Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz - Part 3
Posted On: Thursday - November 7th 2019 1:05PM MST
In Topics: Cars Books Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from Part 2, and Part 1)
You know, I'd thought I'd finished the book, but I noticed a bookmark and saw that I hadn't read the last 20 pages! Luckily, that doesn't change anything for the previous parts of this review of Bob Lutz's Car Guys vs Bean Counters. After this brief history of the American auto industry, the part about the gas crises and the foreign completion, GM's forays into alliances all over the world, some discussion of the innovative Saturn division, and just a bit about the author's time at Chrysler, the book gets to his final 10 year-long stint at General Motors. He started back in on September 1, '01, after 3 decades away, as a vice-Chairman reporting to the CEO Rick Waggoner.
Much of the rest of the book is about Bob Lutz's problems with GM's management style, that of conformity, harmony, and reliance on data, rather than that of the semi-autocratic leadership he'd have liked to have been. The car guys were being stifled. As I've written, these "car guys" per the author, are not what you'd think. Bob Lutz was good at marketing (and leading, of course), and his type of marketing expertise is just pure "feelz". What do the customers really think in the showroom? Where should we put the chrome to make this car look the coolest? How should the grill look? (I doubt he understands the first bit about the heat exchanger behind it - erroneously called a "radiator" vs. a "convector".)
Bob Lutz's car guys were the ones developing the clay models of the car bodies and placing all the exterior and interior details having a little knowledge of stamped parts vs. machined ones, types of materials, etc. along with it. Even early on, the GM execs realized "these guys are just artists". It does take a feel as opposed to hard data, for which you only get from surveys that really can't be trusted, part of Mr. Lutz's problems with what he calls the "bean counters". It's not like hard data from the engineers as to "this change in ignition and injector timing will result in oil temperature 5 C lower at the reservoir", "this torsion rod is specified for anything up to 220 ft-lb", "the new changes from the 'car guys' resulted in a drag coefficent 0.025 higher", etc.
I mean, the car's got to not break regularly at under 120,000 miles, as this ain't the 1970s. The car's got to get the gas mileage the 'car guys' are advertising. The car's got to be manufacturable for a cost that let's GM make money at 100,000 units annually. I don't think the author really has a problem with that stuff, so I'll generously say that his "bean counters" are the ones on the MBA side of things at GM that he noted loved to institute meetings, metrics, and more management, resulting in a "Performance Management Process" and lots of other bureaucracy that is rightly derided in this book. Without them, letting the car guys run things, you can get this:
There were definitely people there at GM, Ford, Chrysler, and AMC - I'm not so sure about - that knew how to create beautiful functional vehicles back in the day. The Corvette even gets damn good mileage for the 2 people and maybe one small duffel bad that can ride - it's got that low drag coefficient that I wouldn't be surprised brings its best mileage speed up toward 70 mph. There were and still are the Ford Mustangs, the Dodge Chargers, etc., and for the foreigners, that Datsun 240-280-Z(X), the 1980s-'90s Toyota Celicas. Perhaps these sports cars, not near the majority of the vehicles made by each manufacturer, just give the companies a good name. The rest of the vehicles have to to be economical and functional though and make money. You can't run the company based on a few beautiful vehicles the car guys got lucky with.
When you don't have these "designers" running things enough, you can get products like the GM Aztek. I personally care about function over form, but even I noted that as an ugly vehicle the first time I saw one. I thought better of doctoring up an image of this monstrosity for this post in fear of it bringing down MS Paint. Bob Lutz brings up this very vehicle, "the Quasimodo of crossovers"*, in the book in a section on what not to do. You might also get this:
"When you said we were gonna go for a ride in your 'vette, this is NOT what I pictured. How dare you? Drop me off back at school, behind the bushes, where no one can see me get out!"
"But Greta, I thought you loved me?!"
Now, we get to that big contradiction. Of all the projects, good and bad, that Mr. Lutz was involved in during that recent 10-years at General Motors, the Chevy Volt was the one he sounds most proud of.** On the Volt, well, Mr. Lutz and his car guys "designed", meaning determined the body shape and the styling of the exterior and interior, of the car that was a smash hit at the Detroit auto show in '07. The Japanese executives had blown it off as just for show, and of course, it somewhat was, as the show car had 2 old-fashioned lead-acid batteries just to let it drive in! This was just a concept car, and that kind of thing was the norm at the auto shows. Toyota had decided this would be a good time to show off their newest monster SUV. Japanese treehuggers were confused.
The author devotes quite a few pages to the real development of the Chevy Volt. As it turned out, to bring the drag coefficient down to where it needed to be to get the Volt the electric-powered range desired, the body shape had to be changed drastically from that of the concept car show at the '07 auto show. Mr. Lutz goes over some of the basic engineering problems that were solved by the, well "non-car guys". After all was written about it, the Chevy Volt sure does not prove out Bob Lutz's point that the car guys should be running things.
That was the big contradiction to the title of this book. As we review this almost another decade later, we can see that the whole "car guys" theme is almost a moot point now. The vehicles are ALL boxy little sedans, similarly looking "crossovers" or big monsters that will soon require ladders for entry. (Wait until gas goes back up - I don't pretend to know when - to get a steal on one of these, ladder included.) Young people don't even care about driving a cool vehicle, or ANY vehicle, anymore, being more urban, and with Lyft and Uber around.
As I read the last of the book, the idea that this book is mostly Bob Lutz's defense of the worth of his 47 years in the American auto industry has been solidified. He does a decent amount of tooting of his own horn, from "Oh-oooh-ga" to the modern "Beep beep".
Still, his criticisms of management by committee are well justified, in my opinion, his insight from his 5 decades of time in the industry are great, and the book is humorous and not too preachy. It's worth reading, but don't take the guy as your management guru.
* Yes, the author is quite humorous at times.
** There is a lot more background in the book, especially on GM's big amount of research into hydrogen-fuel-cell power (that I had known nothing about) and the politics involved in the "carbon-free"*** vehicle manufacturing.
