How to control the WORLD -- bruhahahahahaha

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Dateline 2025 with references to history, political, incl: ViraMaticUcontrl opportunity
Display until 11:59am March 31, 2025.
Start:
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[cue standard "excited consumer jingle 234"]

This is simple.
How many of these apply to you:
[ ] I am Evil
[ ] I am Wealthy (50% of respondents to the first question will be)
[ ] I have control of a large number of people in my country
[ ] My country or company is a manufacturer of consumer goods
[ ] I work for/in a company that manufactures some part of a consumer good.
[ ] I seem to have an urge to control other people.
[ ] I would prefer, if at all possible, to control the world. (bruhahahahahaha, [rub hands together and hunch shoulders like a vulture while glancing from side to side)
[ ] I work in quality control, shipping, receiving, customer setup, programming, assembly or know or control someone who does.
[ ] I am the Grand Poobah of a sinister police force and can make offers that can't be refused.
[ ] I am a staunch supporter of the Patriot Act and will obtain the necessary retroactive subpoenas as needed.
[ ] I haven't got a clue. I just go to work and do what I am supposed to do.
[ ] I have purchased an electronic device before (ANY electronic device).
[ ] I have plugged some devices into my computer at one time or another.
[ ] I have an Internet connection.

If you have selected more than 3.5 of these choices, then you may have an opportunity for fame, fortune, and power. If you didn't check off the wealthy or powerful choices then you are NOT disqualified from this event.
You can HELP someone else, (possibly even somebody that you approve of) control the world.
You could be eligible for all of the benefits of belonging to the "Universal Henchman for Evil-Doers Union".
Imagine the pride that your grandchildren will feel when they tell others that their grandfather or grandmother was an actual Henchman for the "Revolution of Alignment of 2012".

OK, enough of this bubbly excitement about how YOU will gain from this... I will tell you what got me so excited. The secret word today is "OUTSOURCING".

Outsourcing is the way that manufacturing operates in the modern world. A company has a product that needs to be made, well they can't make it themselves so they hire somebody else to make it for them. A company that is going to sell a product just has the ideas, marketing staff, financial people, etc. They usually do not actually anything, they ask for bids and companies from China, Mexico, India, Portugal, Malaysia, Trenton NJ, or Chicago all submit an estimate of how much that they can make a product for. The bids from "somewhere else" are usually "less expensive" than making it locally, so you send the paperwork and cash over to them, wait a while, and then they ship the finished goods directly to retailers in your local country. Everybody makes their percentage and everybody is happy. Especially the consumer that just bought a 52 inch LCD TV for less money than it would cost to pack and ship it when you move to a new apartment a year later.

To appreciate the opportunities that await you we will tell you the HISTORY of this exciting opportunity and with a small investment on your part, we will TimeSpurt® you back to the year 2009 so that you can grab your share of the riches/fame/fortune that you could have had if only you had been paying attention.

The year is 2010, a non-descript year with no significant music, no arts, no politics, every thing was calm.
Now Mr. Sinister steps into the picture. He has hired a consultant that knows the nuances of the "WarrenEffect". (This was a scenario published way back in 2008 about how to control the world and the author was universally ridiculed.)
Here is how we think the scenario would have worked:
To accomplish world domination you start with most of the products produced in a manufacturing country that is exceptionally friendly with a consumer country that imports a lot of products. The "WarrenEffect" suggested that someone could develop a long range plan. A ridiculous example using two countries that always had a wonderful relationship was used so that nobody was insulted: Let's hypothetically say that China makes a lot of goods for a country like the USA.

Mr. Sinister has a powerful "Secret Service" that has the opportunity to pay a visit to every electronic manufacturer that they can find. These "representatives" of Lieutenant Sinister "suggests" that every company in China has to log all of the serial numbers of each item that they make "for demographic purposes". They "must" insert this little memory dongle once into every item before it is packed so that each serial number can be logged.
Instead of actually reading each serial number, the dongle actually loads a virus into each unit. This virus is designed to stay dormant until April 1st, 2012.
On the scheduled day of awakening, every electronic device that is attached to the Internet is controlled by a team of "supporters" of Colonel Sinister that work at a single control room at an undisclosed location, who can pretty much define what everyone is going to do.
There are subtle changes at first: The TV shows that you watch are carefully screened by General Sinister to remove all objectionable subject matter.
There is a new "transfer fee" for ALL monetary transactions.
The DieBold ATMs had been sending the paper money tracking data [see Note 1] to General Sinister for the past several years already, and of course, the credit card and "customer discount" cards have been sending in tracking information for a decade.
After about a year of background tracking to build up a good database of everybody, a press release will be sent to Fox News announcing that all other news outlets and newspapers (except for Fox News, of course) are to cease operations immediately.
Some other subtle things would change.
Coffee shops knew what type of coffee you liked and had it ready when you arrived.
Our electronic picture frames seemed to only show photos of Emperor Sinister playing with his cute little Beagallator (the extremely popular designer beagle/alligator mix).
Our toasters will only toast bread Extra Dark because that is how the Emperor wants it done.
There were no more speeding tickets because the cars would not drive faster than allowed.
There was a terrific benefit for ambulances because ALL cars would automatically move over to clear a path, this was a side effect of the 'motorcade alert' that was set up to simplify travel for politicians.
Everybody woke up in time to make it to work on time.
Telephone calls by terrorists, suspected terrorists, potential terrorists, people seeking information about terrorists and all members of their family tree were automatically monitored.
Some people did not like the changes, but most citizens enjoyed the security of not having any enemies.

