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I plan to buy a house next spring, so I'll almost certainly need a new refrigerator. There's a problem: they don't make the fridge I want, and never have. I can't figure out why.
        Refrigerators today are quite different than antique ones, using a different coolent because of the ozone layer, better insulation, the use of rare earth magnets in the motors, and other improvements.
        But they're still incredibly wasteful.
        The fridge I want has two vents outside, much like dryer vents but insulated. There is an electronic outside thermometer, one in the refrigerator, and one inside the freezer.
        When the temperature outside is above seventy fareignheight, the heat taken from the fridge is vented outside, so the air conditioner doesn't have to work harder to cool the hot air refrigerators let out inside the house.
        Under seventy the air is vented into, rather than outside, the house. If the heat is on, it doesn't work as hard.
        But most of all is winter. It's ludicrous that we pump the heat from our freezers with a lot of energy expenditure, while freezing air is right outside that could come in the intake hose and freeze and cool your food. At freezing, this fridge doesn't need the compressor at all and compressors take a lot of energy to operate.
        I don't know why nobody is selling those things.

There is an article in the Guardian called Britain is heading for another 2008 crash: here's why.

The premise seems to be that government running a budget surplus leads to contraction in the private sector i.e. recession. Therefore, austerity will continue to make things worse for us.

The reasoning is very simple, perhaps simplistic.

You may be objecting at this point: but why does anybody have to be in debt? Why can’t everybody just balance their budgets? Governments, households, corporations … Everyone lives within their means and nobody ends up owing anything. Why can’t we just do that? Well there’s an answer to that too: then there wouldn’t be any money. This is another thing everybody knows but no one really wants to talk about. Money is debt.

I understand that people may borrow money to invest in e.g. a business where they might need to buy machinery and to pay staff before the profits start to roll in, and that hopefully the profits will be large enough to pay back the load and to make a living, but that's where my small brain gives up.

What is the rest of the story?

Also, note the graph of house prices.

Update: here come the sub-prime mortgages again. Only this time we, the public, have to bail out the banks when it all goes horribly wrong. Remember how they changed the law after the last crisis, so that the same terrible fate would not befall the banks again.

The UK's descent into fascism accelerated today when Home Secretary Theresa May introduced a McCarthyist witch-hunt against "extremists" of all kinds in the public sector.

In other news, David Cameron has positioned the UK as China's best friend in the West ahead of all other countries. He had to promise never to speak to the Dalai Lama ever again though, to be best friends with China

Amnesty International and other groups concerned with human rights issues in China are expected to protest in St James' Park on Tuesday and it is expected that there will also be a pro-China protest.

Recently I read a post lamenting the fact that cheaper LCDs may show only 262,144 colors (18-bit), despite 16,777,216 colors (24-bit) having been more or less the standard among various software and hardware since the '90s. Out of curiosity, I tested my own machine, and soon I was testing everything at my immediate disposal.

The methodology went like this. I took a nice photo in JPG format, reduced it to 21-bit, 18-bit, and 15-bit, and saved separate BMP files. Double checked with a hex editor to make sure the files were different. Then I viewed the files and noted which ones I could actually distinguish.

My old but awesome NEC laptop showed 21 bits on its built-in LCD and 24 bits on an external monitor. さすがだＮＥＣ！！！！

Everything else tested showed only 18 bits. Panasonic Toughbook T8. Fujitsu Lifebook S2210. WTF, guys?

Even desktop machines connected to CRT monitors were only 18-bit.
Trident 8900
Intel 855GM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200, FX 5700, 7600GT

:(

Oh hey... I found the 'edit' button. Guess I should make a note here in the original entry that my results were not actually accurate (see later post). Oops.

The Guardian and Channel 4 News each report about a young British mother who went to the "Islamic State" to join her jihadi husband (a former Guantánamo Bay detainee) but changed her mind, describing life there as, "not my cup of tea."

The gangster mentality that she encountered amongst other women and the squalid living conditions that the jihadi wives and children had to endure were not to her liking, so she and the children fled where they were held in Syria near the Turkish border by a gang of smugglers who needed strong convincing that she wasn't an ISIS supporter.

She claims she went there to try to talk some sense into her husband, to plead with him to come home. She wants to come back to the UK, but what fate awaits her?

Last year Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police and policing lead for the government's Prevent counter-terrorism strategy, warned that Britons returning from Syria would be stopped at the border and face arrest.

How could anyone be so naive, at the age of 33 and having had five children? And living in the UK where we still just about have free speech and the freedom of the press? How could you possibly not know what it would be really like? How could you voluntarily take five innocent, defenceless children willingly and knowingly into a war zone?

