Dissecting Mike's great illustration.

From his comment...

Out west somewhere, in the 19th century, is a spot of desert ground where there is absolutely nothing. No one lives there, nothing grows there.

Sounds like the start of a good mars analogy.

Along comes a prospector and finds gold. Within weeks a town has spring up. There are prospectors and miners pulling spendable gold out of the ground.

As long as we don't get hung up on precious metals, I'm with you so far.

There are stores supplying their need, for mining equipment, food, clothing, liquor and entertainment. The owners of those stores mostly borrowed the capital to establish them.

Let's consider this in the context of mars. So we've got some martians that choose mining as their profession and they are successful. We've got other martians that choose to be shopkeepers and are willing to trade with the miners. Where do the shopkeepers get their inventory? There are only two sources: mars and earth. Most of their inventory they will get from other martians that choose to be ISRU manufacturers because that makes the most economic sense, but some things will have to come from earth until martian industry is up to supplying that demand. There are two ways of getting things from earth: direct import/export which is prohibitive, and trade with newly arriving colonists (those trades being initiated before those colonist leave earth, but with transactions finalized directly on mars.)

What about the borrowed capital? That could have happened before or after the shopkeeper left earth, but most lenders will only make a loan if they have collateral on earth providing security. It sucks, but that the reality of the lending business. The good news is the type of things miners need will probably all be producible locally on mars (including basic electronics.)

All those goods, which can not be manufactured on site, are being shipped in in return for the gold which is being shipped out and sold for profit.

This is where the analogy fails. mining equipment, food, clothing, liquor and entertainment will all be produced locally because they can and only that makes economic sense. Some entertainment consists of data which may be imported at a low enough cost to make economic sense. Mining equipment is mostly iron, hydraulics and some electronics all of which makes the most economic sense to produce on mars. No gold export required. The gold stays on mars.

Eventually, the local veins of ore are tapped out. This happened in many places.

Of course, then the miners have the normal economic decisions to make. Search for more minerals or find another means of employment. Since mars industry will have demand for mars minerals perhaps forever, most miners will probably continue with perhaps a focus on other minerals they may find. Almost anything they find will have some demand.

When that happened, the miners and prospectors, no longer able to produce wealth with which to buy the things they needed, moved on, leaving the storekeepers behind.

Nonsense. The single biggest advantage martian miners will have is that almost everything is in demand. Lowest on the list being martian iron which they can't even avoid finding.

The storekeepers could get by for a while, trading with each other, but their main market, and the source of the actual wealth, is gone.

Let's examine that premise a little closer. Would the shopkeepers have miners as their main or only customers? Not likely.

First the ones selling mining equipment close up, absolutely no demand for that.

Do you remember the general store from your history books? Inventory moves through the store and changes over time to reflect changing demand. It would be a really stupid shopkeeper that didn't consider future demand.

Then the others, without the spendable gold coming in, are no longer able to service their debts and obtain new credit to bring in additional goods, not that there is anyone to sell to anyway. So, one by one, they close and move out, leaving a ghost town behind.

The mistake here is the premise. Having a limited source of a high value export is not the correct analogy. Ghost towns are created because of a focused economy. They are avoided by having a diverse economy. To equate mars with any boom town is ridiculous precisely because export is so prohibitive. As the doctor says, "don't do that!"

It is every bit as empty as it was before. No one lives there, because there is absolutely nothing of value to bring people there. Well, that is Mars.

Only true if gold mining is what brought them there. It certainly will not be. That is not the reason people will go to mars precisely because it wll not work. This is known as the false choice fallacy (also a bit of strawman.)

There is absolutely nothing, no thing, that can be produced on Mars and shipped back to the earth and sold at a profit.

Let's agree. That just means that will not be the motivation.

There could be ingots of pure, refined gold just sitting there and they could not be recovered profitably.

Absolutely true with regard to exporting it to earth.

Thus, without an economic basis for its existence, the colony will ultimately devolve into people sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the next supply ship, until Earth decides not to spend any more money endlessly sending supplies and getting nothing in return.

You have not shown a lack of economic basis. Earth doesn't need to spend a penny. The colonist pay their own way if the ticket price comes down enough and there is another way if it doesn't. My plan pays $5 million per ticket at no cost to the earth or the colonists. It is paid for the way development is always paid for, by the free will of speculators.

The problem with your argument is you're right only if you make assumptions that aren't actual constraints.

Holt in the bag

Answering Michael

Michael
September 29, 2016 At 6:35 AM
Let’s say that the first group of colonists rip a space suit and need a new one. Space suits are expensive, transporting them to Mars isn’t free. These colonists do represent a market, but in order to supply that market, they have to produce new wealth to trade for that space suit. Even if there were pure refined gold just sitting there waiting to be scooped into bins, you could not bring it back to earth and sell it for a profit. How are the colonists going to pay for that space suit, or anything else they need?

Great question Michael and the answer is simple.

A colonist damages his (or her) personal spacesuit beyond the ability of martian industry to repair. He contacts a colonist on earth preparing to leave for mars arriving perhaps a year in the future (a 3 month trip available every 26 months.) They discuss what the martian needing the suit can produce on mars in that year to trade for that suit and come to terms. That colonist doesn't have to personally produce these items since they can trade for some or all of those things with other martians. Meanwhile what suit does the colonist use? There will be spares that he can borrow or rent during that time. But being like most martians he may not even need a suit for that year because martians usually live in a comfortable shirt sleeve environment throughout the year. They also have the option of moving between such environments in sealed vehicles.

Where does wealth come from? Understand that export is not required.

Anyone thinking this isn't workable doesn't seem to realize this is already how it works on earth. If you can't afford the cost, you do without.

Elaboration on the mars economy

See this first.

The following is of course simplified:

Suppose we have 100 colonists on mars. Each can produce a certain amount of various products. Products essential to life support include energy, water, food, breathable air, etc. These must be produced on average above 100% of the colonies requirements (above because dips below 100% means some casualties. A safe reserve must always be maintained.) Other items will also be in demand but could be produced at less than 100% of demand without loss of life.

Planners determine that each colonist needs X solar panels and storage batteries for there energy needs. If a colonist produces less than 100% of their life support needs they will have strong demand for more, meaning they will be willing to pay more for it. If they produce 100% they will still have some demand for more but will be price sensitive. If they produce more than 100% of their life support needs some will be available for industry and some for resale. The labor requirement for producing energy will be low; mainly the result of how many solar panels (or other means) they deploy. Any profits they have may be reinvested to produce an increased rate of production.

Unlike energy, food comes in varieties that encourage more trade opportunities. Some food is more storable while other food is more perishable. Basic farming using Zubrin's example would require about an hour of labor per day to produce more than 300% of the colonies needs. Even though colonists could produce more than 100% of their needs demand and trade will be strong due to the desire for variety. As farming becomes more efficient a lower percent of the colony will be engaged in it.

Supply, demand, labor and such will be similar for other items. The invisible hand, a principle that can hardly be denied, will insure that production meets need. Note that exports have not been mentioned because none are required for this model to work.

Suppose items A and B are essential and items C and D are not. Colonist zero spends various amounts of his time during the day producing 50% of A, 20% of B, 10% of C, and 40% of D. Note these are percentages of the colony's average individual demand. This is not 120% of the individuals production capability. It may be more like less than a quarter of that.

