Archive for June 2005
Flight Training Report / Solo
It began six weeks ago with this entry on May 13. Today, I soloed in a Citabria 7ECA (N5032G) after completing exactly 16.7 hours of instruction. Three takeoffs, three landings. It's generally considered a success when your number of landings precisely equal your number of takeoffs, which is always my primary objective. I actually should/would have soloed last Friday, within an hour of receiving my medical clearance and student pilot certificate, and at exactly 15.1 hours of instruction. But the cross winds were too strong at 10 to 15 kts at 90 degrees, and sometimes even quartering--so, takeoff and landing with a cross wind and tail wind component. Not first-solo material, so I went up with the instructor, and instead, greatly enhanced my confidence. I'm really starting to master the side slip for both positioning on center-line for final, or holding on center-line in a cross wind situation. Now we begin cross country training where things start to really get fun. Onward.
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Driving
I've always been a car enthusiast--moreso as a kid working on them and dreaming of having my own to work on and drive. I've owned a few cool ones. My "Ensignmobile" (first car upon obtaining my commission in the US Navy in 1984) was the new Pontiac Fiero. Silly, now, but in 1984, the idea of an $11,000 mid-engine sports car with 60 series, semi-low profile tires that could do better than .8 Gs on the skidpad (power on; come off the gas too quick, or--God forbid--brake in a high G turn, and you'll oversteer quicker than you can say 'Shit!') was fantastic. I had one of the first--bright red--and people thought it was some Italian job. Then I owned a 1986 Corvette. Those who know, understand that in 1984, the Corvette was redesigned from a simple over-power-to-weight ratio muscle car to a true sports car with handling and [especially] braking that was world class. That is, for a fraction of the money, you could respectably go head-to-head with many of the Italian and German makes. At that time, with its 50 series meats all-around, low weight, and anti-lock brakes, it had the shortest stopping distance of any production car...
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Just Desserts
Well, I've been around libertarian blabber long enough to know that something like this just isn't very damn likely to happen. Still, it is pleasurable, and hence, difficult to resist sitting here indulging myself in the pure fantasy of it.
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Sumpreme Surprise
Well, I see that while I wasn't looking, the Supremes went and voted to take away your right and mine to own property. Take note: that emphasis on the word "own" is of critical importance. At any rate, they didn't take away anything, from a political standpoint; for, the state can't grant that which is not its to grant in the first place, and given that, can not then take it away. The right to own property is a natural one. It's immutable, inalienable. It's a given, per our natures as volitional beings. Where the state exists, the state usurps all property under its jurisdiction through the use of guns, fists, billy-clubs, jails, and kangaroo courts. It withholds its power from time-to-time for the purpose of propping up and maintaining the illusion of freedom and rights; to maintain The Big Lie. Looks like they let their guard down just a bit here and exposed their true nature, the nature that has been there all along and that I've been telling you about all along.
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Goings On
Spent most of the last week in a wonderful suite just off Union Square in San Francisco with my beautiful and charming wife, who just completed her 23rd year teaching 5th graders (in the manner it's generally supposed to be done). San Francisco is a great place, even though it's filled to the brim with loads of commies, which, but for their incessant and ignorant wrangling in everyone's affairs, the city would be one hell of a lot nicer, cleaner, and not the refuge of every damned street bum west of the Mississippi. Commies are so dumb that they think that any goodness that abounds anywhere is the result of their "programs" rather than the result of capitalism keeping us from going entirely off the cliff, as did the USSR. They overlook entirely all the messes. Anyway, I'm back. Both in the office and in the cockpit. I'm pretty sure I'll solo early next week, which'll be right around the 15 hour mark. Now I'm off to downtown San Jose to hook up with Kyle Bennett who's in town for a convention.
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Do I Really Need to Say…
It was a great country we had here once. But every day, in so many ways, we're losing every one of the liberties the founders bequeathed to us. We are in the process of building the same system the Europeans have: A system where the limits to acceptable political debate are severely circumscribed, and political elites make every possible decision they can, while granting us an increasingly meaningless fiction of democracy. And this is happening, by the way, uncer a Republican administration. McCain-Feingold was sponsored primarily by a Republican senator, passed into law by a Republican President, and upheld by a Supreme Court whose justices were primarily appointed by Republicans. So much for Republicans being the party of "Smaller government". So much for Ronald Reagan's "Government isn't the solution to the problem; Government is the problem". No, now it's "When people is hurting, government must act." That's the regime under George Bush's "compassionate conservatism". ...No shit! Where have you been? By the way, democracy is a fiction of freedom.
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Bow to the Authority
I caught wind of something in an email from Aviation Web this morning. You can read about it, here. And now, the decision has come down. Oh, aren't we all just so happy? Only a "Letter of Admonishment." The message? Hey, Jeremy Johnson, or anyone else: don't grab the limelight, next time. Next time you have an inkling to save a family of six, come up with a way to help them financially, and potentially save many more by flying out explosives (ohmygod) to a needed area, just make sure that you include the minions in the FAA so that they can be sure to get their needed face time in front of the camera "managing" the disaster for the benefit of all of us poor, lost souls who just shouldn't be able to beat our way out of a wet paper sack without your oh-so-knowledgeable assistance and authority. You know what? Fuck. You! You miserable fucking assholes. Jesus. By the way, I know Jeremy, good Mormon boy that he is. A year or so ago, he approached my company. See, he doesn't just fly helicopters (at the tender age of 29), he started a company that employs better than...
