The Warped Woodturner (TWW) is a local artist traveling his artist's journey in a suburb of Springbrook, WI (pop. 536). TWW's creative calling is to use a wood lathe to make useless objects from locally-sequestered organic carbon for tourists to bring back to the city to give to people they had to buy something for but do not like that much. His target market is the senior citizens since their vision is not as good as it used to be so cannot see the defects as well. His marketing jingle is: “Bowls as simple as their creator”.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Mrs. TWW's new deck - day 1

Out with the old 





In with the new unless it rains


Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Reverse engineering as a life enrichment activity












Q & D Construction and Rainwater Consulting Co. will have someone on site tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

New Observation Platform Arrives

Old prototype of observation deck on last legs


New deck arrives. They did not tell us assembly was required.

Fledgling words of wisdom - release 1

Mike Sandler says in the Huff and Puff Post: " Cognitive scientist George Lakoff notes that people will block out facts that conflict with their existing worldview. In Lakoff's framework, many conservatives have a strict father frame that places humans above nature. On the surface, climate change would seem to reinforce this. We are dominating the earth? Great! But if the climate goes out of control, and begins to threaten our current way of life and civilization itself, then this puts humans in a subjugated, reactive mode, which is unacceptable to the strict father mindset."

This got TWW to wondering if there is a liberal equivalent to George Lakoff's strict father metaphor. (TWW does not know what a metaphor is but will use the word anyway in this post). It is possible the political liberal people are free of using metaphors when they think since they are enlightened but that seems doubtful since Lakoff seems to say everybody thinks with metaphors.

So TWW proposes based on his empirical observations liberal people think using the Ignorant Sinner metaphor . Everyone who is not a liberal then is an ignorant sinner. This is the liberal equivalent to saying everyone who has conservative values frames their world with the strict father metaphor. This metaphor explains how liberals see the world and act. Liberals then have a purpose in life. They need to educate the conservatives who are ignorant with their superior knowledge they have from many years of education (perhaps schooling is a better term). It is called debunking myths.

Let's try a few examples:
  • Global warming - Liberals think Igorant Sinners drive SUVs and pollute the world but cannot see reality as seen in the quote at the beginning of the article. Recent climate science (Roy Spencer's new book for example) is questioning the party line of the Anthropogenic Global Warming crowd so we will have to see how the people who think with the Ignorant Sinner metaphor react. Will they deny 'reality' just like the Strict Father people deny the liberal truth of Climate Change? Will their Ignorant Sinner metaphor blind them the same way the Strict Father metaphor blinds the conservatives?
  • Trees - In the area where TWW lives there (according to tree hugger myths) were zillions of old growth white pine the Ignorant Sinners cut down and then left the area to rot . The problem was the white pines came during a colder period of time (the Little Ice Age?) in about the 16th century. Virgin white pines were not here forever until the Ignorant Sinners cut them down. Are the liberals capable of knowing there were not always virgin white pines in this area?
  • Arizona - Does the Ignorant Sinner metaphor keep the liberals from seeing the difference between legal immigration and illegal immigration?   Listen to them talk. It is just immigration all mixed together.   Part of the Ignorant Sinner view also is to call the ignorant sinners rascist at at every opportunity.  So now white race people with hispanic names (like you see every time some form asks you for your race) are not part of the white race?  How can people be rascist against members of their own race?  It is possible if you view the world through the Ignorant Sinner metaphor. 
  • more in a later posting if TWW can get beyond his Strict Father metaphor way of thinking

Monday, April 26, 2010

Parents: Want to make the little darlings behave?

If they don't eat their peas tell them it puts CO2 into the air.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Latest life enrichment activity: watching the oaks grow

More good reporting about hate

Now you would usually think that when the member of one group kills a leading 'anti' of another group it means something. No more. The story quotes below now say that if a black person kills a white supremest the white supremest wasn't really a white supremest.

