KLEM FM

Overheard at Lem's:

Trooper York said...
I hope President Trump does what he thinks best for the American People. Let the chips fall where they may. Not be stopped by labels or ideology. Just do what he sees as the right thing. I think he has pretty good instincts. He has been pretty much on the ball. He has been stopped by activist judges. By craven Republican Congressman. He should not take counsel of their fears and instead do what is right for America.
If that means bombing NYC and San Fransisco and Chicago then go for it.
Just me a heads up so I can move to Florida. Thank you.
March 28, 2017 at 10:54 PM

"Well, I been movin' down Florida Way,
And I'm gonna build me the atomic bomb"

link

Words to live by

The old family motto came from a comment by my mother:

We're not crazy; we're just mean.

Too true. But since I've either disowned my family or been disowned by them (and good riddance either way), I want a new motto. Today, in a text to my wife, I may have hit upon it.

If I'm going to be a fluffy pink poodle with purple sequins, I'm going to do it the right way.

Context might help you understand it, but why worry about that? Should probably make it first person plural, though....

-The Kitchen Drawer

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Was there an informal motto in your family of origin? Do you have a personal motto? I don't know if this counts as a motto, but my go-to saying is, 'It could be worse.'

Not so fast with that optimism, buddy!

The new jobs report was released today. I have heard a few people make some optimistic noises about the fact that private sector jobs have matched the 2008 peak in terms of numbers. (See here, for example, though they do have the decency to caveat the hell out of the article.)

What I'm not hearing, and don't expect to hear from the Administration, is a comment about full-time jobs. As of March 1 2014, the US economy had 3,872,000 FEWER full-time jobs than it did at its peak in November 2007. And that's after almost five years of recovery.

And given that the working age population has grown considerably in the intervening years, the employment situation is actually even worse than it appears.

So don't let the bastards tell you how goddamned good we've got it, and what a wonderful job they've done. Because it just ain't so.

The Kitchen Drawer -Icepick

Bubble indicators

"In the Bay Area, the cash is coming from deep-pocketed tech workers. In New York, Wall Street workers, flush with bonus checks, and foreign buyers looking to park assets, are paying with cash. Meanwhile, South Americans have been buying up real estate in South Florida as a safe haven for their money. In February, more than 71% of sales in the Miami area were all-cash deals.

...As housing becomes more expensive some worrisome trends that occurred during the bubble years are re-emerging, said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Zillow. These include a greater reliance on non-traditional financing, like low-downpayment loans and adjustable-rate mortgages, and a greater pressure to move further away from urban job centers in order to find affordable housing."

CNNMoney
h/t Icepick
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Has anyone noticed indications of an inflating bubble?

House flipping rises

"Oddly, this sign of real estate madness isn't considered to be a bad thing. But certain observations about the general economy hold true here as well: Upscale is doing well for itself.

More expensive homes were especially popular with home flippers, as sales made up of flip-related sales from homes valued at more than $400,000 were up 36% last year. Sales of less valuable homes bought and sold within six months were up 16% over the same period."

Kitchen Drawer

Ever flipped a house? I think it'd be kind of fun. With the rash of Boomers retiring, I think there's a great market out there for smaller, geriatric friendly houses.

Showdown at the NTTAWWT Corral

Arizona swelters

[Update: "Erich Holder: States' Attorneys General Can Ignore Laws"  h/t Icepick]

Song Request And Open Thread

This one goes out to Icepick and to Rhythm And Balls; I already know that Sixty Grit can't stand it:

 

Flea tends bar.  I got my older brother to like the song (despite the band's name).

Sponsored Warfare

Up on Drudge now: Kerry: Arabs Will Finance Our War

h/t Icepick

It makes me want to look again at exactly where Armageddon is supposed to take place.