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Of Idiots Who Think They Know What Economics Is
You've probably had at least one course called "economics." Did it use equations? Then it wasn't economics. Did it refer to aggregates, "interest rates," variables, "inflation is a rise in the average level of prices," and "functions"? Then it wasn't economics. Were none of its statements referred back to the decisions and values of individuals and the pricing system? Then it wasn't economics. For the past eight decades, what has been taught as economics, has been the same tired fallacies advanced since the first man crawled out of a cave, and which have been refuted constantly over the course of the two and a half centuries previous to the 20th. The fallacies of Keynes, Gesell, and the Mercantalists have gained authority, new disguises, and have wormed their way into every class on economics. Those classes have, for over three generations, produced people who are remarkably consistent in rejecting economics. Look at any paper, and you will see the results. Paul Krugman, for instance, perhaps the most famous economist alive (How many words have been written about him, versus Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams combined?), applying the broken window fallacy to 9/11 three days after the attack in the New York...
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Flyin’
Haven't dropped a note in a while on this topic. Been busy. But I just had a particularly great morning of flying. Rain is coming, and we've got a low ceiling, but winds are almost dead calm. So, I was to the airport at 8:45 so that I was pre-flighted and ready to go when my instructor arrived at nine. Since about 5 hrs. of instruction, I've generally been taking off and landing with little to no assistance. Every now and then, Jim will shake the stick one way or the other, or assist with the rudders. If I've flared it a bit much a bit high, he might introduce some power. Every now and then, he'd say, "wow, good; that was all you," meaning, he hadn't given any assistance (though he always gives vocal guidance throughout the lesson, particularly in approach and landing). Last Monday, while loggin' my eighth hour, we did seven takeoffs and landings. It was windy, cross, and difficult. I was proud of most of the takeoffs and one or two of the landings. In the end, I was in sensory overload and on the last landing, Jim took it in on a 20 mph. cross...
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2005?
It's really difficult to believe, isn't it? ...That we can have some tribunal of imbeciles perched behind marble pillars, wearing black robes, sitting high atop carved wooden benches dictating what 270 million people can and can't smoke on their own time and at their own expense. John Lopez has it right on. You should be ashamed. You who support such nanny-statism by going to the polls to have your 1/270,000,000th say in how yours and everyone else's life should be directed from on high. Assholes. This sure isn't anything anywhere near the vision of the future that was inspired in me as a kid in the 60s, seeing films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and others. Not by a long shot.
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Vito
Beck points to an entry at Samizdata that's well worth the read. In certain areas in Dallas, you're the nuisance if thugs come knocking at your door and you ask the police for assistance--"too many" times. They'll send Vito out to set you straight. Fuckers. Every single one. May they all die of horrible and painful diseases, and then rot in hell. May their children be ridiculed for even attending their funerals. You know, it wasn't but a few days ago that a commenter to one of my recent entries made us all aware of the "fact" that government is an evil, but, of course, a "necessary" one. I defy anyone anywhere to make a rational case for any such thing as a "necessary evil." The whole point of evil is that it is manifestly unnecessary and ought to be dealt with on just those terms, unmercifully, harshly, and swiftly. Perpetrators of evil ought to accrue no special dispensation, and, if you ask me, government out to be dealt with the harshest of all.
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Dear John:
John gets mail from his 20/20 segment last week on the bogus "wage gap." Really, more issues ought to be aired in this way. Just let idiots blather away. One thing I like is that it tends to cut through the that's-your-point-of-view crap. Listen: if you believe there is a real wage gap between men and women, for equivalent work, then you're either ignorant, or too stupid to understand a complex set of facts. At any rate, just so we're clear, I wouldn't mind it if there was a "wage gap," on either side. I also don't care if you want to pay whites more than blacks, or blacks more than whites, etc. You can demand that your secretary comes to work nude (male or female), for all I care. See, I believe in freedom, the sort that extends to one's property, including the businesses they own. You're not obligated to associate. "I can't believe what I just watched on your 20/20 segment tonight about women's wages! It's like having you get on television and say there is no such thing as racial discrimination." Lynn Butler "Dear John, Your smug, indifferent attitude in reference to working American women will be...
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Simple, Indeed
...everything about government is about lashing people who know what they're doing to the carts of idiots who're busy driving off the various cliffs of life. "Freedom", ladies and gentlemen, means the leave to dissent from the actions of idiots and act differently -- on one's own judgment -- in order to not ride over the various cliffs, etc. From here.
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The Fiction That Is the State
For a number of years, I've been on the email list of The Independent Institute. I'm not really a Great Big Fan of pubic policy "think tanks" for several reasons, but as such things go, these guys and CATO do some good work I suppose. I usually only skim the emails that come, rarely reading the whole thing or really even any one of the articles completely. Today was different. Finally; something comes along with which I can find nary a single thing wrong. This bears reading about ten times. Take it to heart; because it's the absolute reality concerning the State and always has been. Given that the State is such a huge force in everyone's existence, then if the following does not represent your view of it, you're ill-equiped to live a life as full and happy as it could be--such fulfillment and happiness always requiring the maximun possible adherence to reality. The State: it's nothing more than fictional harbor for scaredycats--and it always has been. HOW RULERS EXPLOIT FEAR When governments of old tired of spending lots of resources to beat the public into submission, they created the court priest, who promoted a theology of obedience. Modern...
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Busy as Hell
Here I've spent the last few month building up a respectable readership, and now nothing posted for days. It's all mostly good, though. Making significant strides on all other important fronts. Flying lessons, business plans, making and charting goals. I've set sights on buying an airplane in the next year. It's on paper. Always write down your goals, make them big goals, and make a habit of reviewing them often--if not each day, at least a couple of times per week. Until you write them down and hold yourself accountable for achieving them, they're not goals, just ideas. Something caught my eye in email though, so I'll have a new substantive entry up shortly. G'day.
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