Do you know how long it is going to take to plow, till etc those acres with that tiny thing called a tractor? That is not a tractor, that is a rototiller.
Nothing like collusion to conceal material events from shareholders to show change we can believe in. Chalk this one up as yet another policy that transcends administrations.
I read that book when it came out, and I've been prepared for that eventuality for 5 years now. You're right, too -- a sudden devaluation would put me in the catbird's seat.
My grandfather had a "hobby farm" about a third that size but otherwise similar in the northwest. It's still "in the family" so-to-speak and probably always will be.
Not saying that specific scenario, but any number of "dollar collapse" circumstances that could come fast or slow. As those things go, by the time you know it's happening it's way too late to prepare for it.
Regulatory Reform Focus of Talk by Assistant Secretary for Financial Institution
"Securitization helped banks move credit risk off of their books and supply more capital to housing markets. It also widened the wedge between principals and agents - lowering underwriting standards and the incentives for due diligence."
Sometimes the sanitation inspectors put us on double secret probation. Usually a handful of twenties gets us off.
I guess the ML deal isn't working out.
One last copy paste and then off to the movies: This is an example of why banks will have slower growth as the competition amongst them all, increases. The result is a turf war with lots of cannibalization and or fraud, to pump up bogus EPS (just like before) same as it ever was, same as it ever was: YouTube -
Additionally, in the second quarter of ’09, Fannie Mae instituted tougher underwriting standards for its conventional small-loan program. Small loans from the agency once featured slightly better underwriting standards than larger loans; that’s not true anymore. Small loans are now being underwritten at a minimum 1.25x debt service coverage ratio (DSCR), and offer a maximum 75 percent loan-to-value ratio—just like large loans. As recently as March, small loans could be underwritten at a 1.20x DSCR and 80 percent leverage. Fannie Mae is also taking a closer look at an asset’s market; the property’s trailing 12 months of net operating income; and the borrower’s financial health. For instance, the minimum FICO score for a borrower is now 680, up from 650 (and sometimes as low as 620 with a waiver) in the past. AFT Online Article
I spoke to a coworker about going through that in Serbia. One day you find you cannot access your bank account. A couple of weeks later you get the option of your life's savings back at 10 cents on the dollar or you could wait something like 10 years and see whether you could get more back.
"I spoke to a coworker about going through that in Serbia."
i can't think of why someone in that part of the world wouldn't either have a stack of physical euros and dollars and/or an account in a german or british bank (or even santander, etc)
HollywoodHack (homepage, profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Wed, 7/15/2009 - 10:15 pm
reply ignore user
"I spoke to a coworker about going through that in Serbia."
i can't think of why someone in that part of the world wouldn't either have a stack of physical euros and dollars and/or an account in a german or british bank (or even santander, etc)
I got the impression it's the same thinking as here. It won't happen here, it's not too bad. By the time you figure out it's too late.
i dunno, guys, central europe is gangstered-up in the old sense, guys brazenly coming into eateries for bag drops, usually with near-skinhead hair and a late-model BMW or Benz idling out front...
good one.. no, seriously.. could we make that kind of a technological leap today? Not that we do not have the ability, but with all the assorted scum in our system at almost all levels
By: CNBC.com with Reuters | 15 Jul 2009 | 10:40 PM ET
CIT Group, is likely to file for bankruptcy Friday, a source close to the company tells CNBC. The major lender to small-and mid-sized U.S. businesses had been surprised at the failure of bailout talks. CIT is now pursuing a plan that is likely to include a chapter 11 filing on Friday. "Discussions with government agencies have ceased," CIT said in a statement. "There is no appreciable likelihood of additional government support being provided over the near term."
good one.. no, seriously.. could we make that kind of a technological leap today? Not that we do not have the ability, but with all the assorted scum in our system at almost all levels
Probably make a Saturn V SIV... all the wonks who would have worked for NASA long ago now work for GS & JPM anyway, right? I mean who gets 2 and 20 for designing rockets for crisssake?
And SIVs are damned near as complex... folks understand rockets [its only 'rocket science' after all]... no one understands securitization.
speaking of hard work, those old mercury tin cans were not comfy.
manned space flight - should be thought of in the same light as big-rig driving. i'm more impressed with someone who has taken an 18-wheeler over the grapevine a few hundred times than some candy-assed astronaut.
We all know that CIT should be kept afloat so they can continue to make loans to companies that no one is willing to buy from.
As if a bailout would help the economy... the bailout would help CIT be made whole from the smuldering ruins of damage brought on by failing companies destroyed by the failing consumer destroyed by failing productivity destroyed by a focus on shoveling shit... we can re-make the Monty Python scene with the beggars talking about shoveling shit and getting paid like the king...
I hear ya... give it time. We are early in the down phase of this 'longwave'... got a lot of down to go before we hit bottom... it is from the bottom where the dreams come from. Who would have imagined computer networks & such from the bottom of the 70s stagflation. Or a Saturn V from the bottom of the late 1930s?
There will be ideas again but only after the scorched earth of 'creative destruction'...
"The country will never pull together to fulfill a dream like that ever again."
The species has a bottle neck to get through, and the survivors (if any) will need to face that question.
Why not? I think it has to do with the financialism.. we seem to be enamored by making money through investing money to make more money.. but what can that money buy? Creating real wealth requires using money to innovate or build stuff or services.
//The country will never pull together to fulfill a dream like that ever again.//
I remember a moment of disbelief that day when I first read BofA was going to aquire CountryWoe. Nasty. It was a nasty, nasty surprise. It's like finding out the seemingly nice family next door is secretly molesting, etc. Gives you a different take on the neighborhood, suddenly.
Yes we could make an Atlas V now. I don't know if our government would be willing to fund it, and I don't know if they would put up with all the delay's due to the cautiousness in today's Aerospace engineering programs. But we'd absolutely be able to.
But that would involve funding scientists who think differently, do not play games or have ivy league pedigrees.. historically conventional thinkers, ass-kissers and clever shysters make poor innovators.
//Yeah, I was personally kind of hoping for an Apollo-like project to build America's next energy infrastructure.//
I touched my first network in 1989. I hacked into a corporate MicroVAX II in Boston. From there, I hacked into another Vax in Munich, and then into Tokyo, then into the Vax right next to me in Agoura Hills, CA and activated that test system remotely.
it was an awesome adrenalin rush.
Running the system around the circumference of the world.
I never dreamed of anything like it.
I'm certain that we could still build the Saturn V in the U.S. It's the same sort of thing we still do well here. However, we don't have the motivation. The only reason for the Apolo program was a giant dick measuring competition with the Soviets. At its peak, the U.S. was spending .5% of its GDP on NASA. That's the equivalent of spending $70 billion/year. Personally, I can think of many, many better ways to spend that kind of cash than ego projects.
"Frankly, unless Washington prints money and bails out every state that needs capital, including California, federal power will decline amidst this severe economic recession, and the process of a soft American devolution will begin. If you think this idea is outrageous, then you’ve still not come to terms with a core reality of our current situation: the structure of this financial crisis is wholly different than any in our post-war era. This isn’t a recession. This is collapse."
Another way to look at it is that the entrenched powers that be, have to be rendered powerless for anything to happen.
That is happening in the political area by the implosion and aging of the GOP.
In the economic are, it is the implosion and loss of prestige of the financial area.
For those with a fondness for fondness of old time manufacturing, robots have taken the place of most workers and in fact Mish had an article up about unemployed robots.
Leadership is very important. Plundering corporations for personal gain is not leadership.
I'm certain that we could still build the Saturn V in the U.S. It's the same sort of thing we still do well here. However, we don't have the motivation. The only reason for the Apolo program was a giant dick measuring competition with the Soviets. At its peak, the U.S. was spending .5% of its GDP on NASA. That's the equivalent of spending $70 billion/year. Personally, I can think of many, many better ways to spend that kind of cash than ego projects.
Yes, I can think of a lot of shit I could throw my money away on instead of the destiny and last best hope of mankind.
Space Exploration Technologies has successfully launched a Malaysian satellite into orbit, achieving a milestone in commercial spaceflight after a string of failures. Better known as SpaceX, the private company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, co-founder of the PayPal electronic payment service, parked the Earth-observing satellite called RazakSAT in orbit at 12:25 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday. The nearly 400-pound satellite is orbiting more than 425 miles above the Earth. SpaceX is hoping to build a business carrying payloads into space. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company launched RazakSAT into space using the company's Falcon 1 rocket. SpaceX charges about $8 million per flight.
Also, Delta engines still built here. It's true we don't have the industrial diversity, but that's not because we don't have the ability. We're just too cheap...
For those of you interested in launching space ships the size of small cities into space in an economical and extremely efficient manner, read up on Project Orion
Essentially, instead of rocket fuel, a backwards-pointing revolver fires small nuclear bombs behind the ship, which detonate and impact a shock absorbing pusher plate, which then pushes against an absorbent spring that connects to the payload. Think of it like trying to fly by tying an automatic shotgun to the bottom of a pogo stick, only with atomic bombs for shot.