Colonist zero must buy 50% more of A and 80% more of B. Zero keeps 5% each of C and D and sells the rest. Assume zero has a reserve of A and B that are not part of this calculation.

The colony overall produces 120% of both A and B. It produces 50% of demand for C and D.

The price for A and B will be relatively low and kept there by competition. The demand for C and D means the price will be somewhat higher and those producing it will have an incentive to produce more.

In this situation colonist zero will have 99 potential customers (though not all for all products because some will obviously be sellers rather than buyers of some items.)

What happens if production of items C and D rise to meet demand so that colonist zero can no longer sell enough of C and D to pay for what he must have of items A and B? Either he will sell his labor or start producing item E (assuming s/he is already producing as much of A and B as s/he is capable.)

The bible principle is very simple... if they don't work, let them not eat.

Sunshine is money

This post is dedicated to Jerry Pournelle, who got it right almost 50 years ago, and all those that continue to get it wrong today.

Reagan once famously said, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” This truth isn't limited to liberals. The intellectually insecure and lazy are often unwilling to test their assumptions. The assumption that I will prove isn't so, using just basic math, is that mars requires exports to be economically viable. It doesn't. That is not to say mars will have no exports because information, in forms from research to entertainment, will certainly be a mars export. But this only enhances mars economic viability. It is in no way required.

Let's start with a given... economic viability requires that income be greater than expense. Can we agree on that? Expense includes everything required to live. If some part of income above expense is retained this eventually leads to wealth. What are the details?

What Pournelle got right is that viability starts with having enough energy. Energy is the primary critical requirement. The useful energy must not only be enough for life support but also enough to manufacture a means to acquire more excess useful energy over time. Industry requires it.

Sunlight, converted into useful energy, is one very important income source. Just like on earth, this commodity can be traded among martian colonists for other assets. It is money. How much is produced by each colonist and how much is purchased by each is an economic choice like any other. That energy isn't just that which is converted to electricity. It is also the energy stored in plant growth. Plants are also money. The options of what to grow and trade makes for a very robust market. Do I have to continue in saying that minerals are also money. To be viable they simply have to be worth more to other colonists than the cost of extraction.

Where does the money to buy things come from? You missed it, didn't you? Read that last paragraph again, except with some insight.

Any martian that can produce anything another might want has produced wealth. Pieces of paper are not money. They are a convenience. Barter is an inconvenience that money cures. That's mainly all it is. So let's get even more basic...

Mars is economically viable if the life of each martian is viable. So let's take a closer look at that. You will note that no export to earth other than possibly data will be mentioned.

A martian starts out on earth buying a ticket to the surface of mars. That money comes from each ticket purchasers savings. No mystery involved. Elon Musk says to make this work the trip will send a lot of people at a time on a quick 3 month trip every 26 months. That ticket will include provisions consumed during the trip and personal property once they arrive (including a space suit.)

There will be a bootstrap period for the first colonists where abundant presupply will have to be sent first, but we are going to focus on the colonist that arrives later on mars with a spacesuit and just a few hundred kgs. of personal property. They have just enough consumable provisions to meet up with colonists that have been on mars for at least 26 months.

Some things can be made on mars and for some time other things will not be. Life support comes in a variety of forms. The lander will have life support as will a spacesuit (although of a shorter duration.) These are both subject to damage that may be difficult to repair. So the first order of business for our new colonist is to trade for a habitat that uses locally repairable life support components. That habitat is a trade good those on mars for the last 26 months or more can produce with just local labor and materials. That habitat could be paid for immediately with some items from earth or over time as part of a labor or some other agreement. The early colonists will have an advantage over later because there will be so many unique things they can import from earth (just in plant varieties alone) that they may be able to hold onto monopolies for some time. Unique skills will also be a valuable import.

Those habitats may or may not be completely self contained. Either works. If not, then the person living there must have tradable skills to make up for any deficiencies. That will not be difficult especially early in the life of the colony. Even basic labor alone will be in great demand. Beyond that, a colonist may have skills in short supply that raises their value even more. Is this really so difficult to imagine and note it involves zero export to earth?

Now for the simple math I promised. So simple it doesn't even require numbers!

Each colonist will have the ability to produce. How much and what is totally up to them but the invisible hand will be hard at work. Their market will be every other colonist. Known as a one to many relationship that applies to each and every person.

Can a colonist produce all of their own needs? It doesn't matter. What does matter is, can they produce some things in excess of their own needs. Of course they can. Each colonist willing to put in the effort can therefore produce wealth. If each colonist can produce wealth, so does the colony.

It's not that complicated. Put away your economics books and equations and just think.

Over time, industry will be built. Earth can participate in this wealth creation the same way we do in any other foreign stock market with zero export required.

Roboto

Trump's lost opportunity

"Hillary, you're lecturing us on cyber security? How many of our operatives had to flee for their lives or lost them because of your felonious handling of our government's secrets?"

Trump-Clinton debate transcript SCORED

The transcript.

HC: We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women's work. (-2 issues that only win with ignorant voters.)

DT: they're using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China, and many other countries are doing the same thing. (+1)

DT: We have to stop our companies from leaving the United States (+1)

DT: I'll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies (+1 this is not a tax break for the rich. This is a tax break for consumers in any competitive market.)

HC: the kind of plan that Donald has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. (0 DT's last plus one covers this.)

HC: I believe is the more we can do for the middle class... (-1 because she's lying. She wants to raise taxes on the middle class.)

DT: When we sell into Mexico, there's a tax. ...When they sell into us, there's no tax. (+1 free trade is only free trade when both sides use the same rules. Reagan pointed this out.)

DT: She's been doing this for 30 years. And why hasn't she made the agreements better? (+1)

HC: Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse. DT: That's called business, by the way. (+2 Trump)

HC: Some country is going to be the clean-energy superpower of the 21st century. (-3 This is the definition of govt. policy disaster.)

HC: Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real. DT: I did not. I did not. I do not say that. (-1 Trump. This is a very weak response by Trump. He should have just let it slide.)

DT: She talks about solar panels. We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. (0 Trump is right but should have included details.)

DT: The Obama administration, from the time they've come in, is over 230 years' worth of debt, and he's topped it. He's doubled it in a course of almost eight years (0 Trump is right but said it in a way that destroyed its impact.)

DT: For 30 years, you've been doing it, and now you're just starting to think of solutions. (+2)

DT: Your husband signed NAFTA, which was one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry. HC: Well, that's your opinion. That is your opinion. (+1 Trump.  Hillary's response is weak.)

DT: you go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacture is down (+1)

DT: You called [TPP] the gold standard of trade deals. You said it's the finest deal you've ever seen.

HC: No. (-1 She lied again.)

DT: ...you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence. (+2)

DT: I think I should -- you go to her website, and you take a look at her website. (+0)

dt: She tells you how to fight ISIS on her website. I don't think General Douglas MacArthur would like that too much. (+1)

HC: I have a feeling that by, the end of this evening, I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened. DT: Why not? (+1 Trump. Reinforces the idea that Hillary has had decades to fix things.)

HC: $4 billion tax benefit for your family. (-1 Wow. Hillary just claimed Donald pays a lot of taxes!!!)

DT: Typical politician. All talk, no action. Sounds good, doesn't work. (+1 This should have been Trump's theme for the entire debate. He should have even complemented her on how well she talks lie a politician.)