*** Yes, though Mr. Lutz agrees with Peak Stupidity on the Global Climate DisruptionTM being a big political scam, he ends up using these terms. Most likely he's just tired of bucking the system, and, again, he's proud of Chevy's hybrid-electric vehicle. (Again, per the author, the press was highly biased against the American companies.)
Comments (5)
"Goin' Green" with 2-strokes and dualies
Posted On: Wednesday - November 6th 2019 3:33PM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Curmudgeonry Environmental Stupidity
I'd have attached the Peak Stupidity Roadshow (formerly "Traffic Stupidity") topic key here too, but that part wasn't too bad. It was just the usual driver that waits for 5 seconds, I suppose for his eye accommodation*, then decides, "yeah, I guess I got time" and pulls into my lane. This guy could have gone into the 2nd lane and not gotten in my way at all, but I'll give him credit for knowing I was closing in and gunning it.
That was just it, though. It was a large pick-up with labels somewhat like the truck pictured above, "Green-Pros", "Go green", or some such thing. I could hear that engine roar as the big V-8 pulled that truck with it's dualies (4 wheels on the back axle, like on a semi), temporarily making 5 mpg. I imagined it blowing out smoke too, but I won't exaggerate just for the post. OK, it was probably a hard-working landscaping guy with his 2 or 3 Mexicans. They probably had lots of equipment in the truck too. I don't have a problem with all that - good on them for the hard work.
It's the hypocrisy of this constant "green" this and "green" that everywhere that irks me. You may tell me that the "green" is in reference to the yards these guys work on. Nah, but then, why the crap like "the responsible way to a green lawn"? I know the answer though. These guys themselves aren't really hypocrites (I doubt they really keep track of the science of Climatology, for example). They just know that this sort of silliness is good for business. It won't be every customer that falls for this green crap. Maybe 1 in 5 women though, that hire these guys to run 3 high-revving** loud-ass 2-cycle engines burning gas AND oil, will FEEL BETTER that this particular company is as green as her lawn. At least the truck is bright green. This is the mindset we're dealing with: "So what that these guys charge $20 more a month than Joe's did? What's 20 dollars compared to saving the whole planet?! Joe's has a couple of older rusty brown trucks and his black & white paper flyers don't even MENTION the planet. Joe, HOW DARE YOU?!"
Oh, and if you're REALLY GREEN (raise your hand if you mean it), you'd pick up a damn rake rather than running the leaf blower and waking up the neighbors at 7 AM. I myself, no, I'm NOT that treehugger. I raked for years, and then quit one day cold turkey, and got a small electric blower. Greta, I am so, so sorrry!!
* I theorize that it's the small screens of the phones and tablets, held 8" to 16" from our eyeballs, that are causing lots of people, even the young, to not be able to focus at the distance and quickly.
** Yeah, it's not just the volume but the pitch. A medium volume-level edger to me sounds more annoying than a the big loud diesel and hydraulic pump on the cherry picker.
Comments (2)
Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz - Part 2
Posted On: Wednesday - November 6th 2019 11:00AM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Cars US Feral Government Environmental Stupidity Books Big-Biz Stupidity
I'll continue right where I left off yesterday.
The Japanese automakers had always made vehicles on the smaller side for their market, just as the Europeans did (for the most part) for 2 big reasons:
1) These places have always been more crowded than the US by far.
2) Gas is taxed so much more than it is, even now, in the US.
Due partly to the lack of contentious unions, but also due to a different mindset of the Japanese management, the quality of the Japanese autos had well-surpassed that of the American cars. We've all heard stories about "don't buy a car made on a Monday or Friday" and the purposeful sabotage of quality during union troubles. I can remember hearing that guys on the auto lines in Detroit were making $17/hour in the late 1970's and being AMAZED at that - minimum wage was $2.85 or so!
Therefore, when this gas "crisis"* hit the first time, the Japanese were just in a great position. Mr. Lutz writes lots about the bias toward foreign makers and the vilification of the US automakers for being these polluting, wasteful bastards. This was back when we worried about emissions of ACTUAL pollutants, such as the Nitrous Oxides from inefficient combustion, and the particulate matter that made 70's vehicles visible across 10 miles of California desert via their smoke clouds alone. I agree with Mr. Lutz on some of this. Eric Peters on his great Auto/Libertarian blog Eric Peters Autos**, mentioned how especially Consumer Reports used to bad-mouth American car companies and completely biased in their ratings system.
However, it was the US Government that was the big problem for the big 4 (at the time) American automakers. The authoritative C.A.F.E. standards (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) on fuel mileage were a Soviet-era method of trying to force gas mileage up against the wishes of consumers. Buyers could read the mileage numbers and choose for themselves. Nope, but Big Gov. forced these companies into a very expensive re-tooling, putting them at a serious disadvantage against the foreign companies.
Now, here's one weak part of Mr. Lutz's track where he went off the rails. What was his suggested solution, per Car Guys vs Bean Counters? Raise the gas tax, massively, to force people to drive less! Now, keep in mind that this guy was an auto executive for 47 years, much of this when America was a fairly free-market society. I guess his MBA from Berkeley*** did not preclude any forays into deep stupidity. Yeah, he's a car guy, but all for a huge tax on gasoline?! Really? Screw that. I'm glad nobody listened to him on that score.
The C.A.F.E. government meddling just caused the US companies to build cars that were not optimal and didn't make a lot of money, to bring their gas mileage averages up, while they made money off the big vehicles. A slightly different loophole was what started the SUV craze in roughly the end of the 1980s and through the long gas price ramp-up (Part 2) through summer '08. See, built upon truck-type frames, the SUVs (till possibly the modern crossovers) were counted as trucks, and therefore not counted in that average-mileage standard required (and upped continually) by the C.A.F.E. law. What a break, indeed! The gas had been down and steady for > 1/2 a decade already, people loved these vehicles, and the auto companies made much more profit per unit on them. Per Bob Lutz, at least, the Japanese automakers could never compete well with the American SUVs, as far as tastes go - remember he was a "car guy", meaning all about style.