With a propulsion system as powerful as this, the entire equation for space travel changes - instead of ultralight aluminum, it behooves you to put as much mass in your spacecraft as possible to help absorb the shock. Steel walls and supports, built using submarine technology instead of spaceship technology. All kinds of gizmos and gears, raw material for building extra-terrestrial industry, everything becomes possible if we would just pursue this propulsion technology earnestly.
There's a small issue of the fallout causing something like 150 deaths per booster shot, due to extra background radiation and fallout, but come on people, that many people die a day of malaria. If we're not willing to spend $15 bucks a head to give some starving africans malaria medication to save their lives, why are we willing to sacrifice the future of our species for 150 statistical deaths?
Hopajoops - talk to me about project Orion when you have someplace to go. If you want to spend money on space more space based observatories are a worthwhile investment. Playing around on the moon less so.
Vader,
And the next time around the current Dem leadership will collapse. Both parties are made up of old white folk so out of touch with the masses. Can I vote for someone young and bold versus someone old and entrenched? Unfortunately, it looks like only Palin has the balls to do this to the GOP. I don't know who would do it for the other party.
I'm up in Siem Reap, the town next to Angkor Wat... I was here back in Oct and
can't believe how fast developers are screwing up what was once a nice,
dusty town say 10 years ago. Anyone remember Cancun before the conversion
to Spring Break Uber Alles?...
same thing happening here...
Boomer wealth continues to plunge: commentators celebrated the fact that home prices ONLY fell another 0.6% in June, but none of them mentioned that this represents another $100 billion in US wealth gone.
Bottomline: the 20+ year expansion in Boomer came to a screeching halt last year. We’ve now entered what may in fact be the greatest period of wealth destruction in American history. The effects this will have on Boomer spending, investing, and the like will completely change the investing and economic landscape for the US REGARDLESS of what the Fed, Obama, or any other economic/ political authority attempts.
Hopajoops - talk to me about project Orion when you have someplace to go. If you want to spend money on space more space based observatories are a worthwhile investment. Playing around on the moon less so.
So in your opinion we should wait on space travel until someone opens a starbucks out there for us or something?
What about species insurance against a global pandemic or planetary catastrophe? We're such a fragile species... our civilization could be wiped out by a little bit of a cold spell, geologically speaking. Is the preservation of your very species reason enough to do it?
What about the kind of biological sciences and manufacturing we could get done in the low gravity environment of the moon? Hell, we could just put a bunch of nuclear power plants up there. If you think there's a shortage of things to do or places to go in outer space, then you lack an imagination.
What about species insurance against a global pandemic or planetary catastrophe?
robot exploration & R&D first.
immediate problems before ones that come every sixty million years.
What about the kind of biological sciences and manufacturing we could get done in the low gravity environment of the moon?
What about them? Which science fiction book are you thinking of?
Hell, we could just put a bunch of nuclear power plants up there.
I prefer Canada, actually.
If you think there's a shortage of things to do or places to go in outer space, then you lack an imagination.
I'd like to see some exploration effort go towards the deep sea floors. Lotsa good stuff down there, and surviving on the ocean floor is a damn sight more doable than out in space, believe it or not.
In Saudi we have something called "chop-chop" square for peeps like this. Go ahead....how many people on this board can tell me that's a bad thing for this one special case.
I'm with Hoopajoops. If there's a reason for this here human race, it sure the hell isn't the petty shit we're dealing with every day. If we have a destiny, why wouldn't it be in (or beyond) the stars??? Besides, if we don't get somebody off this beautiful rock soon we may never do so.
broward,
I'll leave that story for a weekend but it involved a small indie film I was involved in in NYC,
the actress who played Mrs Dean Wormer attended the screening along with her husband
Jay Cocks... I asked my director who she was and all he could tell me was that she was in Cassavetes'
films (he was French)... later at Shun Lee Palace...
Winston writes: I'm certain that we could still build the Saturn V in the U.S. It's the same sort of thing we still do well here. However, we don't have the motivation. The only reason for the Apolo program was a giant dick measuring competition with the Soviets."
check your history again, from the get go the Russians were into big rockets, our program consisted
of smaller tactical missiles for a considerable length of time [typical Russkie mentality - to this day
they still hold the record for largest hydrogen bomb explosion, I believe... we MIRVed ours 5 to 7years
ahead of their ICBMs, if not for espionage our advantage would have been around 12 years...]
I don't mind manned missions -- nothing like "eyes on the ground" as they say. However, let's not make it an absolute rule that everyone has to come back alive. This is risky stuff, and everyone knows it, so expecting a 100% survival rate is ludicrous -- you'll still have candidates lining up around the block. I just don't see the point in shutting everything down for years every time someone dies doing something inherently dangerous.
What gets me about the "space race" was the idea that we were actually flying into space beforehand, but because of that damned Soviet spiny basketball we had to switch over to strapping rockets to our asses. How far ahead would we have been had we simply continued down the space plane road?
Last updated on Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009 09:10PM EDT
The disgraced Montreal financier Earl Jones may be in the United States, a family friend said Wednesday, amid news that the collapse of Mr. Jones's firm was forcing elderly widows to sell their homes and turn to a food bank. Hours after the authorities shut down Mr. Jones's investment operations last Friday on suspicion that he might be running a Ponzi scheme, the long-time family friend called the condo of Mr. Jones's eldest daughter, Kim, in Massachusetts.
Speaking of robots & wealth, it struck me that someday this century someone's going to tele-operate a robot to rob a bank or whatnot. That'll be fun.
Anyhoo, I don't have a big beef with manned exploration, I just think it's a bit of been-there-done-that. Saving some subset of humanity from global destruction sounds good on paper but that can also be achieved by depositing the necessary tissues and whatnot somewhere safe in orbit and let the space aliens eventually help a brother out. Plus of course it's a million times easier to survive in say Antarctic isolation than up in orbit or on the moon.
Don't know if this is true, but I heard once that the blueprints for the Saturn rocket have been destroyed. With the original engineers gone, the answer then is NO, we could not build the Saturn again today.
Speaking of robots & wealth, it struck me that someday this century someone's going to tele-operate a robot to rob a bank or whatnot.
Amazing it hasn't happened already. Sounds like a good premise for a screenplay. You remember that heist movie with the trained dobies? That was cute (except for when the one got nailed by a car).
How far ahead would we have been had we simply continued down the space plane road?
I always wondered if Heinlein's Mag-Lev boost (Moon is a Harsh Mistress) could've at least lowered the amount of fuel you need to accelerate.
sdtfs: "I always wondered if Heinlein's Mag-Lev boost (Moon is a Harsh Mistress) could've at least lowered the amount of fuel you need to accelerate."
Not practical on earth. It would be great for getting off the moon though. It's all about drag here. You have to get up ~100,00ft/20mi/30km and out of the majority of the atmosphere before you can tip over and pile on the speed.
Much of the technical design documentation for the Saturn 5 and the Apollo spacecraft has indeed been lost or destroyed. In fact, much of it was never saved, nor meant to be saved. Certainly there are hundreds of thousands of pages of technical documentation preserved on microfilm and in boxes at the National Archives facility near Atlanta. But these records (I’ve seen them) are incomplete, and they contain considerable gaps. There is nothing close to a complete set of “Saturn blueprints” in federal archives. I have also been to the archives at Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Houston, and Fort Worth. There is nothing approaching a “complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints” anywhere.
and...
The Saturn had many contractors. The first and second stages were built by different contractors, and they did not share their documentation with each other. So when the program shut down, detailed technical documentation was spread around at various contractor facilities. NASA did not collect it all and save it.
Another issue is the tooling for the vehicles. Documents and blueprints are not the only things necessary for building a rocket. They also require tools, many of which are built exclusively for assembling the vehicle and many of which are large, such as jigs that can hold ten-meter-diameter fuel tanks. Those tools also have to be designed. When the contract is over, the tools take up space that can be devoted to other tasks. So the tools are either put into storage and later scrapped, or simply scrapped immediately. The tooling for the Saturn 5 was destroyed over three decades ago. If a complete set of technical documentation existed, the tooling to build it would have to be designed (more blueprints!) and then built.
Technology evolves, however. A Saturn 5 was not simply a piece of technology, or even many pieces of technologies, it was the product of many other technologies, many of which were evolving or becoming obsolete.
But NASA officials were also not stupid when they shut down the Saturn program. They realized that key parts of the vehicle were likely to be useful in the future and they made a strategic decision to preserve that technology. In particular, they preserved most important part of the Saturn 5, the engines.
sdtfs
as an avid fan of Stranger in a Strange Land (Vonnegut called it a masterpiece of Sci-Fi literature - he hated that term -)
I still wonder why it has yet to be put up on the silver screen (yes, I know a version of it was done in early 80s with David Bowie,
look... I like Bowie and he was great in Man Who Fell to Earth but I want bigger budget movie with an interesting actor playing
Robert Valentine Smith)?
