Big brass ones

The Boeing 707 is as old as I am, having received it's FAA certification when I was a month old or so.  That's a long time ago, and it means that a couple things are important to know.

1. It was designed by slide rules, not computers.

2. There weren't any computers on board, because computers of the day filled a room.

That meant that the bird was flown by the pilot.  This is some sort of flying:



That's a roll test for the 707.  Yikes.  They were Giants, in those days.

Via Theo Spark.

Blogging will be sporadic

I'm in Albuquerque, visiting Mom and Dad.  Each of these visits is a gift, but I want to be helpful while I'm here, so they're increasingly busy.

Yesterday was a bit of a whirlwind, and today looks to be no different.  Blogging will unpredictable for a couple days.

The Dragon

The brave king,
gold-friend of the Geats,
sat down on the headland
and talked with his companions.
He was sad, restless,
and ready to die.
That fate was near
which the old man
would greet.
He would seek his reward,
life from body parted;
not for long
would the soul of the prince
stay wrapped in flesh.

- Beowulf

Beowulf is the most ancient story in a plausibly English language.  It is so old that it's actually in Old English - Anglo-Saxon, really - the still Germanic root of our current tongue.  It's the lay of a great king, and his deeds which lived long beyond his days.

Beowulf ensured his fame by defeating and killing the monster Grendel, who was preying on his people.  This he did as a young man, a King in his prime.  Great deeds are the province of a young man, who aims to make his mark in the world.

Less well known are Beowulf's final deeds as an old man.  A Dragon had descended on his realm, awoken from his sleep by the theft of a portion of his golden horde.  Yes, J. R. R. Tolkien stole this story, and used it in The Hobbit.  Tolkien was a scholar of Old English, so we can excuse this literary appropriation.

Beowulf took eleven companions with him, but insisted on fighting the Dragon alone.  He became the Dragon's Bane, killing the beast with his broken sword, Nægling, but at the cost of his own life, poisoned by the Dragon's bite.  His final words sum up what perhaps every man hopes to be his own final moments:

"For this treasure I give thanks to the Lord of All. Not in vain have I given my life, for it shall be of great good to my people in need. And now leave me, for on this earth longer I may not stay. Say to my warriors that they shall raise a mound upon the rocky point which jutteth seaward. High shall it stand as a memorial to my people. Let it soar upward so that they who steer their slender barks over the tossing waves shall call it Beowulf's mound."

But we can't all die of poison from a dragon, dead by our hands.  And we can't all die a quick death, ending our lives in a blaze of glory - especially a blaze that saves our loved ones.  For some, the end comes like a candle, consumed by a relentless flame that devours the body from within.

I have been blessed thrice in my relationship with my father.  Three, we are told, is a lucky number.

In the days of my youth, I was lucky enough to become friends with my father.  Many - perhaps most - don't.  In a dark, evil part of my life, I cut myself off from my father, my friend.  I was lucky enough to reconcile with him, getting past my foolish, foolish pride.  Many don't.   In the last year, I've been to visit him many times.  Each day is a gift, and these visits are something that I cherish.  Many don't get that chance.

This visit is a meditation, on life, and the living of it, and the leaving of it.  He does not find himself in Beowulf's enviable position of a quick end.  But I find myself lucky once again, as I watch him apply Seneca's dictum about the end that faces us all: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it - the fear of it.

I find myself wondering how I would choose to go.  Would it be quick, hopefully heroically, like Beowulf?  Leaving his kingdom safer by his sacrifice?  Or would it be the slow but stoic way, with one last chance to pass on wisdom and comfort to my sons?  I know which takes more courage, and my heart trembles at the thought.

But I find myself lucky once again.  I see an example before me, one where the easy path is not chosen.  An example where the Candle willingly approaches the flame, for the sake of its sons.  Again, my heart trembles at the sight.

It's said that if we see far, it's because we stand on the shoulders of Giants.  I find myself lucky yet once again, perched high on the shoulders of my Father.

