Wiperless windshield - zaps free of frost, rain and bugkill.

I want McLaren's promised wiperless windshield for Christmas.  It's a radically right solution for rainy and dirty windshields - a buzz that drives the water and dust off the window so it never films or cakes or smudges in the first place. Imagine having the optimum view forward all the time, not just for a moment as the blade moves by. And no layer of frost. And reduced drag.

On 2015 models?

Old way

The chief designer for the McLaren sports car dropped a teaser that wiperless is coming soon. Motor Authority reports: 

"Frank Stephenson said his employer is developing a system that can repel material from a windshield by creating a force field using high-frequency sound waves.Such systems were originally created by the military for use on fighter jets. Stephenson didn’t go into detail but explained that an ultrasonic transducer on the screen could send 30 kHz waves of ultrasound across the surface and repel all debris--even snow and insects.  Benefits of the system are said to be improved visibility, since debris would be repelled instantly, as well as improved aerodynamic efficiency, due to less drag".

CNetTV links to a 2008 Fioravante demo video but I can't get the sound to work.
There's a video clip of a related concept which coats the windshield so that water beads on the glass instead of wetting it.

1-2-3-4, Who ya gonna vote for?

Thanks to the Harper government, Canada continues to gain over the US in economic freedom and the prosperity it brings.  Even with this advantage, PEI and NS are still the bottom jurisdictions in North America. The Fraser Institute reminds us to vote for candidates who respect your freedom to pursue what's good for you and your family.

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The little bar graph won't strain the intellect of a Grade Six scholar.  The short red bar on the left is for intrusive government and want. The tall blue bar is for greater freedom and personal prosperity. AB and SK are blue.

The Fraser Institute's annual review is out again.  Alberta wins by every metric and when you count in the benefits of our somewhat conservative national government, Saskatchewan joins it for top place in North America.  This isn't about having oil and gas, it's about citizens having choice and prospering because of it.  Despite the blessing of the Canadian umbrella and despite having been the birthplace of confederation, Prince Edward Island and its neighbour Nova Scotia are the bottom jurisdictions in North America for economic freedom.


From page 20 of the report:
"In some ways it is surprising the debate still rages because the evidence and theory favoring economic freedom match intuition:  it makes sense that the drive and ingenuity of individuals will produce better outcomes through the mechanism of mutually beneficial exchange than the designs of a small coterie of government planners, who can hardly have knowledge of everyone's values and who, being human, are likely to consider first their own well-being and that of the constituencies they must please when making decisions for all of us.

High speed evolution: Environmental stress triggers genetic variation. HSP90 is the key. UPDATE

New evidence points to a mechanism for fast evolution.  When heat-shock protein HSP70 is depleted during times of stress, orderly protein folding is disrupted and genetic variation emerges rapidly.  The cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus, lost its eyes and pigmentation while acquiring other skills after just thousands of years of cave living. Lab work comparing the cave and the open water varieties pinpointed the role of HSP90. "Because HSP90 governs the folding of the key regulators of growth and development it produces a fulcrum point for evolutionary change." Source at Science Daily News.

Solid ribbon model of the yeast Hsp90-dimer (α-helices = red, β-sheets = cyan, loops = grey) in complex with ATP (red stick diagram).^[1]

UPDATE:  Another environmental trigger for change, this time in stem cells. A low acid treatment transformed common body cells into a type of stem cell.  They call this STAP:  (Stimulus triggered acquisition of pluripotency).  It's a big deal.  Cells are reprogrammed after a short exposure to low ph conditions.  They can be cultured from that point to become full-service stem cells.  This isn't evolution but it means the medium for expressing genetic change is more flexible.

Kissing threatens western civilization.

Girl's kiss is called "sexual violence" and an "insult to a public official". The Italian Police Union is outraged.  One police officer is very happy.  Look at his eyes in the picture. Nina de Chiffre's street theatre is eclipsed by the madness of bureaucracies. (PC thought is a bigger hazard than the railway extension being protested).














In the same week, six year old Hunter Yelton was suspended from school for kissing a girl on the hand.  "We were doing reading group, and I leaned over and kissed her on the hand.  That's what happened." The Colorado Springs school accused him of sexual harassment. After an outcry of public shaming, the madded bureaucrats allowed the boy back into school and reduced the offense to misconduct. Sounds like a hyperactive kid that has trouble staying in bounds, but it was the adults not the kids with the biggest problem.

Wenceslas, Conservative Icon.