I wonder who has the novel rights and script in turnaround...
The entirety of NASA's engineering output in the 60s is equivalent to a few good afternoons of work by Jack Parsons thirty years before... manned spacecraft has always been a giant welfare project for the more backwards regions of the country.
HollywoodHack (homepage, profile) wrote on Wed, 7/15/2009 - 11:57 pm
The entirety of NASA's engineering output in the 60s
You know what exactly? Next time you want to know something go back and read the original papers from the '60's and '70's on combustion instability. See how they solved the problem in the F1.
Then go through the '80s and '90s and look at the same thing through the glasses of computational fluid dynamics.
There are several hundred problems of that same difficulty level that got solved in a couple of years in which people were listening to vacuum tube radios and watching black and white tvs. And only one or two generations until people don't even know what questions to ask. Evidently, you.
It's not the blueprints. It's the way of thinking.
Yes, I can think of a lot of shit I could throw my money away on instead of the destiny and last best hope of mankind
Maybe I'm quibbling here, but exploration isn't about hope, it's about inspiration and expanding limits. The subtext is be something more than a number listed at the bottom of a Net Worth spreadsheet. The "Space Race" fired up the imagination in all the sciences.
the funny thing is the degree to which we're moving backwards. i really wonder if the concorde will be seen as the summit of human achievement in terms of popular access to technology before humans began to fetishize digital nothingness.
Obsolescence is a huge issue in the electronics industry. Try and buy any of the popular commodity chips (processors/FLASH/RAM) from just 10 years ago. Generic stuff stays around for ever, but cutting edge stuff ships millions of units a month and is then discontinued the next. Eventually the machines that were used to make the original wafers are scrapped too (8" wafers => 12" wafers) so saving the masks won't help. It's not that you couldn't recreate any given chip on a modern process exactly, it's that it wouldn't be cost effective.
Same thing with something like a Saturn V. I'd bet half the alloys called out on the drawings have been superseded by something better. You could have special batches made or simply figure out what modern alloy to use to make it lighter and stronger. And that's just the raw metals which were a mature technology by then. Electronics, not so much. Even the shuttle predates the original PC. Stone age, literally.
OT / yesterday NY Times published a story by Seth Mydans on the Genocide Tribunal
the story contained a number of factual errors, not only that, but Mydans claims (very
Jayson Blair like) that the accusing witness put his face in his hands and wept. Not
only have a reviewed the only tapes that exist of that particular testimony (cameras are
not allowed into the courtroom gallery... security is like an airport) but I was sitting at the
only angle possible to see the acuser's face and then it was a partial view, no chance to see
tears! Seth Mydans wasn't there! Of the three camera shots there was not one reaction shot of Duch's apology.
You ain't goin to the moon big guy.
Nope. As all moon missions have proved, there ain't nothin there.
There's more life (and hope, and destiny) in ... Victorville, then on the moon.
EEngineer -- there's a terrific book about the development of the guidance system at Draper and MIT for the Saturn system ... I can't remember the name and we're just moved, but it has lots of pictures of the core memory modules and some examples of the development environment.
That these people were able to make real-time, interrupt-driven, fail operational systems with pieces of metallic dust sewn together by gentle old ladies and code written by very geeky people in the basement of buildings in Cambridge is a miracle. And it worked.
When you attempt cutting edge feats you need cutting edge technology. Cutting edge technology might be used in applications someone else can only dream of.
mp said:
We're slowly losing the technology.
I think we're losing the desire to fund technology. But I don't know if we are losing technology. Certainly we are talking about massive propulsion engines; there is not a lot of money to be made in developing massive propulsion engines that take time and can only be funded by the Federal government and are subject to the whims of folks getting elected. See the Raptor and desire to cancel it. You'd think some of this technology would flow down to high performance cars... or maybe not. But who wants to design and manufacture an item that numbers in the hundreds and takes a long time to get the payoff?
There were two really difficult things, among many others.
Rendezvous, which was required for every system except "direct ascent" in which the astronauts launched and landed in a single intact rocket. The incremental fuel quantities (based on the rocket equation) for the alloys didn't allow direct ascent .....
This was solved in part by a clever PhD who would later live the equations. Aldrin. Up to that point the energy management practicalities had not been worked out.
The other was actually landing on the moon. The radar system couldn't be tested in an equivalent environment, and nobody knew what the radar system would do when the dust started blowing. (Not the usual non-fear of sinking into unknown feet of dust on landing; this was proven false by unmanned orbiters).
I think it's overrated. For example, the multiplexing systems needed to relay data for hundreds of data channels from the booster was a completely custom system from design to operations.
Today the technology is in every cell phone, and the theory behind it and the thousands of engineers from whom you might pick a few to design it exist all over. A much better place to be.
Same with any CFD and related issues.
The place we need more help is in the transition regimes, Mach 5-7, and heat flow, where real data is more sparse. This is the stuff that was decimated by the on-again-off-again budgeting.
NervousRex,
Agree. There's other funding needs than advanced materials research. What do you mean there's no lab anywhere that can create those conditions? I'm not going to spend that much money just to make sure my math is accurate... pffft... cancelled!
The generation of dreamers who got us off the Earth came in two batches.
The first was a bunch of people in the first BIS (the British Interplanetary Society) which included Arther C. Clarke (RIP) and some other famous people. They actually dreamed up the first realistic scenarios for going to the moon and Mars (building on the orbital mechanics work of Tsiokovsky). Their stories inspired the first wave of scientists who worked on second order problems -- metallurgy, communications, cryogenics.
The second was the generation of kids born into the depression. I think a huge percentage of the original astronauts and engineering managers were born from 1930 to 1940. Very young, highly educated, no BS.
Here's hoping there's a new crop of tough, no-nonsense, smart kids who dream their own dreams and make them happen. Cause we sure screwed it up.
squidware
not so easy... generally field reporters don't have a comment section and if I stick it in somewhere else
say Dowd's column it won't be published... I tried this on some reporting of Kristoff's from Phnom Penh,
he was played like a chump by a woman who runs an NGO which helps girls get free of sex slavery (his term),
as Nick was quickly surveying a destroyed building that supposedly had secret warrens where girls were kept
as sex slaves (think Kiss the Girls or Silence of the Lambs) she said, "come we must go, it is dangerous
to be here!' Now this was in broad daylight. I have asked my various drivers and contacts to take me to such
a dangerous street and they say 'doesn't exist'... my questions to Nicholas Kristoff were never published.
and today's paper has an opinion 'Too Late for Revenge':
Mr Kim writes:
"And I find myself asking, what sort of justice is possible now? After ignoring our suffering when action might have saved our country, what does the United Nations expect to do for Cambodia now? Placing elderly Khmer Rouge leaders on trial will not bring back those who lost their lives in the Killing Fields, or bring peace to the survivors. It will only stir more anger and misery and hate. Pol Pot, the chief criminal, is long dead. So are many of the others who killed and tortured at his command."
obviously, he hasn't spent much time in Kampuchea as of late... (again, why is the Times so brain dead sometimes?)
"Here's hoping there's a new crop of tough, no-nonsense, smart kids who dream their own dreams and make them happen."
I'm also looking forward to the accomplishments of the generation being born now. they'll be living a dream as of 2035 which my generation had only held out as a fantasy - a world largely without the anchor around the leg that is the baby boomers.
BofA: Double Secret Probation. Bank of America Corp. is operating under a secret regulatory sanction ...
"There is a little-known codicil in the Faber College constitution which gives the dean unlimited power to preserve order in time of campus emergency. "
In a letter that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the Fed criticized Bank of America's management and directors for being "overly optimistic" about risk and capital.
Haha! The Fed can criticize people for being "overly optimistic"? Oh, right. They are quasi-government employees. They are immune to total and complete FAILURE! Don't forget to demand that your congress servants audit them.
dr munch (profile) wrote on Thu, 7/16/2009 - 1:44 am
So Arnie's going to put kids on waiting lists for health care? That'll save money until the kid with no doctor gets put in an ICU for an asthma attack that could have been prevented by a six dollar inhaler.
$6 health care means Arnie can cut CA government health spending to zero because every child can buy his/her own health care with allowance money.
Investment-banking revenue from trading and stock and bond underwriting is helping offset rising defaults on consumer loans, such as mortgages and credit cards. That’s allowed Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to post net income during every quarter of the U.S. recession that started in 2007, the only bank among the nation’s top five to manage that feat.
“Jamie Dimon’s the best operator by far and he kind of avoided a lot of the pitfalls that sunk a lot of these other companies,” said Keith Davis, a Washington-based analyst at Farr, Miller & Washington LLC, which manages about $500 million, including JPMorgan stock.