The brave in battle arose then,
bore his shield and mail,
trusting his strength
under the stone cliffs.
(This is not the coward's way).

This is not the coward's way.  My heart trembles when I think that one day, my time will also come.  I am thrice lucky, and thrice lucky again.  Three, we are told, is a lucky number.  I pray that on that day, my Father's example will once again inspire me, and that I will find that once again, I am a lucky man.

X-Box Air Guitar

This is only a prototype, but just imagine what Guitar Hero could do with a polished version.



I have to say that X-Box Kinect is very seriously cool.  We probably won't get one this Christmas, because we'd have to get two (two kids, two X-Boxes, poor planning), and that's just plain too ridiculous.

But man, it's cool.

Please, enough of your ridiculous dogma

Fran Lebowitz explains why young women aren't "feminists":

But there are still girls who make it bad for girls. Young girls are always showing me their diamond engagement rings. “Look, Fran!” It’s so old-fashioned.

Well, it's not clear that Fran knows that's what she did.  Let's see: philosophical purity and solidarity with the Sisterhood, or the chance of a life of happiness?

It would be grotesque, but her utter contempt combined with her utter lack of self-awareness suggest that this is actually a brilliant piece of Dada-inspired Performance Art. You can almost picture her having to bite her cheeks to keep from laughing at the Bambi-eyed credulity of the interviewer - and the readers who will swallow this hook, line, and sinker.

Or she's just a clueless idiot.

(Ann Althouse)

Blogroll Addition

Via a referral trackback, I find that Rob Colling at Greasy Gears was kind enough to add me to his blogroll.  Rob posts mostly on outdoor topics (nice buck, Rob!), but also serves up some humor:



That's some righteous snark, right there.

So welcome to the blogroll!  And the usual note to bloggers who've blogrolled me: if I haven't added you to the blogroll here, send me an email or leave a comment here.

Cracks in the wall

A court has struck down ObamaCare's mandate that you have to purchase health insurance, ruling that the Commerce Clause does not give Congress power to force people to engage in commerce, whether they want to or not.  This seems destined to end up before the Supreme Court, especially since a Michigan court ruled the opposite way.  Get the popcorn.

But that's not what's interesting.  Via an email from Rick, we find the Boston Globe running a poll on whether this was ruled correctly or not.

 

 

Almost 60% of Boston Globe readers (online readers, but Globe readers nonetheless) think that the Fed.Gov has no right to force people to buy what they don't want.

They seem to want it banned in Boston.

Clever, that

Isegoria has more Science Fiction For Children.  It's been quite a long while since #1 Son or #2 Son was interested in Goodnight Moon, and it was a sad day when I realized that I could no longer recite it from memory.

But this brings some of those memories back.  And the color choice here gives the obvious opening line: In the great green dunes, there was a stillsuit and a picture of Muad'Dibb riding a worm ...

Feel free to leave more lines in the comments, and we'll see if collectively we can do the book.

Great House

Something happened in the Nile valley around 3000 B.C. - something that had been gathering steam for a thousand years.  The ancient Egyptians called their land Kmt, "the Black Land"; their fertile fields were annually renewed with fertilized black silt from the river floods, in great contrast to the nearly sterile red dirt soil of the neighboring hills.

This fertility, when controlled by irrigation canals, led to a massive food surplus and population boom.  The Old Kingdom was blessed, but that blessing came via the controls needed to ensure the maintenance of the irrigation works.  That came from the kings, who were gods.

Pharaoh is the modern transliteration of the ancient Egyptian word pr-aa.  It was a term used when referring to the terrible God Kings, and terrible they were.  The Great King would take wive from their husbands as he fancied; men approached trembling, kissing the dust from his feet.  Only the most favored were allowed to rise to his knees.  His name was death, and so Great House - pr-aa - was the term of address, very like today's Majesty.