It would be 8 years before it was figured out how Master Sinister had gained so much power, but it turns out that it was iPods, laptops, televisions, alarm clocks, GPS, automobiles, telephones, the new all-electronic remotely operated micro personal chainsaws (with Designer names) that everyone went ga-ga about in 2009, and every other "must have" item that we all had.
The "WarrenEffect" had been publicised in 2008 by an insignificant toad who wanted his odd name to live on in infamy, but he did raise the notion that the incidents of viruses being found on Digital Photo Frames and other consumer goods could progress from being an "accident" to being a "plan" [cue sinister music].
At the time, viruses were accidentally being loaded into brand-name consumer goods by the passing of "electronic saliva" during casual contact between different types of electronics. The problem spread a bit, until you had to actually type in your social security number and bank account passwords before you could activate your child's "Yank and Talk, gas powered pointy thing" educational play system. The US government quickly enacted the "Whig Act" to strengthen the previous "Patriot Act of 2001" and "Tory Act of 2008" which made the virus problem completely go away by outlawing any lawsuits, complaining, or whining in order to protect National Security.

The Stage was set for young Mr. Sinister to control the world with a single program virus [with the cryptic codename: wwstrikesback.exe] to become the all powerful "Grand Poobah his Excellency" that he is today.

[Message Interruption]
It's noon, remember to turn to Blog #7734 for today's story time, Or we will switch your device for you.

After story time, be sure to check out some more history at: Viruses Come Pre-Installed

[Message resumes at 12:59pm] "and we will continue with the message already in progress..."

So through the magic of TimeSpurt® you can go back to the year 2009 and armed with this knowledge, you can play a role in the changing of the world. Upon full payment of $37,989.99USD we will arrange your trip for you including accommodations near the location in China of your choosing and we will include a FREE memory stick with our exclusive ViraMaticUcontrl software already installed!
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Note 1: ATM's made by DieBold sent in your fingerprint data to the General that was gleaned by sorting the majority of prints on the paper money that you have deposited or withdrawn.
Tracking CASH vs credit cards presented a difficult challenge to the designers at DieBold, but they patented a process called Securitrac® which allows the ATMs to match and log the serial numbers on the cash with who withdrew the money. The same system scanned all cash transactions at all cash registers and banks and it supplies real-time reports of where anyone spends cash anywhere. This system was created in response to the public outcry that was raised when CASH transactions were going to be outlawed by the Tory Security Act. It was determined that the system only needed to lift the prints off of five different bills collected from any source as long as the "subject" had handled the particular bill at any time, with a 97% accuracy. Within four years Halliburton Corp has collected the fingerprints from more than 72% of the world population, which is 5% better than projected when awarded the contract. The Tory Security Act was modified to allow CASH transactions to continue.

A website about politics that a friend created.

Warren,

I am trying to put together a website and start a grassroots movement called "Reform2008". (http://www.reform2008.com/)
The concept behind this is simple: no matter who gets into office,the American people want government fixed. No fancy speeches, no vague promises... really fixed.
So I am trying to figure out a way to unite voters in all camps to come together and demand real reforms. Right now I have developed a website and petition and I have spent some time trying to come up with the right words to relay the message... but I'm not sure that they do.

The goal is to get most every voter to sign the petition regardless if they are Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever.

Chris C

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Chris,

I haven't forgot about your political site. I did get a chance to look at it and you did a very nice job. I will write my in-depth comments later but for now you should think of a mechanism (and I have a good one in mind) to allow people to enter their views and let majority votes determine what 'causes' bubble to the top.
All of us may not have the same philosophy, but the "majority" is being ignored with our current system of lobbyists and payola. When set up correctly, the majority CAN have a voice, and maybe someone big will latch on and wield some power.

Great concept, I think it can work, but it must be setup so that it doesn't just promote our views. If you add a forum so that people can launch ideas and people can vote on them causing the good ones to bubble up and the winners can migrate to a Wiki for each proposal. The Wiki can be fine-tuned until it is something that can be passed. Then if there are a LOT of signatures for a proposal that doesn't have objectionable side-effects then it would be embarrassing for a politician to vote against it. (Although we seem to elect some politicians that either weren't born with the embarrassment gland or they had it surgically removed)

Now the proper way to vote for ANYTHING when a large group of people are voting is to use the technique called "Approval Voting". It's awesome! It was developed by a mathematician that is always trying to solve puzzles. A while ago I was reading a paper that he wrote about the proper ways to cut a round cake so that everybody gets a fair share. It sounds strange, but it is important to use a system that works, is fair, and can be audited.

Nobody is going to audit the cake cutting procedure because it is too dang complicated to even DO the cutting, what with "floating knives" and other such things, but an ELECTION should be fair and uncompromising. The "Approval Voting" technique is simple, easy to understand, and REALLY cuts down on name calling and dirty politics. Recounts are easy.