Some Quotes:

  • Headline: "White supremacist 'stabbed and beaten to death by his black neighbour' in Mississippi town"
  • "A white supremacist lawyer was stabbed and beaten to death by a black neighbour who had done yard work for him at his home in Pearl, Mississippi."
  • "Richard Barrett, 67, was stabbed multiple times in the neck and bashed in the head...had burns over 35 per cent of his body.....he was killed on Wednesday night and his house set on fire Thursday to cover up..."
  • Comment: When a black person is killed this way it shows racial hatred and we would start hearing about how lousy Amerika is but instead we hear: "Richard Barrett was a guy who ran around the country essentially pulling off publicity stunts,' said Mark Potok, who monitors hate groups for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center...'He really never amounted to any kind of leader in the white supremacist movement.' "
  • Conclusion from story: it cannot be a hate crime

Friday, April 23, 2010

More rightwing hate speech


"Let me just say it. The Obama/Clinton/media left are comfortable with the unrest in our society today. It allows them to blame and demonize their opponents (doctors, insurance companies, Wall Street, talk radio, Fox News) in order to portray their regime as the great healer of all our ills, thus expanding their power and control over our society.
A clear majority of the American people want no part of this. They instinctively know that the Obama way is not how things get done in this country. They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not." - source:  Rightwing, fascist hatemonger Rush Limbaugh in a  op ed in the Wall Street Journal today. 

First official solar oven baking attempt

Have you ever tasted twice-baked baking soda?





Thursday, April 22, 2010

Thought for the day: Benford's law

The wizards at Wikipedia say: "Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 almost one third of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than one time in twenty. This distribution of first digits arises whenever a set of values has logarithms that are distributed uniformly, as is approximately the case with many measurements of real-world values."


Below we are pointing (without permission) to a web page showing the national debt.  See how many of the numbers start with the digit one, two etc. (click on image to expand)




To see the real copy visit see:http://heartlandmusings.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/obamas-budget-and-national-debt2.jpg  (this is a good guy blog since they do not believe in AGW)

E-manuscript



Aid to Dependent Woodland Owners
by
The Warped Woodturner
Wisconsin
(1400 words)

Back in 2005 the good folks at Countryside (volume 89/4) were kind enough to allow The Warped Woodturner (TWW for short) the opportunity to spell out his principles of country freeloading. The original idea was people who live in the country should create conditions where their city visitors bring more food and other goodies when they come to visit than they consume so you profit from their visits. (By the way there are back copies available if you want to help the owners of the magazine profit from your visit to the current article). In this era of bailouts and stimulus money it is time to explore another untapped source of donations to our country causes: government programs.



There are two Golden Rules. The Golden Rule #1 is about treating others the way you want to be treated. This article is about Golden Rule #2.

In his book Your Money or Your Life , Joe Dominquez listed his nine steps to financial independence, integrity and intelligence. Step #6 in his program is about valuing your life energy by minimizing spending. Homesteading is all about doing it yourself so you can minimize your spending. One big fly in the ointment is high property taxes taking too much of your gold. This article is about how you can hang onto more of it. That is where Golden Rule #2 comes in: They who have the gold set the rules. One example of this golden rule is government forestry incentive programs. If you can tolerate playing by their rules and own woodland you may be able to cash in. This might not be as bad as you think. At its best country freeloading is like the synergy created by individuals working together in concert to create a better outcome than the same individuals could do working alone.

Since The Warped Woodturner lives in Wisconsin this article focuses on a state forestry incentives program named the Managed Forest Law. If you live in a different state it will give you an idea of how to start your search for cashing in on the goodies in your state too. Don't limit your search for donors even if you live in the desert and there is not a tree in sight. Government giveaways abound.

Government programs usually exist for a reason though sometimes it may be hard to figure out why. Don't focus on that . Your job is to find out how you can benefit. Government incentives give you money to act in certain ways. Forestry incentives give away money to grow trees for later harvest.

According to the publication Wisconsin's Managed Forest Law PUB-FR-295-2010: "The Managed Forest Law (MFL) is a landowner incentive program which encourages sustainable forestry on private woodlands in Wisconsin. Together with landowner objectives, the law incorporates timber harvesting, wildlife management, water quality, and recreation to maintain a healthy and productive forest. Sustainable forest management benefits Wisconsin’s economy, hunting, fishing, wildlife, recreation, soils, waterways, and air quality, and renews our beautiful forests for everyone to enjoy ."

At first you might think you have to give up your land to keep your gold but the Wisconsin rule-makers realized some people might not like strangers on their land so they came up with open and closed categories of land. The open land category lets you keep more of your gold but closed acres are closed to the public.

THE RULES
Here are some of the rules for the MFL program:

• You must pay for and follow a forestry management plan written by an independent certified plan writer (ICPW) and approved by a Wisconsin DNR forester. Remember the rule-makers can make up their own fancy terms when they create their rules. An ICPW is a private consulting forester certified by the Wisconsin DNR and hired by the landowner to prepare a forest management plan.