Most terrible of all was when the God King died, and went to join his fellow deities.  The first two dynasties of the Old Kingdom pre-dated the pyramids; the preferred burial crypt was a Mastaba, a low, rectangular funerary temple.  The greatest collection of these is in the city of Abydos, where the Old Kingdom Pharaohs made their terrible final ends.  The entire Royal Court, or at least a very large part of it, entered the Mastaba with the body of the dead God.  The Mastaba was then sealed up, entombing them.

The charnel house was full in the First Dynasty:

• King Zet's tomb had 174 subsidiary graves.
• King Den-Setui had only 136, but in a very elegant new style.
• King Azab-Merpaba had a very small tomb with only 64 subsidiary graves.  Perhaps he had a financial crisis to deal with.
• King Mersekha-Semempses had a single, massive Mastaba with one great substructure (as opposed to different wings and annexes).
• King Qa, the last of his line, whose tomb was built in haste.  The whole structure collapsed on all the court, in the haste with which it was made.  A sad end to the line of Menes.

But the irrigation projects continued, and later dynasties left even greater legacies, including the Pyramids - to this day, the largest sculptures on the planet.  Organizing the people under the conditions of the day led to a massive surplus that the ruling class could spend as they wished.  They used it to make Wonders of the World, at least until the climate changed.

The divine pr'aa brought the floods.  Irrigation and fertilization from the regular, predictable, annual floods was the seat of his power.  When the floods stopped around 2150 B.C., the God Kings found that their hold on power was merely mortal.

Something happened in the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - something that had been building for hundreds of years.  The Industrial Revolution lifted millions out of poverty, and created wealth undreamed of.  It created so much wealth, that the Ruling Class was entirely overthrown, and Napoleon's despised "nation of shopkeepers" came to dominate much of the globe.

The new Political Class thought on what it might do if it directed itself to the effort, rather than riding the wave by accident.  The Progressive Age was born.

If "society" could make such a wealth of products - cheap clothes, cheap steel, railroads, great steamships - could it not make a wealth of human capital?  The Progressives thought that it could, and began a program aiming to enrich people's non-material lives.

In many ways, they succeeded:  Women's suffrage, the end of child labor, and (plausibly) full voting rights for racial minorities are properly credited to the Progressive Movement.  We wouldn't want to live in a world without these.

But the great Progressive Leaders were sometimes as terrible as their Old Kingdom precursors.  Stalin and Hitler were entirely Progressive, and killed millions chasing their empty philosophies.  Closer to home, we have sad, sorry spectacles like Eugenics, which impoverished the lives of countless unfortunates.  The Mastabas of modern political philosophy have their own set of mass graves.

But the whole edifice was constructed on the premise that "progress" would keep the People fed, housed, and safe, and that the People's children would partake of those benefits, or even more.

In the old system, both blue collar and white collar workers hold stable jobs, a professional career civil service administers a growing state, with living standards for all social classes steadily rising while the gaps between the classes remain fairly stable, and with an increasing ‘social dividend’ being paid out in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks and so on.  Graduate from high school and you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that gave you a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle; graduate from college and you would be better paid and equally secure.

Like the Nile floods of 2150 B.C., that's drying up.  The priestly political class sees that the floods have not come, but doesn't know what to do.  They stick to the old script:

"Nebensi, the lord of reverence, saith: 'I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, (and I have) the power to be born a second time."

Of course, they wouldn't dream of using anything so out of touch as the Book Of The Dead.  Instead, they use a century old Progressive dogma that would be recognizable by Teddy Roosevelt.

The People don't care (mostly) about the many dead from the Progressive Era, any more than the people of the Nile valley cared about the ancient courts, entombed with their God Kings.  What they care about - like the ancient Egyptian people cared about - is their prosperity, and that of their children.  They don't see it on the horizon.

The rains do not come.  You can't redistribute what isn't produced.  For a group of people who claim to be as educated as the Progressives, you'd think they'd realize that.  History speaks plainly, if you listen.

Barack Obama is playing the part of King Qa, last of the First Dynasty.  His agenda is turning out to be his Mastaba, completed in haste, and looking to collapse.  He looks like he very well may be buried with a court of Democrat Congressmen and Senators, following The One to the bitter end.  The sands may cover all traces of this age, and rather than a monument worthy of the Seven Wonders, leave simply the sound of the wind.



