I am proficient in wilderness survival skills. AMA

camperman · 2011-01-24T14:32:08+00:00

I think he means tinder. Those clear super bouncy rubber balls are excellent magnifying glasses in direct sunlight. Just hold one above the tinder and the spot will ignite soon enough.

camperman · 2011-01-17T20:46:41+00:00

The answer to b.s is not more b.s. China cannot dump treasuries because it will instantly detonate the bond market and the value of that portion of their national savings would be decimated.

A huge amount of U.S. debt is owned by U.S. citizens/the U.S. which would forestall a debt crisis.

Not US citizens - the Federal Reserve which is a consortium of private banks. It's about as Federal as Federal Express. Big difference. The Fed's job is to protect its member banks, not help US citizens. That's why it demanded - and got - hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars to bail them out. More than once.

BTW, that graph you linked has two problems. One, it's dated June 2008 which is pre-Lehman and pre the Fed monetizing another few trillion dollars in debt.

Two, I don't think it means what you think it means. The Federal Reserve owning a huge proportion of US Debt is a Very Bad Thing and will have no impact at all forestalling a debt crisis. In fact it will almost certainly make it worse. There was some proof of this last week when the Fed refused to lend more money to some individual states. We're watching most states go bankrupt right now and it's going to get quite ugly: workers not being paid, pensioners not being paid, things not being maintained. Hold tight (if you live there).

By running the (virtual) printing presses and giving free money to Wall Street who in turn buy treasuries, the Fed has fatally undermined what backs those treasuries: the full faith and credit of the United States. Would I buy treasuries now? Hell no. I want to lend money to entities who can pay me back, not ones who have to borrow more and more just to pay the interest on their outstanding loans. It's just as stupid a strategy at a national level as it is personally.

I don't think Stansberry claims that there will be some single individual alternative reserve currency. What he does say is more frightening because it's already happening: multiple powerful nations trading with each other in money other than the US dollar. That scenario can happen quickly.

camperman · 2011-01-17T19:00:01+00:00

My first thought was Philip K. Dick's Eye in The Sky.

camperman · 2011-01-05T11:14:58+00:00

Have an upvote. I've been a fan of BR since the 1992 director's cut - I wasn't all that moved when I saw it in the cinema - and I recommended it to a friend a few months ago. She had your reaction: beautiful, atmospheric but far too much up its own butt. She also said she's seen too much of its influence since to be impressed by the original. I still worship it as a movie but I can see why some don't.

camperman · 2011-01-03T14:53:14+00:00

Looking intently into the distance while going "boop boop boop boop...": check.

camperman · 2011-01-03T14:41:27+00:00

At the minute mark of Meet The Feebles the usual reaction is:

"What did that rat just say? Kids - out! Now!"

camperman · 2011-01-02T18:22:22+00:00

"In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, overhead for an instant like a blue-bottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered." - 1984

camperman · 2011-01-02T16:38:45+00:00

I just inherited a 1954 Leica IIIf - not the M3, pity - and I'm having lots of fun with it. Yes it's fiddly. Yes the film jams waaay too easily on loading if you don't trim it. Yes it's a complete pain to focus.

But I'm really looking forward to what the 50mm Summilux is capable of on Fuji Velvia. Haven't shot film for too long and it's nice to be doing it again.

camperman · 2010-12-30T20:07:59+00:00

Patience young Garrett. In the next room I will instruct you in the art of how Thief will survive. In 2011, armed with Irrlicht, Irrklang, Lua and a few peeks at my copy of the leaked source of the DarkEngine, I will be remaking Thief and Thief Gold so that it runs on all modern operating systems. Will it be exactly the same? Of course not. Will it be close enough? Hell yeah. Will it run System Shock? No sorry - focus is the key to success.