King Wenceslas distributed his own goods to help the poor.  He didn't send Social Services but went in person when it was inconvenient and cold.  He didn't wait to be begged, bullied or taxed but was on the lookout for opportunities to help.  Having a heart for the poor is a personal choice, not a government policy. Your heart is the engine. Policy is just the caboose.

His skull still venerated by Czechs.

I take another lesson from the sainted King.  His support staff was small, his security footprint almost invisible. Instead of a cabinet and a limo with armed motorcycle cops, he did his work with one able-bodied page. Smaller government tends to be better government.

“Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?”  “Sire, he lives a good league hence...

“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither, You and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither.” Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together, Through the cold wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather. ..Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing, You who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing.

Pictures show China's Jade Rabbit landed on the moon and ready to roam.

But you wouldn't know it to look at American media.  They scarcely noticed because it's embarrassing that the world's leader is now not even a follower.  In North America it's illegal to let a kid scuff her knees on the playground dirt.  It's not that people don't want to enter space.  200,000 volunteered for a one way trip to Mars.    Pictures below and more at the link.  h.t speaceweather.com

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Would you volunteer for a one way trip to Mars?

Lord Black: Proud, not Embarrassed.

"I can take care of myself, but I want to emphasize one point: I am proud and not embarrassed at all to have been sent unjustly to prison; to have been able to help victims of the U.S. justice system when I was there; to have got the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the statute used against me; and to have collected $5 million, by far the largest libel settlement in Canadian history, from the sponsors of the prosecution".

Rest of article at National Post. 

China needs a war

China needs defensible borders and so do her smaller neighbours. The big will prevail over the little.  China doesn't fear much from the Siberian Tundra, the Himalayan Massif or the jungle warlords but her opening east to the sea is crowded with competitors and enemies.  That's the trade door out and the attack door in.  A few miles of open sea was once a barrier but no longer.  Advanced technological societies sit on her doorstep and their US ally sails up and down with deadly tools nearby.  Only a few minutes of missile time buffer China.  She needs a bigger security buffer.

So do her neighbours.  Taiwan and Japan need that buffer and are entitled to it.  So do South Korea and  the Philippines and they are entitled to it.  They can't all have what they want.

The one option that never goes away is war.  If China can recover Taiwan peacefully, that will open the sea door.  If China can buy Siberia or North Korea like the US bought Alaska, that will open sea doors.

(Title doesn't have to pass if the neighbour's policy becomes subordinate to Beijing's.)
If China gets control of the Indian seacoast of Burma, that will open sea doors.
America can protest but it is sitting pretty with the best protected borders of any great state on earth.

China won't stop growing and despite short term economic malaise,  the work ethic, education and profit motivation of the Chinese assure  them an even bigger place in the future. The high volume of trade China has with the US pretty much rules out a hot war.  But that's not enough.  The law of the sea will have to make an exception for the seaward face of the new Chinese empire.  If China makes it worthwhile to Taiwan, North Korea, the Philippines, Siberia and the United States, war can be avoided but it may be painful for some.  Unfortunately the Chinese leadership is motivated to blame foreign threats when corruption at home and an excess of young unmarried males are threatening political control.

The stakes were raised when China claimed the islands in the "China Sea".  Now they are challenging the right of free passage to US ships.  This is a scary episode.  They ordered the American ship to stop. When it didn't, they parked a smaller naval vessel in the path of the Americans. (The American vessel, USS Cowpens was on a provocative mission shadowing the new Chinese carrier.)

For more educated background on this opening-to-the-sea argument, listen to Friedman and Kaplan of Stratfor.

Buy parkas, not bikinis.

This chart is climate.  Everything else is weather.

When Al Gore says the North Pole will melt
or you see snow on the pyramids of Egypt,
that's weather.   The 400,000 year picture is plain that parkas, not bikinis are the near future unless we get lucky with global warming.

There's the last half million years. The little box in the upper right is the last ten thousand years. If you take a hand lens to the chart, you might make out the last hundred years which gave birth to climate alarmism.  If you are a betting person, would you be saying colder or hotter is next?

Fake view in Las Vegas
h/t Starfighter441 in comments

Al Gore who said "the entire north polarized cap will disappear in five years" (2007) or more cautiously in this 2009 video clip, “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,”    --- was wrong.

I get a warm glow seeing snow on a camel's back and the frosted peaks of the Egyptian pyramids. That's schadenfreude but is still weather, though 112 years have passed since the last snowfall.

Real View in Cairo area.