But I guess you mean: "Could we create a huge technological leap on the magnitude of going from scud-like german V2 rockets to the Saturn V" FAT CHANCE
I've decided that it is Bloomberg's policy never to mention any benefit banks might have received from taxpayers when discussing positive things that happen in banking. We taxpayers are only mentioned when things are going down the drain!! Enter CIT!
This is risky stuff, and everyone knows it, so expecting a 100% survival rate is ludicrous -- you'll still have candidates lining up around the block.
"Do you know what you're saying? You're talking about.... DEATH! The Great Enemy! How are we supposed to defeat The Great Enemy if you are talking about giving in?"
Dawg - they should be whispering "moooraal haazard, Timmaay...", you can show them, take a stand., strength builds confidence, confidence builds strength, on your watch Timmayy...
Where should I send the bill for the new keyboard? I'd like 100% on the dollar and see on reason to exercise my insurance provisions and settle for less. Very funny.
This counter seasonal nature makes the drop an even bigger deal (from your link):
Traffic fell by 2% between May and June during a period when traffic typically experiences a surge due to increased shipping in preparation for the upcoming holiday season.
I thought the commentariat viewed a cit bail out as a tacit admission by the administration that the recession was still bad. just yesterday, we were making calls to let them fail. given those claims, isn't today's news about cit another sign of economic stabilization/recovery?
I am still worried about JPM. They have the largest amount of CDS outstanding on them of any company. They have WaMu's loan portfolio. They have a huge amount of Helocs. And, they have a gigantic amount of OTC swaps.
They are able to make more money now because of fewer competitors and a large interest spread. Higher defaults, higher capital costs, or bad derivatives bets can still cause a lot of havoc.
Many of the banks I work with have been put under MOUs in the past few months - the wording in this one is harsher than most, but the regulators have been very hard in examinations, especially on loan loss reserves.
gotta out-nerd you. it was valentine michael smith. and i never want to see them make a big budget movie out of it cause it would be terrible. remember when they made heinlein's starship troopers? and that was a pretty cut and dry interstellar war plot. Stranger was long, complicated and controvesial with very little content to interest a major movie producer (besides all the sex and orgies). If made they'd change it into a "sex-capades in space with aliens and magic" movie. Please, no.
Careful, CR. They send people to Gitmo for talking about stuff like this.
How does it help GS?
golly - you mean benny and timmy didn't appreciate kenny's tattle-tale antics in front of those junior-level fed employees, er, i mean, congressfolk?
lol, those Goldman guys are good. BAC announces on Friday morning.
Related to last thread:
TJ, if this happens this summer/fall, you'll be able to afford that expensive Colorado place sited above:
DollarCollapse - Your ringside seat for the global financial crisis
Toga, toga, toga...
So the question is "Will Bank of America or California go bust first?"
So the question is "Will Bank of America or California go bust first?"
Yes.
How to make a toga:
YouTube - HOW TO MAKE A TOGA
Wow, I just now noticed that Dean Wormer looks like Jamie Dimon.
Can we skip BOA Animal Bank antics and just get real with Caligula (toga lite)
pigged
Slop is what you feed to the hogs. And there are usually hogs on most Az farms if they are north enough. Hogs also need shade.
Do you know how many acres of hay you need to feed a cow and some goats? Do you know how long it is going to take to plow, till etc those acres with that tiny thing called a tractor? That is not a tractor, that is a rototiller.
hoocoodanode
we need a "smiling pig" textual smiley/emoticon graphic
really, we do, they exist out there...
Re: "Dean Wormer looks like Jamie Dimon."
Intesting idea of a toga.
I can fold a full 9 yard kilt.
Nothing like collusion to conceal material events from shareholders to show change we can believe in. Chalk this one up as yet another policy that transcends administrations.
Can you toss a caber as well?
Wow, nobody could have guessed that BofA was in bad shape. /snark off
jg,
I read that book when it came out, and I've been prepared for that eventuality for 5 years now. You're right, too -- a sudden devaluation would put me in the catbird's seat.
I have this old garbage sitting in storage; what does it mean?
BAC 1/21/09
Price $6.68
EPS 0.554
P/E 12.06
E/P 8.29%
10 year Treasury 2.526%
BAC Overvalued by 5.77%
BAC 6/13/09
Price $13.72
EPS 0.85
P/E 16.10
E/P 6.19%
10 year Treasury 3.778%
BAC overvalued by 2.412%
Intesting idea of a toga.
I can fold a full 9 yard kilt.
Well, if there is ever a Calculated Risk Convention, I know which one I'll be wearing.
We will go broke first. They get the fancy accounting tricks, we just pay higher taxes on lower wages.
Royalty-Free (RF) Clipart of Smileys, Illustrations of Smileys, and Vector Graphics
Pig Emoticon
Happy pig
:@)
MSN Pig Emoticons
I can fold a full 9 yard kilt.
What's inside your wallet?
dryfly,
That did sound like an ideal lot.
My grandfather had a "hobby farm" about a third that size but otherwise similar in the northwest. It's still "in the family" so-to-speak and probably always will be.
C'mon sudden, overnight devaluation!
LOL broward.
I think most kilts are worn regimental.
The pouch in front is what you keep your wallet in and yourself behind.
Comrade jg,
Not saying that specific scenario, but any number of "dollar collapse" circumstances that could come fast or slow. As those things go, by the time you know it's happening it's way too late to prepare for it.
Maybe this says it all:
Regulatory Reform Focus of Talk by Assistant Secretary for Financial Institution
"Securitization helped banks move credit risk off of their books and supply more capital to housing markets. It also widened the wedge between principals and agents - lowering underwriting standards and the incentives for due diligence."
C'mon sudden, overnight devaluation!
Comrade, I lived through one of those in Mexico in 1994. Believe me, you do NOT want that experience.
Dazed,
Sounds like you've got a story to tell. If not here, perhaps at "afterthecrash.net"?
BOA must be laughing their asses off - what are the regulators gonna do - close them down?
Bwwwwahahahahaha...
Sometimes the sanitation inspectors put us on double secret probation. Usually a handful of twenties gets us off.
I guess the ML deal isn't working out.
Devaluation fast or slow (relative to gold), it is coming.
Okay, I will defer to your experience, Comrade D&A: no overnight devaluation, please, Dear Lord.
Good night, all!
One last copy paste and then off to the movies: This is an example of why banks will have slower growth as the competition amongst them all, increases. The result is a turf war with lots of cannibalization and or fraud, to pump up bogus EPS (just like before) same as it ever was, same as it ever was: YouTube -
Additionally, in the second quarter of ’09, Fannie Mae instituted tougher underwriting standards for its conventional small-loan program. Small loans from the agency once featured slightly better underwriting standards than larger loans; that’s not true anymore. Small loans are now being underwritten at a minimum 1.25x debt service coverage ratio (DSCR), and offer a maximum 75 percent loan-to-value ratio—just like large loans. As recently as March, small loans could be underwritten at a 1.20x DSCR and 80 percent leverage. Fannie Mae is also taking a closer look at an asset’s market; the property’s trailing 12 months of net operating income; and the borrower’s financial health. For instance, the minimum FICO score for a borrower is now 680, up from 650 (and sometimes as low as 620 with a waiver) in the past.
AFT Online Article
CFC and ML? That's like stirring cyanide into your ethylene glycol cocktail. That's on top of all their CA RE exposure.
Yeah, they're fine.
Dazed,
Sounds like you've got a story to tell. If not here, perhaps at "afterthecrash.net"?
I'd be glad to one of these days. It's 12 CDT so I need to go to bed. Buenas noches a todos.
I spoke to a coworker about going through that in Serbia. One day you find you cannot access your bank account. A couple of weeks later you get the option of your life's savings back at 10 cents on the dollar or you could wait something like 10 years and see whether you could get more back.
Erm, wasn't the BAC-CFC marriage arranged by the Fed? Same as the BAC-MER buyout?
"I spoke to a coworker about going through that in Serbia."
i can't think of why someone in that part of the world wouldn't either have a stack of physical euros and dollars and/or an account in a german or british bank (or even santander, etc)
"the Fed criticized Bank of America's management and directors for being "overly optimistic" about risk and capital"
no worse than declaring the recession is over by BoA/ML asshat analysts
& their CNBC co-dependent shills...right?
geez...what's the big deal?
HollywoodHack (homepage, profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Wed, 7/15/2009 - 10:15 pm
reply ignore user
"I spoke to a coworker about going through that in Serbia."
i can't think of why someone in that part of the world wouldn't either have a stack of physical euros and dollars and/or an account in a german or british bank (or even santander, etc)
I got the impression it's the same thinking as here. It won't happen here, it's not too bad. By the time you figure out it's too late.
i can't think of why someone in that part of the world
THAT part of the world is quickly becoming here.
i dunno, guys, central europe is gangstered-up in the old sense, guys brazenly coming into eateries for bag drops, usually with near-skinhead hair and a late-model BMW or Benz idling out front...
it really never was THAT much like the west
Could we have built the Saturn V today?