Female ex-Muslim anti-Islamist campaigner Maryam Namazie writes in the Guardian "Why I speak out against Islamism."

The article is superbly written and makes very clear points regarding the importance of the ability to criticise religion (of any kind) to facilitate social progress.

The complex situation regarding Islamism, Islam, Muslims, Muslim culture and "the Muslim Community" is outlined making clear distinctions between each, and in particular the range of opinions (and beliefs) within them. This contrasts with the (bigoted) simplistic views (pro- and anti-) presented in the Western media and which frequently leads to Islamophobic attacks against peaceful and innocent people.

What is particularly refreshing to see written in main-stream Western media is the following:

The labelling of much-needed criticism of Islamism as antisocial, even dangerous by left apologists sees dissent through the eyes of Islamists and not the many who refuse and resist. How else are we to show real solidarity with those who struggle against the theocracies we have fled from – if not through criticism? The fight against Islamism and the need for international solidarity apparently does not enter into their calculation.

In short: things will not improve unless we are free to talk.

The BBC has a story about children being abused, having been accused of witchcraft, in the UK in 2015.

It would appear that there are significant numbers of people who really believe in witches, witchcraft, black magic and evil spirits here in 2015.

An NSPCC spokesman said: "While the number of child abuse cases involving witchcraft is relatively small, they often include horrifying levels of cruelty.

Small children have been thrown out of their homes by ignorant, hysterical parents, and in some cases murdered.

Of course, money is involved.

...within churches there was often a financial motivation behind accusations.

"The pastor says there's a witch in this church today; looks around and points to a child.

"That means public humiliation for the family. The next step is exorcism which is not done for free. It's a money-making scam."

The Witchcraft Act 1735 appears to have been written by learned people who took the opinion that Witchcraft was an impossible crime and so it outlawed the pretence of witchcraft. The law was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951. Finally, this was replaced in 2008 by Consumer Protection Regulations.

So there you have it.

It was the only life-bearing planet in the entire universe; the very first planet to have life. It was the only planet in existence to have the conditions necessary for biogenesis, including being a double planet, each orbiting each other. The double planet was one of the keys of biogenesis, because of the tides. The timing of orbits and gravities had to be perfect, as well as chemical and photonic conditions.

        Life has a hard time getting started. This was the first planet on which it was possible. It would be billions of years before any other planet had these conditions.

        In time, its rotation slowed as its sister planet Theia went farther away and took up an eccentric orbit around the star.

        It was a very rich planet. Rich in metals, rich in diversity of vegetation once life had evolved that far, vast riches of water, and very rich in hydrocarbons. It was rich in chemicals and conditions conducive to abiogenesis. One of the planet's fauna evolved to the point of sentience, then the arts, than the sciences, until their technologies were very advanced. By the time this had come about, though, the slightly smaller sister had wandered away. The Vulcans never knew of it.

        The Vulcans were a very religious people who worshiped Plutus, a god everyone could see and love. When the heretic prophet Ragnarok was twenty three, he warned them that Plutus had told him to inform everyone that he was commanding them to explore outer space, that there were vast riches there, and their very existence depended on it.

        But space exploration isn't cheap, and the Vulcans couldn't see any monetary payback, only expense. Space travel wasn't started.

        Fifty years later Ragnarok spoke of an evil that only Plutus could save them from, and said it was on its way, and called it Theia. He spoke before a crowd one day, saying Plutus had spoken to him in a dream. As they listened intently, he informed them that their god was angry because they had never left Vulcan and was going to destroy the Vulcans, and Ragnarok and his family were the only ones who would survive the cataclysm unless he told anyone of his dream, in which case he would die instantly and his family would perish as well. His blasphemy was met with a storm of stones, and he died there broken and bloody. The mob then murdered his family and set his house on fire.

        But Ragnarok was right. The rich are never satisfied with their riches, so poured more and more of their seemingly limitless hydrocarbon riches into industry and commerce, all worshiping Plutus with all their hearts. Technology brought wealth, and was developed to a very high degree.

        A century after the would-be savior Ragnarok was stoned to death, the Vulcan culture was already in decline. They developed space travel, but they never saw the signs of the decline. The denizens of a declining civilization never do. But space travel was developed despite its seemingly nonexistent to meager payoff, and a colony was planted on the next planet out from theirs, the third, and another on the fourth. The third planet was uninhabitable because of its almost completely nitrogen atmosphere, and space men and women had to wear oxygen masks and very heavy clothing outside. It was very cold there, having very low concentrations of greenhouse gasses. The planet was called “Schnee”.