The People won't notice, or remember.  They just want the floods to come.  When the dam holding back creative endeavors - created by legions of Progressive Era bureaucrats - is swept away, new leadership will lead this land to new heights, just as Ramses did.  But Ramses was the heir to a line that had learned a valuable lesson.  You don't need to build any more Pyramids.

Double Down

Suppose you're a Big Shot climate scientist.  You're calling 2010 the warmest year on record (or in the top three, or whatever).  It's hot hot hot.  Oh noes!  Thermageddon!



There's only one little problem.  Record cold has descended across large parts of North America and Europe - indeed, this has been going on for some time now: the winter of 2009-2010 seems to be about as cold as ever seen in the Northern Hemisphere.  People are starting to look at you like you're the crazy uncle in the attic.  You know they have a choice of believing you or their lying eyes, and you think you know which way that wind is blowing.

So what do you do?  Well, if you're NASA's Dr. James Hanson, you say the same thing again, only louder:

The cold anomaly in Northern Europe in November has continued and strengthened in the first half of December. Combined with the unusual cold winter of 2009-2010 in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, this regional cold spell has caused widespread commentary that global warming has ended. That is hardly the case. On the contrary, globally November 2010 is the warmest November in the GISS record.

Figure 2(a) illustrates that there is a good chance that 2010 as a whole will be the warmest year in the GISS analysis. Even if the December global temperature anomaly is unusually cool, 2010 will at least be in a statistical tie with 2005 for the warmest year.

Click through to see Figure 2(a), which takes turns the Thermageddon! knob up to 11, or you could just watch this to understand how he got his results.

It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
"She blinded me with science!"
And failed me in Climatology

Science!

Can I just say - as a taxpayer - that I'd really like a higher quality of nonsense from my tax dollar?

European Fascism stirs

As you'd expect, it's not pretty.

Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson today mounted an extraordinary defence of armed protection officers after the worst Royal security blunder in a generation.

Sir Paul hailed the 'enormous restraint' of the team guarding Prince Charles and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall, implying the rioters were lucky not to have been shot.

Camilla was left terrified as their Rolls Royce came under fire from a snarling mob of student fees rioters as it made its way to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.

The car was kicked, rocked and hit with paint bombs as up to 20 demonstrators attacked it and chanted 'Off with their heads!' and 'Tory scum', leaving the couple visibly shaken.

Sir Paul has forgotten his history, possibly intentionally.  The rise of fascism was spurred on my the sense of lawlessness and collapse of legitimacy in the ruling order following the end of the Great War.  Street gangs fought state law enforcement, and each other.  The majority increasingly kept their heads down, as the state showed itself increasingly unwilling - or unable - to establish and keep order.

The man in uniform standing next to Adolf Hitler is Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, very nearly the victor in the last great German campaign in 1918.  Hitler had one of the biggest and toughest street gangs around, and an ideology of social control over much of society.  Sensing that the time was ripe, he looked for someone to add a veneer of respectability to his bully boy organization.  Ludendorff fit the bill.

Of course, the Beer Hall Putsch failed miserably.  Even as weak and decadent a state as the Weimar Republic rounded up his gang.  But it was too weak to do much about things.  Hitler was sent to prison, but it was all but a slap on the wrist.  Not only did he become a celebrity, receiving many visitors in his cell, but he wrote his notorious polemic Mein Kampf while behind bars.  Ten years later, he was Chancellor.

Europe has been sliding into chaos for a long time.  Large parts of Paris - the banlieus, or housing projects - are effectively no-go areas, where the police dare not enter.  Tens of thousands of cars are burned each year.  In the UK, the population has been disarmed, while the police and courts refuse to do anything about a wave of "hot burglaries" - break-ins that occur while the residents are at home.  The sense of lawlessness is palpable.  People keep their heads down.  The Ruling Class increasingly is seen to have no legitimacy.