• You can enroll in the MFL program for either 25 or 50 years

• You can withdraw early but only if you pay a penalty.

• You only currently pay a per acre fee for closed land of $8.34 instead of normal property taxes

• You pay a harvest tax and also a consulting fee to a private forester to arrange the timber sale (if you are smart) at harvest time as dictated by the management plan.

• You must pay a non-refundable petition fee to start saving

A Few More Rules
To be eligible for the Managed Forest Law, you must have ten or more acres of contiguous forestland. At least 80% of the land must be covered by forest with no more than 20% unsuitable for producing timber like water, vacant farmland, or roadways. Finally, you cannot use the land for crops, pasture or orchards. The good news for homesteaders is you can still cut firewood from your land that is in the MFL program but only for your own use.

The Gold You Keep
It may be easiest to illustrate here using TWW's property as an example. He has 30 acres total with about 24 wooded acres, one acre for his house and a few acres of prairie. He recently decided to put 18 acres into the MFL program.

The acres TWW put into MFL land is mostly popple. While people in other states may love their aspen where TWW lives they call the trees popple and they are giant weeds mostly good for feeding deer, grouse and paper mills. But the beauty of popple for aspiring freeloaders is all you have to do is watch the popple grow. When the forest management plan says to harvest you have the trees cut and pay some forestry consulting fees and the timber harvest tax on the money you get for the timber.

Assuming he understands the rules here is how TWW calculated what he will save in property taxes per year to start using his 2010 property tax statement:

• assessed value of 29 acres (one acre for house was removed): $72,000

• assessed value per acre for unimproved land is $2483 per acre

• $2483 per acre times .14% property tax rate equals $34.76

• $34.76 minus the $8.34 fee for close land means $26.42 saved in property taxes per acre

• $26.42 times 18 acres in MFL is about $476 of property taxes avoided per year

Remember: your results may vary. You should also realize a few things here: First, TWW had to pay for the forest management plan which was around $400. But second, he gets money off property taxes for the next 25 years. Third, while the amount he will pays per acre is adjusted periodically so are property taxes and it usually is not downward. Finally, if TWW ever somehow makes so much money as an author he wants to itemize deductions on his income tax he will have less property tax to deduct.

Perhaps you should also know TWW is used to dealing with rules since he used to work for a county government. He moved to the country as soon as he could collect his pension. Interestingly enough right before he moved beyond the sidewalks, governments began facing revenue shortfalls and needed to shed staff. His employer devised a great buyout plan. Even though TWW was planning on retiring anyway, he still qualified for the buyout. His goals matched the goals of the people with the gold so he cashed in without a major compromise on his values. It was pure synergy. If you already have trees on your land you may already want to harvest trees in the future so your goals may already match some government program.

There is free money out there just waiting to be harvested. You just need to find programs applying to you and learn the rules. Look at it as a game you play with the government. Self-reliance is nice but why not find a way to have the government pay you to do it.

If you want to learn more about sources of this gold for woodland owners check with your local or state foresters. Some people may also get help from the Web page 'Financial Incentive Programs for Non-Industrial Private Forest Owners' found at: http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/data/forestincentives/

Finally, another good source of leads is the next generation . See if your local high school has a Future Freeloaders of America (FFA) chapter.

Good luck with your search.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

White cherry tree


After dropping off MRs. TWW to get her hair done, TWW decided he would paint some trees white so they reflect more light instead of absorbing it and then reradiating it to heat things up. This used to be a cherry tree.

New old exercise machine

One of our loyal readers asked what the new old exercise machine looked like.  (The old one was shown in the post below being moved to BANANAland.  Here is the new one (as seen in Jan 2009 post)

 You may also notice the Sears repairman has come and gone as shown by a new countdown clock above. He found something else TWW had worn out. Good thing TWW has a maintenance agreement.

Birthers Beware! -- Be careful of what you wish for

Remember: change is good. But what if you want to undo the change? See below...and then there is healthcare reform... 



"Divorce dilemma: Texas says gays can't get divorce

Angelique Naylor stands near the Texas state capital in Austin, Texas Monday April 12, 2010. She had a same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, but recieveAP – Angelique Naylor stands near the Texas state capital in Austin, Texas Monday April 12, 2010. She had …
The source of this stuff is: Play Video
DALLAS – After the joy of a wedding and the adoption of a baby came arguments that couldn't be resolved, leading Angelique Naylor to file for divorce. That left her fighting both the woman she married inMassachusetts and the state of Texas, which says a union granted in a state where same-sex marriage is legal can't be dissolved with a divorce in a state where it's not."