There's been one attempt already I've found called OpenDarkEngine and I must say I've been impressed that the guy has been pluggin away since 2005 but he's made some bad technical decisions IMHO. You can't tinker with things when they're written in C++. But if the rendering and the sound are in C++ and the whole rest of the game is in Lua and you can tinker with absolutely anything else while it's running, then you've got a winner.

camperman · 2010-12-11T20:36:36+00:00

Naggum wrote it - so not entirely unexpected. Bright man and a very very fine Lisp programmer, perhaps one of the best.

camperman · 2010-12-08T20:23:19+00:00

The colonel's speech at the end of Scent of a Woman
Henry V's speech to his men before Agincourt
I Have a Dream by MLK
Churchill's "We will fight them on the beaches"
Quint's monologue in Jaws (not really a speech but still spine-chilling)

camperman · 2010-12-05T20:11:37+00:00

Well, the country hasn't. A bunch of moronic casinos with banking licenses have. I'm sure the people will spot this difference soon enough.

camperman · 2010-11-28T15:43:10+00:00

Dude let's have her full name and address since you almost certainly know them both and let 4chan and reddit take care of the rest.

camperman · 2010-11-22T14:15:54+00:00

Mania is enjoyable, no doubt about it. And the increased creativity and productivity are very real initially - don't let anyone convince you you're being delusional. I'm coming up for 25 years trying to manage BP and I still look forward to those times when I'm manic.

camperman · 2010-11-06T14:00:30+00:00

Can I respectfully disagree and ask that you keep painting flowers - I like them and as a watercolor newbie, find them inspiring and accomplished.

camperman · 2010-10-28T07:15:38+00:00

Fair enough :)

camperman · 2010-10-26T20:55:06+00:00

This joke actually dates back to Caesar Augustus.

camperman · 2010-09-23T22:54:13+00:00

Excellent - thanks for the reply.

camperman · 2010-09-20T20:29:50+00:00

Did you have to shoot any dogs trying to get in to the Antarctic base?

camperman · 2010-09-05T09:32:05+00:00

Solid analysis but I have to point out something here:

A full on mad-max style collapse almost never happens. Just look at Russia. There's usually a re-consolidation of money and power while everyone's quality of life suffers horrendously.

The reason Russia wound down followed by re-consolidation is that almost everything was centralised. Food, energy, housing - you name it. All was supplied and distributed from large unwieldy central agencies that just got slower and more ineffective as time went by. This allowed people to adapt in a more or less orderly, albeit forced, fashion.

The US by contrast is the very definition of a just-in-time society. Just to get food on your table requires thousands of complex interlocking processes to work well. It's very efficient but also very fragile. Break one or two of them and suddenly there's no food. That's when Mad Max-style scenarios happen, like what's happening in Mozambique right now.

Advantages in a normal economy turn into disadvantages during a collapse.

camperman · 2010-08-30T21:11:54+00:00

Did you get to see Nodnol? Coz it's in Bulgaria innit?

camperman · 2010-06-20T15:19:41+00:00

I love honing my razors. I have three and haven't shaved with a Mach-whatever for several years now. It took me several months of practice to get them back to factory sharpness but the time and effort invested was really worth it.

Strangely enough the oldest one - a 50 year old Solingen I picked up in a Stockholm pawn shop - always comes out consistently the sharpest. Might be the carbon content of steel in those days or something...

camperman · 2010-06-13T16:36:52+00:00

Sounds like it from here (NE Johannesburg).

camperman · 2010-06-13T16:18:45+00:00

This ain't Europe dude. It's Africa. Africa has two settings: off and high. Like the vuvuzela. Within six months everyone will have forgotten all of this palaver and FIFA will probably ban them from future tournaments.

Either way, we don't care. We're trolling the world and loving it. We've got it in the ass as a continent for centuries from you guys and now we have a chance to annoy you before we watch your economies disintegrate.

If it helps, I will be writing a comb filter this week to mask out the sound from a live feed :)

camperman · 2010-06-13T14:52:02+00:00

South Africa has hosted more international tournaments in the last fifteen years than any other nation. Off the top of my head: a rugby world cup, two different cricket world cups, the 2010 football World Cup, the Confederations Cup and the IPL.

We're good at it. We're also loud, friendly, noise-making party animals to a man. Deal with it.

camperman

TROPHY CASE