There is a citizens group that would like our elections converted to this technique, you can see their site at http://www.approvalvoting.org/

There is a government site that is a terrific resource about this topic: Approval Voting (gov)

There is a column by a very smart fellow at M.I.T. here.

It is incredibly easy to program your website database to add things up and topics can be sorted by their current standings.

It's the way to hold an election in a democracy. A recent primary had odd results because Guiliani had converted the states that thought he was going to win to a "winner takes all" system. The democratic party has super-delegates which is just asking for trouble.

We just missed being hit by the Diebold voting machine problem. These "no paper trail and no recount is possible" machines were heading towards being required by law to be used in all fifty states. Florida is officially sending them to the scrap pile because the corrupt people that thought that they were a good idea (and obviously don't like democracy) were scrapped at the last election.

So read about "Approval Voting", plan to incorporate it into your website so that people are not just signing up for YOUR ideas. Although forcing them to vote on MY ideas would be fun.
Use a forum to give them a voice, and if you are successful, maybe WE will have a voice.
[add wimpy disclaimer and apologies here]
Warren
If any of you readers have helpful (or hurtful) comments about "Reform2008" I am sure that Chris would appreciate it. Just comment here. He reads this blog often.

Remove the fuel, remove the fame.

Another gunman goes out with fame.
The schools have learned how to do lock-downs.
The police and medical personnel have procedures in place to handle the situation.
The news groups have learned how to mobilize.
The crazy guy still takes out multiple kids in a last ditch grab for fame.

You have a long-term depressed guy or the recently snapped crazy man feeling that if nobody sees me NOW, then they will KNOW MY NAME SOON.

We all know that people need attention. If they can't get good attention, then bad attention will do. We try to avoid dealing in a responsive way to kidnapping, hostage taking, and terrorism, so PLEASE let us issue a gag order on the name of the shooter.
The locals will still know who he is, but the fame will be deflated.

NO NAMES. We can still have all of the information about the events leading up to the event without giving the gunman what he was looking for.

32 people this month
4th event in a week

We can analyze why later, but we have to stop this now.
Remove the fuel, remove the fame.

Chemistry minus-101

I saw something the other day that was so amazing.

It was a person that either had discovered a loophole in the laws of chemistry or was an incredibly stupid person.

I was in a drugstore buying some useless item. The person in the checkout line in front of me was a larger sized boxy woman with a VFW voice². She had an armload of trinkets and when it was her turn she dumped her load and proceeded to order four packs each of two different types of cigarettes. She paid and left the store.

I checked out and walked to my car. I was sitting in my car writing down an idea that had popped up when the lady with the VFW voice waddled up and heaved herself up into the pickup truck next to me.

This was the same pickup truck that I had noticed during my slow stroll to my car (my stroll was obviously much faster than Miss VFW). I had noticed the truck because the tired looking driver was sitting there with one of those oxygen tubes strung across his face.

I don't know why, but the couple did not drive away. I was in the middle of trying to grasp the concept of going to buy cigarettes by getting a ride from a person on oxygen.

My intense pondering was interrupted by an act that amazed me. The VFW gal lit up a cigarette. She was actually smoking in the closed cab of a truck where oxygen was being used!

Note: Oxygen mixed with a match creates an annoying ball of fire, and if that ball of fire is enclosed in a finite space (like the cab of a pickup truck), the ball of fire can be accompanied by large shards of metal, glass, and people parts.

I drove away as fast as I could. I did take a quick look through the smoke filled cab to confirm that the tired looking man was still wearing his nose-hose, he was, but the inside of the truck looked like a bong.

I am confused about what I saw...

...on so many levels.

---

Note 2: VFW Voice: The easily recognizable sound emanating from a person that has been smoking 'a little' since the age of fourteen, usually consumed simultaneously with beer or coffee. Cause: Beer and coffee seem to act as a catalyst that reacts with the smoke to modify vocal cords from their natural flexible condition into extra crispy with an efficacy rate of more than 98%.

Symptoms: When you hear a 35 year old gal with the interesting voice of Lead Belly, Rod Stewart, or George C. Scott, then that is a VFW voice.

New Hampshire Primary Day

There are some people that have not experienced what it is like to be in New Hampshire during Primary Season. It is absolutely amazing. EVERYBODY takes it very seriously. It is an important job and they don't take it lightly. I don't think that you could get the same candid response from a large state. The candidates would not be able to traverse California to meet people everywhere and would end up parking themselves in front of a TV camera, which just doesn't give you the same feel.
The phone NEVER stops ringing, the mailbox and diners are stuffed full of politician stuff.
The citizens hate being bombarded but accept it as part of the job.
I was watching TV with some teenagers recently and I explained to them during one of the candidate's "very important messages" to the American people during an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" that the rest of the country is still seeing KIA's "Maniac dancing salesman commercial" and are still being told how important "Super White" clothing is and that they haven't lived until they have eaten a breakfast burrito with "real egg byproducts" included with the other secret ingredients. In New Hampshire, these commercials are gone. America's economy can go to hell, there is only one thing to advertise: the candidates. The teenagers in this state just assume that the entire country is being bombarded like this.
Surprisingly the stores are still in business and I looked around and in this little town, the whites are still "SUPER WHITE" so obviously everyone is still buying the correct laundry detergent.
Maybe we don't need quite as many ads as the companies think that we do.