DT: Our country is suffering because people like Secretary Clinton have made such bad decisions (+1 A simple powerful declarative statement which is what he should have stuck with.)

Releasing tax returns (-2 DT needed a prepared, succinct answer.)

HC: when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax. DT: That makes me smart. (+1 DT)

HC: So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. (0 channeling Elizabeth 'You didn't build that' Warren.)

HC: It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that. (As long as she isn't held responsible.)

DT: That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely (0 He keeps talking which weakens his point.)

DT: I am very underleveraged. ... I have a tremendous income ... It's about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea about money. (0 would have been +2 if he said it w/o the parts I ellipsed.)

DT: ...it's one thing to have $20 trillion in debt and our roads are good and our bridges are good and everything's in great shape... (+0 He didn't finish the thought clearly.)

DT: it's politicians like Secretary Clinton that have caused this problem. (+1)

HC: you wouldn't pay what the man needed to be paid, what he was charging you to do...  DT: Maybe he didn't do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work... Which our country should do, too. (0 But Trump made a reasonable point.)

DT: I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I'm running a company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that's what I do. (+1 It can't be said any plainer than that.)

DT: When we look at the budget, the budget is bad to a large extent because we have people that have no idea as to what to do and how to buy. The Trump International is way under budget and way ahead of schedule. And we should be able to do that for our country. (+1)

Everybody agrees racism is worse since Obama took office (-3 DT because he didn't make this plain point.)

 Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York (0 Trump made the point it's used effectively and is law in other places but did it ineffectively.)

DT: Lester, we need law and order. And we need law and order in the inner cities, because the people that are most affected by what's happening are African-American and Hispanic people. And it's very unfair to them what our politicians are allowing to happen. (+1 This resonates with those experiencing it.)

DT: ...the African-American community has been let down by our politicians. They talk good around election time, like right now, and after the election, they said, see ya later, I'll see you in four years. (+1)

Birther issue (-2 DT because he continues to allow this issue to linger.)

HC: he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed. (+1 racist is a dog whistle, but effective.)

DT: last week, your campaign manager said it was true. So when you tried to act holier than thou, it really doesn't work. (+1 Classic winning Trump.)

DT: we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country -- it was a federal lawsuit -- were sued. We settled the suit with zero -- with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. (0 Hillary uses this to successfully paint Trump a racist with some, but Trump has the correct response.)

cyber security (0 Trump blew his chance for a knock-out punch.)

DT: She's been trying to take [ISIS] out for a long time. But they wouldn't have even been formed if they left some troops behind (+1)

HC: the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq... (-1 the only way???)

DT: ...we've been working with them for many years, and we have the greatest mess anyone's ever seen. You look at the Middle East, it's a total mess. Under your direction, to a large extent. (+1)

DT: you were secretary of state when [ISIS] was a little infant. Now it's in over 30 countries. And you're going to stop them? I don't think so. (+1)

nuclear weapons in the hands of other countries (+2 HC. Trump could have used Ukraine as an example. The US negotiated nukes out of Ukraine's hands allowing Russia to annex Crimea. The point can be debated, but the left would rather use the issue as a club.)

DT: The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming, like you think and your -- your president thinks. (+1)

DT: Russia has been expanding their -- they have a much newer capability than we do. (0 An important post debate topic.)

DT: I would certainly not do first strike. (0 Lost in the noise.)

DT: It was actually $1.7 billion in cash [to Iran.] (0 Again lost in the noise.)

DT: All of the things that she's talking about could have been taken care of during the last 10 years, let's say, while she had great power. But they weren't taken care of. And if she ever wins this race, they won't be taken care of. (0)

Stamina (+2 HC. Her poise during this debate gives her the win regardless of the point count. Trump, if he can, needs to do better.)

DT: We have made so many bad deals during the last -- so she's got experience, that I agree. (+1)

HC: [Donald has said] women don't deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men. (0 A missed opportunity for Trump. His response should have been, "So you're suggesting they should get equal pay even if they don't do as good a job?")

DT: ... $200 million is spent [by her campaign], and I'm either winning or tied, and I've spent practically nothing. (+1)

Trump won on points but Clinton won on presentation.

The truth about BLM

More biased reporting

They can't even pretend to be unbiased. From the title I thought it might be a neutral article.

Here's the authors take on a Lauer interview.

Trump has very little idea what he's talking about and when pressed on a clear contradiction he starts making up new nonsense to avoid addressing the question.

Is that right? What Trump said is he has a good chance of becoming president. Correct. In that case, unlike Obama, it would be stupid to inform ISIS of his plan. Correct. Lauer falsely accuses Trump of having no plan. What Trump is clearly saying is he will listen to his generals. There is no contradiction.

Trump is extremely ignorant when it comes to public policy.

Trump is not a political wonk. He has an average business persons understanding of the issues, but with the executive ability to look deeper into things and listen to expert opinion. The farce is to believe a chief executive is suppose to have detailed knowledge and polished answer for every conceivable question. It's a stupid f%$&^g game the press plays that does less than no service to journalistic integrity.

it's usually pretty obvious he's just making things up.

This is the no win scenario. He doesn't generally have polished prepared answers like a politician would. This is actually a good thing. A real journalist, not looking to just antagonize, could actually use this fact to do their job better. Trump's other option is to tell the journalist he needs to defer his answer until after he's given it more thought. How well would this perfectly reasonable response fly with these antagonists? No win possible.

I think it would be highly advisable for Clinton to confront Trump on birtherism.

Why? Because of the authors biased hope that this non issue could harm Trump.

If [Hillary] can deliver a strong performance which cuts against perceptions.

True perceptions that she's a liar and a crook that used government to enrich herself even if it meant treason against this country, risked American lives and kept the poor in poverty (See Haitian relief.) Being careful not to raise expectations this 'reporter' can't help slobbering.

Absent a teleprompter, Trump has shown no ability in eighteen months to be anybody but himself in public.

Think about it. Trump can't win with this guy. He's basically admitting that Trump can give a good prepared speech. He's also suggesting Trump would do better if he actually was a con man. He's saying Trump is real. All the while implying this is a bad thing. The media hasn't just attempted to blind us, they're completely clueless themselves. I will be glued to this first debate.

The catastrophic collapse of all of the political pundits’ predictions.

Not controvercial

Girl fight

Last week.

Who is Kaine?

Some info.

It's about jobs

An indictment of the tech industry.

Who created Islam?

It wasn't Mohammed.

Loving America - we have more fun

Last week.

9-11-2001 was yesterday

Media coverup. The "worst is still to come."

A reading list. Don't know how many I'll get to, but has lot's of stuff I wasn't aware of.

Parkinson's not definitively confirmed

Earlier post.

It takes a very high level of intelligence to be this stupid

Whenever I hear the word ethics I know it's verbal camouflage for an onslaught of bullshit. Here's a good example.

The implied argument is we shouldn't colonize mars now, but without the courage to actually say it. Then in too many words the authors says... How we colonizing Mars will determine its success, but without defining success which would seem to be the important part?

In my opinion, when has a huge impact on success which in this context I would define as a thriving independent group of humans capable of continuing life and growth even if all life on earth were lost.

This is revealing, Hawking doesn’t acknowledge that the disasters he names are human-made, that's true because that has no relevance to his argument. Extinction is extinction regardless of how it comes about. It's revealing because it goes with other arguments that assume human bad/nature good as if humans were not part of nature.