Still Seeking The Island Of Stability

Element 115 is one step closer to being added to the Periodic Table: Link

h/t Icepick

But the atomsmiths still have haven't found the legendary "Island Of Stability"

link to original

Professor Martyn Poliakoff explains:

Daily Frost Bite

From Iron 

TOOLS AND WEAPONS 

To Ahmed S. Bokhari 

Nature within her inmost self divides

To trouble men with having to take sides. 

~Robert Frost (1956)

Get Elmore

Elmore Leonard has died of a stroke at the age of 87. I have only read one of his novels, Get Shorty, and listened to one on CD, The Switch. A favorite scene from The Switch, which I think typifies his writing style, tells of one guy waiting in the car for his friend. On the way back to the car, the friend finds a golf club. When he gets back to the car, he considers making a quip using the club, but thinks better of it because he knows his friend is expecting him to. So he just throws the club into the back seat instead.

He wrote westerns, crime novels, and the short story, Three-Ten to Yuma, which was twice make into film.  Leonard was known for his compact writing style, as this Onion obituary notes, via MadisonMan, via Althouse.

Added: Icepick finds writing tips by Leonard.

Icepick on bulletproof whiteboards for professors

From the Baltimore Sun:

Eastern Shore professors to get bulletproof whiteboards

Calling "campus violence a reality" to prepare for, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore announced plans Thursday to spend $60,000 on the Clark Kent of teacher supplies: an innocuous-looking white board that can stop bullets.

The high-tech tablet — which hangs on a hook, measures 18 by 20 inches and comes in pink, blue and green — can be used as a personal shield for professors under attack, according to the company that makes it, and a portable writing pad in quieter times.

18" x 20"? I could hide my head and part of my upper body behind that. (I just checked, and I'm about 22" across at the shoulders.) Of course, covering my head and upper torso would be a good thing. If we've learned nothing else from the movies we have learned that it can take days to die from a bullet to the gut.

But the man behind the bullet-resistant white boards envisions an ancient phalanx.

[George] Tunis envisions teachers using the whiteboards to fend off attackers individually or as a group, standing side-by-side to create a wall that could shield evacuating students or to fend off an attacker.

"It's designed to be a last resort and to buy you some extra time," he said.

Yeah, extra time is good. I can see a shooter faced by a phalanx of professors (possibly including wannabe Hoplites from the Classics Department) holding these white boards up in formation, blocking all of 20" of vertical target, max. All he'd have to do is aim low and chop them down like a Ma Deuce through the under-growth in Vietnam. It'd take a committed mad man whole milliseconds to figure this out.

Also from the article:

"It needs to be a great whiteboard and a useful tool so that it doesn't get hidden in the closet," said maker George Tunis. His Worcester County company Hardwire LLC starting out making military armor, then adapted it for the classroom after the tragic shootings last year at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults were killed.

Maybe it's be useful if you're writing answers down and flashing them to the class? I don't know. But we used most of the large blackboards that measured their dimensions in feet when I was a TA in college, and I don't ever remember a professor only using a space that measured that small. So these things aren't even all that practical for a classroom, despite the claims of the manufacturer.

Distressingly, the school in question doesn't seem to have anyone capable of doing a cost-benefit analysis. How many classrooms does the nation have? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? How many of these classrooms see the kind of random violence where such a device MIGHT have an impact?

These things cost $299 a pop, so they're not cheap. But at least they come in a variety of attractive colors! I'd suggest that they add red to the pink, blue and green currently offered. It would better hide blood spatter and thus be more intimidating to any shooters out there. (See "red coats" for more.) Or perhaps they should be rainbow-colored on the non-writing side, to demonstrate the school's commitment to diversity.

Spending $60,000 on these for this one college in a backwater part of Maryland seems ludicrous. It would be ludicrous for just about any other school as well. (And if there is a school for which this isn't a ludicrous expense, they need to MOVE THE SCHOOL!) Surely there are other things that can be done with the money.

So, can anyone else think of how the school could have better spent the money? Remember that this is a one-time expense (or at least not a regular expense) so hiring an additional security guard is out, as that is an ongoing expense.

What better ideas has everyone got?

Icepick