Somebody remarked on TV recently that New Hampshire is one of the only states that EVERY registered voter in the state has at least once been in the same room and listened to a person that has become the President of the United States of America. We listen, we switch sides, we jump ship, and we lend our support to the various candidates based on what they actually say, not on the little sound-bites that are fed to us. Sometimes we meet the candidate and they only speak in sound-bites and there is no real substance behind it. They have to be weeded out.
What the folks in New Hampshire vote for is only our opinion. A lot of thought has gone into it, but it is only one voice out of 50. Our voice IS the most important voice on this particular day because we put so much research into it, but the other 49 states can redirect everything down the correct path if that is required because of new information.
Almost HALF of the state's voters are "Undeclared" which is New Hampshire's legal term for "Independent". We don't just vote for who we are told to vote for, we vote for who we WANT to vote for, tempered of course by the little dance of "electability" and "throwing you vote away" and other little strategy items that cloud the waters.
This year was our first year that we voted in the big city of Keene. They have different checklists and lines for different parts of the alphabet! They didn't even recognise who we were! In Antrim we used to announce who we were because that is the law, but they already were flipping to the correct page before you even speak up. There were no cookies as a reward for doing your civic duty, I REALLY missed the cookies. But Keene did have a nice touch, they had a table right next to the ballot box so that you can switch back to "Undeclared" immediately after voting for a candidate in one of the two major parties. So you don't have to be a full-time Democrat or Republican for more that the two minutes that it takes to check-in, vote, and checkout. I really feel kind of trapped when I am officially in one party or the other because of all those brainless statements that politicians make when "the other side" is accused of something. So Keene makes it very easy to open both ears again. In Antrim you had to loop around to the checklist person again and change your affiliation and sometimes you could forget to do it what with the cookies and talking and jokes an' all that you get at a small town.

Small town or big town, everybody that I know participates and takes it seriously. Of course I have some friends that consistently vote for the wrong people but I don't hold that against them, they think that they are right even though they are so obviously mistaken. My vote counteracts one of those poor misguided souls and somebody cancels somebody Else's vote. We could actually save trouble if we coordinated our cancellation votes and only have those seven people that don't have a counterpart make the decisions, b-b-b-b-but there is the chance that those seven people would vote wrong, so I guess we will keep doing what we do.
I know ANYBODY reading this in New Hampshire has already voted, but if you live in one of those other states make sure that you weed out the propaganda from the candidate and VOTE.
A helpful hint: If the talking head on TV or on the radio sounds like he is frothing up, what he is saying is probably not entirely based on reality, I mean, you could do as well getting your facts from THIS website (which you shouldn't) than you would from a talking head that is just a leeeetle too excited. Entertainment versus News, step carefully.

Remember that during the primaries you get to actually vote for a person. As soon as the primaries are over you are voting for an administration. The candidate is just the public face for the folks working behind the candidate. As Bob Goldthwaite said a few presidents ago "You can't blame Ronald McDonald because you get a bad hamburger". So vote for the figurehead that you think has a leeeetle more skill than the others and during the actual election you should vote for the administration that is slightly less corrupt and self serving than the other one is. Every short term decision has long term ramifications. We are still recovering from stupid decisions made a long time ago that were obviously stupid and short sighted when they were made. The figurehead did not make the decisions, but the administration that is hiding behind the curtain did. We are paying for it this year, and next year. Saying "nobody could predict this would happen" is a lousy excuse when the people that weren't immediately profiting from the decision were saying that it was a bad decision way back when the profiteers were pushing it through.
Profiting for short term results = BAD
Planning for long term results = GOOD
This rant is over.

A quick rant.

This morning I started my day with a quick little rant about those emails that want you to spread the word -- NOW. It isn't very good, and it is full of false information, and serves no purpose, but maybe you should read it before a lightning bolt hits you.
Why are those spotted dogs sitting out in the yard? W-w-what are they? Are they smoking? What is that smoke? Are those? They are! Hellfire and dalmations! Aaaaaaaargh!
Here is my rant: Chainmail from a bully

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chemo sabe said...
OH I AM SOOOO with you!! I am personally insulted by chain mail. Especially the religious ones. I TOTALLY believe in the power of prayer. BUT those stupid "if you send this within 5 minutes to 10 people, God will grant your wish!" letters make me nuts! As if God were a puppet on YOUR string!!!
I will admit to having forwarded a couple--ONLY with the caveat that as a chain letter this is stupid, but perhaps the message alone had some merit.
Love your rants!!!
chemo sabe,
December 6, 2007 11:51 AM

The Voice of Reason.

I was recently listening to a lady named Leddy Hammock telling a story about a difficult time that she had with a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was in a foul mood, the customer quickly got into a foul mood and they had a blowout. The customer stomped out, and long story short, after determining that this store was the only store that had what she wanted, she had to return to the store and apologize. The shopkeeper apologized, and everybody lived happily ever after.

I learned this lesson a long time ago from an unlikely source.
Now to make a short story long again.

I was working at a small company of about 35 employees. There were two owners (the grownups), a large group of 18 to 25 year olds (the kids), and then four of us that played the role of day to day management (the teenagers).
We were inexperienced but we were constantly trying to improve ourselves.