After discussing other causes of the decrease in competitiveness of the US automakers vs. Japanese and European (still early on in the book) including union troubles, massive pension obligation, etc., Mr. Lutz gets to a couple of issues dear to the heart here at Peak Stupidity. On the bad press against the US companies, the author rails on the stupidity and bias of the journalists. Hey, you're preaching to the choir here, Bob. He then gets into the Global Climate Stupidity business, with digs at Al Gore and a pretty reasonable take in one direction - just the almost-negligible amount of "excess" CO2 emitted from autos - only one factor, but not bad for a non-math guy. In fact, going by the wiki article on Bob Lutz linked-to in one footnote here, Mr. Lutz is still against the Global Climate DisruptionTM religion (his term too). Let me put it this way: I don't think young Greta Thunberg is ever gonna make it as one of those models that sits on the hood of the concept car at the next Detroit auto show!
Then there is the author's hilarious take on the Saab owners, a company General Motors bought in 1989 and finally sold in 2010... it then went bankrupt. Mr. Lutz knows his marketing, and the 100,000 units sold yearly by Saab was a number that he figured couldn't be raised to bring an economy of scale just due to the eclectic group of buyers that were the only people that liked them. They really liked Saabs though, but were too small a market:
If you add up all the professors of sociology and political science, all the leftish intellectuals who admired the failed Swedish experiment in 90 percent tax rates and womb-to-tomb welfare, all the well-to-do who for some reason eschewed Mercedes, BMG, and Audi, you still couldn't get 150,000 sales.Haha! After this, I forgave Bob Lutz for that "raise the gas tax" crap.
Well, I can't get into this many details and finish this thing anytime soon, so Peak Stupidity will finish this review tomorrow, with a real wrap of of the gist of Bob Lutz's them of "Car guys" vs "Bean Counters". Spoiler alert - there's a big contradiction by the end of the book.
* It was just a political thing more than the "crisis" it seemed, as in "OMG! We are running out of oil!" Granted, with the gas station lines and odd/even day purchasing, it did seem like a crisis at the time.
** I haven't read it regularly in 3 years or more, but I should get back to it. It was good reading, and he had decent commenters when I used to keep up with it.
*** This should have been in the first post, but wiki has this biography of Bob Lutz.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Same as it EVER was!
Posted On: Tuesday - November 5th 2019 7:02PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Trump
I've kinda lost track of the direction I planned on going in for posts this week, sometime over the weekend. I'll get back on it, but I just ran across this great video. This was made a year ago. Man, that's what I get for not being on Facebook, I guess! Hat tip to Dtbb.
I am very impressed by the amount of work involved, simply because one would have to have a great memory to keep the phrases needed for the song in one's head while going through a whole bunch of Trump speeches. I'm not sure if there is any political agenda with this one - it'd be great if it was made just for the pure fun of it.
As a reference for those born well after the era in which MTV did not suck, the video had Donald Trump's words made into the lyrics of Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads, headed by big-suit wearing semi-weirdo David Byrne. The song is from that band's album Remain in Light from just under 40 years ago! I believe it was the first music video I ever saw, on a Black&White TV sometime in the summer of '81.
Comments (2)
Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz - Part 1
Posted On: Tuesday - November 5th 2019 8:28AM MST
In Topics: Cars Books Big-Biz Stupidity
I just read this 2011 book written by Bob Lutz, a 47-year career executive in the American auto industry (GM, Ford, Chrysler, and also BMW). As Peak Stupidity noted in "Master Bullshit Artists", the guy's long career as a muckety-muck alone doesn't convince me that he knows a whole lot about cars. He was not a guy that came up from the assembly line or engineering, as is more the case in Japan. (There's discussion of the Japanese auto industry in the book.)
Just in review mode here for a bit, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters is a fairly short (230 small pages) book that is very readable. One doesn't need to know too much background on the US auto industry, as Mr. Lutz gives a nice summary of the history of it going back a century or so (lots that I've always wanted to know there, too). I learned a bit about the management and different "parts" of these big car companies, and a lot about the struggles from the 1970s onward. However, to me, the very theme of the book was not really proven, and the author has a big contradiction about it near the end.
Bob Lutz had written one of those "How to succeed..." type books before, Guts: 8 Laws of Business from One of the Most Innovative Business Leaders of Our Time, 8 years earlier than this book. I believe he wrote this one just to defend his whole career. It's not that he admits no mistakes, but he's always the good guy, no matter what the results were of the product decisions.
My big problem, starting with the very title of the book is Mr. Lutz' definition of who these "car guys" are and who the "bean counters" are. Of course, by "car guys" he refers to people in the industry who love cars, but that's kind of broad. In this book, these are the people that like the cars for STYLE. Yeah, they may like the sound of the big V-8s and understand something about horsepower and torque, but Mr. Lutz doesn't refer to the engineers that UNDERSTAND cars. The guys on this side are what the industry calls "designers", but that term is not a good one.
In aerospace, the designers would be technicians that work on the CAD system to virtually place all the parts that the engineers have specified. One might think it would be the engineers themselves, who decide how the engine will sit, the configuration of the suspension, and everything. In Mr. Lutz's and the auto industry's terminology, these are the people that determine what the body of the car will LOOK LIKE - it's pure aesthetics. They are the ones that put the tail fins on those late 1950s cars, place chrome here and there, and determine the placing of the Mustang horse emblems. Is that all there is to being a "car guy"? That's the way this book reads.
Now, on the other side, Mr. Lutz thinks of the marketing people and some of the engineers that must make these cars pencil-out economically, with reasonable manufacturing costs (commonality of parts, reduction of complicated stamped parts, etc.) as the "bean counters". There are always people putting a damper on grandiose plans - sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are wrong. Mr. Lutz leans on the side of making the cool cars that stir up the buyers based on emotion, and let sales due to emotions get to where the models ARE worth making.
All this conflict within General Motors (Bob Lutz's management there being the main part of the story) was not an existential threat to the company and the industry until... the 1st oil "crisis" of 1973. Things became much more serious when the Japanese automakers made big inroads with their smaller vehicles, and the politics of this for the next 40 years is the subject of the rest of the book and the 2nd part of this review - tomorrow, I guess.
Comments (2)
For Frank
Posted On: Saturday - November 2nd 2019 8:03PM MST
In Topics: Music Bible/Religion
Comments (2)
Back Off!
