Death by Nostalgia: but only after filing all the forms

Almost a decade ago Frank Zappa predicted the work ending in paperwork and nostalgia.  The short form of the quote is often sited (below highlighted in orange), but here is the longer version.

The really big news of the eighties is the stampede to regurgitate mildly camouflaged musical styles of previous decades, in ever-shrinking cycles of 'nostalgia.'

     (It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice-there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia. When you compute the length of time between THE EVENT and THE NOSTALGIA FOR THE EVENT, the span seems to be about a year less in each cycle.  Eventually within the next quarter of a century, the nostalgia cycles will be so close together that people will not be able to take a step without being nostalgic for the one they just took.  A that point, everything stops.  Death by Nostalgia.) Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book, Touchstone, 1990, p 203

There is still a little time to run on his prediction, but we seem to have defeated the Doom Loop* of nostalgia.  Now we simply 'tweet' our every walking step, or at least half formed thought.  Granted the tweeting and re-tweeting do seem to be somewhat of a stasis type situation, but as long as we can multi task while we tweet, we seem able to stumble along. 

 

On the paperwork issue, it is a little less clear

The effort needed to comply with federal bureaucracy now has a number. According to new government estimates released this week, Americans spent 8.8 billion hours filling out government forms in fiscal 2010. …In all, the paperwork burden has increased by around 19% over the past decade, up from 7.4 billion hours in fiscal 2000, the White House Office of Management and Budget said (from WSJ via here circa September 2011).

This is talking about the Bush-Obama onslaught before Obamacare has really kicked in.

 

* Here, "a virtueless circle representative of a deteriorating condition".  

New virtual Cupcake empires and abuse

Our friend, Kymber, has been perturbed by the recent food abuse posted at this site.  Note, it is our policy, that we are merely reporting, not condoning the behavior represented: Although I will grant you that linking the registration form for a pumpkin-chunkin contest might teeter over that edge just a bit. It certainly isn't promoting good grammer.

In any case, she asks if there is no end to this abuse.  The simple answer is: no. 

Since I disallowed anonymous posts, this is the first "spam" post I have had [now deleted].  It is in response to the follow up on the Endangered Cupcake Empires post.  It took me a minute to realize that it was a different sort of response to the "cupcake" issue than I anticipated.

So you could say, we have a sort of virtual food abuse here: of the "cupcake " sort.

Comment from https://openid.aol.com/opaquexxxxxxxxx

Starting an Adult/Porn 3D Virtual Reality company, need donations

I am trying to start a small software company that will develop adult/porn 3D interactive virtual reality programs for the new Oculus Rift VR headset.

Right now the Oculus Rift is in development stage, but I need to raise 300 dollars which is the cost of the developers kit, which includes the VR headset.

I'll be very thankful for your donations and will keep you up to date on the progress of our development. Hopefully we will have rendered porn into 3D and have it ready by the 2014 release date.

Email me at vxxxxxx@yahoo.com and I'll keep you up to date.

Here's my Bitcoin wallet address, please donate as much or as little as you like. Every bit helps.

My response:

I am sorry, but we are not that sort of cupcake site.  Although I will grant you. sadly, that our posting about virtual girlfriends, comes awfully close to what you are talking about.  We generally like to discuss the possibility of a coming collapse, not contribute to it.  Best luck on your endeavors. -Russell1200

Advance apocalyptic weaponry: Pumpkin Chunkers

Okay.  I can see where everyone's interests lie.  Everyone wants to know about advanced biodegradable, sustainable munitions for our future combat, apocalyptic or otherwise, scenarios.

Pumpkin Launching (from here)
Mark Robichaux Wall Street Journal

MORTON, Ill. --Ponder this: Will a pumpkin, as it nears the speed of sound, turn into pie in the sky?

In a machine shop in a sea of cornfields here in a place that calls itself the Pumpkin Capital of the World, this is not a theoretical question. For months now, a team of volunteers has worked earnestly on an effort to send a gourd soaring at Mach I.

Their invention is an 18-ton, 100-foot cannon made of 10-inch-diameter plastic pipe, powered by compressed air and mounted on an old cement mixer. Dubbed the Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator, it has already set a world distance record, flinging a pumpkin 2,710 feet -- at a velocity of more than 600 miles per hour, literally faster than some speeding bullets.