...are we setting ourselves up for a long-term future of planet hopping from one ruined world to the next? Give me a freakin' break. YES, let the havoc begin!

...stripping the planet bare. O.M.G. How can we take anything else seriously after making a statement like this? If we could suddenly transport a billion people to mars and it was their sole intent to rape the planet, they couldn't do it in a thousand years... but let that not dissuade the mindless fantasy about evil humans. How could this level of self hatred even exist?

Let's have a clue about sustainable practices, if they aren't sustainable they self regulate! No effort required. No planning required. Sustainable isn't just a football for kicking around your self loathing. It has a meaning and associated implications. The arrogance of thinking you can decide how things should be, over ruling those that would actually live on mars is beyond astounding. It's practically a case study in this form of lunacy.

If there is life on Mars, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Just more extreme bullshit. If disturbing life is a problem caused by humans we should just kill all humans because that's the only way to stop it. Of course, my definition of success would argue otherwise. We sterilize martian probes to protect possible martian life. Let me rephrase, we kill existing life to protect possible life. At this very moment our immune systems are murdering millions of life. Killing ourselves is the only hope for these poor microbes (who would then cease to exist because they wouldn't have us to feed upon.) Mars is a planet. It would be impossible for us to kill it.

Zubrin’s approach touts practicality to the exclusion of other considerations. Yeah, let's not be practical or have the least bit of common sense. Let's all hug a rock. Or better yet, beat you senseless with it. Too late, you must first have sense before you can be beaten senseless. Let's apply a single braincell to the question of... the magnitude of the irreversible disaster that could be caused if we are wrong. By definition, we don't know what we don't know. So there is no basis for inaction. Action or restraint from action has to have a basis in knowledge, not ignorance.

What if inaction or even just delay causes our extinction? This isn't hypothetical. We know that disaster is waiting for every basket and we need to be in other baskets to survive. If survival is the definition of ethical then arguing against is the most unethical position.

Then comes the ethics of ownership. Without belaboring the point, denying ownership to a broad base of people is not just unethical but just plain evil. I'm not going to argue it here.

How we colonize will determine success. Individual freedom is success and requires individual ownership.

Busy day, but I didn't forget...

Last week.

With friends like these...

ET farming research.

Here's the problem...

“We must regard a plant as a piece of technology and understand exactly what happens to it first. All chemical, microbiological and physiological aspects (of plants in extraterrestrial conditions) needs to be understood and mapped... We cannot take risks.”

Because colonization "is not a priority" to this guy.

Solving the dust problem

Make a mars dollar equal to one kg. of pure iron. Mars banks can each establish their own exchange rates for other elements. ATM cards will handle all mars dollar transactions. Collecting and refining mars dust will clean up any inhabited area while the wind becomes a direct source of profit. Anyone wanting to corner a market just has to set up the right exchange rate.

Update: Reply to Jefff...

Wow. That was a great comment Jeff. I hope my reply can do it justice.

Your definition of economics is missing something important that Thomas Sowell felt so important he repeated it several times in his books. You said, "economics is about the production and distribution of goods and services" which is true while leaving out an absolutely essential ingredient that I may have to paraphrase if I can't find the actual quote...  found it: "Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses." This definition is important because it highlights what most people get wrong about economics because of their rigid thinking. They fall into the trap of thinking economics must work a certain way when the definition is saying economics is all about adapting to the true situation rather than claiming the situation is some kind of economic problem.

So we don't crosstalk I'm going to try to understand the rest of your comment in light of your definition (doing so I can perhaps understand your point. I'm not there yet, but hopefully before I finish this comment I can get there. I will provide feedback as understanding dawns.)

As for spacious dwellings: I think it a no brainer for several reasons. It's safer (allowing what DenBeste once called graceful failure modes in engineering.) It's really rather cheap because they will have plenty of space and basic construction equipment (2 remote control tractors could fit on a single Dragon lander and do the work required for several dozen colonists.. They will not need to dig wearing spacesuits with pick and shovel. One way they could go about initial construction would be a relatively fast trench (a week of digging at most) covered by a brick arch (they will need water and a sealed tent to make the bricks.) The arch ceiling takes some skill but for those so trained it shouldn't take more than a few weeks per habitat. When vacationing in Greece my folk's landlord did similar brick construction by himself in a single week. The machine that cranks out compressed bricks produces them faster than they can be used (it could be a tractor attachment using the tractor's PTO.) Once the trench is dug and covered it can be sealed just by spraying the walls with water (although better options are available in time. Once sealed they can take their time finishing the interiors. They can use mars iron for airlocks made in clay molds but will probably need to bring tubes of gasket material from earth initially. None of this is very high tech., including the life support equipment which is gaslight era chemistry. The environmental monitoring equipment shouldn't be high tech either. No electronics will be needed to keep it functioning (an important reason for big habitats. Whatever fails, which has 100% probability of happening, should fail slow enough they have days to fix from stored replacements.) But habitat's are a bit of a side issue. Let me get back to your points.

The kickstart: First of course there should be abundant presupply to a single site which can take as many years as required to give the first colonists safe margins (4 to 10 tons per colonist should do it before the first arrive. Every colonist thereafter only needs about one ton each because the bulk other than their spacesuit will come from local mars production (this means a wide range of things will simply not be available to early colonists, but what will be is more than you would first imagine.) The first 26 month window should get at least a dozen colonists on mars. Any fewer will not provide enough labor even with heavy equipment to do their job which is not science or exploring. Their only job is to learn how to survive and get essential production rates up to a level suitable for the next group of about 3 or 4 dozen colonists. Four dozen colonist are about the minimum you need to have the skills for a full basic industrial ecology. That's not going to be the same level as thousands or millions, but 48 skill sets can produce a surprising diversity of stuff. A single machinist can produce almost anything, just not in quantity (although each could produce enough for a dozen others. Look at occupational percentages of any large city to get a closer approximation.) You need two or three machinists for every chemist. What you don't need initially are doctors but first aid training should be for everyone.

I haven't yet mentioned energy which should be presupplied to about four times what we think they need (solar is fine to start but backup methane powered generators would be a good idea. Designed to be simple to make or repair on mars. Lubricants will initially come from earth.) Having too much energy allows industrial growth (including producing higher energy rates.) Having too little is deadly.

Benefits to Earth: The easiest way to see benefits to earth is to look backwards from some future. Is the earth better with or without adding a martian economic component? I think the answer is clear if mars is independent. The problem for most people is they can't see that as possible. I say it could be very easy in four parts. 1) Existing market. 2) Intrinsic import. 3) Transportation. 4) Investor speculation.

1) The existing market of supply is the time, materials and skills of local martians. They have the time to produce valuable supplies which only need to be distributed to demand on mars. Most of this increases wealth on mars which is the only place it is absolutely required but some percentage of this will also make it's way indirectly to earth (not in products, although that isn't totally out of the question, but in ownership. Capital transfer does not require transportation of mass. It just requires transfer of ownership data. If a person on earth buys stock in a mars company that value has been transferred to earth and that capital can be used to finance that martian companies growth.)

2) Some level of import will certainly be required for mars but can be completely provided by the personal assets of mars immigrants which also contributes to their individual wealth.