Posted On: Saturday - November 2nd 2019 6:47AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Media Stupidity
(Nothing at all against Tucker, BTW, just TV political news, period)
Back off the TV infotainment stupidity, is what the title means. I hope the Peak Stupidity readers don't take this the wrong way, even if you are continual "consumers" of the TV (aka, Gov't Media) infotainment for the, probably for the purpose of knowing how this country is getting ruined or just to watch that in real time. Yes, the ctrl-left is has been trying different end-runs to overturn a Presidential election for almost 3 years now. Yes, you may want to know the details.
Firstly, keep in mind, if you are paying for TV, then as far as all the networks that you are capable of viewing, YOU LIKE THAT CRAP. Getting it unbundled is a something that could very easily be done, but I don't think anyone on the other, "broadcasting", end wants that, at least the people REALLY on the other end behind the scenes.
In the Peak Stupidity post Nothing but Distractions from a year and a half ago, I'd seen some back-and-forth TV-pundit discussions on the myriad of details of the attempted impeachment goings-on. This FBI guy revealed this. President Trump was influenced by this other guy. The one guy is under questioning and admitted this other thing. Hell, it had already been going on a while, and now it's 1 1/2 years after that! I didn't give a rat's ass, honestly, about all those details then, and I sure don't now, for the newest attempts.
VDare Chief Peter Brimelow, has written it before, and he just the other day wrote "Democrats Huff And Puff—YAWN! Wake Up When Senate Trial Begins. Then Lock And Load." His point is, and he finally realized ("I now regret that I allowed some 131 references to the farcical Mueller investigation onto VDARE.com..."*) that this impeachment deal is no search for any truth in some wrong-doings that shouldn't be tolerated in high government office (hahaha!). No, the ctrl-left (D-squad AND R-squad helpers) don't care about the details and if anything really wrong happened. They want Trump OUT. I don't even think it's because he's taking action on (or really, mostly blabbing about) immigration control or drainage of the swamp. Nope, They just don't think it's right that the deplorables should even be able to put someone in office who's not down with the narrative. They are not used to this, and they just won't put up with it! The narrative is simply the destruction of traditional America, pretty much what the Commies tried to do in the EXTERNAL Cold War, but this time they have us truly surrounded.
Is it gonna help to keep up with all the details of the latest impeachment business? I have almost no idea of the names involved in this newest thing, the Ukraine deal, besides a Mr. Biden and son. If you are a regular reader of Peak Stupidity, you've gotta know that we are not exactly your latest source of political news. When I do reference any of this, it's usually off of other sites that discuss the politics BEHIND it all, and often the history of these politics. The TV infotainment gets into details that I don't want to know about. We can find out what's really going on - we've got this internet, and we have our knowledge of history, our common sense, and our consciences.
I implore the good reader to back off. Not just a couple of days, but for a month, 3 months, or more, keep off the Gov-Media infotainment on the detail politics. Keep that thing off, period. You will likely be surprised how soon you will get to the point at which you are just plain disgusted at it when you turn it back on at a weak point. (It's a little bit how I feel about the whole internet once in a while, but at least we get to pick your poison here.)
* This partial sentence quote doesn't mean much there, but his point is that the details didn't mean anything - there was nothing the D's had on Trump, but that didn't stop them one bit.
Comments (5)
The Dead - Werewolves of London - Halloween 1985 show
Posted On: Thursday - October 31st 2019 8:44PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead
The sound on this recording is not very good, and Jerry couldn't sing as good as Warren Zevon, but the Dead made every song their own. We've got Warren Zevon's version - well he wrote it - featured here.
Jerry got in a couple of very short solos, but maybe he should have just gone the same way as Lynryd Skynryd's Ed King on Sweet Home Alabama, as, after all, the chord progression is exactly the same. Nah, probably wouldn't have worked ...
Don't mind the 1st minute or so of the ending of the "space" part of the set. It was just the normal noises around there. Their Werewolves was the first song of this show played at the old Carolina Coliseum in Columbia, S. Carolina.
Comments (3)
As IF! (late '16 Election News humor)
Posted On: Thursday - October 31st 2019 3:47PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '26 Humor Trump Pundits
Who's that guy, Anderson Cooper? I really am not sure, as I got the pic off a comment with a caption that didn't help. Well, Peak Stupidity doesn't wish for things like that in the image, but we wish the situation was at that point anyway. Plus, it's hilarious.
President Trump has got the left ACTING like they think he's a madman, but he hasn't done a lot that should really have pissed them off yet. Up your game, Mr. President - it's been almost 3 years!
No comments - Click here to start thread
Meet Hanna from Oceania
Posted On: Thursday - October 31st 2019 1:22PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Globalists alt-right/MAGA Orwellian Stupidity
Just in case you didn't catch the meaning in my clever-by-150% post title, "Oceania" is the name for England in George Orwell's famous
I mean it, though - that place is living up to the standards of the book now, this day. Sure, they are 35 years behind schedule, but, hey, they've got new and improved "TECH", so ... One of these is called "the tweet". From a tweet from the MiniTru to the population of Oceania, we hear about the Radicalis[sic]ation Awareness Network:
More from the tweet:
Meet Hanna. She’s 19. Her friends were #harassed by a group of African men. Concerned about her own safety, she is drawn to a #farright extremist group with a hostile attitude against #migrants. Hanna's mother is worried. What’s the priority in terms of addressing this case?Wait, not just "harassed" but Pound-harassed. I guess that means harassed via pounding in the ass, but maybe it's just that British spelling again. So imaginary Hanna has a right to be pissed and joining or at least supporting the alt-right who want to stop the immigration stupidity madness, seems, well, quite brilliant, as they'd say over in Oceania, or the Newspeak version thereof.
Per the advert, as they say there too, doing this is getting radicalis[sic]ed. Yet, letting in foreign men ready to "harass" women on a mass level (Peak Stupidity has apparently not written yet about the "grooming" - nope they don't just brush their hair - of young girls in Rotherham. It's been going on for years!)