        Schnee was the reason space travel was actually developed on Vulcan. Vulcan had been much like Raj a few centuries earlier, but had gradually warmed, becoming hotter and drier. The area near the equator become a desert with fewer and fewer forms of life, and its oceans started shrinking, the water entering the atmosphere as vapor and staying there. Collecting this water was very expensive, so they started looking at Schnee for water. It was a hard life for the scientists and ice miners there, many of whom froze to death.

        The fourth planet, Raj, was much nicer. It had a nitrogen atmosphere with plenty of oxygen for animals to breathe, and carbon dioxide for plants to breathe and warm the planet, so had very comfortable temperatures near its equator. Scientists were there before too long, followed by rich tourists, followed by rich immigrants who went for its beautiful weather and the wonderful Marineris Ocean's seashores. As Vulcan became hotter, Raj became the star's ruling planet. All still worshiped Plutus.

        Vulcan was dying, but wasn't yet dead when Theia returned. It had been in its eccentric orbit for billions of years, its orbits often changed drastically by a gas giant and a ringed planet.

        Theia seemed to be headed directly to Raj! It came very close, its gravity from its larger mass than Raj's and its nearly all iron composition tearing away almost all of Raj's atmosphere. Animals, including the sentient Rajians whose ancestors had immigrated from Vulcan died in hours. Flora came to its end shortly later.

        Raj's gravity altered Theia's course, and it was now headed directly to Schnee. Vulcan had fallen so far that its meager population of Vulcans had no idea of the destruction that had hit Raj, now dead, and what awaited Schnee. It mattered not to them, for they knew that they were doomed. Ragnarok's prophesy was well on its way to being true -- but no one would be left alive to tell tales of the blasphemous prophet.

        The Vulcans on Schnee saw Theia coming, but were helpless to do anything about it. There were few of them left, as well.

        At first it was a white dot in the night sky that got brighter and brighter every evening, then bigger and bigger. Before long it was a huge circle. It hit Schnee with tremendous force, releasing tremendous energies. It made a giant splash of molten rock and metal, and steam from the suddenly boiled ice. Vulcans who still had binoculars could see rings around Schnee, but there were few Vulcans, let alone binoculars. They, the few animals, meager vegetation, and microbes in Schnee's atmosphere that had ridden to Schnee with the Vulcans were the only life in the entire universe.

        Plutus had his revenge, making Vulcan so hot anything combustible burned, and soon there were rivers of flowing lead. Schnee was covered in an ocean of magma, and Raj was hit by so many meteors that all traces of Vulcan activity were erased completely. Plutus had not only destroyed the Vulcans, but all evidence of their very existence.

        It was finally only the microbes in Schnee's atmosphere that lived, who had no way of appreciating the beauty of Schnee's rings. Which was a pity, as they were very beautiful rings indeed.

Right-thinking Tory Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Freudian-Slip has announced today that the decent, honest, noble, compassionate Conservative Party would like to encourage the poor to work as hard as the Chinese and Americans.

How they'll achieve this is novel and exciting.

A previous Labour government introduced a system of Tax Credits for people in work with families (i.e. children to feed) but on low incomes which, without the tax credits, would mean that they were in poverty. So, the idea is it pays to work hard.

Note that we are talking about tax credits - a rebate of some of your Income Tax (a tax discount) - not a hand-out for "scroungers."

This is the good part. Those intellectual giants of the Conservative Party reason that, if they abolish Tax Credits (which are only paid to those on a gross annual income of under £16,500 or $25,000) those people will be so motivated and empowered that they will move into better-paid jobs!

“There’s a pretty difficult question that we have to answer, which is essentially: are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in the way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in the way that Americans are prepared to work hard? And that is about creating a culture where work is at the heart of our success.”

Hunt also suggested in the interview that those reliant on tax credits and benefits lacked self-respect. “Dignity is not just about how much money you have got ... officially children are growing up in poverty if there is an income in that family of less than £16,500. What the Conservatives say is how that £16,500 is earned matters.

Meanwhile, in this brave, new, flexible and empowered labour market of short-term and zero-hours contracts, hard-working Britons are so scared of being off sick at places like Sports Direct that they're being taken away by emergency ambulance.

Work harder for your crumbs, plebs.

Disclaimer: I've never voted Labour (or Tory) in my life. But I do always vote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_orOT3Prwg#t=4m54s

A Japanese man is seen sitting at his computer, attempting to light his cigarette with an oil lighter while chatting with another person who is apparently using vocaloid software. He adds more lighter fluid to the lighter. Some of it spills. When he finally ignites the match, the lighter itself ignites, causing him to drop it. He puts down the match. As he fumbles around, the flames spread, and a girly computer voice warns: "behind you, behind you"

It's all down hill from there.