James The Wanderer
Acceptable Limits
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011Acceptable Limits James the Wanderer 12/06/2011 In engineering, quality control and such areas we speak of tolerances, limits and acceptable operations. What we generally mean is that THIS much (or only this little) variance is allowed if we are to stay within specifications: marketing has promised products that are this big, this strong and [...]
A Busy Day at the Career Fair
Monday, October 10th, 2011Author James The Wanderer Yesterday, I went to the Career Fair at the university. It was surprisingly busy; so much, that as in previous years, it is now split into two days. One day is the Science / Engineering / Math day, and the other is the Medical / Legal /Everyone else day. I went [...]
Revival
Friday, August 19th, 2011Author James The Wanderer We don’t need any more money, to lower the value of the money we already have. We don’t need any more Keynsian stimulus, QE3+, POMO, MOMO, fraud, waste and abuse disguised as economics. We don’t need any more government – we could stand with a great deal less than we have. [...]
Stretching the Idea: An Independence Day Essay
Sunday, July 10th, 2011Author James the Wanderer Let’s start with a little general chemistry: Na+ + Cl- NaCl Sodium plus chlorine gives sodium chloride. Beginning with a silvery, unstable metal and a greenish, noxious gas, they combine and produce a whitish-clear salt. A reaction occurs: two inedible substances combine to form a basic necessity of human life. Two [...]
God of Endings
Monday, May 30th, 2011James The Wanderer O God of endings, be gentle As you take my father to darkness and rest Two years of illness, pain and suffering Have left so little of the strong, fair man I still remember And what yet lives surely cannot endure much rough handling. O God of hospitals, be merciful, And ease [...]
Keeping the Evil Spirits Away
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011James The Wanderer Imagine that you are a scientist of some sort, heading out to do your investigations in the world. You come across a remote village where the natives are committing assault on a stone pillar with branches – beating a rock with sticks. You make polite inquiries, and are told that they are [...]
The Escaptionists
Saturday, February 19th, 2011Author James The Wanderer One can observe a disturbing pattern in many recent events. Matt Taibbi’s latest polemic in _Rolling Stone_ is a depiction of how corruption between Wall Street and Washington has allowed criminal mischief to go unpunished: “The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the [...]
The Test
Sunday, August 15th, 2010Author James The Wanderer He was standing there at the side entrance to the Whole Foods strip shopping center, three blocks or so from my house. He had the typical cardboard hand-lettered “Homeless – will work for food, money, housing……” sign to hold up to the passing traffic. He was a bit older than usual, [...]
Peace Games
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010Author James The Wanderer The 1983 movie _War Games_ has a sentient computer put in charge (actually, it gains control) of all American nuclear weapons. The computer “games” all the possible outcomes of thermonuclear war, whether the Americans attack first, the Russians attack first, the Russians attack the Chinese who then attack America, and so [...]
The Peter Principle Presidency
Sunday, July 4th, 2010Author James The Wanderer From Wikipedia, “The Peter Principle is the principle that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle”. Viewed from this perspective, we now have an explanation for the [...]