Wolf!
California Budget Talks Break Down Again
California Budget Talks Break Down Again - cbs5.com
Could we have built the Saturn V today?
We do.
Saturn Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HH,
I just mean in monetary safety terms, not the full-on Wild Wild West atmosphere.
Sheep!
CIT talks start up again.
Just kidding.
good one.. no, seriously.. could we make that kind of a technological leap today? Not that we do not have the ability, but with all the assorted scum in our system at almost all levels
//Could we have built the Saturn V today?//
LOL nothing would suprise me at this point.
I don't know.
CIT likely to file for bankruptcy Friday: report
Comments: CIT likely to file for bankruptcy Friday: report - MarketWatch
Jul 16, 2009, 12:54 a.m. EST
Could we have built the Saturn V today?
Perhaps the question should be: Can we build the Saturn V today?
Only with great difficulty.
CIT Talks Fall Apart, Bankruptcy Filing Likely Friday
CIT Talks Fall Apart, Bankruptcy Filing Likely Friday
By: CNBC.com with Reuters | 15 Jul 2009 | 10:40 PM ET
CIT Group, is likely to file for bankruptcy Friday, a source close to the company tells CNBC. The major lender to small-and mid-sized U.S. businesses had been surprised at the failure of bailout talks. CIT is now pursuing a plan that is likely to include a chapter 11 filing on Friday. "Discussions with government agencies have ceased," CIT said in a statement. "There is no appreciable likelihood of additional government support being provided over the near term."
good one.. no, seriously.. could we make that kind of a technological leap today? Not that we do not have the ability, but with all the assorted scum in our system at almost all levels
Probably make a Saturn V SIV... all the wonks who would have worked for NASA long ago now work for GS & JPM anyway, right? I mean who gets 2 and 20 for designing rockets for crisssake?
And SIVs are damned near as complex... folks understand rockets [its only 'rocket science' after all]... no one understands securitization.
speaking of hard work, those old mercury tin cans were not comfy.
manned space flight - should be thought of in the same light as big-rig driving. i'm more impressed with someone who has taken an 18-wheeler over the grapevine a few hundred times than some candy-assed astronaut.
We all know that CIT should be kept afloat so they can continue to make loans to companies that no one is willing to buy from.
As if a bailout would help the economy... the bailout would help CIT be made whole from the smuldering ruins of damage brought on by failing companies destroyed by the failing consumer destroyed by failing productivity destroyed by a focus on shoveling shit... we can re-make the Monty Python scene with the beggars talking about shoveling shit and getting paid like the king...
Yes.. but the ability to dream of and build something innovative is the bigger issue.
//Can we build the Saturn V today?//
That is what I was hinting at.. we are not interested in creating real things.. just more financial BS.
//And SIVs are damned near as complex... folks understand rockets [its only 'rocket science' after all]... no one understands securitization.//
Could we have built the Saturn V today?
Just outsource to the Russians---
They will probably (a good bet) get it done for a fraction of the cost.
Can we build the Saturn V today?
The country will never pull together to fulfill a dream like that ever again.
Was the rig built by the contractor with the most political connections? and contained a few hundred tons of rocket fuel?
//i'm more impressed with someone who has taken an 18-wheeler over the grapevine a few hundred times than some candy-assed astronaut.//
"The country will never pull together to fulfill a dream like that ever again."
That's a scary statement.
you need to buy one of these and go with a black and red devil motif, lucy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InternationalLoneStar.JPG
That's a scary statement.
Surprising pessimism from Nemo.
Obviously not a snorter of green shoots.
Dedicated to you, Nemo.
YouTube - Goldfrapp - Happiness
I hear ya... give it time. We are early in the down phase of this 'longwave'... got a lot of down to go before we hit bottom... it is from the bottom where the dreams come from. Who would have imagined computer networks & such from the bottom of the 70s stagflation. Or a Saturn V from the bottom of the late 1930s?
There will be ideas again but only after the scorched earth of 'creative destruction'...
"The country will never pull together to fulfill a dream like that ever again."
The species has a bottle neck to get through, and the survivors (if any) will need to face that question.
Why not? I think it has to do with the financialism.. we seem to be enamored by making money through investing money to make more money.. but what can that money buy? Creating real wealth requires using money to innovate or build stuff or services.
//The country will never pull together to fulfill a dream like that ever again.//
That's a scary statement.
Yeah, I was personally kind of hoping for an Apollo-like project to build America's next energy infrastructure.
I remember a moment of disbelief that day when I first read BofA was going to aquire CountryWoe. Nasty. It was a nasty, nasty surprise. It's like finding out the seemingly nice family next door is secretly molesting, etc. Gives you a different take on the neighborhood, suddenly.
What dryfly said (as usual).
Yes we could make an Atlas V now. I don't know if our government would be willing to fund it, and I don't know if they would put up with all the delay's due to the cautiousness in today's Aerospace engineering programs. But we'd absolutely be able to.
TJ and The Bear,
But that would involve funding scientists who think differently, do not play games or have ivy league pedigrees.. historically conventional thinkers, ass-kissers and clever shysters make poor innovators.
//Yeah, I was personally kind of hoping for an Apollo-like project to build America's next energy infrastructure.//
Who would have imagined computer networks
I touched my first network in 1989. I hacked into a corporate MicroVAX II in Boston. From there, I hacked into another Vax in Munich, and then into Tokyo, then into the Vax right next to me in Agoura Hills, CA and activated that test system remotely.
it was an awesome adrenalin rush.
Running the system around the circumference of the world.
I never dreamed of anything like it.
Good night you all - got work to do tomorrow.
Got me all hot and bothered
Yes, why not..
Maybe we should start by making the engines of an Atlas V (currently they use RD-180/1 russian engines- first stage)
//Yes we could make an Atlas V now.//
I'm certain that we could still build the Saturn V in the U.S. It's the same sort of thing we still do well here. However, we don't have the motivation. The only reason for the Apolo program was a giant dick measuring competition with the Soviets. At its peak, the U.S. was spending .5% of its GDP on NASA. That's the equivalent of spending $70 billion/year. Personally, I can think of many, many better ways to spend that kind of cash than ego projects.
"Frankly, unless Washington prints money and bails out every state that needs capital, including California, federal power will decline amidst this severe economic recession, and the process of a soft American devolution will begin. If you think this idea is outrageous, then you’ve still not come to terms with a core reality of our current situation: the structure of this financial crisis is wholly different than any in our post-war era. This isn’t a recession. This is collapse."
13.9 Trillion to the Banksters? and what do we get.?
//hat's the equivalent of spending $70 billion/year.//
Another way to look at it is that the entrenched powers that be, have to be rendered powerless for anything to happen.
That is happening in the political area by the implosion and aging of the GOP.
In the economic are, it is the implosion and loss of prestige of the financial area.
For those with a fondness for fondness of old time manufacturing, robots have taken the place of most workers and in fact Mish had an article up about unemployed robots.
Leadership is very important. Plundering corporations for personal gain is not leadership.
Energy - for anyone that doesn't follow it.
Polywell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Talk-Polywell.org :: View Forum - News
I'm certain that we could still build the Saturn V in the U.S. It's the same sort of thing we still do well here. However, we don't have the motivation. The only reason for the Apolo program was a giant dick measuring competition with the Soviets. At its peak, the U.S. was spending .5% of its GDP on NASA. That's the equivalent of spending $70 billion/year. Personally, I can think of many, many better ways to spend that kind of cash than ego projects.
Yes, I can think of a lot of shit I could throw my money away on instead of the destiny and last best hope of mankind.
Communist!
//Plundering corporations for personal gain is not leadership.//
"Yes, I can think of a lot of shit I could throw my money away on instead of the destiny and last best hope of mankind."
Now, this is why I'm here.
Let 'em have it, Hoopajoops.
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel;
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun,
Pop! goes the weasel.
A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle—
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
and whom is left without a chair
broward,
It is sad that we do not fund more people like that group.. the biggest advances have never come from committee planning or conventional thinking.
//Energy - for anyone that doesn't follow it.//
I need someone to spin this into a 2nd half recovery... I'm losing my faith in CR's optimisim...
deanfv,
you need hopium..
Space Exploration Technologies has successfully launched a Malaysian satellite into orbit, achieving a milestone in commercial spaceflight after a string of failures. Better known as SpaceX, the private company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, co-founder of the PayPal electronic payment service, parked the Earth-observing satellite called RazakSAT in orbit at 12:25 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday. The nearly 400-pound satellite is orbiting more than 425 miles above the Earth. SpaceX is hoping to build a business carrying payloads into space. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company launched RazakSAT into space using the company's Falcon 1 rocket. SpaceX charges about $8 million per flight.