The big picture shows a cozy interlude is ending.  We are reverting to the mean and the mean is chilly with ice advancing.

Buy Parkas

If you like a contrarian view in humour:

Gunfire in Beijing March 2012 - the true story is emerging.

Information is now emerging that Zhou Yongkang may have been behind a coup attempt in March of 2012. The gunfire "in the streets of Beijing" is now placed inside the Communist Party compound in Beijing (Zhongnanhai).  The target may have been Xi Ping, now President and General Secretary in China. (Both a bomb and a poison attack are named.).  Zhou (and associates) being charged with corruption is astonishing unless you see it as part of a cover up of the assassination attempt.  Zhou's son is still under house arrest.  The disgraced Bo Xilai may have been trying to raise a private army and have made common cause with Zhou at that time.

Zhou Yongkang

A summary of the earlier rumors is here. Bo Xilai discussed..

News from Outer Space: December 2013

A disturbance about 1 km in diameter in the outermost ring of Saturn has just been discovered by Cassini and given the name Peggy.  What is it?

Also from Cassini's view of Saturn:  There's a striking hexagonal storm at the pole.

Peggy

Hexagonal storm

The comet ISON has disappeared as it went around the sun.  Predicted as a possible naked eye wonder for early December, it has instead broken up and fizzed out.

Chelyabinsk lake with hole

The Chelyabinsk meteorite has been analyzed and it's history charted from near the beginning of our solar system when it became part of a 100 km object under frequent bombardment, was struck about 30 million years ago whereupon it moved out of the asteroid belt and into near-earth orbit until it was knocked loose from that 1.2 million years ago until it smacked into Russia February 15 2013.  Extraordinarily, scientists have some pieces of the object it broke off from 1.2 million years ago. A Japanese space craft rendezvoused with the 500 metre diameter asteroid, Itokawa, in 2005 and brought samples back to earth in 2010. The analysis of that rock shows the same history.  Links to the kaboom part of the story in Russia.

China's Jade Rabbit lunar lander will be touching down Saturday December 14th.

SpaceX delivered cargo into space orbit for $65 million dollars, $200 million dollars less than Arianespace charges.  Gamechanger as market forces enter space.

A narrow zone in Earth's Van Allen Belt has been discovered to  accelerate particles to near the speed of light.

A neutrino lab under a mile of Antarctic ice is on-line and collecting information left over from the creation of the universe.

The sharp decline in sun spots is turning into a big news story.  Expect surprises as earth may enter a prolonged cool phase or even a Little Ice Age.

Extra-solar planet detection is getting better all the time.  Now they have detected planets with water.

Previous edition of Space News from November.

Kill the exclusive clause. The Post Office can charge $1 or whatever it wants.

A dollar a stamp (March 31) and no home delivery by 2019 is a good deal for the Post Office. I'd like to see them make a profit.  It's not a good deal for us until a clause changes in the Canada Post Corporation Act. It's illegal to collect or deliver letters unless you charge customers three times the first class rate.

14. (1) Subject to section 15: The Corporation has the sole and exclusive privilege of collecting, transmitting and delivering letters to the addressee thereof within Canada.

I remember licking this to a 1st class letter

15. (1) The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14 (1) does not apply to...
15. (1) (e)   Letters of an urgent nature that are transmitted by a messenger for a fee at least equal to an amount that is three times the regular rate of postage payable for delivery in Canada of similarly addressed letters weighing fifty grams;

Most messages already bypass the post office and couriers, thanks to email. Email cleverly eludes the grip of the law but would surely have been targeted if lawmakers had seen it coming. In my foolish youth I pictured a local mail service that I would run out of a kiosk at the mall for half the price of a first class letter.  A couple times a day I'd let myself in to sort mail into destination slots, all in the same town. The outside would be an attractive wrap-around bank of mail boxes with a door and a groovy logo.  The threat of jail deterred me.

Kiosk could be modified to sport about
500 mail boxes, self-serve. Maybe just
a little roomier for the sorter inside.

Politically correct toilets for a nation of Sitzpinklers

High-tone coffee shops and delis want to make women out of men.  They refuse to offer a urinal, one of the most practical and sanitary inventions in the history of plumbing.  Grab bars, expensive tiles and taps, and custom sinks for wheelchairs get the money.  The urinal is verboten.  Thank the Germans for inventing the term, "Sitzpinkler" for men who have to sit to tinkle.  The banned urinal calls for half the time and, being touch-less, is far cleaner.