3) Transportation is the first economic issue most consider which is also the simplest. The transport company sells tickets at a profit in competition with other companies. This is very traditional and should be simple to understand. The rub is, we can't expect enough (or perhaps any) colonist to come up with that ticket price and we shouldn't if we really want mars to be colonized.

4) So the last issue is how to finance migration? Anyway that works I say. To me the simplest is to auction off plots on mars and use all that money for passage (with constraints that make it work.) If you don't like that (which should completely pay for the first million colonists and distribute title to many and any small speculators on earth even if sold as a novelty... which it isn't since it should be actual title to a plot of land which they can give to their kids or resell.) Then you are free to figure out your own method of financing.

I haven't fully addressed the issues in your terms, so... Production will grow as population grows. Because the population grows slowly it will never outstrip production. The only thing is product and service diversity will expand over time.

Distribution is local. Nothing need be distributed off mars, which is not to say some things may not be. If ships are returned to earth for reuse that opens up marginal cost cargoes... but they are not at all essential. Rigidly thinking we need some sort of spice trade is just flat out wrong. Not bad to have but not required. Because the delta V to LEO is lower from mars than from the earth and mars by virtue of a growing population will grow industries, some profitable trade from mars may develop but in competition with infrastructure development in other places.

What would a billion dollar mars development entail?

I would build incremental profitable businesses that vertically get me to mars. I would not develop the technology because others are already doing that. I would develop a series of different profitable businesses that all contribute to the final goal. The first thing is putting a refuelable ship in earth orbit. That becomes a leased asset. It doesn't have to go anywhere, but will have enough delta-V when fueled to go between earth and mars orbit. That should cost about $200m to $300m to LEO with life support for 12 (using a free return trajectory to mars. Which means 8 mo. rather than Musk's 3 mo. plan. Mine will leave sooner because Musk will need more than a billion dollars before he can go. Leasing those ships in earth orbit should produce about $600m per year (see Bigelow's Alpha station business plan.) Allowing me to send a dozen to mars each window. $450m for landers to mars orbit and $300m for fuel to earth orbit.

Martian real estate auction procedures.

While earth governments should acknowledge martian real estate titles the important point is that martian colonists should fully support the idea. Martian title agencies should be established on mars for that purpose.

432 plots (2000 sq.m. ea.) with a minimum bid of $1 can be auctioned off a single sq. km. with the title agency establishing the legal definition of each plot. To bid, each bidder must make a minimum $20 non-refundable deposit into the mars colony trust (which can be totally spent on bids.) Bidding is closed on any plot an hour after the final bid for that plot. Bidding is done on earth with the results sent to the martian title agency. New plots are added to the auction as soon as the title agency establishes the legal definitions. New plots can be multiples of the basic 1/5 hectare size, but the minimum bid of $5 per hectare is retained.

The money in the trust is banked on earth. It is only used to pay for transportation of a colonist to mars providing them with a minimum to the surface of 100 kg of personal property, a spacesuit and a month of consumables. Ticket prices will be $5m or below (in competitive bidding) regardless of the actual cost. This provides transport for a minimum of 60,000 colonists, but much more should land values appreciate (which naturally occurs with occupation and development.)  At $20 per plot we can pay for over a million colonists.

New colonists will not starve with only a month of consumables because the colony will have sufficient consumables on hand to support them. As a matter of fact, much of the consumables new colonists will bring with them are likely to be exotic trade goods (like coffee?) rather than personal consumption items.

Note that no government approval is required but will in fact occur as more title holders grow. Trading of titles on earth will probably not happen until governments establish laws acknowledging the legality but that should be no impediment as long as the martians themselves fully back the titles which paid for their transport.

Update: I decided to send an email to my AZ representative in terms of economic development and millions of voters. Let's see if it gets a response? (They're coming to take me away... ha ha.)

MCT predictions

September 27th we'll find out, but I've got some fun predictions.

The MCT (or BFS) will not carry 100 crew or 100 mt to the surface of mars. The BFR will be 10m w/ 9 Raptor engines but will soon use 2 F9FT reusable boosters. The MCT will not be reusable, instead it will be left on the surface of mars (engines will be removed for a new future vehicle of martian design each using a single Raptor engine.)

A second generation MCT will only travel from orbit to orbit. A martian SSTO will support operations at the martian end while a stretch Dragon will support earth orbit operations.

The MCT that lands on mars will deliver 500kg per crew to the martian surface when fully crewed (more cargo when less than fully crewed.) It will require 500kg of food per crew in space during the voyage to mars. Water will be recycled but start at 500kg per crew.

It will be refueled in earth orbit massing 100 mt before fueling. Maximum crew will be about 50, not 100 as originally planned.

Update: My mars colony trust will only pay $5m per ticket. 3 FH supply launches will be required before MCT mars departure for a total ticket cost of about $16m per crew. If Musk agrees to contracting the colonists to support property ownership of martian real estate he'll take the $5m (which adds incentive of a cost reduction goal.)

The mars schedule

According to Musk.

2018 - 1 red lander on mars.
2020 - 2 more red landers on mars.
2022 - MCT first landing.
2024 - First MCT crew to mars.

Update: Important new data.

MCT designed for 100 mt to surface of mars meaning each ticket is for 1 mt. This should provide each colonist with several hundred kg. of personal property besides their combined body and spacesuit mass  (and some consumables quickly replaced by ISRU.) Assuming a ticket price of $5m and 500 kg. of personal property each colonist arrives with $2.5m in worth.

Clarification: 1mt includes consumables for the trip which would be about 2mt. which does not compute. I'm assuming 8 kg. per day with no recycling. Apparently a bad assumption. I'll have to discover better data.

A pretty flower

Last week.

Identifying the real BLM problem

President of Croatia

Now I understand the supercar!

What prevents us from selling mars by the hectare?

Cutting to the chase... nothing but attitude.

The expense of developing martian real estate is so high (and letting others do it so abhorrent to the control freaks) that the elites have decided nobody should be allowed to do it without their control.

Mars has 14.4 billion hectares of real estate. Musk, in late September, will announce his plan to send people to mars. Nobody owns mars which stifles its development. But a simple attitude change could open the flood gates.

Suppose we set up a trust for one single purpose. We auction off hectares starting at the proposed first human landing site. All that money goes into the trust. From that trust we only buy transportation tickets, payable on delivery of a live human to the surface of mars near enough to connect with an established colony.

This is a win-win-win-win.

win#1. The transportation company sells tickets at a profit competing with others for the lowest possible price.

win#2. The land speculator sees the value of their property appreciate as more colonists arrive.

win#3. Colonists already on mars have a ready made market for their time and materials to be sold to new comers.

win#4. New comers arrive wealthy by virtue of whatever mass allotment for personal property is included in their transportation ticket.

Before new comers leave earth they can contract with existing colonists for eventual trade when they arrive. 100 kg of disposable personal property would be worth its transportation cost alone.

Cost/kg per lander = ($200m / 2000 kg.) or $100k per kg.

Lander ($100k/kg)  x 100 kg, so each colonist arrives a millionaire with a mansion waiting for their arrival and enough resources to follow any individual dream.

It's just attitude that holds us back.

Update: Jim asks, "Who do you envision auctioning off Mars? Who do you envision bidding?"

