Is the NRA running out of ammo?

Very interesting article by Adam Winkler on how the gun rights community increasingly sees the NRA as out of touch.  This part strikes me as the crux of the matter:

The NRA explained its position [on Heller v. DC] by saying it didn't want to risk losing at the Supreme Court. But gun owners told me they thought the NRA was really afraid of winning. The NRA, they said, thrives on crisis-driven fundraising appeals that warn about government coming to take away all your guns. What would happen to this fundraising machine if the Supreme Court said the Constitution prevented government from ever doing that? To many gun owners, the NRA seemed more interested in its own finances than in protecting those gun owners' rights.

Pournelle's Iron Law predicts this type of behavior, of course:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

*COUGH* Wayne LaPierre *COUGH*

I have to say that about the only thing between me and canceling my membership is the NRA's insurance policy for firearms.  But given that we only have maybe a couple grand invested in our guns, that's a thin thread.  Probably I'll send my money to the Second Amendment Foundation instead.

Climate Databases are still a mess

Dog bites man:

Virtually all of the USHCN warming since 1973 appears to be the result of adjustments NOAA has made to the data, mainly in the 1995-97 timeframe.

We've seen this before:

An interesting question is how much of the 20th century's temperature change is due to adjustments? As it turns out, the answer is all of it.

This chart shows the before-adjustment and after-adjustment temperatures for the 20th century, super imposed. All of the warming is due to adjustments, rather than raw data. Almost all of the adjustments are for readings after 1970.

Color me skeptical on the ZOMG Thermageddon panic. I would love for a clear explanation on the adjustments.  And I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the argument for warming if the warming didn't all evaporate when you just look at the original, unaltered data.

Sarah Flower Adams - Nearer My God To Thee

A century ago to this day, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic struck an iceberg and foundered, taking 1,514 souls to a watery grave.  Many stories of heroism and sacrifice from that cold, desperate night have come down to us; perhaps none so moving as that of the band gathering on the boat deck to play music that might soothe the panic and grief of the passengers.  Bandmaster Wallace Hartley and the entire band perished, but did not desert their post.  The story started circulating almost immediately in 1912, and has given Hollywood some of its most powerful scenes of them playing the Titanic's last song.



Or was it?  Walter Lord, author of A Night To Remember and perhaps the finest Titanic historian devoted an entire chapter to this question in his sequal, The Night Lives On.  The story is, as most stories from that night are, confused and contradictory.

The Hymn Nearer My God To Thee was written by Sarah Flower Adams in 1841, and put to music by her sister Eliza.  But the music was not what you just heard, because the popular hymn was soon re-scored.  The tune in the scene above is properly called "Bethany", composed by Lowell Mason, and was the popular version of the hymn in the United States.  But Hartley was English, and the White Star Line was owned and operated by Englishmen.  In the UK, the tune most commonly played for the hymn was "Horbury" by John Bacchus Dykes:



But that's not the end of the matter.  Hartley was a Methodist, and the Methodist hymnal used a score by Sir Arthur Sullivan.  Perhaps this version was Titanic's ultimate song:



We have conflicting eye-witness accounts from survivors.  Col. Archibald Gracie was blunt when asked whether this was indeed the song [quoted from The Night Lives On]:

If 'Nearer My God To Thee' was one of the selections, I assuredly would have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death, and more likely to create a panic ...

Others said that the music was light and cheerful, tunes that the band had been playing all voyage.  One in particular was called out, "Autumn", referring to the 1911 London hit Songe d'Automne:



A few have said that the reference was to the Church of England hymn Autumn, but according to Lord that seems unlikely as it was rarely used and removed from the hymnal a few years later.  In any event, the legend lives on to this day.  The disaster called forth perhaps the best from society, and Caruso himself performed at a benefit concert only a couple of weeks after the sinking.



Perhaps most astonishing of all, Bandleader Hartley's body was one of the few recovered, and was brought back to England for burial.  Lord describes the scene:

Seven bands played as his rosewood casket, borne shoulder-high, was carried through the winding streets of Colne, Hartley's birthplace in the winding hills of Lancashire.  Aldermen, councilors, ambulance men, police, boys' brigades, and musicians from all over England fell in behind - the procession was a half-mile long.  Thousands lined the route, most wore black or white, but occasionally there were mill girls in their drab shawls and miners in their blue overalls.  All business had stopped for the day.