There was something that Paul was doing on a regular basis that concerned me.
No big deal, just using his signature to give his favorite kids more leeway than the others.
Paul and I were having a discussion when I happened to voice my opinion that I felt that he shouldn't be doing what he was doing. We delved into it further.
I explained to him why what he was doing was inherently wrong. He surprised me by explaining that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, it was MY problem.
The discussion continued for a very long time. I was up in my office and he was standing in my doorway. While our discussion was happening everybody else in the company had gone home and we were the only two left. He usually opened the place up and I usually closed it, so he was losing his steam. He had to go.
We ended our “dialog” with both us stating our beliefs on the subject. He holding firmly to his knuckle headed concept that it was no big deal, and me stating from my all-knowing pedestal that what he was doing was no less than stealing. And I meant it too.

I didn't sleep well that night.
I didn't want to go to work the next morning.
Paul and I worked very closely every day. We disagreed on a lot of little things and we had no problem telling each other. We would adjust our thinking to the side of whomever presented the best logic. Paul was big on logic, the big knuckle head was just on the wrong side of ethics with this issue. I was on the correct side, and he was wrong. I couldn't apologize because when you are arguing about ethics and you are on the right side, to apologize would step over to the wrong side. This sucked. I saw no way out. It's tough being right.

The next morning I was out in the shop fixing a problem on a Mazak. My stomach was churning, I was cranky, I didn't want to be there. Paul was late.
The control panel on this Mazak hung from a high swinging arm so to program this particular machine, you had to perch yourself up on a very tall stool that was on top of the operator's platform. You looked like a British schoolmaster looking down at the kids when you were working up there poking at the keyboard. Or a dunce sitting on a stool.

Paul eventually came in. I kept typing.
I was cringing as Paul Reason came up to me that morning. Paul is a big guy, six and half feet or so and twice as wide as me. He marched right up to me on my little wobbly stool, looked up and said “Hi Warren, It's a new day!”
I shook his hand and said “Yes it is, isn't it.”
The anxiety was gone, I felt better. We never mentioned that subject again.
Time to get a snack.

I still remember that experience. The feeling of relief, the feeling of forgiveness, the reminder that differences of opinion are just a puff of smoke from a skidding tire. It should be forgotten by the next lap. If you keep creating puffs at the same spot on every lap, then it is up to you to tweak your approach, or speed, or do whatever you have to to avoid repeating the same mistake the next time around.
I have used Paul Reason's technique MANY times. It has made my life easier to forgive and TRULY forget, and to do it as quickly as possible.
It has certainly made life a little bit more pleasant for some of those that I have exchanged “viewpoints” with in the past.
I hear that Paul lives in Brattleboro Vermont now. He still is having a good time working at the same place with most of the same “kids” who have grown up now.
I ran into Paul a couple of years ago and we snapped right back into the same warped sense of humor that allowed us to connect when we worked together.

Now when I have a conversation that ends in a way that should be “corrected”, I always try to listen to “The Voice of Reason”, and clear the air as soon as I can.
Forget the ego, do what's right, none of it is important, it really isn't.

Mr. Reason, if someone tells you about this article, I would like to say “Thank You.”
Be sure to say hi to the gang of misfits for me.

Silos with a secret.

Mr Tibbits has reminded me of a cool place that we went to in Wyoming.
Read about Mr. Tibbits in my previous post.

I am a pacifist. I can't kill, I don't even like to talk about killing because of it's links to death.
Not that I'm against death mind you, it would get VERY crowded with billions of very-uncomfortable, very-worn-out, very crabby, very-senior citizens. It's just that I'm firmly against death as applied to a recipient who doesn't want it yet..
I am an engineer. As an engineer I can't HELP but get excited about all of the technology that has been used for war throughout our history. We may be self-destructive boneheads, but we are ingenious boneheads.
The weapons and tools that we create are amazing. Without Napoleon needing a way to feed his troops in the winter we would not have canned food. Or TANG!, no wait, that was NASA. Tang tastes awful anyway.
Beth and I were barreling around out west when Sherman mentioned in a comment on this very blog that there was a fellow that converted a missile silo into a personal residence. I researched it and found that the owner of that particular silo does not do a lot of tours (and probably didn't like to be pushed on the matter), BUT we were smack-dab in the middle of missile-silo country. There are 1000 huge almost-underground launchpads scattered all over the place. Many of them have been upgraded to a newer fancier weapons of destruction than the old-fashioned "Minuteman II" rockets that these silos were built for.