This is the fundamental problem. Who gets the loot? If not 'me' (whomever me might be) we're just not interested. The trust auctions off mars with all of humanity being the beneficiary. The trust doesn't belong to anyone. It's sole purpose is to buy tickets to mars (or anyplace else a similar trust is set up for using its real estate... but we start with mars.) Who bids? Any person on earth wishing to speculate on the future value of martian real estate. I would also propose the plots to be 40x50 meters for a minimum bid of $1. This provides a minimum of $60b (but in reality much more) at 84% utilization (all property having a minimum frontage of 40 meters on a planetwide road system.) Only individuals could bid on these plots which could then be resold and aggregated in a secondary market. It just requires govt. to acknowledge titles.

I would also recommend (but it's outside the focus of this post)... All governance would be local. A township would be 10x10 km. with each square kilometer choosing a resident as its representative. All laws would sunset after one martian year from the moment of enactment.

It is idiotic to look at it from the perspective of, "I wouldn't pay a dime for a 2000 sq. m. plot of real estate on mars." The only valid perspective is "would others?" Given the govt. support of the validity of title the answer doesn't require an active brain cell because even without it humans have been willing to make similar investments.

Black magic woman

Last week.

Ya gotta hear this guy!

Putin threatening war?

Par for the course

I get WIFI internet for free. I called the only provider for this area because I would like to pay for guaranteed service. They require a credit card. I only use prepaid visa on the net. Had I not told them it was prepaid we probably wouldn't have had an issue. The representative asked her boss who said no.

If I try to use another national provider they just connect me with Frontier, our local monopoly.

I'm wondering if the Americans with disabilities act would have any usefulness. I'm going to talk to a lawyer (who happens to be related to both my partner and the founding family of this town. This makes him a good partner to have.)

The kicker is my free WIFI is provided by this monopoly!

Also there could be damages because they are preventing me from implementing my product.

This should be fun.

None of this prevents me from continuing to write my code. I just need others to test. Working blind isn't that big a deal for me. I used to edit out of state code without a wysiwyg editor (ever code dBase using edlin and a 300 baud modem?)

I also worked for a short time with a literally blind Shearson Lehman BAL programmer in one of the twin towers before they came down in NYC. I could only do my edlin trick because I'd memorized 10,000 lines of dBase code. I really don't know how that blind programmer did it with BAL other than he used a line editor with text to speech software. I never knew how many lines he was working with but my impression was... a lot.

Croatia makes...

...a supercar?

Body count rises

 "If I'm ever found dead, it won't be a suicide."

Haifa Wehbe and others

Last week.

Would you like tires with that?

I have to visit or call mom once a week or she gets a little panicky and comes by. She's too old for that so I usually visit when she's out on her porch around midday. Today the neighbor asked how I was and I told her about being stuck on my project. "You still working on that?" I had shown her an earlier version I'd written last year in a different language. "You should work on a new project." That's when I told her, I could, but it's a bit like making cars. I can make all different types, but then I'd have to ask the title question.

Dad (step-dad) is a Mexican version of Mayberry's Floyd the barber. He shuffles along and his hearing is bad but he works his 3 customers a day at the barber shop. He's got the classic roman nose so mom swears he's an Italian. He loves spaghetti westerns, so whenever some famous Mexican actor (yeah, they have those) comes on the screen, especially if really dark skinned he'll call out to mom, pointing at the screen and say, "Hey, another Italian actor." Then mom will say, "noooo, that's just another dumb Mexican." The whole family here in AZ is Mexican, so that's a big hit with some.

Does Hillary have Parkinsons?

Server blues

I still can't make a connection between my computer at home and my server but all the SQLitening software is working correctly. Server logs show that others can make the connection. I'm pretty sure my own computer has it's port open through the firewall but I'm wondering about my wifi connection? I'm not sure how I'm going to test that?

It's time I canceled my first server contract since I'm not going to be using it. Goddady has two levels of firewall protection. One I have control of, the other I don't but I got the right port opened for me and it's working so i'm going to keep my Godaddy server until I figure out how to get SQLitening working from my home machine.

Also I'm going to reset my first domain back to the Google DNS. I never should have listened to 1and1.com about setting it to their DNS. At the time I was just following their directions since I didn't fully understand how it worked. As McCoy might say, "I'm a computer programmer Jim, not a technician."

Just begging for a fisking...

...this article is.

During a 33-year career...

Why do they always start by trying to prove how unbiased they are when the whole point of the article is to explain their bias?

First he starts with a pure assertion. Hillary is highly qualified and Trump is not and dangerous to boot. (There's your politics of fear Bob.) I can respect that as long as it's backed up with solid evidence. It isn't.

I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room.

What does that mean? How the hell does he know what her political calculations are? If he's trying to say she's not a political beast, a derisive snort is about the only sensible reply. How about Trump then?...

• "self-aggrandizement" Now there's a rare thing for a politician. /sarc.
• "overreaction to perceived slights" Perceived? He's been attacked with a fury that only a biased media can ignore. So is the writer advocating that America just bend over and take it as we did when the Iranians captured and insulted our sailors and country?
• "decisions based on intuition" A powerful tool for many good people.
• "refusal to change his views based on new information" A lie. Trump chooses which positions he's firm on and has been scolded for those he is not. Even those he is firm on can alter when more facts are brought to bear. Do we want somebody that blows in the wind with every unconfirmed random bit of news?
• "carelessness with the facts" Nevermind that he's usually right if inarticulate.
• "unwillingness to listen to others" Another fat lie. He built his fortune listening to other, but coming to his own conclusions. Ignoring truthful arguments has been the democratic trait. Look up unwillingness to listen and you'll see Obama's picture (with McCain patting him on the shoulder.)
• "lack of respect for the rule of law" Laws often made by people that lack moral principles. These people routinely exempted themselves from the very laws they use as weapons against the American people. Where is the respect for law that keeps Hillary from being behind bars! These are howlers, folks.

[Trump] is already damaging our national security.

How does this pure assertion stand scrutiny? Ever heard of the Clinton foundation? This is way, way, way beyond a howler. This is an ear splitting screamer.

Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him.

Unlike Hillary, who actually made us vulnerable by not protecting national secrets.

"Putin is a great leader"

Yes, by many standards he is. Acknowledging that doesn't mean he isn't evil as well. A leader is someone who has followers (by any means.) All the evil men of history were great leaders or we'd have never heard of them. Trump will unabashedly negotiate for an American advantage with every world leader. Hillary has already demonstrated treason for which she will never be held account.

In the intelligence business, we would say...

This from an agency that hasn't always demonstrated its allegiance to American interests in recent years.

"undermined security with his call for barring Muslims"

So vetting immigrants now undermines security? Does he work for THAT MONUMENT TO PUBLIC SAFETY, the TSA?

"many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country"

Great. What does his have to do with vetting immigrants? If you're having trouble coming up with the answer, the answer is absolutely nothing. They are two different groups of people. However, some Americans are also terrorists (but somehow these work related, or nightclub, incidences seem to escape their notice.)

"[I] call it as I see it." 

With a blindness that is so far beyond astounding that it boggles the mind. Every accusation he's thrown at Trump as a possibility is a damning reality a thousand fold with Hillary as far as national security goes.

Update: Upon reflection, I'd have to say this is one of the best articles for choosing Trump over Clinton. Great job, CIA guy.

Sadie says hi, with her hips

Last week.

