Saturday, September 29, 2012

CAFE standards for children

I don't understand what all the fuss is over Michelle Obama's new CAFE standards for children. By following her new calorie standards, America will soon be able to save millions of tons of food that could be better used for making biofuel for Eco-friendly flights in AirForce One to this month's new vacation site. Creating EU-compliant carbon-neutral biofuel for the weekly junkets is far more important than making sure hungry children have enough to eat, anyone with an Obama bumper sticker will tell you that.

CAFE standards for cars have proven that government need only mandate a one-size-fits-all standard and the market place will, like magic, make it happen. So what if the child runs track or plays sports; like the SUV, if government passes strict enough fuel standards, eventually a hybrid will emerge and some student will 'evolve' to run a 200k triathlon on a pack of crackers and a hardboiled egg.

With these new CAFE standards in place on children, all we have to do is wait and watch the magic happen!

We should be thanking Michelle Obama for helping speed evolution along! Without imposing a new CAFE standard, GM would never have invented the Volt, and the Prius would never have been. Get off your lazy ass, Creator, we need to switch to hybrid children today, so that all those crops we waste on food can fuel our clean, carbon-neutral utopia future!

Perhaps, if reelected, Obama will implement a cash-for-clunkers where he will give drug addicts, smokers, alcoholics, the fat, and the out of shape $3,000 to stay out of ObamaCare or move to another country. I look forward to the day where the FDA can jail someone for eating too many calories at one time, much like we do with speeders. The test pilot is already working. FDA representatives have already prevented children from eating packed lunches that 'don't comply' with the new CAFE standards for children. We can't have ObamaCare without imposing these new standards on everyone. Perhaps we can apply it to our new emigration standards too. Go over a certain BMI and lose your citizenship!

But the brilliance doesn't end there. Without all those excess calories, the children of the future will be much easier to control. It will soon be as rare to find a child misbehaving as it is to find a Yugo speeding. Soon, all that children will have the energy for is playing on video games and napping on the couch. Michelle is, by far, the most brilliant first lady we've ever had, and you all should be ashamed of yourselves for criticizing her for imposing CAFE standards on your children. What are you, a bunch of racists!

Hope and change! Hope and change!

. . . can I get my free. ObamaPhone now?

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Greedy green scams.

See, I've been saying this for a while about all these green scams.

I'm a fan of alternatives, they feature in most of my books. But I'm realistic too, ain't none of them are workable...yet, and likely never will be.

Its nice Europe is picking up on the scam.

We are told that mittens is for the rich, but dems are the ones that rammed this gift to the rich through Congress, and similar punish the poor solar panels and windmills into law.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2205708/Electric-car-grants-worth-5-000-benefit-just-government-pot-used-scheme.html?ITO=1490

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Word Macro for analyzing dialog ratios in chapters

Here's a fun WORD macro for the writers out there.

Most of us are curious about how much of a chapter is dialog. You don't want it too thick with descriptions, and dialog is, lets face it, the juicy stuff that readers like. It's very useful to see what kind of dialog to text ratio there is, and this little gem does it.

Now, a few warnings.

First, you need to know how it defines a chapter. It looks at where the cursor is, then scrolls up until it finds a manual page break. If you don't separate your chapters this way, it won't work for you. It then scrolls down until it finds another manual page break. So, if you run it on the first chapter and there isn't a page break above or below where the cursor is, it'll get confused. Easy fix, just add a few manual page breaks and you're fine.

It'll get confused if you don't have any quotes in it at all. And, it'll report estimates, not exact word counts. So, just use it as a rough guideline, not an exact word counting tool.

Lastly, it doesn't understand what dialog is exactly, so it just counts the words that fall between two quotes. This works fine for most styles, but when your quotes go beyond a paragraph, it can confuse the poor thing.

Example: (I'll underline the dialog AS it Counts them)
Jack said, "Bla bla bla." And was slapped. Then he said, "Bla!"

It'll get that just fine.

Jack said, "Bla bla bla.
Bla bla bla
Bla bla bla." Jack got slapped. "But I bla bla
Bla bla bla"

It'll get that just fine.

Jack said, "Bla bla bla.
"Bla bla bla
Bla bla bla." Jack got slapped. "But I bla bla
"Bla bla bla"

This last style just confused the hell out of it. If this last style is how you do your quotes, it'll be useless to you. It's a valid style, but a nightmare to code it to be able to tell the difference between the two, so I had to pick one style. And, obviously, I picked my style.