Yeah the Radicalis[sic]ation Awareness Network is telling us that recruitment of girls to the alt-right were a big thing. Really, if it were that easy to recruit young cute girls to the “far-right”. the far-right would have control of the bloody House of Commons and the bloody House of Lords Right by now. Who do they actually have, for chicks in the movement, Tommy Robinson's girlfriend (and he deserves one)? They won't even let American alt-right people enter the country!
That's not the video - just a screenshot from it.
I wanted to embed the video here, but youtube doesn't seem to have it. You'll be absolutely disgusted at the lies, so don't eat anything but dry crackers first, then watch on Steve Sailer's post What's the Matta with Hanna?. Mr. Sailer keeps his sense of humor too, you can tell. ("If you can keep your sense of humour when those about you are losing their souls ...")
This is some serious Orwellian shit here, probably paid for by working Brits’ tax dollars**. Just turn the truth around 180 degrees and broadcast it out to the public. They won’t believe it over their own lying eyes, but that’s not the point. It’s so much fun degrading them like this, knowing they have to listen to the lies, while the truth is that they are being replaced, and in the meantime held out to the Moslems for prostitution, taxed into poverty, taken by the state for indoctrination by age 5, and told they must not protest under penalty of law.
* NEVER AGAIN! We'll all wear contacts this time around, or get Lasik surgery. Picking out the intellectuals this time will require a visit to the University.
** Yet, they voted in the Socialism, dinnay, Govna, so I can’t say that most don’t deserve it.
No comments - Click here to start thread
A porcine crisis in China
Posted On: Wednesday - October 30th 2019 7:34PM MST
In Topics: China Economics Inflation
China's female, rural, answer to the American urban cowboy, I guess.
There's some type of swine flu going on in China, and well, this one is actually affecting the swine. It's a bigger deal than it would be here, as the Chinese LUV LUV LUV that pork. My guess is that the population density just doesn't allow as much land for cows, and it's been dense for a long, long time. Just as with black Americans always having a big hankering for chicken, it being cheaper than red meat in the past when they were poor for real, pork seems to be "what's for dinner" in the Chinese culture. (It helps a whole lot that they left the economic portion of Communism far behind, as meat of any kind used to be more like a flavoring for meals, if any at all, rather than big hunks of satisfying protein.)
Per Zerohedge, a couple of weeks back, there is a porcine crisis now, and imports of pork from the US have hit all-time highs - from near nothing fairly recently, about 20,000 tonnes in September to 142,000 tonnes in October. Don't even bother with ZH's graphs - it's one of the site's worst features. There's not even any units of the vertical axis (price)* on their 1st graph! Zerohedge is OK with the large number, say, FED money created in a year, but terrible with detail numbers - I'd call Tyler Durden an "innumerate savant" or something. Come for the headlines, stay for the comments (bound to be some comments on the big pig above - picture taken directly off ZH).
I'm lucky to have source of information about China. I am told that the price for pork on the street is ~ 50 Yuan/lb. (I think they use 1/2 kilo for units, called - by my inaccurate ear a "bon" - note, that's not even the PinYin, just my ears.). That is about 7 bucks a pound. You've got to understand, this is a LOT of money for a middle class Chinaman. Even though there is a big middle class there now, this middle class makes the income that would make them lower-middle class here in America. Yeah, it's great they're not poor, no doubt, but my experience from people I know is that lots of families are making something like $1000 to $1500 a month (they always think of salary on a monthly basis in China) with both Mom and Dad working. There's not a lot extra with housing prices going up like crazy.
It's tough for the average Zhou in China, but kind of a delicious irony for the average Joe here, watching the Chinese government piss and moan about tariffs designed to simple even things out, after 25 years or so of China being given every break in the book ... with NO reciprocation whatsoever.
This inflation in pork is obviously mostly due to this calamity with the Chinese pigs, but also, as Peak Stupidity noted near the bottom of the post Inflation and Chinese Imports and Exports, "Inflation is our biggest export to China". This is the case due to China's government's peg of their RMB ("The People's Money", denominated in Yuan) to the US $. Hey, not my idea. They do this to keep cheap exports flowing. We devalue the dollar with the FED's printing of money, and the Chinese government follows suit to keep the exchange rate steady.
Serendipitously, I noticed that our post on inflation and imports/exports was written just over a year ago, and at the bottom, I happened to have related my knowledge that the price of retail pork at that time was on par with the price in the US. So there you go - I can dispense with the low-quality ZeroHedge price graph completely.
This is something to note, as we have admired the great improvements in China in infrastructure (here and here), industriousness, and entrepreneurship (here and here). The vaunted middle class is not that high up. Most of these people will be struggling to put a few ounces of meat onto each family member's plate in the form of sliced-up strips, while Americans with no jobs go into Safeway and buy 16 oz. steaks with their EBT cards. That's quite the disparity.
* From my information on retail, I'm gonna guess that the numbers are in Yuan/kilo, making them just under 1/2 of the retail price I gave.
No comments - Click here to start thread
A Holiday for Sluts
Posted On: Wednesday - October 30th 2019 8:42AM MST
In Topics: Female Stupidity Holiday from Stupidity
Last year, Peak Stupidity commented on Halloween as a Burlesque Show, and I learned a little bit about burlesque shows off of Wikipedia doing it too. Things have not changed in the direction of chastity, per a recent visit to a specialty store for a Halloween costume*.
My only question (that I'd like to have asked) at the check-out counter: "Is this the costume store or Victoria's Secret?"** They even have the costumes wrapped up in plastic, just like the old Playboy magazines at the 7-11. Will they let you take them into the bathroom? No, no, I mean, you may want to try them on.
The women do enjoy dressing up like sluts, cause it's not everyday (most of them) can do this sort of thing.
* I know, I know, WE also used to make them ourselves, or our Mom did. It's just not happening like that, unfortunately.
** We've also discussed in these pages Victoria's Other Secret.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Student loan debt and forgiveness - Part 3
Posted On: Tuesday - October 29th 2019 9:43AM MST
In Topics: University Global Financial Stupidity Economics
It's been a good while, but Peak Stupidity is nothing if not compulsive about finishing a series. (It CAN take a year or two, occasionally, so do keep reading with alacrity.) Here are Part 1 and Part 2.