Why are these men's washrooms designed firstly for women and the handicapped and lastly for the main customer?   To walk into the washroom at Starbucks is to walk into a sermon on political correctness, a sermon I can't escape by plugging my ears.

German humour about Sitzpinklers.



Men's washroom at the Las Vegas Hilton.


"In German, the phrase for someone who sits and urinates; a "Sitzpinkler", is equivalent to wimp, wuss or pussy."

Tweedledum and Tweedledee battle over Castro-Obama handshake. Why not?

Tweedledum:  "Just some guy he met at a funeral".

"Kerry suggested that there was no planning or message associated with the handshake and that it was pure happenstance. "Ladies and gentlemen, today is about honoring Nelson Mandela," Kerry said. "The president was at an international funeral with leaders from all over the world. He didn't choose who's there".

Tweedledee: 

Is Barry bowing to Raoul? 

Tuesday’s handshake between Obama and Castro comes after six months of quiet diplomacy between the United States and Cuba—and Castro signaling he’s ready for bigger talks.

Footnote:  What's with handshakes? No precious bodily fluids are lost by the touch, even the touch of an enemy. You can keep up appearances by scowling and being stiff while shaking hands. Part of the gesture is to show you don't hold a weapon in your striking hand. I think the default should be "Shake".  Why not signal you can talk with enemies, consider them to be human though unlovable, and that the guy in front of you is not the personal embodiment of everything evil in the other country's policy?

Cabinet shuffles are more fun in Denmark

Michelle's sour face as she bumped her husband from sitting next to the beautiful PM of Denmark set me looking for more Thorning photos. What I discovered is that cabinet shuffles in Denmark are more fun than Canadian, but Canadian shuffles look like a party compared to the American sense of ceremony which is more suited to guest choral groups in a seniors home. A little happiness, informality and a lighter touch on security look well on a leader.

Yes, that is Ms Thorning-Schmidt, PM, in the white.
A lean team. More than just token males.
It's possible to look like Sarah Palin and be respected.

Smiles, a crowded bench. July 2013
A stouter team. An awkward bit of tie.

EPA and Budget appointments. HO HUM.

As a footnote, the entertaining three-photo sequence from the Mandela memorial which ends with Mrs. B.H. Obama looking askance at the blonde PM after getting her husband to trade places.  Soap opera at its best.

Canadian Politics are irrelevant Thank God.

Canadian politics are mostly irrelevant, coming in seventh after family and neighbourhood, internet, work, shopping, and entertainment activities.   (Internet is a transnational oddball, not even Canadian).  A #8 Robertson screwdriver, the Nanaimo bar and a drive across the prairie are more of my Canadian identity than antics in Ottawa.

We still love our politics, especially in an election year, but since government spending is only one sixth of the GDP  (15.9% cited in Cato report and down from 22% some years back), it's only reasonable and desirable that politics should be more of a hobby than a calling for most.

Chuang Tzu (369 BC - 286 BC) may have been the first to point out that less government is better government:  "They made no history"

"In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were “doing their duty.” They loved each other and did not know that this was “love of neighbor.” They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were “men to be trusted.” They were reliable and did not know that this was “good faith.” They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history."  -Chuang Tzu

Martin & Chretien share credit with Harper for having reduced the burden of government in Canada.  At the same time, the United States has been climbing from 18% to well over 20%.

Privacy? That ship has sailed. Ginormous internet theft.

Belarus servers played man-in-tbe-middle and re-routed millions of communications from businesses and governments through its copier.  This is the same trick NSA uses
but now it's done by a private criminal enterprise.  h/t smalldeadanimals

The idea is simple.  BGP routers decide what path messages will follow and depend on trust, telling each other what IP destinations they can easily deliver to.  The winner is the one with the smallest block of IP addresses that includes the destination address.   Sometimes people lie.

“What makes a man-in-the-middle routing attack different from a simple route hijack? Simply put, the traffic keeps flowing and everything looks fine to the recipient,…” Renesys wrote in a blog post about the hijacks. “It’s possible to drag specific internet traffic halfway around the world, inspect it, modify it if desired, and send it on its way. Who needs fiberoptic taps?”

Lots of detail at the source.  The good news is that Renesys sends tagged data out into the internet all day long and retrieves it so see if it followed a logical path or was detoured.  On the other hand, if the thieves only tell a few targeted servers to re-route data, Renesys may not hear about it.