Also, Delta engines still built here. It's true we don't have the industrial diversity, but that's not because we don't have the ability. We're just too cheap...
For those of you interested in launching space ships the size of small cities into space in an economical and extremely efficient manner, read up on Project Orion
Project Orion (nuclear propulsion) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Essentially, instead of rocket fuel, a backwards-pointing revolver fires small nuclear bombs behind the ship, which detonate and impact a shock absorbing pusher plate, which then pushes against an absorbent spring that connects to the payload. Think of it like trying to fly by tying an automatic shotgun to the bottom of a pogo stick, only with atomic bombs for shot.
With a propulsion system as powerful as this, the entire equation for space travel changes - instead of ultralight aluminum, it behooves you to put as much mass in your spacecraft as possible to help absorb the shock. Steel walls and supports, built using submarine technology instead of spaceship technology. All kinds of gizmos and gears, raw material for building extra-terrestrial industry, everything becomes possible if we would just pursue this propulsion technology earnestly.
There's a small issue of the fallout causing something like 150 deaths per booster shot, due to extra background radiation and fallout, but come on people, that many people die a day of malaria. If we're not willing to spend $15 bucks a head to give some starving africans malaria medication to save their lives, why are we willing to sacrifice the future of our species for 150 statistical deaths?
jamie Dimon like Dean Wormer, eh?
I have a great story about how one night I ate sushi with Mrs Dean Wormer...
Hoopajoops LTD,
Orion type spaceships are currently the only viable and readily available method to put humans beyond mars. People forget that..
"It's true we don't have the industrial diversity, but that's not because we don't have the ability."
The Egyptian pyramid-builders had the innate "ability"--human beings what they are-- to build spacecraft, but they didn't have the technology.
We're slowly losing the technology.
I ate sushi with Mrs Dean Wormer...
I'm not going there, Duke.
Later.
Hopajoops - talk to me about project Orion when you have someplace to go. If you want to spend money on space more space based observatories are a worthwhile investment. Playing around on the moon less so.
Vader,
And the next time around the current Dem leadership will collapse. Both parties are made up of old white folk so out of touch with the masses. Can I vote for someone young and bold versus someone old and entrenched? Unfortunately, it looks like only Palin has the balls to do this to the GOP. I don't know who would do it for the other party.
I'm up in Siem Reap, the town next to Angkor Wat... I was here back in Oct and
can't believe how fast developers are screwing up what was once a nice,
dusty town say 10 years ago. Anyone remember Cancun before the conversion
to Spring Break Uber Alles?...
same thing happening here...
final frontier?
Pagan in Burma!
For those commenters who repeatedly mention future demographics as part of the looming problems, an article about Boomers and the Economy:
Kitco - Commentaries - Graham Summers
Boomer wealth continues to plunge: commentators celebrated the fact that home prices ONLY fell another 0.6% in June, but none of them mentioned that this represents another $100 billion in US wealth gone.
Bottomline: the 20+ year expansion in Boomer came to a screeching halt last year. We’ve now entered what may in fact be the greatest period of wealth destruction in American history. The effects this will have on Boomer spending, investing, and the like will completely change the investing and economic landscape for the US REGARDLESS of what the Fed, Obama, or any other economic/ political authority attempts.
Hopajoops - talk to me about project Orion when you have someplace to go. If you want to spend money on space more space based observatories are a worthwhile investment. Playing around on the moon less so.
So in your opinion we should wait on space travel until someone opens a starbucks out there for us or something?
What about species insurance against a global pandemic or planetary catastrophe? We're such a fragile species... our civilization could be wiped out by a little bit of a cold spell, geologically speaking. Is the preservation of your very species reason enough to do it?
What about the kind of biological sciences and manufacturing we could get done in the low gravity environment of the moon? Hell, we could just put a bunch of nuclear power plants up there. If you think there's a shortage of things to do or places to go in outer space, then you lack an imagination.
Yes, I can think of a lot of shit I could throw my money away on instead of the destiny and last best hope of mankind.
::eyeroll::
I'm 100% four-square behind continued unmanned missions, the more the merrier. Actual manned lift capability can wait.
Can't tell the difference between 1080p @ 120hz video vs. a viewport through the hull anyways.
Luci, Can i smoke me some hopium? Where do I buy that stuff?
Comrade Troyski,
Innovative technology is usually created by stretching the limits of what we thought was possible.
deanfv,
Read the glossary entry about hopium.
I'm 100% four-square behind continued unmanned missions, the more the merrier. Actual manned lift capability can wait.
By all means. Let's send some robots up there and plenty of gear to assemble the architecture and infrastructure to sustain human life first.
What about species insurance against a global pandemic or planetary catastrophe?
robot exploration & R&D first.
immediate problems before ones that come every sixty million years.
What about the kind of biological sciences and manufacturing we could get done in the low gravity environment of the moon?
What about them? Which science fiction book are you thinking of?
Hell, we could just put a bunch of nuclear power plants up there.
I prefer Canada, actually.
If you think there's a shortage of things to do or places to go in outer space, then you lack an imagination.
I'd like to see some exploration effort go towards the deep sea floors. Lotsa good stuff down there, and surviving on the ocean floor is a damn sight more doable than out in space, believe it or not.
In Saudi we have something called "chop-chop" square for peeps like this. Go ahead....how many people on this board can tell me that's a bad thing for this one special case.
I'm with Hoopajoops. If there's a reason for this here human race, it sure the hell isn't the petty shit we're dealing with every day. If we have a destiny, why wouldn't it be in (or beyond) the stars??? Besides, if we don't get somebody off this beautiful rock soon we may never do so.
I prefer Canada, actually.
LOL!
^ thinking of the nukes we're going to need to crack all the tar sand crap. Nukes need water and space, N Canada has that.
Hmmm..
That explains your lack of vision.
//I prefer Canada, actually.//
broward,
I'll leave that story for a weekend but it involved a small indie film I was involved in in NYC,
the actress who played Mrs Dean Wormer attended the screening along with her husband
Jay Cocks... I asked my director who she was and all he could tell me was that she was in Cassavetes'
films (he was French)... later at Shun Lee Palace...
Winston writes: I'm certain that we could still build the Saturn V in the U.S. It's the same sort of thing we still do well here. However, we don't have the motivation. The only reason for the Apolo program was a giant dick measuring competition with the Soviets."
check your history again, from the get go the Russians were into big rockets, our program consisted
of smaller tactical missiles for a considerable length of time [typical Russkie mentality - to this day
they still hold the record for largest hydrogen bomb explosion, I believe... we MIRVed ours 5 to 7years
ahead of their ICBMs, if not for espionage our advantage would have been around 12 years...]
If there's a reason for this here human race
Glittering generality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BTW,
I don't mind manned missions -- nothing like "eyes on the ground" as they say. However, let's not make it an absolute rule that everyone has to come back alive. This is risky stuff, and everyone knows it, so expecting a 100% survival rate is ludicrous -- you'll still have candidates lining up around the block. I just don't see the point in shutting everything down for years every time someone dies doing something inherently dangerous.
Troyski,
Waxing philosophic, I know. Any thoughts on the subject (without getting too Zen)?
Comrade Troyski,
A canuck saying that.. isn't your whole existence a series of lies and delusions?
What gets me about the "space race" was the idea that we were actually flying into space beforehand, but because of that damned Soviet spiny basketball we had to switch over to strapping rockets to our asses. How far ahead would we have been had we simply continued down the space plane road?
Is missing financier in the United States?
This page is available to GlobePlus subscribers
Last updated on Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009 09:10PM EDT
The disgraced Montreal financier Earl Jones may be in the United States, a family friend said Wednesday, amid news that the collapse of Mr. Jones's firm was forcing elderly widows to sell their homes and turn to a food bank. Hours after the authorities shut down Mr. Jones's investment operations last Friday on suspicion that he might be running a Ponzi scheme, the long-time family friend called the condo of Mr. Jones's eldest daughter, Kim, in Massachusetts.
Robot exploration has great overlap with general economic development of useful wealth-production.
YouTube - ASIMO FALL ( Broken Ankles )
Speaking of robots & wealth, it struck me that someday this century someone's going to tele-operate a robot to rob a bank or whatnot. That'll be fun.
Anyhoo, I don't have a big beef with manned exploration, I just think it's a bit of been-there-done-that. Saving some subset of humanity from global destruction sounds good on paper but that can also be achieved by depositing the necessary tissues and whatnot somewhere safe in orbit and let the space aliens eventually help a brother out. Plus of course it's a million times easier to survive in say Antarctic isolation than up in orbit or on the moon.
Could we have built the Saturn V today?
Don't know if this is true, but I heard once that the blueprints for the Saturn rocket have been destroyed. With the original engineers gone, the answer then is NO, we could not build the Saturn again today.
Speaking of robots & wealth, it struck me that someday this century someone's going to tele-operate a robot to rob a bank or whatnot.