Tough call, I'll grant you.
We do not favor ANY type of forgiveness program on student loan debt, as it will screw over the more responsible, or just more thrifty, causing a further moral hazard. That is, these people will not be willing to play "fair" anymore with anything involving government or big organizations.
What's Peak Stupiidy's short-term solution to this mess?* The laws stating that these school loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy were made a decade or more back. I don't think that they are Constitutional in the least. Bankruptcy is a State matter. Now, this may result in the same problem, assuming nobody really fears or worries about getting into the bankruptcy process. The easygoing chapters of bankruptcy law are scams often, especially the way Big-Biz uses it as a re-org tactic and to get rid of debts to the small guy.
(There are scams available for the ex-student debtor too, such as paying off the school loans with money extracted from other debt, such as credit cards, and then blowing off all the other debt in bankruptcy.)
Oh, yeah, Dad, I mean Your Honor, absolutely!
Bankruptcy should be more of a financial-life-changing event than it is now, but even now, it still is something not everyone would like to go through. Let the students work as far as they can on paying off the loans and make personal bankruptcy mean something serious. That's, to me, the best way out of the short-term problem of how to handle the $1.6 Trillion debt already outstanding. It's not elegant, but it keeps things on the up and up.
* The long-term one is simple - get the US Gov't TFO of the loan-guarantee business.
No comments - Click here to start thread
Hanging up in style
Posted On: Tuesday - October 29th 2019 9:15AM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity
Just as a quick continuation of the curmudgeonry of the previous post, I really do miss the ability to hang up with gusto. It's really needed now more than ever, with all the robo-calls and other wastes of our time. We've got caller ID for some of that nowadays, though they are getting pretty slick - using phone numbers of the same area code and prefix even - how do they do that? I tell you, if it weren't for the H-1B visa immigrants, what would we ever do?
Still, there are plenty of calls that we intended to answer but often end up intending to terminate with extreme prejudice. Wasn't it a stress-reliever to just slam that big receiver down onto the base of those big old desk phones? Even the ones on the wall would suffice for this, though you did need some good mounting to the sheetrock. I'll give the old monopoly Bell Phone or AT&T, whoever they were, kudos for specifying those solid American-made plastic phones. The engineering specs probably required a "hard hang-up" stress test as part of the quality assurance process.
Did the person on the other end ever hear that big bang that we heard on our end? We would have liked to have believed so! (The movies would have you thinking that the one on the other end would immediately hear a dial tone. That was wrong, and I don't know why they would keep getting this wrong through decades of scenes such as Mr. Floyd calling Mrs. Floyd - OK, not a good example with the long-distance operator involved.)
Well we can't do this anymore. It's maddening. You get some asshole trying to sell you a warranty for a car you don't own is running out, or some city government guy saying you need to quit working on your car out on your own driveway, or your neighbor never returned the cup after you lent her the proverbial cup of sugar ... (whaaa?) "Yeah, well, you're the asshole. Call me again and I'll take your head off and shit ..." Swipe, swipe. Hmmmm, it's bringing up fucking windows now ... Swipe. Oh. "... down your ..." dainty little pinky swipe "... scrawny little .... Do you still hear me now?"
But, we can now do this by the side of the road in traffic on our bicycles, thinking our wife had called about an emergency, so, again ... there's that ...
Comments (2)
From "hearing a pin drop" to "how 'bout a door slam?"
Posted On: Monday - October 28th 2019 6:16PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity
Anybody remember the old Sprint "pin drop" commercial? This had nothing to do with
The big Sprint advertising campaign for their long-distance service (10 cents a minute - it was a steal!) was the "you can hear a pin drop" TV campaign. I am not sure if they were better than the other 2 competitors on the costs, but they figured we wanted good clear noise-free audio. Now that's worth having, but then, I don't remember in my lifetime the land-line phone service having anything but trouble-free service, sound-quality-wise. Maybe a commenter or 2 could tell me otherwise.
OK, great. We had a bit of experience with bad signals during the time between old-fashioned land-line phones (they did start to come in all kinds of colors and shapes - like, say a red Trans-Am at least) and the time of ubiquitous cell phones, say 2003. By the end of the 1980s, there was the cordless phone. These things had a base that plugged into the land-line signal 4-conductor cable, but also to AC power at the socket to allow it to be a radio transceiver. A battery-powered handheld transceiver had your mike and speaker, and you could carry it around the house and even into the yard a ways. How cool was that? It's when we first ran into the whole "can you hear me now?" business, least in my household. (One time, I even walked outside simultaneously with a friend who lived one block away, as we both tried to see how close we could get and keep talking.)
After this, you had your cell service of varying quality. We didn't expect much more than walkie-talkie quality at the start, but things got better quickly. Verizon advertised its quality signal with their "can you hear me now?" ad campaign. Yeah, sigh, I still watched the idiot box back then.
After that little history of phone service in our lifetimes, let me get to the curmudgeonry here. Things have gotten worse. I've switched cell companies a few times lately, and none of them give clear signals everywhere they purport to HAVE a signal to begin with. I call friends and have to ask them to repeat stuff, the worst being when I lose about every 20th syllable in a regular fashion. One guy has to hold his phone just a certain way, at the house. This is not what I would have expected by 2019 in 2003.
The big network companies are doing all kind of tricks to keep profits increasing. Good on 'em - productivity increase is good. However, these tricks don't all work. The companies definitely LUV LUV LUV you to use your wi-fi, as they takes the burden of your service completely off their backs. When you don't, there are electronic methods that I don't even know the names of that help them get more data over the same hardware.
Come to think of it, www information, especially video, of course, is the big data suck, so you'd think the simple voice signal would be peanuts. When I think of that, I think of this whole texting business too, as the opposite situation. When it was just words, (not really the case anymore, though) the cell companies LUVED LUVED LUVED that too. Instead of sending so many many kilobytes of data per second to keep the voice quality reasonable, when sending text, you're spending 20 seconds sending 50 bytes if you're good! Hell, the telegraph could do better than that. This costs these cell companies just about... let me pull out the calculator ...approximately the square root of squat, in signal capacity.