Chuang Tzu predicted this thousands of years ago:

In taking precautions against thieves who cut open satchels, search bags, and break open boxes, people are sure to cord and fasten them well, and to employ strong bonds and clasps; and in this they are ordinarily said to show their wisdom. When a great thief comes, however, he shoulders the box, lifts up the satchel, carries off the bag, and runs away with them, afraid only that the cords, bonds, and clasps may not be secure; and in this case what was called the wisdom (of the owners) proves to be nothing but a collecting of the things for the great thief.

This applies to passwords and credit card information too. You are obliged to use increasingly complex alphanumeric passwords for everything while your overlords are robbed blind by hackers who steal those secrets by the million.

Privacy? That ship has sailed.  The choice is between a dynamic identity in an open network or a private identity in the backwoods.  Both are attractive but the open one needs power to counter-attack thieves.

One easy trick to eliminate last minute shopping.

Don't apologize for last minute Christmas shopping.
Re-Brand it.

What you really are is a Just In Time Shopper.


Like the pioneering Toyota and other industry leaders you have applied JIT to the holiday season.

Little bird in a tree is a master of math

An edible bird perched in the branches of a tree is exploiting a space-filling algorithm to maximize its safety at the same time as the tree exploits that algorithm to distribute its branches, twigs and leaves to grab light.  Though single twigs seem chaotic and random, they are optimized for the bird's defence and the tree's offense.

Hawk defeated by math.

You are 100% vulnerable to hacks. Privacy ain't what it used to be.

This should be a movie.   When journalist lecturer Penenberg's laptop froze, telling him to dial a 312 area number to unlock, and simultaneously his cell phone began vibrating in the middle of a class, he knew he had been hacked.  All his passwords, savings, investments, even the phone numbers of some of his anonymous sources were tracked down.  Oddly, this was the plan.  He had contacted SpiderLabs and challenged them to get into his stuff.  Below is the plan of attack they set out.  You and I are so vulnerable.   Read the original entertaining story here.

This isn't a bad news story, it's a news story, like the discovery of antibiotics or gunpowder.   Privacy is like tribal identity, something that is being redefined.   It's nice living in a small village but cities often offer more.  I love being private but a resilient identity in a large open network can offer more.

Mandela: Soft-pedal the hagiography. UPDATE

Let Mandela be remembered as a kindly old guy, who was not vengeful, didn't steal his country blind, and helped South Africa move away from Apartheid.  Soft pedal the hagiography as leaders great and small climb aboard the hallelujah train.  He was a Marxist dupe and slept with his Winnie who organized the murder of black opponents.  (He later divorced her).   I'm glad he played a role in recovering from Apartheid but his speeches are embarrassing to a conservative.  You can test this by seeing that the usual lefty suspects are loudest in his praise. I salute honourary Canadian, Nelson Mandela for a peaceable character but will follow neither his politics nor philosophy.

UPDATE: Read this PBS interview with South Africa's Justice Minister, Coetsee, who set in motion the talks with Mandela while in prison, met personally with him, and came to respect his character, more than just "a kindly old guy" as I wrote above.

UPDATE: A book draft Mandela wrote while in prison can be read on line.  This story points out he was an active member of the South African Communist Party and certain views he held were erased from the later book, The Long Walk.

Below, a nice picture upon Mandela's 1990 release from prison, found at the National Post. The smiling Winnie okayed the killing of political opponents with a burning tire necklace,  liked vengeance and went in for communism.  (Coetsee reports that Mandela's release was behind schedule because Winnie was at the hairdressers.)

Moderate and more appropriate encomiums upon his career (reproduced below) can be found  here at Instapundit and again  here, also at Instapundit.    (My education points to "encomia" but my heart to "encomiums".

Jihad Sux

RIP Nelson Mandela. No he was not a saint. He was not in the mold of Gandhi. If he was a communist that is a sin he will have to answer for.

1) Soon after his release from prison he divorced Winnie Mandela. She who apparently never turned from her support for vengeance, communism, retribution and hate. +1

2) When many anti-Apartheid people urged violence to topple the regime he no longer did so after prison. +1

3) Once the Apartheid government relented he was the most powerful and popular person in all of Africa. He ruled more moderately than his enemies predicted. +1

4) He protected and promoted the reconciliation process which granted more amnesty and forgiveness to his enemies than his enemies had any right to expect. +1

5) He stepped away from political power when even more would have been his had he only asked. +1

6) He did not however use his world acclaim and statesmanship to condemn Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. As an apparently great man he could have done more and should have. But we could say that of all great men.