They were closer to the tragedy than we, looking back through the glass darkened by a century's passing.  They felt the grief of loss sharply, the sudden and entirely unexpected loss of friends and family.  That's worth a moment of our thought this morning, for the lost souls - men, women, and children - of the unsinkable Titanic.  And so the circle is completed, with an achingly beautiful a capella version of the first version of the hymn that we heard here.  Whether this was the last song that they heard or not, these words seem fitting.

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,

Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;

Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God, to Thee

That's gentler than the 1892 Book Of Common Prayer which would have been familiar to most of the doomed souls:

O MOST glorious and gracious Lord God, who dwellest in heaven, but beholdest all things below; Look down, we beseech thee, and hear us, calling out of the depth of misery, and out of the jaws of this death, which is now ready to swallow us up: Save, Lord, or else we perish. The living, the living shall praise thee. O send thy word of command to rebuke the raging winds and the roaring sea; that we, being delivered from this distress, may live to serve thee, and to glorify thy Name all the days of our life. Hear, Lord, and save us, for the infinite merits of our blessed Saviour, thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  

Amen.

Those who go down to the sea in ships

Who do business on Great Waters,
They have seen the works of the LORD
and His Wonders in the deep.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Amen

The Titanic sank 100 years ago.  More here and here.

Dallas Blogshoot Reminder - one week

One week from today will be the Dallas blog shoot.

When: Saturday, April 21 2012 at 10:00 AM until mid-afternoon or when people want to leave.

Where: 3100 E. Beltline Rd, Ferris, TX 75125.


What to Bring: It's Texas, and late spring, so bring lots of water.  There's likely somewhere near by for lunch, but I'm not sure where (you might want to bring lunch).  Oh yeah - bring your guns and ammo.

Charity Raffle: We're having a Blogshoot raffle to support our gunnie brothers and sisters trapped behind Enemy Lines in the People's Soviet* of Massachusetts.  Each pre-ban AR magazine you donate to the Cause will get you one chance to win.  I'll bring (mostly lame) prizes, as well as the obligatory stuffed children's toy that we sacrifice to the Gunnie Ghods.  Remember, these have to be pre-ban, meaning manufactured before 1994, or we can't send 'em to JayG and the Crew.  Bring your old stuff - these are surprisingly hard to get in Massachusetts (which is the point).  Stupid Mitt Romney and his "assault weapon" ban.

Obligatory Blogshoot Target: We have a HopeNChange™ unicorn to shoot.  I hear that every time you hit it, you'll get a rainbow Unicorn fart.  Well, it's what I heard.

Carpooling:  The Texas Gun Blogosphere's own community organizer, Southern Belle has generously agreed to help, err, organize.  While carpooling is a commie plot to undermine the fabric of American society, at $4/gal it's pretty dang expensive to do long road trips (ask me how I know!).  We have folks in Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas - and points outside and in between).  If anyone is thinking about NOT coming because of the cost of gas (or the hassle of driving), please leave a comment here or over at her place.  I can bring two people from Austin to and from the blogshoot, and if we can get a few other folks to volunteer, we can bring a Texas sized crew.

A HUGE tank you to our host, U.S. Citizen, for arranging range time for us.  See you next week!

HAHAHAHAHA

All you need to know about the Democrats and Ann Romney, set to music.

Man, those Democrats are so much smarter than everyone else. *Rolls Eyes*

You know you want one

I'd comment more, but I am advised by Counsel that anything I say can be used against me ...

Roy Acuff - The Great Ship Titanic

(Image source)

Music is topical.  Since everyone's talking about the centennial of the Titanic disaster, I wondered "did anyone ever write a country music song about the Titanic?"  The answer is, of course.

As you'd expect from a topical song, this is very, very old - dating to the 1920s, to the formative years of Country Music.  This version was recorded in the 1930s by the father of Country Music, the great Roy Acuff.  And so the song was written only 15 years or so after the event.



The Great Ship Titanic (Songwriter: Ernest Stoneman)

It was on one Monday morning about one o'clock
When that great Titanic began to reel and rock
People began to scream and cry
Saying, oh! Lord, were bound to die
It was sad when that great ship went down.

It was sad when that great ship went down
It was sad when that great ship went down
husbands and their wives,
Little children lost their lives
It was sad when that great ship went down.