Amazing it hasn't happened already. Sounds like a good premise for a screenplay. You remember that heist movie with the trained dobies? That was cute (except for when the one got nailed by a car).
Speaking of robots & wealth, it struck me that someday this century someone's going to tele-operate a robot to rob a bank or whatnot.
Amazing it hasn't happened already.
Why bother with the robot? I thought GS software already did that on a regular basis.
How far ahead would we have been had we simply continued down the space plane road?
I always wondered if Heinlein's Mag-Lev boost (Moon is a Harsh Mistress) could've at least lowered the amount of fuel you need to accelerate.
sdtfs: "I always wondered if Heinlein's Mag-Lev boost (Moon is a Harsh Mistress) could've at least lowered the amount of fuel you need to accelerate."
Not practical on earth. It would be great for getting off the moon though. It's all about drag here. You have to get up ~100,00ft/20mi/30km and out of the majority of the atmosphere before you can tip over and pile on the speed.
The Space Review: Thunder in a bottle: the non-use of the mighty F-1 engine
Much of the technical design documentation for the Saturn 5 and the Apollo spacecraft has indeed been lost or destroyed. In fact, much of it was never saved, nor meant to be saved. Certainly there are hundreds of thousands of pages of technical documentation preserved on microfilm and in boxes at the National Archives facility near Atlanta. But these records (I’ve seen them) are incomplete, and they contain considerable gaps. There is nothing close to a complete set of “Saturn blueprints” in federal archives. I have also been to the archives at Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Houston, and Fort Worth. There is nothing approaching a “complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints” anywhere.
and...
The Saturn had many contractors. The first and second stages were built by different contractors, and they did not share their documentation with each other. So when the program shut down, detailed technical documentation was spread around at various contractor facilities. NASA did not collect it all and save it.
Another issue is the tooling for the vehicles. Documents and blueprints are not the only things necessary for building a rocket. They also require tools, many of which are built exclusively for assembling the vehicle and many of which are large, such as jigs that can hold ten-meter-diameter fuel tanks. Those tools also have to be designed. When the contract is over, the tools take up space that can be devoted to other tasks. So the tools are either put into storage and later scrapped, or simply scrapped immediately. The tooling for the Saturn 5 was destroyed over three decades ago. If a complete set of technical documentation existed, the tooling to build it would have to be designed (more blueprints!) and then built.
Technology evolves, however. A Saturn 5 was not simply a piece of technology, or even many pieces of technologies, it was the product of many other technologies, many of which were evolving or becoming obsolete.
But NASA officials were also not stupid when they shut down the Saturn program. They realized that key parts of the vehicle were likely to be useful in the future and they made a strategic decision to preserve that technology. In particular, they preserved most important part of the Saturn 5, the engines.
And so on.
sdtfs
as an avid fan of Stranger in a Strange Land (Vonnegut called it a masterpiece of Sci-Fi literature - he hated that term -)
I still wonder why it has yet to be put up on the silver screen (yes, I know a version of it was done in early 80s with David Bowie,
look... I like Bowie and he was great in Man Who Fell to Earth but I want bigger budget movie with an interesting actor playing
Robert Valentine Smith)?
I wonder who has the novel rights and script in turnaround...
The entirety of NASA's engineering output in the 60s is equivalent to a few good afternoons of work by Jack Parsons thirty years before... manned spacecraft has always been a giant welfare project for the more backwards regions of the country.
The BoA MOU sounds like mostly board changes... ho hum...
Look, we don't have the tooling to build Model-T's either. So what?
HollywoodHack (homepage, profile) wrote on Wed, 7/15/2009 - 11:57 pm
The entirety of NASA's engineering output in the 60s
You know what exactly? Next time you want to know something go back and read the original papers from the '60's and '70's on combustion instability. See how they solved the problem in the F1.
Then go through the '80s and '90s and look at the same thing through the glasses of computational fluid dynamics.
There are several hundred problems of that same difficulty level that got solved in a couple of years in which people were listening to vacuum tube radios and watching black and white tvs. And only one or two generations until people don't even know what questions to ask. Evidently, you.
It's not the blueprints. It's the way of thinking.
Yes, I can think of a lot of shit I could throw my money away on instead of the destiny and last best hope of mankind
Maybe I'm quibbling here, but exploration isn't about hope, it's about inspiration and expanding limits. The subtext is be something more than a number listed at the bottom of a Net Worth spreadsheet. The "Space Race" fired up the imagination in all the sciences.
An Xeon processor is more complicated than a Saturn. More useful too.
Intel makes 'em by the million. In 2009.
You can stuff as many Xeons in your fanny pack as you want.
You ain't goin to the moon big guy.
the funny thing is the degree to which we're moving backwards. i really wonder if the concorde will be seen as the summit of human achievement in terms of popular access to technology before humans began to fetishize digital nothingness.
This has been going on since the 23A letter BOA, C and 2 others received in Q2 2007 ....
Obsolescence is a huge issue in the electronics industry. Try and buy any of the popular commodity chips (processors/FLASH/RAM) from just 10 years ago. Generic stuff stays around for ever, but cutting edge stuff ships millions of units a month and is then discontinued the next. Eventually the machines that were used to make the original wafers are scrapped too (8" wafers => 12" wafers) so saving the masks won't help. It's not that you couldn't recreate any given chip on a modern process exactly, it's that it wouldn't be cost effective.
Same thing with something like a Saturn V. I'd bet half the alloys called out on the drawings have been superseded by something better. You could have special batches made or simply figure out what modern alloy to use to make it lighter and stronger. And that's just the raw metals which were a mature technology by then. Electronics, not so much. Even the shuttle predates the original PC. Stone age, literally.
OT / yesterday NY Times published a story by Seth Mydans on the Genocide Tribunal
the story contained a number of factual errors, not only that, but Mydans claims (very
Jayson Blair like) that the accusing witness put his face in his hands and wept. Not
only have a reviewed the only tapes that exist of that particular testimony (cameras are
not allowed into the courtroom gallery... security is like an airport) but I was sitting at the
only angle possible to see the acuser's face and then it was a partial view, no chance to see
tears! Seth Mydans wasn't there! Of the three camera shots there was not one reaction shot of Duch's apology.
YouTube - NY Times Seth Mydans = Jayson Blair? Did Mydans Invent 'Moment' @ Comrade Duch's Genocide Trial?
I call BS on NY Times reporting of this story!
You ain't goin to the moon big guy.
Nope. As all moon missions have proved, there ain't nothin there.
There's more life (and hope, and destiny) in ... Victorville, then on the moon.
Duke - post that to the NYT website. Let their readership know.
EEngineer -- there's a terrific book about the development of the guidance system at Draper and MIT for the Saturn system ... I can't remember the name and we're just moved, but it has lots of pictures of the core memory modules and some examples of the development environment.
That these people were able to make real-time, interrupt-driven, fail operational systems with pieces of metallic dust sewn together by gentle old ladies and code written by very geeky people in the basement of buildings in Cambridge is a miracle. And it worked.
on the way TO vegas, sure... but on the way back, with the family nest egg lost to bets on black? the dark side of the moon is cozier.
When you attempt cutting edge feats you need cutting edge technology. Cutting edge technology might be used in applications someone else can only dream of.
mp said:
We're slowly losing the technology.
I think we're losing the desire to fund technology. But I don't know if we are losing technology. Certainly we are talking about massive propulsion engines; there is not a lot of money to be made in developing massive propulsion engines that take time and can only be funded by the Federal government and are subject to the whims of folks getting elected. See the Raptor and desire to cancel it. You'd think some of this technology would flow down to high performance cars... or maybe not. But who wants to design and manufacture an item that numbers in the hundreds and takes a long time to get the payoff?
There were two really difficult things, among many others.
Rendezvous, which was required for every system except "direct ascent" in which the astronauts launched and landed in a single intact rocket. The incremental fuel quantities (based on the rocket equation) for the alloys didn't allow direct ascent .....
This was solved in part by a clever PhD who would later live the equations. Aldrin. Up to that point the energy management practicalities had not been worked out.
The other was actually landing on the moon. The radar system couldn't be tested in an equivalent environment, and nobody knew what the radar system would do when the dust started blowing. (Not the usual non-fear of sinking into unknown feet of dust on landing; this was proven false by unmanned orbiters).
It's all much harder than financial engineering.
EEngineer - so you're saying we may not even get to the tin whiskers melt-down as the technology changes so quickly...
mp said:
We're slowly losing the technology.
I think it's overrated. For example, the multiplexing systems needed to relay data for hundreds of data channels from the booster was a completely custom system from design to operations.
Today the technology is in every cell phone, and the theory behind it and the thousands of engineers from whom you might pick a few to design it exist all over. A much better place to be.
Same with any CFD and related issues.
The place we need more help is in the transition regimes, Mach 5-7, and heat flow, where real data is more sparse. This is the stuff that was decimated by the on-again-off-again budgeting.