These new fancier rockets carry much more “stuff” on the pointy end of the flying part, so they don't need quite as many to do the same job, so many of the old ones that could only destroy say... Rhode Island, have been taken apart so that we can get our disarmament card punched at the next international peace treaty. We HAD 32,000 nuclear warheads and many more conventional warheads, so you see, we had a little wiggle room when it came to making promises that we would dismantle some of them. The new ones that replaced the Minuteman II missles can take out Massachusetts, Connecticut, AND Rhode Island anyway. I think New York would get it's own separate “better than the rest” missile.
I wanted to find a missle silo. What would a Russian spy do? I Googled it, and found one right near the highway where we were going to drive on the next day. I called to see about a tour and it turned out that the next day was “Open House Day”. No scheduled tours, just stop to register and take a look for yourselves.
I found the mobile home with the appropriate government labels nailed on it's side and I went in and registered. We were supposed to backtrack West again to exit number 127, turn right, first driveway on the left.
OK, here is a great example of “hide in plain sight”. We saw the exit 127 sign and I noticed that there was an exit and there was no services listed (which isn't that odd in the the desert), but there were also NO towns, villages, or destinations listed. Just “Exit 127”. If you have no need for “Exit 127” then you just keep on driving, mister.
Once you take the exit and drive up the road you will notice a sign attached to the fence that lets you know that you have found D-01. We pulled up, and Beth looked at the little ranch-style house and thought that she would just sit in the car and read.
I joined a small group by the gate and when there were enough of us, we started our tour.
We were shown the outside antennas and told about how many miles of underground cables connected this control room to other control rooms and the missile silo that is down the road.
We looked into the dorm rooms and they were just as they were in the 60s and 70s when this was the hot spot to be at Exit 127. Ten person crews came out here from the military base that is even farther out in the desert. These folks lived in close quarters for the week that they were on duty, but then a subset of them would rotate 12-hour shifts in the egg. Two people would pass through complicated security measures and then go down in an elevator to the control room below ground. They would go through a large blast door that was always painted with the latest slogan, the final one was “Delivered in 30 minutes or less or the next one is free”. This control room egg is quite a distance below ground, is egg shaped, and is mounted on large hydraulic shock absorbers so the occupants would be bounced instead of whacked if there was a nearby “hit”. The room was small with two chairs mounted on rails that could slide back and forth in front of each chair's control panel. There were a lot of radios, decoding devices, operation manuals and of course –the keys--. The control keys to do anything major were set up far enough away from each other so that it took two separate people with normal length arms to switch the keys at the same time. They would also have to coordinate the key turning with another control room somewhere else, so four people had to have the same intentions at the same time for anything to actually launch. It was assumed that out of four people, one of them would put a stop to behavior that would lead to the destruction of our country unless it was duly authorized. I would have thought the same back then. Keep in mind, way back in those days we didn't know as much about the potential forces of mob psychology that we have been forced to learn since Rush Limbaugh has been on the air.
The control room used 24 hour shifts. I have heard from other people that were in the military that the military sometimes will think that it is easier for someone to think straight for 24 hours without sleep than to go through all of the hassle of security and scheduling to change people more often. Just think of all of those extra signatures and launch codes that would be involved, besides, the sliding seats had seat belts and shoulder harnesses, so it isn't like they would hurt anything if they collapsed.
Most of the launch teams were men, not because of a lack of women's rights, but because the military wives protested strongly against any plans to have their husbands locked into a small space with another woman, even a high-ranked other woman, with no communication to the outside world and no way for anybody to peek in. There wasn't even any privacy around the stainless steel bomb-resistant commode. Eventually women were down there, but I believe they were down there as pairs.
They had a supply of food and oxygen. If they happened to be down there longer than “scheduled” because of an “event” they could survive for a while, and if things stretched out longer, they also had a hand-cranked oxygen generator, a really cool device that I would have loved to play with. Tests done on these devices years later showed that the physical exertion of cranking it actually used a small percentage more oxygen than it was generating, but it kept you busy.
If the dorm, security room, elevator, and other stuff was “missing” they supplied a way to manually get out. There was a hatch over the control panels that you could open that gave you access to a sand filled tunnel to the surface. They gave you a sort of large military issued spoon to dig through this sand, although in later years someone calculated that the top few feet of sand would have been turned into glass, which the spoon, military-issued or not, would not be able to scrape through. Now there is a good reason to have a woman down there with you: your top-side wife would dig down through anything to make sure you weren't there any longer than you were supposed to be. “Now get home and fertilize the lawn, it seems to be burning”.
Our guide was a park ranger who had actually interviewed people that were stationed in control rooms so she could give us some details. She was very good.
We went topside and drove to the launch site related to this control room. We drove down dirt roads with right angle corners that seemed only to be in the spots they were in so that the cars wouldn't hit the cattle. We came to a square of chain-linked fence again. We parked, Beth picked up her book, and I walked in.
This ranger was holding court in a more free-form method where the tourists would ask questions and he would answer them. I had a lot of questions, which he answered. He knew a lot about the system because he was a retired launch-control operator. He had state trooper sunglasses. two hearing aids, and a very large thermos of coffee. As he constantly drank his caffeine, he talked, and talked. He was a professional talker. He was perfect for the job. If this stuff wasn't totally de-classified he would have been kidnapped by the Russians long ago after Boris came to an open house day some years ago. Fortunately for us, the Russians have no interest in any of this stuff any more because everybody has bigger and better stuff, and the Russian government is so strapped for cash that they couldn't afford to have anyone type the stuff up and file it.
There was a thick glass cover over the missile so that we could look in and to keep the large hole from filling in with critters from the desert. The missile itself is much larger than the picture makes it seem. If it was at ground level, it would seem very tall and impressive. Hidden in it's hole and just peeking out, it had a sinister air to it. Go ahead, try me.
These amazing systems were designed and built in an very short time. It wasn't known if they would all work, but there were enough of them scattered around that somebody was gonna suffer.
Officer Chatty gave us a LOT of insight into how accurate these things could be. Even if the nose was filled with rocks (which it wasn't), it would be a formidable weapon.
When somebody asked about the control-room egg being able to survive a direct hit, Mr. Chatty confirmed that it could, but the inhabitants always wondered whether the egg would survive the 60 to 600 foot fall into the bottom of the crater afterward. The goal of course, is to launch these things before the other missiles could hit them. Of course, at that point we would have missiles flying in both directions heading towards empty silos. That wasn't our plan, so the goal was to launch first, and since you are launching things anyway. russian silos may not be the only targets. We have have always had First Strike capability that can go from passive to full attack in less time than you could call home to tell your spouses about what you saw fly by your office window.
We heard about some false alarms in the 60s that were pretty close to changing history enough that I am pretty sure that global warming would not be on any one's minds right now, and the concept of what a Government used to be would be difficult for little Jimmy to comprehend when you explain it to one of his heads.
The cold war is over. The secrets and technology behind the fear was amazing.
Our new stuff is even better and scarier.
Our current developments are only revealed to the public when a PR boost is called for. Somebody I worked with in New York used to be a mechanic on a top secret “jumping” jet called a Harrier. No talk, no pictures, everything was hush-hush. In a break room between shifts he was watching the Six Million Dollar Man on TV and they showed one of these science-fiction jets land vertically and the star of the show took off a helmet and strolled up to the camera. It remained top-secret for several more years, but little “promos” like that would give boosts to military recruitment efforts. He STILL couldn't talk to his buddies about what he did for a living.
Well here are pictures of the missle stuff. Un-Classified.
Of course, you SHOULD print out the pictures so that you have some evidence to eat when they come for you, it's more exciting to be frantically stuffing 16 photos into your mouth than saying "just Google it".