It writes the report where your page number is. You probably don't know but that's the line below the text that reads something like this:

Page 1 Sec 1 1/1 At 4.3" Ln 18 Col 38

It's usually just above the word [Start]

The very next thing you do in word will erase the results and it'll return to the Page # thingy.


Now, if you manually edit the code, it can do some neat things. It can underline or bold all the dialog for you. That's sometimes very useful too.

======================================================

'
Sub ChapterOnlyReport()
'
' ChapterOnlyReport Macro This macro finds dialog in a chapter
' Macro recorded 6/26/2008 by TR NoWry And counts it, then reports at the end
' Chapters are defined by manual page brakes
' This lets you know how much of a chapter
' is dialog
'
UlDialog = False 'Change to True to Underline all the Dialog
BoldDialog = False 'Change to True to Bold all the Dialog
' 'Useful for diagnostics and, well, just fun!
On Error GoTo Quiter:
OEMpos = Selection.Start
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^m"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = False
.Wrap = wdFindAsk
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
BeginChapter = Selection.Start
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^m"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindAsk
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
EndChapter = Selection.Start
ActiveDocument.Range(BeginChapter, EndChapter).Select
w1 = Int(Selection.Words.Count * 0.808)
WordNumber = Str(w1)
If Len(WordNumber) > 4 Then WordNumber = Left(WordNumber, Len(WordNumber) - 3) + _
"," + Right(WordNumber, 3)
Selection.Start = BeginChapter

Loop1:
With Selection.Find
.Text = """"
.Forward = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
If Selection.Find.Found = False Then GoTo OutLoop
If Selection.Start > EndChapter Then GoTo OutLoop
S1 = Selection.Start
With Selection.Find
.Text = """"
.Forward = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
If Selection.Find.Found = False Then GoTo OutLoop
If Selection.Start > EndChapter Then GoTo OutLoop
S2 = Selection.Start
ActiveDocument.Range(S1 + 1, S2).Select
w = w + Selection.Words.Count

'For pause = 1 To 6000000
'Next

ssold = Selection.Text
BG = 2.5
For pt = 1 To Len(ssold)
If Mid(ssold, pt, 1) = "," Or _
Mid(ssold, pt, 1) = ";" Or _
Mid(ssold, pt, 1) = """" Or _
Mid(ssold, pt, 1) = ":" Then BG = BG + 1
If Mid(ssold, pt, 1) = "," And pt = Len(ssold) - 1 Then BG = BG - 1
Next
w = w - BG

If BoldDialog Then Selection.FormattedText.Bold = True
If UlDialog Then Selection.FormattedText.Underline = wdUnderlineSingle

Selection.MoveRight
Selection.MoveRight
Selection.MoveRight

GoTo Loop1

OutLoop:
Selection.Start = OEMpos
Selection.End = OEMpos
For d = 1 To 15
Selection.MoveUp
Next
Selection.Start = OEMpos
Selection.End = OEMpos
Selection.MoveLeft

gg = ActiveDocument.Words.Count * 0.807
g = Str(Int(gg))
If Len(g) > 4 Then g = Left(g, Len(g) - 3) + _
"," + Right(g, 3)
WW = Str(Int(w))
If Len(WW) > 4 Then WW = Left(WW, Len(WW) - 3) + _
"," + Right(WW, 3)
StatusBar = "This Chapter has <<<-- " + WordNumber + " Words, " + """" + WW + """" _
+ ", or " + Str(Int((w / w1) * 100)) + "% in quotes -->>> " + g + " Total book"
Quiter:
End Sub

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Redneck bugZapper... er.

Redneck bugZapper... uh, drownerer. Uh, OK, it's just a bowl of soapy water under a nightlight, but it getsRdone :)

I want a refund from Steven Chu (rant)

When Obama was elected, I had high hopes, like most of America.

I was working for a union in the DC area, so, naturally, I saw a brighter light at the end of the tunnel than most. Surely if there was going to be a recovery, it would start there, with union workers leading the way.

The average length of unemployment (between construction jobs) under Bush, what my union called the worst economy in history for 8yrs, was 3 months. That's a long time to be out of work, but the jobs you normally got after the wait lasted a year or more.

Under Obama, that script has been flipped. The average job lasts 3 months, AT BEST, and you have to wait a year or more to get the next.

Again, this is Union Work IN DC Under Obama, the president that got The Most money and support from the unions in the History of the United States.