You wonder why, with all the Megabytes of data being sent to your phone in a few seconds, these companies can't get the voice data coming across well enough to enable that ability to hear a pin drop. Right now, I'd be glad to be able to hear the front door slam. This stuff sucks. 1985 was way better. Of course, now we can talk while I'm talking a dump in the restroom of the O'Hare airport, so there's that ...
PS: I am no network specialist, electrical engineer, or anything like that, but I do have a possible reasons in mind. Is it that the data can be interrupted for short intervals occasionally without the user experiencing a problem, while the phone calls must continue without so anything more than a 10 millisecond or so interruption in real time, for a decent conversation? If so, the emphasis is on data now. They must know, nobody uses the phone to, like, call people, anymore, right?
Comments (2)
Peak Stupidity says NO to Human Trafficking
Posted On: Monday - October 28th 2019 10:12AM MST
In Topics: Humor Treehuggers Globalists Big-Biz Stupidity
This is some new cause-of-the-current-year, this "human trafficking" business. The name is just stupid, We used to say kidnapping. "Kid" "napping", weil, OK not the best term as there is nothing wrong with kids napping, but hey, I'm tired of learning new shit for nothing! That goes even for new terms like "human trafficking", "people of color", "Beijing", and, above all, "Myanmar"!
Well, no matter what the US Globalist Big-Biz has to say about it, the kidnapping of young people and transportation of same, is not a big problem in the traditional US of A. That is, unless you count Dads that have taken their little ones away from sicko Moms and the Family Court ruination of their lives. I don't count that. I wrote "traditional" US just now, as most of the human trafficking within this country is done by immigrants of very foreign cultures that do this stuff regularly in their homelands. We don't want to impose on their cultures of grooming young girls for prostitution, bringing over fully-vetted-I'm-sure young immigrants to make into slaves (sexual and just the mundane stay-in-the-house-24/7/365-and-clean-the toilets version), and other examples (read VDare on this stuff).
Outside the country though, much of the human trafficking has been discussed quite a bit on the news, using the terms "caravans" and "coyotes" instead. These are kids sent by their parents with complete strangers on 1-2,000 mile trips to sneak into our country. We don't want to use that nasty term, "trafficking" regarding this activity, as they are future valedictorians and shit...
So, let's pick on the normal Americans and make them feel that they are evil in just one more way, because kids are being "trafficked" (DAMN, what a stupid phrase!), and we should be all very vigilant. OK, I mean be vigilant, but don't go being a vigilante, now! (Hmmmm, sounds like a Mexican term, coincidentally.)
Here's the thing: Jeffrey Epstein is dead. He did pretty well with that Lolita-XPress business, when those girls absolutely, positively had to come overnight. Is this a new business "space" that we could fill? I mean, the guy had a 727, so, you know?
Well, Peak Stupidity has taken a quick look at the possibilities for human trafficking. How about a young Swedish girl?
NAH! I mean, I know how to sail, and she's got her own yacht, but ... NAH! Greta Thunberg has probably turned off thousands, if not millions, of potential human traffickers from this idea. For that, we can be grateful to her. "Heeyy, Greta, just call me cigar Bill. Put on the blue dress, young lady. We'll get a coupla' cheesburgers and shakes, and then I can show you my, uhhh, cigar collection..." "No, I don't want any EMISSIONS from you! HOW DARE YOU?"
No comments - Click here to start thread
The Cure - Friday I'm in Love
Posted On: Friday - October 25th 2019 5:33PM MST
In Topics: Music
I heard this one in a store recently and waited for Friday. I had no idea this was from The Cure till just now. It's a band I've got a CD of somewhere, but still wanted to hear more of. I had thought of this song being from the 1980's, but, nope, it's off of their 9th album, Wish, from 1992.
It seemed like in the era just before this, say early 1980's and maybe for a decade, all the cool new sounds were from British bands. Was that the 2nd British invasion? (OK, the 3rd, if you count the War of 1812.) The Cure is an English band.
This song has a good riff, and also a sound that reminded me of The Ocean Blue, a band who I thought was English too, but it turned out they were from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Listen to 01:30 to 01:40 - the sound right there is something exactly like that of The Ocean Blue on Between Something and Nothing from 1989, so maybe the Cure guy inadvertently copied that. Interestingly, per Wiki:
During the writing process, Robert Smith became convinced that he had inadvertently stolen the chord progression from somewhere, and this led him to a state of paranoia where he called everyone he could think of and played the song for them, asking if they had heard it before. None of them had, and Smith realised that the melody was indeed his.[3]Weird, in that the melody is not the problem here, but that sound (between 02:17 and 03:08 is VERY similar). Is that what he recollected?
Peak Stupidity has another song up from that band, The Office of a Busy Man, also from that The Ocean Blue self-titled debut album.
Anyway, this is The Cure with a catchy tune for tonight:
The band:
Robert Smith – vocals, guitar
Simon Gallup – bass
Porl Thompson – guitar
Boris Williams – drums
Perry Bamonte – six-string bass, keyboards
No comments - Click here to start thread
Ann Coulter - echoes of Peak Stupidity
Posted On: Friday - October 25th 2019 8:47AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Pundits Race/Genetics
(Picture credit: Stolen straight off of VDare.)
Doing her best to keep her batting average above .980, our favorite literary pundit, Ann Coulter, has knocked another one out of the park, with "We, Too, Can Be A Failed Latin American State!". This latest column of hers echoes what Peak Stupidity has been arguing for quite some time, especially in our admonitions to the Libertarians*, at least those Reason magazine open borders idiots.
The left’s enthusiasm for Third World immigrants isn’t only because they vote 8-2 for the Democrats. It’s that Latin American peasants seem uniquely amenable to idiotic socialist schemes.That's just the beginning - Miss Coulter gets into accurate details, as usual, concentrating on the recent history of Venezuela, former crown jewel of South America.
You probably think it’s beyond silliness for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to keep promising FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL! NO PREMIUMS! NO CO-PAYS! ILLEGAL ALIENS, TOO! EVERYBODY GETS A PONY!
No one could be gullible enough to fall for that.