"It's all much harder than financial engineering. "
but easier than advanced phrenology
NervousRex,
Agree. There's other funding needs than advanced materials research. What do you mean there's no lab anywhere that can create those conditions? I'm not going to spend that much money just to make sure my math is accurate... pffft... cancelled!
yes, and sigh!
The generation of dreamers who got us off the Earth came in two batches.
The first was a bunch of people in the first BIS (the British Interplanetary Society) which included Arther C. Clarke (RIP) and some other famous people. They actually dreamed up the first realistic scenarios for going to the moon and Mars (building on the orbital mechanics work of Tsiokovsky). Their stories inspired the first wave of scientists who worked on second order problems -- metallurgy, communications, cryogenics.
The second was the generation of kids born into the depression. I think a huge percentage of the original astronauts and engineering managers were born from 1930 to 1940. Very young, highly educated, no BS.
Here's hoping there's a new crop of tough, no-nonsense, smart kids who dream their own dreams and make them happen. Cause we sure screwed it up.
squidware
not so easy... generally field reporters don't have a comment section and if I stick it in somewhere else
say Dowd's column it won't be published... I tried this on some reporting of Kristoff's from Phnom Penh,
he was played like a chump by a woman who runs an NGO which helps girls get free of sex slavery (his term),
as Nick was quickly surveying a destroyed building that supposedly had secret warrens where girls were kept
as sex slaves (think Kiss the Girls or Silence of the Lambs) she said, "come we must go, it is dangerous
to be here!' Now this was in broad daylight. I have asked my various drivers and contacts to take me to such
a dangerous street and they say 'doesn't exist'... my questions to Nicholas Kristoff were never published.
and today's paper has an opinion 'Too Late for Revenge':
Mr Kim writes:
"And I find myself asking, what sort of justice is possible now? After ignoring our suffering when action might have saved our country, what does the United Nations expect to do for Cambodia now? Placing elderly Khmer Rouge leaders on trial will not bring back those who lost their lives in the Killing Fields, or bring peace to the survivors. It will only stir more anger and misery and hate. Pol Pot, the chief criminal, is long dead. So are many of the others who killed and tortured at his command."
obviously, he hasn't spent much time in Kampuchea as of late... (again, why is the Times so brain dead sometimes?)
"Here's hoping there's a new crop of tough, no-nonsense, smart kids who dream their own dreams and make them happen."
I'm also looking forward to the accomplishments of the generation being born now. they'll be living a dream as of 2035 which my generation had only held out as a fantasy - a world largely without the anchor around the leg that is the baby boomers.
SpaceX successfully launched a customer satellite into orbit...that's a great achievement.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph: World Bank Warns of Deflation Spiral.
Familiar subject viewed in relation to idled manufacturing capacity. Some fresh statistics.
World Bank warns of deflation spiral - Telegraph
BofA: Double Secret Probation. Bank of America Corp. is operating under a secret regulatory sanction ...
"There is a little-known codicil in the Faber College constitution which gives the dean unlimited power to preserve order in time of campus emergency. "
Transparency you can believe in.
In a letter that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the Fed criticized Bank of America's management and directors for being "overly optimistic" about risk and capital.
Haha! The Fed can criticize people for being "overly optimistic"? Oh, right. They are quasi-government employees. They are immune to total and complete FAILURE! Don't forget to demand that your congress servants audit them.
dr munch (profile) wrote on Thu, 7/16/2009 - 1:44 am
So Arnie's going to put kids on waiting lists for health care? That'll save money until the kid with no doctor gets put in an ICU for an asthma attack that could have been prevented by a six dollar inhaler.
$6 health care means Arnie can cut CA government health spending to zero because every child can buy his/her own health care with allowance money.
I never heard of Califorians waiting to spend $6.
I do not think CA's problem is penny-pinching.
JPMorgan Profit Rises 36 Percent, Beating Analysts’ Estimates
Investment-banking revenue from trading and stock and bond underwriting is helping offset rising defaults on consumer loans, such as mortgages and credit cards. That’s allowed Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to post net income during every quarter of the U.S. recession that started in 2007, the only bank among the nation’s top five to manage that feat.
“Jamie Dimon’s the best operator by far and he kind of avoided a lot of the pitfalls that sunk a lot of these other companies,” said Keith Davis, a Washington-based analyst at Farr, Miller & Washington LLC, which manages about $500 million, including JPMorgan stock.
More good news!
a little fly in the ointment...
Port Traffic Declines In June After Hopes Of Improvement:
LBPOST.com: Port Traffic Declines In June After Hopes Of Improvement
That’s allowed Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to post net income during every quarter of the U.S. recession that started in 2007
I think what is apparent is that the taxpayer was forced to make good on the bets between the winners and the losers in the casino of greed.
"Could we have built the Saturn V today"
Well, sort of. We're building it. Ares V.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Maximum_payload.PNG
Constellation program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But I guess you mean: "Could we create a huge technological leap on the magnitude of going from scud-like german V2 rockets to the Saturn V" FAT CHANCE
I'll bet Godman Sachs has their loan to CIT hedged with credit defaut swaps over at AIG, the circle jerk continues enjoy tax payers.
this thread feverishly awaits its pig. My commenting here should make it so shortly I'd think. Gimme swine! Oinkoink
Yawwwn. Morning all. Bloomie's picking CIT goes down to test the strength of the system.
Looks like the Full Lehman coming. Managed, or freefall?
C
@ dr. strangemoney
I've decided that it is Bloomberg's policy never to mention any benefit banks might have received from taxpayers when discussing positive things that happen in banking. We taxpayers are only mentioned when things are going down the drain!! Enter CIT!
Don't taunt the Pig™.
CIT bk'd should be good for every other SB lender. Gee, what do you think they are whispering in the administration's ear?
This is risky stuff, and everyone knows it, so expecting a 100% survival rate is ludicrous -- you'll still have candidates lining up around the block.
"Do you know what you're saying? You're talking about.... DEATH! The Great Enemy! How are we supposed to defeat The Great Enemy if you are talking about giving in?"
Dawg - they should be whispering "moooraal haazard, Timmaay...", you can show them, take a stand., strength builds confidence, confidence builds strength, on your watch Timmayy...
C
Morning All!
Another fine summer morning here in scenic South Carolina.
All this risk talk makes me think of my favorite show "The Deadliest Catch".
And now for my "wild hair" prediction:
Dow closes at 8700 today.
That is all.
Where should I send the bill for the new keyboard? I'd like 100% on the dollar and see on reason to exercise my insurance provisions and settle for less. Very funny.
sartre,
This counter seasonal nature makes the drop an even bigger deal (from your link):
Traffic fell by 2% between May and June during a period when traffic typically experiences a surge due to increased shipping in preparation for the upcoming holiday season.
CR,
Eagerly awaiting your port update if and when...
I thought the commentariat viewed a cit bail out as a tacit admission by the administration that the recession was still bad. just yesterday, we were making calls to let them fail. given those claims, isn't today's news about cit another sign of economic stabilization/recovery?
All this risk talk makes me think of my favorite show "The Deadliest Catch".
First couple of seasons were great.
Now, it always seems like a clip show, even though they're new.
"It's cold.... it's wet, we're catching crabs, and look, Sig has fallen asleep in the wheelhouse again!"
Green shoot jobs report? I'll say 545k. NSA 603k.
Eric,
Do you think the Time Bandit Boys are going to can Russ?
This week was kinda sad with the death and all.
"It's cold.... it's wet"
That's the Bering Sea in the middle of winter for ya.
RockyR, I am still holding out for a CIT bail this morning.
Maybe we need a "Wild Ass Week Prediction" post on Sunday night?
My "Who's online" is currently showing two Rob Dawg.
522K
Do you think the Time Bandit Boys are going to can Russ?
I don't watch it anymore.
{edit}
Skyin' 'em, boss
My "Who's online" is currently showing two Rob Dawg.
Multiple computers and/or paging off HCN while working.
{edit}
@HG
The number has been released. Check MarketWatch.
I am still worried about JPM. They have the largest amount of CDS outstanding on them of any company. They have WaMu's loan portfolio. They have a huge amount of Helocs. And, they have a gigantic amount of OTC swaps.
They are able to make more money now because of fewer competitors and a large interest spread. Higher defaults, higher capital costs, or bad derivatives bets can still cause a lot of havoc.
{edit}
505k
Many of the banks I work with have been put under MOUs in the past few months - the wording in this one is harsher than most, but the regulators have been very hard in examinations, especially on loan loss reserves.
gotta out-nerd you. it was valentine michael smith. and i never want to see them make a big budget movie out of it cause it would be terrible. remember when they made heinlein's starship troopers? and that was a pretty cut and dry interstellar war plot. Stranger was long, complicated and controvesial with very little content to interest a major movie producer (besides all the sex and orgies). If made they'd change it into a "sex-capades in space with aliens and magic" movie. Please, no.