(Click on the picture for more)

Paul Tibbets.

2007/11/01: General Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, dies at 92

"There is no morality in war," The Virginian-Pilot quoted him as saying . "A way must be found to eliminate war as a means of settling quarrels between nations."At the same time, General Tibbets expressed no regrets over his role in the launching of atomic warfare. "I viewed my mission as one to save lives," he said. "I didn't bomb Pearl Harbor. I didn't start the war, but I was going to finish it."
Tibbets had requested that there be no funeral or headstone, fearing it would give his detractors a place to protest.

The comment about no funeral or headstone bothers me.

Mr. Tibbets was doing his job. An undesirable job, for sure. Many people think he was evil for helping kill 60,000 instantly and ruining the lives of 250,000 other people in that city and many people think he was a hero for saving so many lives by avoiding the upcoming invasion of Japan (which the US military was expecting to result in over a million American and Japanese being killed).
It's too bad that people couldn't disconnect the questions of morality of using such a weapon from the person who's job it was to deliver it. Soldiers are not allowed to think about what they are told to do, otherwise the group led by my nephew Blake would be storming the dictator's palace before it is time to do so, and the group led by me would be trying to organize a “big group hug” with the resulting injuries and mayhem that would probably follow. So I blame war on “upper management” and never blame the individual soldier, unless they did NOT follow orders, in which case I would nail 'em to the wall.
I am a pacifist, thankfully Mr. Tibbets was not. I thank him for doing his job for our country.
Beth always says thank you to every serviceman or veteran that she meets. They always seem to appreciate it.

Veering South. A veering diatribe.

We are going to be veering towards the South. Probably tomorrow.
Doug is insisting that we stop at "South of the Border" which sounds like an ultimate version of "Another Roadside Attraction". Large, glitzy, rundown in spots, new in other areas, and a little hard to define what the actual business is.
Speaking of "Another Roadside Attraction" we went to a real humdinger today. We went to a "Pottery Village" of some sort today, which touts itself as "200 acres of pure hell" (that probably isn't the actual wording that the marketing people used, but that is what my male mind translated it to). This one was a little better than most. They not only had the usual factory outlets with overpriced "factory direct" items, but they also had a wonderful collection of misspelled signs that pointed to buildings that used to house the retail shops that were either going out of business of already gone, that all seemed to have managers or marketing people who didn't see the need for a proofreader.

Small Business Rule #464: If you don't have the foresight to have someone else double check your signs before you hang them up, you probably don't solicit second opinions on any other knuckle headed business decisions that you confidently make.

The non-proofread signs usually pointed to dead or dying businesses in their odd little buildings.

The buildings were cool. All different, all awful.
In an attempt to make the project an "enclosed shopping experience" a decade or two ago, skyways were added between the second floor of various buildings. Badly designed, badly executed, badly modified, what's not to love?
The grounds and buildings were so bizarre that I couldn't even figure out how I could convert the place to garages and workshops.
It had a really cool pedestrian culvert (they called it a tunnel) under the railroad tracks that bisected this 200 acre shopping mecca.
The other side had a huge group of outdoor statuary, fountains, outside things of unknown purpose.
Hmmmm.

Very
Odd
Outdoor
Stuff
Incomprehensible
At
Driving
Speeds

VOOSAIDS!!!