Plan of action

It's not so simple to get all the pieces together and working to get a thing done. I've paid for three months of server on Godaddy which sets a limit to how long I have to resolve my database access issue. Realistically I give myself 2 weeks but hope to resolve it today or tomorrow. If I can't resolve it in 3 months I will do something else, but not being able to share data severely limits what those else's might be. To be fair, there are applications where the low performance of other shared database solutions would not be a show stopper, but I feel like I am so close. There will still be data security issues, but those are not show stoppers.

So... I've got the SQLitening remote service working on both my local machine and my server. The problem is I haven't been able to get the remote communications working. First thing to do is get the communications working on my machine with itself. Second I will get the server to talk to itself. Once both of those things work, the only thing left as far as I can see is changing the IP address and having the right port open. I don't see how this should take much time at all?

Anyway, that's the plan. My next post about this should be my last on this subject!

I also realize another mistake I made. 1&1.com convinced me to use their DNS servers when I didn't have to. I should have just kept that domain on the Google DNS servers. It may take a few days to get that straightened out but I'm not ready to deal with it at the moment.

Update:

The window service installs and runs both on my machine and on my server. A test program I wrote using my DB and the service works perfectly on my machine and locally on the server. The only thing that doesn't work is to remotely access the DB from my machine to the server. I used a provided batch file to open the correct port on the server and got no errors. Now I just have to hope the developer of SQLitening sees something stupid I've done or left out. I could ask Godaddy to confirm the port is open, but beyond that I'm stuck.

go daddy!

Well I got the SQLitening server running on Godaddy, but I can't connect to it. I've opened the port through the firewall (even turned the firewall off for one test, but no good. I gave this info to the author of SQLitening so perhaps something will come of that.)

I find that outside of it's canned offerings, Godaddy doesn't provide any way to publish a web page from the unmanaged server service they sell. I found a program called tinyweb that should suit me but haven't got it working on the server yet (it works fine on my machine... why all the damned issues?)

It's possible I will go the cookie cutter route for my web page. It doesn't have to go on the server I'm paying for, for that purpose. But none of that matters if I can't get SQLitening functioning completely.

Sometimes you just have to walk away from an issue for a bit.

How many days...

...will it take to fix a few minutes problem? 1&1 customer support is getting a failing grade from me. I will work on getting my three issues fixed or I will cancel my contract...

1. I need SQLite running. This is the primary reason I chose them.
2. I need my webpage to show - not error 403 as it currently does.
3. I need people to be able to download my s/w after issue 2 is fixed.

None of these are major issues and should take about 5 minutes to fix if they did any type of customer service. I am very annoyed.

Trying to use their chat support facility leaves me hanging until finally a page in German is displayed (with no ability to translate.)

Update: To hell with 1&1.com. I just spent an hour on the phone with godaddy sales. They got the last dime on my prepaid visa but now I have an unmanaged server already set up... well, except being unmanaged I have lots of reading to do... but I have RDP access which is the first main hurdle. I'm using my other domain for it..., it's already pointing to my server. it has an error due to the fact that I haven't set up any pages yet, but that's to be expected. I have 3 months to get it working which should only take whatever time I need to read a few things. I'm tempted to set up my windows service right now, but I'm feeling good and don't want to spoil it at the moment. Besides it's 2:30am and I have a 7am appointment. to sleep now!

Obama is not just a traitor

He's a felon.

What a hassle

I've got a domain registered with Google. Another with Godaddy. My cloud server is with 1and1.com  Now I wait a few days to see if my google domain gets propagated by the 1and1 dns.

Meanwhile, I saw Star Trek tonight. Not sure what I think of it, but it had some good geeky stuff. Don't know how the Franklin (warp 4) fits in with Archer's (warp 5) ship?

Now to become more familiar with 1and1.

Update: I'm becoming more comfortable working on my remote cloud server and less comfortable with my local wifi. I now have my firewall giving me access to my SQLitening service, but have to wait until tomorrow to get approval to run the SQLite service (which is the only reason I'm paying for this host out of my pitiful income.)

The good news is what this will enable me to do once I've got the kinks worked out.

Update 2: Looks like the Trekkies are making a big fuss over the Franklin. I guess I wasn't the only one that found it curious.

One reason alone not to elect Hillary

"It's old news," she says.

"For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran," Obama said.

Is there any doubt Trump would say "Iran could pursue billions from us 'til hell freezes over and would never get a dime."

I know the answer.

Update: Check out the 8 part series in links on the bottom for the war on truth.

Wednesday is here again

Last week.

I can only conclude...

...that none of the webhosts I've contacted so far wants my business (or speak english.) I will keep trying. They really stink at sales.

Update: My wound care guy gave me the number for an IT guy that works at the power plant and is setting up an ISP here in town. That could work out for both of us during testing. Once I go live I'll need a provider with an uptime record.

More progress on my code.

I feel like I'm swimming in molasses, but it doesn't matter because I am making progress. I'm not what I used to be nor are the tools I'm working with but the potential is there. I'm going to start looking for a host now. My goal is to have a test online by January. In the old days it would have taken me less than a month to get there, but no matter.

One problem I've got is security. While I can encrypt my database this happens on the server end with SQLite, so I'm vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. I don't know how to implement HTTPS or if it would impose an intolerable performance hit? Also, encrypted, I can't do any ranges in a where clause which I need to do a lot of.

I haven't looked into how password protection works in SQLite either. Without that anyone could mess with my data even if encrypted. They'd produce gobblygook, but that's not good for me.

I'll just have to do the best I can.

How much money is waiting to be repatriated?

None if Hillary is elected, but otherwise...

Apple has $181b overseas; Microsoft around $100b; others hold smaller but still substantial amounts.

It won't fix our out of control federal budget, but it will certainly help.

Donald's history

Hillary's history

Putin sees US as aggressive threat

What are we getting for $2 billion?

A radio controlled car basically.

Let's break that down. You've got the cost of getting it to mars. You've got the cost of the rover itself. You've got the cost of operations.

Cost to mars is fundamentally about mass and size. The rover uses curiosity rover parts and is about 3 meters long, 2.7 meters wide, and 2.2 meters tall. Mass should be about 900 kg. They plan to use an Atlas V for launch which costs about $200m. Balance: $1.8 billion. But wait, this article says the LV cost 20% of $2.5b or $500m. That's quite a price range, but still leaves us a balance of $1.5 billion.

As mentioned, this rover uses parts made for the earlier curiosity rover. Basically it's curiosity 2. I can't find costs for it alone or for operational costs.

$1.5b should get us more than a radio control car that can barely do any exploring. What if we did the following instead...

A high school challenge: for $1000 each, high schools compete to build small rovers with a standard battery, camera and solar cell package provided to them with perhaps one other instrument of their choice.. SpaceX sends a quantity of them in it's 2018 red Dragon flight. The kids operated the rovers for free. Scientists get to look over their shoulders as much as they like. Expect each rover to have different methods of locomotion. Let the kids innovate and explore at their pace in whatever direction they like. Assume each rover is about 20 kg, they could send about a 100 of them per Dragon.

A hundred small rovers going in different directions would do a lot more exploring than one $1.5b rover and cost about $1.499 billion less.

My entry would be a regular radio controlled car inside a huge clear plastic ball. The weight of the car driving up the wall of the ball would move it in any direction. The ball would get scratches, but so what? Another method of locomotion might be jumping.