Now the heir to the throne is attacked in the street by a mob.  The streets belong to the gangs, from Malmo to Southend to Marseille.  The gangs are motivated by ideology - the socialist welfare state, in the case of the yobs who attacked HRH Prince Charles' car; radical Islam in the case of the banlieus.

Hitler would not have been possible without a great adversary.  His German National Socialism was a counter to the International Socialism offered by the Socialist International, run from Moscow.  His posturing as the defender of the old social order rallied the vast uncommitted middle to his side, or at least enough to tip the balance.

I said a while back that it was a short, half-step sideways for Europe to go from Fascism to Transnational Progressivism.  It will only be a short half-step back. 
All that the European countries lack is a charismatic leader.  The current European Ruling Class - including Sir Paul - refuse to do anything to correct the tailspin that society finds itself in.  Society is going to reach a point where they insist that someone - anyone - do something about it.

Read the criticism that Sir Paul finds himself under.  Ask yourself if the next time, shots will be fired.  Ask yourself what will happen after the gunfire stops.  It's said that fascism is always descending on America, but always landing in Europe.

This is my kind of neighborhood

This is only part of the display, which is entirely full of awesome. The picture was surprisingly hard to take, because people would stop their cars right in front of me to take their own pictures.

Don't see much of this up in Massachusetts. Too bad - it would do 'em some good.

That's some "Smart" Diplomacy, right there

India objects to TSA pat down of Ambassador to US:

India's foreign minister said Thursday it was unacceptable that the country's ambassador to the United States was patted down by a security agent at a Mississippi airport, and said he would complain to Washington.

The ambassador, Meera Shankar, was returning from giving a speech at Mississippi State University last week when she was pulled out of line at the airport and given a pat down by a female Transportation Security Administration agent.

Smart.  Good think we don't have some yokel from Texas running things, or something might go wrong.

It really doesn't need to be stated, but one of the traditional causes for war was the violation of the person of an Ambassador.  Ambassador Shankar was traveling under diplomatic immunity, as befits her station, with appropriate documentation, and accompanied by the Mississippi Governor's staff.

Smart.  The TSA is causing diplomatic incidents.  Again.  Last year, they made the Indian President take his shoes off before boarding a flight for a State Visit.  Their comment?  We didn't do anything wrong:

The TSA maintained that it followed guidelines in the search of Shankar.

Hey, why not search the Diplomatic Pouch for contraband, while you're at it?  The punchline?  This isn't the first time this year that she's got the full grope treatment.

Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said this was the second time the ambassador had been singled out for a pat down in the past three months.

"Let me be very frank that this is unacceptable to India," he said. "We are going to take it up with the government of United States, and I hope that things could be resolved so that such unpleasant incidents do not recur."

A TSA spokesman said diplomats were not exempt from the searches, and that bulky clothing could prompt a pat down.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters Thursday that the State Department is looking into the matter and is trying to determine what can be done to prevent such incidents in the future.

And as a public service to the Republic, let me offer an approach to Secretary Clinton, one that  is guaranteed to prevent this sort of incident in the future.  Defund the TSA.

Idiots.

I don't know about you, but I'm aware ...

Still, mark your calendars appropriately.

Hat tip: Bollywood Barbie.

Aaron Lewis - Country Boy

Take one lead singer from an Alternative Metal band.  Add backup vocals from George Jones and Chris Young, and Charlie Daniels on fiddle.  What do you get?

Something awesome.  Today's Saturday Redneck comes via Chris Byrne, who points out that there are in fact two different Massachusetts: the liberal one of Harvard and Beacon Hill, and the blue collar/red neck one of the center and western parts of the state.  And so while Staind is a Massachusetts band, it's from the second Massachusetts.