STALLION

There are folks who may object to what I am about to write, but I think I speak the truth in this:
I do not celebrate the death of Nelson Mandela. He seemed like a kindly old guy in his later years, and he's had his share of difficulties. Nevertheless, I do not celebrate his life either. He was most certainly NOT a Lincoln or Jefferson.
Mandela objected to apartheid. I don't blame him - it was a stupid system that wasted generations of talent and productivity. Nevertheless, he chose the wrong path for his people by choosing Marxism as the political ideology that would lead to his people's 'freedom.' It was very fashionable for the elite of third world societies to earn their higher education in London or Paris and attach themselves spiritually and ideologically to Marxism. The naturalness of the attachment stems from their observation that their respective homelands were, at the time they were getting their educations, likely still under the colonial rule of some western European nation, and the only political movement that seemed to have the strength to oppose the West was Soviet or Chinese Marxism. Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot and a whole bunch of others came to that conclusion, and unfortunately so did Mandela.
It would have been vastly better for his people if he had instead simplified his thoughts and concepts on the just future for his people - a future where his people did not spend their energies trying to 'divide the spoils' of an overthrown apartheid regime, but instead used that overthrow to claim what was theirs truly by birthright - the individual fruits of their labor, the opportunity to pursue personal betterment in a financial or social sense, to exercise their INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
Then, Mandela would have been a true icon for the ages.
Instead, he's just another failed Marxist ideologue whose nation gets more and more screwed up with every passing day, with the difference between pre and post apartheid being just that instead of having the creative and productive potential of their lives wasted by the imposition of a personally enslaving and degrading system imposed on them, they instead impose such a system on themselves.

If you're still with me, here's the kindly gentleman singing with some marxists about killing white people.  Maybe he was just going along for the ride that day.

Serve them right if Harper resigns.

If the rumour-mongerers prove prescient, it serves them right.  If our PM deliberately renews the leadership of the Conservative Party (and then resigns), the man they call names and despise could send them tumbling. Picture the tug of war with a leader on one end of the rope and a press gang tugging away on the other end to bring him low.  If he lets go, its their own rabble that falls. Those catcalls about "despot, tyrant, criminal, corrupt and power-hungry" would come to nothing.  I suspect name-callers of harbouring the sins they charge others with.

I'm happy to picture the honeymoon glow for a new Conservative leader just as the next federal election arrives.  More voters are swayed by the personal than policy.

Best PM in my lifetime.

Robot makes better burgers. More adult kids move home.

360 gourmet burgers an hour come from a robot that pays for itself in a year and frees adult kids from dead end jobs as burger flippers.  They can move home and have time to demonstrate for the $15/hour minimum wage.   Here  and  here.  Pictures and story from singularityhub.com

Gourmet?  Yes.  The patty can be fresh ground, formed and grilled.  The tomato and pickle are sliced the moment the patty comes off the grill.  Big savings on labour mean better quality buns and beef can be bought.  You'll probably have one-click ordering just like at Amazon. The bill is paid and the patty shaped for the grill with one touch.

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A dose of economic freedom may save Detroit.

A dose of economic freedom may yet save Detroit. (Why stop at Detroit?)  Paul Rand has a plan and opened a GOP office in Detroit to advance Black American prosperity.    Ballsy of him.  The plan is to create Freedom Zones with five points:

1.   5% flat income tax for people and businesses inside a designated freedom zone.
2.   Reduced payroll tax in the zone.
3.   Education vouchers for parents in the zone to choose their kids' school.
4.   A stop to EPA air quality penalties inside the zone.
5.   Exemption from union-wage-only laws for government work done inside the zone.

Breaking free

Why do people have to be desperate before they give up folly and why do they try last what will solve a problem?  We had an example this week where the White House screwed up management of Obamacare's Coming Out party and after a month of agony hired six skilled business people. Now they're advertising  the site is being fixed "with private sector velocity and effectiveness".  That should have been first not last.

Paul Rand is advocating shortcuts, using what I call the "Two Question Principle".
First question: If you had only half the time or half the money to get a job done, what shortcuts would you take.  Second question:  Why not take those shortcuts anyway?

What's notable about his five points is they are federal options but most of the screw up is caused by local politicians.  If the city council would pitch in with some shortcuts of their own, Detroit could come roaring back.

Less friction to keep it moving
than to start it moving.

Remember, if you don't like the results, you can tune the direction the freedom zones are going.  Doing more of the same old is the wrong option.  Once you get something moving along, it takes less effort to steer it.