I suspect we could save money by electing these people...

Suspicious phone call

I just got a phone call (432-848-3015) from someone who said they were from google business. Recently I bought a domain name from godaddy. Then later decided I'd better have a backup so got another from google. This caller asked me what business I was in. When I said programmer the line went dead.

Any ideas?

Thanks to Rickl for these links

Here and here.

• Unelected agencies are making laws contrary to our founders intent.
• Every personal activity is subject to the commerce clause.
• Agencies then have judicial power to penalize with guilty until you bankrupt yourself proving your innocents.
• They wave laws for friends thus weaponizing those laws against political enemies.
• It's worse than the article implies with citizens raped and paid off with taxpayer money to keep quiet about it.

...all branches of government conspired over more than a century to turn the Constitution that the Framers wrote in 1787, plus the Bill of Rights that James Madison shepherded through the first Congress in 1789 and the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868, into something their authors would neither recognize nor endorse.

• the bedrock constitutional principle was simply to ensure that America does not “convert a limited into an unlimited Govt.”
• Madison’s nightmare has become America’s everyday reality.
• “The practice of creating independent regulatory commissions, who perform administrative work in addition to judicial work,” Roosevelt himself admitted, “threatens to develop a ‘fourth branch’ of Government for which there is no sanction in the Constitution.”

The solution? If any of these agencies are a good idea they should only exist at the state level. At the federal level they deprive citizens of the vote. At the state level citizens can vote with their feet. This is why we have states. Otherwise we could eliminate states from being a maker of laws.

Being lectured by the boss...

...for being too nice to the customer. In most companies programmers don't interact with customers; they have other people to do that (unless the programmer is the company.) Instead they have customer representatives if a long term service is being provided or just salesman otherwise. When I was a kid working in NYC, we had a customer in Ohio. I flew out there to install a system I wrote (in dBase II multi-user. Never heard of it? That's because we were a test site and the product was never released to the public. DOS 3.1 was the problem, not handling semaphores correctly. We worked around that problem.) Anyway one night the controller asked me, "can you write a liability analysis report." Being a bit of a smartass (a common issue with younger, and some older, programmers) I responded, "Sure. What's a liability analysis report?" I was just a dumb 20 y.o. after all.

He told me and I wrote it. Then I nurse-maided the printer all night while dBase churned it out (about ten hours.) When I got back to NYC I rewrote it in Bascom which produced the same report in less than half an hour. So then I got chewed out by my boss. Why?

"Ken, we could charge them for that report and you just gave it to them for free."

They did offer me a job and even tried to marry me off to one of their office girls. Where are those offers now I ask? Instead they hired some blowhard that claimed he could do better for them than some 20 y.o. kid. His first act was to hire me as a consultant so I flew back to Ohio to explain to this jerk what I had done. This guy had no idea how client/server systems worked. Ethernet itself was a new idea with major companies (3Com and others) jockying at the time to get their standards established.

Another time I talked with Mondo, a really nice fat Mexican (hey, you know the stereotype and this guy fit it.) He was our customer's fleet manager (he and an old PC were the entire department.) He asked me if there was anyway to get a DOT report required by the government. "Sure. What's in a DOT report." Now I was an older and wiser smartass! He told me and I wrote it with the flexibility to meet all our customers customized requirements. I worked with our DB manager for the DB upgrades required (no freebee this time.) That report became the first thing our salesman showed to potential new customers and significantly increased our sales from that time forward. I wasn't supposed to talk directly with customers. We paid the big guys to do that. BTW, I was a programmer, not a tech. support guy, so when Mondo asked for help with another problem I told him he needed to get a newer computer. He got his boss to buy him one and the problem went away.

One engineering boss once called me uranium, "extremely valuable but hard to control." He told me to translate all of my estimates from weeks to double months. So instead of telling his boss I could get a job done in two weeks (giving myself padding even) I had to say four months. Then that boss let me do pretty much anything else I wanted to investigate (we had lots of hundred thousand to million dollar toys to play with industrial machines to study.)

I was the definition of self motivated and self initiative (the FAA once gave me an award saying that right before they restructured the department.) I even got a thanks but no thanks letter from the human resources department two weeks after I got another job. I learned early to bypass personnel and go directly to the guy that needed me, usually for a job they'd never even mentioned to personnel.

That company owned a Canadian gold mine and made a limited number of these six inch beryllium oxide souvenir rulers with real gold markings. I was the only person not from corporate that got one. It later got broken during my travels.

PCS and NextPOS were also good stories where I got a chance to do some amazing things working directly with customers (our distributors in the case of NextPOS which evolved into a much bigger company and changed their name.)

I've seen a lot and learned a lot, but never had a lot of self interest. I just wanted to understand things and help others. Now that I'm old and decrepit, those amazing days are over. But still... I'm not dead yet (Close maybe, but still wheezing... and I never smoked in my life. I refuse to wear a 'portable' defibrillator. Both my feet are wrapped in bandages three times a week. Every month the eye doctor pokes my eyeballs with needles. I do have a housekeeper and nurse that visits several times a week. I still drive... I ignore the screams and bumps. What? Dad drives in slow motion and Mom should.)

Three things drop me to the floor if I over exert myself (like walking three feet.) My blood pressure drops from over 200 to unmeasurably low. My sugar level has been good, but can also render me unconscious. I forget the third??? Usually this seems to happen at Walmart's for some reason?

I'm the nice guy that finishes last. Often astonishing some that just have to let me know. I've spent a lifetime politely listening to people explain things to me I'd learned in more depth 30 years before.

I gave up a full scholarship at Harvey Mudd because I was destroying the lives of 60 A student Asians (who thanks to me and the curve were now C and D students.) Later I found out I would have been just a year behind my high school buddy Paul, that went there.

Life. Where did these last [almost] six decades go?

Once you've chosen an investment

When is the best time to make it? Without delay. You invest for the payoff. Any delay that isn't justified is a delay in the payoff. What justifies a delay? Not other investments. That's an issue before you choose an investment, not after. So what then? Due diligence (an appraisal to evaluate potential.)

What people see when they look at a thing differs with each person. If other people don't see what you do it can be difficult to get them to see it. When I look at mars I see it's future. I see development. But that only happens if other people with the resources see it as well. I'm nobody.

Others do see it. Perhaps not exactly as I do, but that's par for the course. Because they do, it will happen someday in some way. It could easily be the wrong way. People are self centered which is only natural. As a result, their vision reflects their way. But any vision that includes other people has to consider they each have their own differing visions. Why do people that can't plan their own lives think it perfectly ok to plan the lives of others?

I look at mars and see private ownership by millions of colonists. I see a developed world where individual freedom is allowed to flourish. Apparently this is a fantasy because everybody else's vision, if it includes mars at all, is of a prison world with one fascist dictator calling all the shots.

They don't see it that way of course. To them, central planning is just how it must be done and it's just silly to think otherwise. We now live in a time of soft sell fascism. Take care of yourself. They certainly plan to take care of you.

Got nuthin' done today

As far as coding; otherwise it was a pretty busy day.

I might get a little work in by midnight... I just don't want to see the sunrise before I sleep. It happens too often.

googling Rodian belly dancer

They look so much alike!

Last week.

Other thoughts (of a simpler time.)

My evil plan is working!

I made a lot of coding progress today after figuring out a SQLite error I was having. I feel good!