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Treadmill Relocation Life Enrichment Adventure

The TWWs gave Mr. BANANAS Mrs. TWW's old treadmill since she had  gotten a  new exercise machine and no longer used the treadmill.  Here come the crack movers from Q and  D Moving Co.  



TWW asked MAMA to take his picture while pretending to help move the old treadmill out to the moving tractor. Notice his technique as he lets the other people do most of the work.



Almost to the moving tractor.

Loaded.

Up to 245 degrees F



Safety notice: The health inspectors on Garbin Moraine have red-tagged the solar oven since TWW was not  paying attention in the survivalist cooking class he took and used Danish oil on both the inside and outsides of his solar oven.  MAMA recommended baking baking soda in the oven to take the fumes out.  TWW thanks MAMA for the tip. If TWW ever serves something made in the oven you might want to say "No Thanks". 

Friday, April 16, 2010

Dumb question for the day

Just when you think there might be hope for objectivitiy by the major networks they screw it up.

See:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/16/nbc_reporter_to_black_man_at_tea_party_have_you_ever_felt_uncomfortable.html

Kinky Cam not yet to the life enrichment stage


Can you see the wild critter here? 







Patience must be a virtue when using a Kinky Cam. 

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Watch the volcano freeze Europe

See the current pic at: http://www.sat24.com/   (note: corrected Friday at 12:28Z) 


Pee Party day



Today is Pee Party Day were all the pissed-off people get up and and you never know what will dribble out of them.   Above is a living Pee Cup as seen on a Health Partners Facebook page. .

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Rich people who want to pay more taxes

News this morning NPR had a story about rich people who want to pay more taxes. "..."I do feel that I should pay more taxes — absolutely," Hollender says. "While I don't like how the government spends the money I give them, I do feel that I pay too little.  "These arguments are really about keeping money in the pockets of people who already have too much money," Hollender says......Hollender, co-founder of the eco-products company Seventh Generation, says he doesn't believe in trickle-down economics — the theory that what benefits the rich helps everybody." - source link


This comment made TWW think his basic belief about the liberal mind may be flawed.  TWW thought liberals get uncomfortable with social conditions and want the government to do something to make the discomfort go away as long as someone else to pays for it.  The quote above makes it sound like some (very many?) rich liberals really want to pay more taxes.  But look closer.  Right now you can overpay your taxes and there is nothing to stop the rich liberals from paying more taxes. They can even count their overpayment of taxes as a donation to take on the taxes for next year so they can pay even more in taxes next year than they have to when they overpay their taxes again and on and on.  But it sounds like the rich liberals won't pay more taxes unless other rich people do also. The rich liberals are making themselves into victims and it is unfair the other rich people are not paying more taxes when they claim to be willing to do so.  More liberal moral superiority at work here?  This story also makes TWW wonder where he should buy more dish soap when the current supply runs out. 

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

When government cannot perform, citizens take over


With budget shortages closing government rest areas the local people are stepping up to the plate.


Sunday, April 11, 2010

With a drought coming and things so bad perhaps rhubarb pies is what TWW needs

The grass is dry already. Drought predicted.





Maybe Mrs TWW will make some rhubard pie.





Hear the rhubarb pie song. 

Treehuggers beware: Planting trees can cause depression

The trees remaining in the transplant bed.

A transplanted tree.

Just add mulch (hopefully helps with the drought)  


Baby trees waiting to grow. 

Perhaps you may wonder by now what this has to do with depression.  Well, TWW always looks ahead so as he was planting these baby trees he was thinking about what this area will look like when the trees get big in 30 years.  He then realized he may or should not live along enough to see the trees get big. Therefore depression.  

TWW attends training seminar


TWW has not been blogging for a few days since he was attending a seminar held by a Tea Party/militia group called 'Surviving in a Post-Obama 3rd World Environment'.  As part of the seminar he got to build a solar oven.  Below are some pictures of the testing of the oven upon return to Garbin Moraine. 








The temp rose from about 40 degrees F in about 30 minutes while TWW finished the aluminum reflectors and attached them.  He expects to come back after breakfast and find the thermometer melted due to the greenhouse effect.  Interestingly enough this solar oven is an example of the greenhouse effects all of the people who promote these contraptions are trying to get rid of. 