But that wasn't the end of my disappointment.


Obama tapped Steven Chu as the head of energy. Energy, of course, spends billions every year on construction jobs. They build, of fund the building, of lots of cool things. As a union construction worker, and as a citizen, this is a very good thing. And Steven Chu is not just anybody. He's a Nobel Prize winner in Physics and is closely tied to the nuclear power industry, in Livermore, Ca. Livermore oversees the nuclear weapons, incase you didn't know.

When I heard Steven Chu was selected by the, then, new and hopeful administration, I gave an audible sigh of relief. A nuclear scientist. Pro nuclear power. A man that understands how close Livermore Labs is to making fusion power a reality with lasers. A man who was there when they made the STAR, a pocket-sized peeking nuke that, by itself, could cut our CO2 emissions to below those of Cuba! This was a smart man, and an impressive pick. America was going nuclear again!

CO2 global warming (I'm not a believer, but I'm a minority in that) was a problem that Steven Chu KNEW how to solve with Uranium and Deuterium. It was obvious that this was the president's meaning behind the pick. This gave me confidence in the hope and change. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't just a slogan. That would be a first for any president. Perhaps politics had really changed.

Today, the US has approved Zero new nukes under Steven Chu.

But wait, it gets worse. Today, just a few hours ago, A Russian nuke went online. . . In IRAN! Yes, Iran got a new nuke before We did. And, to some true skeptics, this administration actually approved the Iranian nuke (through their inept inaction) before approving US nukes.

Nuclear power was the ONLY zero CO2 energy source capable of replacing coal AND reducing Energy Bills For Consumers AT THE SAME TIME. (Can you tell I'm pro nuke?)

It's so depressing to see a brilliant pick go to waste like this. Instead of greenlighting US nukes, Chu gave billions to politically connected Solar (like Solyndra) and wind (GE), both of which, even when they do work, are MUCH more EXPENSIVE to consumers (Which destroys the economy) WHILE NEITHER are Zero CO2. They both, to make them grid compliant, require a CO2-spewing source to back them up, usually natural gas or oil. And because the natural gas power plant can't predict the clouds and the wind, it has to sit idling, burning gas for nothing.

Imagine a solar/windpowered Hospital. They don't exist for a very good reason, but just imagine it for a minute. The doctor has a guy's heart out and the wind stops blowing or a cloud passes overhead. The lights flicker off and the man dies UNLESS the CO2-spewing diesel generator picks up.

Yes, to function as a hospital, every time a cloud passes overhead or the wind dies down a little bit, that gas-guzzling generator has to kick in of the patient dies. This is how the grid works, just on a bigger scale. Want to give someone an MRI that will really spin the meter? You better be good at predicting the weather down to the second, or turn that diesel on.

But it gets worse. Diesel generators have to be kept warm all the time (That uses energy). The heavy dynamos have to be kept spinning all the time (I've worked on them, I know). All of this is expensive, costly, and introduces stupidity into a fragile grid system for little rewards. In a real-world case of the 'green' hospital, the generator would run 30%-60% of the time to make up the gaps between the solar and wind. Battery backup (I've been in those rooms too) only keeps the building running for ten or twenty minutes, and they're an expensive maintenance nightmare too.

Steven Chu knows all this. He can't not know this. He understands that solar and wind makes grid management a nightmare, yet he politically backs them anyway. He knows that when he says wind and solar, Obama will get donations from solar companies, wind companies (GE who owns NBC), And, he'll get donations from natural gas (the diesel generator in the hospital example). The natural gas generator sells the most expensive, most profitable, least efficient energy on the planet, so they're happy. Without solar or wind mandates, they were never able to trick consumers into buying their Twice-The-Price-Of-Coal power. Solar and wind get to sell their electricity, equally as expensive. And the customers (All of US(a)) get to pay our share in higher and higher energy bills.

Steven Chu knew that nuclear power was cheaper for the customer than Solar/Wind/NaturalGas, but nuclear contribute to politicians a THIRD as much as the solar/wind/naturalGas Cabal... So, Chu buckled.

I'm disappointed, thoroughly, in all of it. This is the kind of proof libertarians like me need to toss our hands up and shout, "End the department of energy! End it now!"

If Chu couldn't fix it, it can't be fixed. It needs to be shut down if it's going to keep making purely political decisions that drive the price of electricity up and drives energy-dependent businesses overseas.