At the speed of sound, minimally about 750 mph, the distance record could easily be shattered, assuming the pumpkin doesn't shatter first. For this team of self-described "high-tech rednecks," this is a matter of some urgency and pride, says Matt Parker, a Morton businessman and a team leader. For the team is, at the moment, the undisputed champion of the arcane sport known colloquially to its practitioners as "punkin' chunkin'."

On Nov. 1, all eyes will be on the Q36 when it defends its title as World Champion Punkin' Chunker in Lewes, a small town on the Delaware coast.

For the past 11 years, pumpkin tossers, dragging all manner of contraptions, have converged there to vie for bragging rights in a variety of pumpkin-tossing categories -- human powered, centrifugal, catapult and air cannons. Sponsored by the Roadhouse Steak Joint, a Lewes restaurant, the contest derives from an anvil-throwing game once played here; how the anvil evolved into a pumpkin seems to be lost to history.

The modern contest's rules are clear, however: Pumpkins must weigh 8 to 10 pounds, leave the machine intact and not be propelled by explosives.

Like the rapid advance in, say, computer technology, pumpkin-tossing prowess has improved exponentially since the first contest in 1986 produced a throw of 50 feet. By 1989, large-scale centrifugals, essentially giant slings, were launching pumpkins more than 600 feet, a mark that had doubled by 1993. In 1994, the first serious air cannon appeared and shot a pumpkin more than 2,500 feet. A Delaware-made air cannon named the "Mello Yello" beat that mark with a 2,655-foot shot in 1995, only to be bested by the Q36 last year.

Of course the cannons, though they have the longest range, don't attract all the attention. Last year, a catapult competitor rigged up two telephone poles planted in the ground, fitted huge rubber bands to them and fired a pumpkin from this Paul Bunyanesque slingshot -- pulled taut by a power winch -- 493 feet.

Somewhere, I read that some of the contests had been cancelled.  Possibly they were concerned with talking out a GPS-locator satellite, and not getting their corn rows straight. 

As best I can tell from the town's Pumpkin Festival website, they seem to downplay the contest.  But of course, good fun will not be denied, the contest has a facebook page, and weather not withstanding, there will be a 2013  contest.  Here are the rules.  And here is a registration form.  It looks like they have restricted the propulsive methods to compressed air, no fancy ignitable cocktails.

An example of a rail gun-like pumpkin chunkin air cannon (from here)

First they came for the cupcakes

Yes it was the cupcake empire first.

Now another group is in trouble:  the newly sprung up fleets of superyachts.

Super yachts are the oversized marine-SUVs of the wealthy set.  Classified as exceeding 30 meters (98 feet).  Most of them are in the Mediterranean, but it is in Hong Kong that the issue is the most acute.

Nice Boat, No Dock
Jason Chow, Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2013 (hat tip: NC)

Boat owners have reported shortages from Florida to New Zealand, while prices for berths are surging to new highs across the Mediterranean and elsewhere...

For superyachts, though, there's literally zero space available. Hong Kong's largest yacht, the 213-feet-long Ambrosia III, owned by a reclusive tycoon named Ambrose Young, occupies one of just 16 places at the Gold Coast Marina for boats of that size. The waitlist for a spot at that marina can last up to two years or more, the club says. When Paul Allen's 415-foot-long Octopus came to Hong Kong in 2007, the boat had to dock at an unused commercial wharf. Young did not respond for comment, while Allen declined.

As a point of reference, the large U.S. World War 2 destroyers of the Farragut Class were 104 meters (341 feet) long and carried around 160 men on board.

 

Berthing spaces for these monsters can get up to the $1-million dollar price tag themselves. 

 

The people of these boats have seen a drop off in sales as places to park them have become an issue.  Less desirable locations are building spots to lure in these desirable wealthy folks, but the wealthy want to go where the wealthy want to go, and second best is not usually in the vocabulary of someone who owns a 70 meter monster.

 

It is an interesting demonstration in my mind about how financial money, and real money are not fungible (~equivalent).  Through all the loos money floating out there, you have tons of money floating around in the financial system, but trying to pull it out of that system, and convert into something real, is difficult.  The amount of money quickly outstrips what is available in the real world.  You either devalue your currency (like if the Chinese tried to buy gold with their US $ holdings), you inflate the price of biddable items (rare art), or you run out of the item.

 

~

The newest catamaran-style superyacht - Island Paradise model (from here)