I refer you to the economic powerhouse that is Latin America.
Does Ann Coulter read the Peak Stupidity blog? No, I wish, but I don't really think so. It is very heartening to see this being written out, though, for some of the alt-right Socialists. Yes, we are importing Socialism, and even though we agree on stopping the immigration invasion, it is especially important to keep out those who would turn us even more Socialist. Read up on Latin American history, and you will see that things just never seem to work out for very long down there.
Who could immigrate here instead, if ANYBODY, that WON'T result in importing the Socialist mindset? Well, there were the Cubans and the Vietnamese, who had experienced it imposed on them and got the hell out, but that was all way back. Even Europeans are generally more Socialist than your average American, so enough of that. South African white people, maybe? Who knows? America has spent 150 years experimenting with immigrants who had different mindsets than the original British/Irish and many Germans. There is no control group to this experiment. The results are final. Maybe somebody can get a Master's thesis out of it, so there's that ...
* BTW, if this blog had started up as recently as 15 years ago even, with the Immigration Stupidity not so visible an existential crisis (at least to this still-somewhat-unaware guy), this site would have been mainly about the topics in with the Liberty Libertarianism topic key.
Comments (4)
Just when I thought I was out ...
Posted On: Thursday - October 24th 2019 6:49PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Music Political Correctness Feminism
... they pull me back in!
Hold the spandex, I beg of you!
How can one refrain from noting the stupidity of the current era? I mean, you really need an outlet through which to dump it, or this stuff will rub off on you. Peak Stupidity today revisits the flavor of stupidity that we categorize under Genderbenders. We coudn't NOT comment on this one.
Per Zerohedge*, Male-To-Female Professor Wins Women's Cycling Championship Again, Taunts Female Critics. Haha... hahahahhaaa! Sorry, it's not just the stupidity of it. That was a "funny haha" along with a "pass the popcorn haha".
As for the first "haha", we non-deluded people all know that men are physically stronger and faster than women on the average. There is a reason most sports have us separated by sex. Though this bike champion may have different sexual organs than he had before getting tenure, that does not take all that made him a man away. Though I would be pretty pissed being a serious (actual) woman contender in this sport, or Dad of a cyclist daughter, I'm not, hence this is just hilarious to me.
As for the 2nd "haha", see there may not even be a long German word for this one. This is a 3-way collision of political correctness, genderbending, and also feminism. The feminists started this Fed-Gov Title IX crap many years back. They wanted just as much money to go into female sports as male sports. Since women don't take sports as seriously as men, the effect was to eliminate lower pay-off** men's teams. No, it's not right, and it's just another reason for young men to be pissed off at Big Government, if they have any sense.
Then, this newcomer to the world of stupidity, the genderbender (BLT-G) crowd, may not be feminists (in fact, they often do not like each other, as they are competing for the same goodies - yes, "goodies" of all sorts!). The genderbenders don't care about equal money into sports, but dang, if there's prize money to be had, what can people say if a former man, now "woman", enters the women's 35-39 y/o division of a bike race? About this controversy, tennis player Virginia Hood says:
The male body, which has been through male puberty, still retains its advantage, that doesn’t go away.Quothe cyclist now-Rachel McKinnon:
I have sympathy with [transgender athletes]. They have a right to do sport but not a right to go into any category they want. [Zerohedge's bolding]
Ms. Hood has expressed an irrational fear of trans women. An irrational fear of trans women is the dictionary definition of transphobia. Transphobia has no place in sport,” the release says.Here, the genderbenders are using modern hard-core Political Correctness to muscle their way into easy wins, money, and fame. Where does the feminism come back in? Well, what can these feminists say, because, after all, women can do anything men can do, right? Hear them roar! The feminists have used the PC as a weapon for decades, so they can't exactly fight it here.
Since women are supposed to be just as good, in say, cycling, as men, then even if this tranny guy now-named Rachel wins every single road-race of the tour, what difference does it make that he does have a little bit of testosterone still not flushed out of his system?
If this goes much further, women will be losers in every one of those Title IX sports, pretty much negating the reason for another bit of unconstitutional bullshit that the feminists got out of the Feral Government. They won't have a chance against these guys with no pee-pees and women's names. I don't think feminists are too awful pleased by these developments, but then, they started all this "we are all the same" stupidity.
As the old-school ZH commenters were bound to tell you, "go long, Orville Redenbacher!"
OK, "ladies", get on your bikes and ride!
I hadn't listened to that guitar ending in a long time, usually wanting to skip to Fat Bottomed Girls (a better melody, IMO) What hard-rockin' guys! If you play Bicycle Race without Fat Bottomed Girls right afterwards, you are some kind of sicko and should be banned from the airwaves, so,
Queen:
Freddie Mercury – lead vocals, keyboards, guitar
Brian May – guitar, keyboards, vocals
John Deacon – bass, guitar, keyboards
Roger Taylor – drums, guitar, keyboards, vocals
Sure, the first guy was a genderbender of sorts, being a flaming homo, but he didn't insist on trying to join The Go-Go's or something ...
* Steve Sailer had a post on this same story, as he gets into some of the details of different types of trans-gender people, and then ends with "So, a guy with a gut can make a joke out of a woman’s sports competition if he decides to call himself a woman." You're going to find smarter commenters under Steve Sailer, but funnier ones at ZeroHedge. Take your pick.
** No matter what, the alumni would not let football and basketball take a hit. That would be a circus too far.
Comments (3)
No posts for another day or so
Posted On: Tuesday - October 22nd 2019 5:39PM MST
In Topics: Bible/Religion
Your lead blogger here has a good friend who is in bad shape. He will not be in this world much longer. In a visit today, it sounds like he is not too worried about what's coming. Death is an unimaginably scary thing unless you have been very close to it already. Try to enjoy your time before the point at which you wonder how many exact days you have left.
Regarding all the stupidity in this world, that he and I have discussed endlessly, I told him that if this is gonna happen, it's good he will miss some of what's to come. The religious part of all this is something too personal for this blog.
They'll be more posts later in the week, and if this financial stuff is getting boring, hey, join the party, pal!
No comments - Click here to start thread