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Great news for last minute tax filers

As you rush to do your returns think about the following: 

  • nearly half of US households pay no income tax
  • "The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment."
  • "The federal income tax is the government's largest source of revenue, raising more than $900 billion -- or a little less than half of all government receipts -- in the budget year that ended last Sept. 30."
  • "The nation's wealthiest taxpayers did get big tax breaks under Bush, with the top marginal tax rate reduced from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, and the second-highest rate reduced from 36 percent to 33 percent...But income tax rates were lowered at every income level. The changes made it relatively easy for families of four making $50,000 to eliminate their income tax liability."
    So what does this all mean?  They play and you pay. And when the Bush tax rate cut disappears then will you pay even more? 

This article may be worth skirting a copyright problem to share with you


"The world is now several decades into the era of environmental panic. The subject of the panic changes every few years, but the basic ingredients tend to remain fairly constant. A trend, a hypothesis, an invention or a discovery disturbs the sense of global equilibrium. Often the agent of distress is undetectable to the senses, like a malign spirit. A villain—invariably corporate and right-wing—is identified.
Then money begins to flow toward grant-seeking institutions and bureaucracies, which have an interest in raising the level of alarm. Environmentalists counsel their version of virtue, typically some quasi-totalitarian demands on the pattern of human behavior. Politicians assemble expert panels and propose sweeping and expensive legislation. Eventually, the problem vanishes. Few people stop to consider that perhaps it wasn't such a crisis in the first place.
This is what's called eschatology—a belief, or psychology, that we are approaching the End Time. Religions have always found a way to take account of those beliefs, but today's secular panics are unmoored by spiritual consolations or valid moral injunctions. Instead, we have the modern-day equivalent of the old Catholic indulgence in the form of carbon credits. It's how Al Gore justifies his utility bills."

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Cabin election Results

• District 4 County Supervisor :

(I)Barbara Love…39

Nell Lee… 84 (winner)



Spooner School Board: two, 2-year seats

(I) Willie Kauffman…521 (winner)

(I) Maureen Revak… 496 (winner)

Kurt Kruger… 362

New life enrichment opportunity



For the latest in excitement we can watch the traffic go by the hi-tech gizmo-thing in Minong.  

quote of the day


"In 1960 Edward Lorenz of Chaos Theory fame asked, “Does the Earth have a climate? The answer, at first glance obvious, improves on acquaintance.”
Due to “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” (the so-called “butterfly effect”), Lorenz asserted that any “complex system” –one with three or more interacting variables– will be non-random but indeterminate: Non-linear, neither amenable to detailed analysis nor capable of extrapolation in any form. In other words, long-term “climatic” changes in Earth’s ultra-complex atmospheric system are mathematically impossible either to model or predict." -- quote by John  Blake 
Lorenz was the father of using computers to model the weather.  Why don't the global warming people ever quote him?

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

New rightwing hero

The following video is by a guy who is supposedly an Army doctor who is also a birther. Watch the video on YouTube.

Is the end near (again) ?

This is a graph found on Roy Spencer's blog (http://www.drroyspencer.com/).  He works at the U of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) analyzing satellite measurements of global temperatures. 


Notice how in the last several months the temperatures are going up. If this trend continues continues we will all boil up under the boiling oceans.


Also notice there was an event in about 1998 where the graph looks similar at least on the left side of the rising line.  Could there be a connection here ? Remember extrapolation is how the climate scientists keep their grant money coming in.  If they predict they might be wrong if the prediction does not come true.  But if they extrapolate then if the extrapolation was wrong they are not to blame. 

Sheriff in Phoenix helps fight global warming

After all the bad raps the sheriff in Phoenix usually gets we thought you'd like to know how he is helping to fight both global warming and obesity at the same time.

"PHOENIX -- Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is implementing a new inmate program at Tent City Jail called “Pedal Vision.”

The program uses inmate-powered cycles to generate electricity for televisions. "

Monday, April 05, 2010

KinkyCam Test #1

The KinkCam is supposed to take pictures of big game but that assumes there are some big game willing to walk by the KinkyCam. 


The KinkyCam did not see these guys coming but did catch them as they made their escape.  There must be some technical issues to resolve. 



The KinkyCam is guaranteed to take pictures of people the people will not like.

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