There were odd stone pedestals, benches, giant stone "lanterns", quarter sized buddhas, half sized aligators, full sized elephants (really!), and a large selection of reflective and see-through bowling balls on stands.
And then we went into...... the BIG building.
Doug and I ventured in to do a quick loop so we could scurry back to the safety of the car and wait for the girls.
I was plodding slowly along in awe of the quantity of items for sale that had 'no commercial value' when Doug said "hey, look to the side. Look how big this building is". I stopped in my tracks. Imagine a Home Depot flanked on each side by two Super Wal-Marts and the whole thing is stocked with very large quantities of items that would make Wal-Mart seem like a high-end boutique store.
** Wal-Mart unofficial byline: The leading supplier to America's yard sales and landfills since 1964.

I marveled at glassware, baskets, brass, fake flowers-tree-sticks-wreaths. Seeing all of these products was a catalyst for my little manufacturing engineer brain to kick into overdrive.
I was attempting to get Doug, Leslie, and Beth to be as impressed as I was about the fact that we were looking at the results of many sweatshops in China producing berries, honeysuckle, seeds and colorful items that are exact copies of plants that they had never seen. These parts are sent to an assembly shop where shipments of fake sticks and vines from plant #7501 will be combined and assembled with the large containers of leaves and flower petals from plant #1604 and then packed in boxes from plant #4500 to be shipped in a container ship and then trucked to this odd warehouse/Christmas store to be bought by people to serve a mysterious purpose that my brain can't really get a handle on. This stuff has to be molded, painted, assembled, and shipped at an incredibly low cost so that the distributors, shipping companies, and stores could make any profit at all on a 79 cents item that has to have at least 12 minutes of skilled labor just to assemble it, never mind the packing and unpacking.
Doug, Leslie, and Beth didn't seem to be overly impressed.
When looking at the granite and concrete items on the outside of the store my mind lurched and sputtered ahead to the concept that these items were loaded into a VERY heavy shipping container and stacked on one of those HUGE container ships that we see on the horizon when we are at the coast. I don't know how they actually decide the loading order of those containers that they stack so high but they MAY try to stack the ones that are almost as heavy as a train car filled with granite and concrete towards the BOTTOM of the ship. When one of these ships that are loaded high with colorful railcar sized containers hits a storm way out in the ocean, some of the containers fall overboard. Over 50,000 thousand containers per year. My mind was going a little squirrely thinking about the fact that in the event of a storm, many containers of these carved granite things that look like enormous tin lanterns might safely arrive across the ocean while a lightweight Ferrari sinks to the bottom.
Speaking of sinking containers, did you know that on the west coast some people use the internet to find the mate to sneakers that have washed up on the shore? In fact, oceanographers were able to learn a lot about currents when they found out that all of the Nikes shaped for the right foot ended up in Seattle while left footed sneakers ended up in San Diego. The shape of the object determines the destination.

In the Atlantic there is the Sargasso Sea which is a non-windy area where eels and seaturtles grow up in the huge fields of floating plant life. In the Pacific there is a large sea of plastic from all of these containers. It floats, it doesn't rot, and is hundreds of miles across. It circles counterclockwise, I think.
Some people have talked about developing boats to go out there to harvest cup-o-noodles, barbies, cameras, and deck chairs for a source of fuel, plastic pellets, or something else with the stuff. I saw a picture of it once and it looked like a sorting area for all the bad yard sales in the world.
Of course, venture capitalists would probably get a better return by investing in a website that allows people to look at the junk for a fee than they would from investing in a technology that would actually do anything with the stuff.
But I digress...
...again.
Anyhoo: We didn't buy anything and now we are lounging next to a pool, and yesterday we saw an awesome wildlife park for damaged animals, we walked through historic Williamsburg when it was closed and the day before we went to Jamestown where we Europeans started our plundering.

An unrelated rule:
Business Rule #465: Always remember -- Pillage, THEN burn.

So anyhow, this brief description of our morning expedition is a testament that we are close enough to the NorthEast that we could buy some ICED COFFEE. My pen can flap as fast as my mouth if given the opportunity. In fact it's better than my mouth because nobody can tell me to be quiet because they think I am busily writing "very important stuff" instead of a rambling analysis of sinking containers.
Bye.

Trashed
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Sneakers
Other Sneaker type stuff
Here's a direct source: The Beachcombers Alert!
Disclaimer: All "facts" that I spout off in this post about containers and flotsam are dirivatives of what I remember from stuff I read years ago. Things may have been modified slightly while in storage in my memory. The links may not match the "Facts" as I presented them.

Hunter S. Thompson R.I.P.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . ."And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Derek's favorite movie was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It also was the movie that convinced him that Johnny Depp was a REALLY good actor and was worthy of being his favorite actor. The story that Hunter S. Thompson wrote for Rolling Stone magazine way back then really changed journalism. Gonzo journalism. When I majored in journalism in college, gonzo journalism wasn't taught in any of my classes but I studied it whenever I could. Hunter was not the type of person that you try to explain to your kid but just as I happened to find the same religion that my father did, Derek found that gonzo journalism made for a very exciting read.
I said READ, not do. Only people like Hunter or Keith Richards could live a life like that and stay alive. It's like listening to "infotainment news", as long as you know it isn't real life, it can be fun to watch; just always remember that it isn't real for people that have any brain cells left or have any wish to treat their fellow man with any respect or dignity.
OK, I seem to be spiraling now, time to load the van and check out the strip. I will not partake in any of the potions that Hunter and his attorney used to make Las Vegas such an interesting vacation spot, but we will enjoy the lights, the buildings, the Vegas.