Lewis precisely captures the feeling of "Red State" America in this single from his upcoming album, Town Line.  Unapologetic patriotism, self-reliance, scorn for the "slick" types who tell you it's OK to change your values.  Rock has sure come a long way, to hear rockers talk like this:

"Well, I'm pretty outspoken as to my political views, and how far this country is from what it's supposed to be right now," Lewis says. "I very strongly believe in the Constitution and I believe in the limited powers it puts forth. I believe that every person in this country would be better off if we went back to having the federal government do what it's supposed to do, and stop sticking its nose in places that it has no authority or right to be sticking it."

If the rest of Massachusetts were like this, we might still be there.


Country Boy (Songwriter: Aaron Lewis)

Well I grew up down an old dirt road in a town you wouldn’t know.
My Pops picked the place up for fifteen hundred bucks back in 1964.
My grandfather was a drinker back in the day he put em down
but a war is known to change a man and the whiskeys known to change the man

but no that’s not me.
I rarely drink from a bottle
but I’ll smoke a little weed.

I still live in the sticks where you wouldn’t go
in a town of 1200 down an old dirt road
‘cause a country boy is all I’ll ever be.

Now it’s been 12 years since I’ve sold my soul to the devil in L.A.
He said sign your name here on the dotted line and your songs they all will play.
He set up shot on Sunset he put me up at the Marquee
he said you want to sell a million records boy you better listen to me.

He said change your style
whiten your smile
you could lose a couple pounds
if you want to live this life you better lose that wife
do you need your friends around?

And I said no that’s not me.
The biggest things in life are my friends and family.
And I like my jeans and my old t shirt and a couple extra pounds never really hurt
‘cause a country boy is all I’ll ever be

‘cause Hank taught me just how to stay alive
you’ll never catch me out the house without my 9 or 45.
I got a big orange tractor and a diesel truck
and my idea of heaven is chasing white tail buck
don’t cha know I know can survive

now two flags fly above my land and really they sum up how I feel.
One is the colors that fly high and proud
the red the white the blue
the other ones got a rattle snake with a simple statement made
Don’t Tread on Me is what is says and I’ll take that to my grave

because this is me
proud to be American and strong in my beliefs.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again because i never needed Government to hold my hand
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again
because my family’s always fight and died to save this land
and a country boy is all I’ll ever be.

(Image source)

What can you purchase using a Massachusetts Driver's License as ID?

Hello, Evil Black Rifle.  With high standard capacity magazine.  But now for the punchline: Your Massachusetts Driver's License is a valid ID to purchase this in Georgia, but not in Massachusetts.

And the air smells like Freedom down here, too.

UPDATE 15 December 2010 00:55: Welcome visitors from View From The Porch.  In the interests of full disclosure, I have to say that I actually haven't bought this rifle yet, even though (a) it's wicked sweet, and (b) I could, with my Mass Driver's License (well, in Georgia, at least).

That said, it seems that those of us in the Free portions of the Republic are obliged to purchase weapons banned in the UnFree portions of the Republic.  If the Great State of Schmuckolina decides that banning, say, a Ruger Blackhawk is a top priority, we should all go out quick like a bunny and buy one.   If enough of us outweigh the banners, we'll get the gun manufacturers building for us.

Hey, Power To The People, Baby!

Wow

Shamelessly stolen from Isegoria, who has a great WWII sniper story.

Not "nuanced"

The Inside-The-Beltway types will hate this.

Hap tip: Theo Spark.

Unpossible

Birmingham (UK) is installing a gunfire locator system:

Birmingham is the first UK city to install the Shotspotter Gunshot Location System. The technology can locate gunshot fire within a 25 metre radius from up to 2km away. It also provides information about how many firearms have been discharged before officers arrive at a crime scene.

West Midlands Police said it will enable them to maximise the safety of its officers and the public. In addition it can help to deploy officers more effectively.

This simply can't be true.  I mean, the UK essentially outlawed handguns years ago.  Good thing, too, or else people might be getting shot in places like Birmingham.

Remind me again how the Left is so much more scientific than everyone else

I mean, at least we're not signing petitions to ban water:



Oh, and enforce international sanctions to reduce the USA's GDP by 8%.  If the Left were as smart as they think they are, they wouldn't let the mask slip.