When building that great ship, they said what they would do
They said that they could build a ship that water could not go thru
God with power in his hand, showed the world it could not stand
It was sad when that great ship went down.

It was sad when that great ship went down
It was sad when that great ship went down
husbands and their wives,
Little children lost their lives
It was sad when that great ship went down.

When that great ship left England, she was making for the shores
When the rich declared, they would not ride with the poor
So they put the poor below and they were the first to go
It was sad when that great ship went down.

Baseball with Custer's Seventh Cavalry

Wow.

Happy blogiversary to Aretae

Blogging for three years now.  You'll gain IQ points by a daily read - he may be the smartest dude I know*, and I know rather a lot of smart dudes (the list probably starts with my older brother).  My experience growing up is that if you run with a smarter crowd, it forces you to keep up.  Running with Aretae will do that for you.

I actually don't think I have anything more complimentary to say than that.  Get over there and read.

* He may actually be the smartest dude since Aquinas, although he denies it.  Pretty smart, denying that.  See my point?

In which I pwn Andrew Sullivan

It ain't braggin' if you can do it.  But man, Google's rankings are weird sometimes.

The "Consensus" crumbles

The most idiotic argument for Global Warming is that there's a "consensus", that essentially all scientists support that conclusion, and therefore the "science is settled".  It's nonsense on stilts, and always has been, but it's been regularly rolled out by mouth breathing environmentalists.

Well, there's every reason to think that this is completely falling apart.  A great example of this is a recent public lecture by the University of Colorado's Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.  Note that he is convinced that anthropogenic warming is happening, so can't be described as one of those filthy deniers like me.  The slides of his lecture are posted, and are pretty interesting:

Pielke's point is that if you want to address anthropogenic warming, the only policy lever that can actually be effective is de-carbonizing our energy supply: it's politically impossibly to reduce standards of living in the democratic societies, and so every policy aimed at reducing GDP will fail spectacularly.  His recommendation - which is not a bad one at all - is that any Carbon Tax should be small (so as not to impact GDP) and the money raised focused on research into better generation technologies.  Clearly solar and wind are a failure, and so other alternatives are needed, and more aggressive policies intended to push economies away from oil and gas will simply collapse in the absence of different alternatives.

Long time readers know that I'm pretty skeptical of the whole warming issue, due to what seem to be really bad quality control issues in the historical temperature databases.  My take is that we've clearly warmed over the last two centuries, that we may have warmed over the last century (but the data is a mess and so that's not at all clear), and that we likely have not warmed at all over the last millennium. I find the null hypothesis - change is dominated by natural variation - much stronger than anthropogenic causes.  However, this slide show is worth your time if you are a climate geek like me.

Good luck

I like my older brother, and have all my life.  He starts chemotherapy today.  Good luck, bro.

Rant

I'm replacing light bulbs in the kitchen, and notice that the burned out ones are the new fangled CFL ones.  You know, the ones that cost four times as much, but "last ten times longer".  Except they last the same.  Thank you, Congress!

And it seems that the new "energy efficient" front loading washing machines - you know, the ones that cost twice as much as the old top loaders - seems they don't get your clothes clean.  Well, that's what Consumer Reports says.  Thanks, Congress!

And it's been years since the toilet would actually flush in a reliable way.  And a further benefit of these "low flow" toilets is that there's not enough volume going through the sewers, and so the sewers all need maintenance, and so property taxes go up.  Thanks, Congress!

Our Congress: making sure that we're dirty, in the dark, and can't even take a dump in peace.

We now return you to a less ranty normal blog schedule ...

Thirty years

1911 saw not just the introduction of John Moses Browing's (PBUP) classic pistol, but a new aeroplane design from a young man named Alliott Verdon Roe.  It was a revolutionary plane with three wings:



The young man, of course, went on to become Sir A. V. Roe, founder of the AVRO corporation, builder of the AVRO Lancaster Bomber that flew almost exactly thirty years after that triplane.

Americans are pretty full of their heavy bomber cred, with the B-17, B-24, and astounding B-29 from World War II.  But the Lancaster was no slouch, carrying the 22,000 lb "Grand Slam" bombs, known as "Ten Ton Tess".  Just as a point of reference, the "Little Boy" atomic bomb dropped on Japan only weighed 80% of this.

Odd trivia, part the first: Sir Alliott died in the same year I was born.  Makes me feel a bit old, right there.

Odd trivia, part the second: You know how military sites sometimes have displays of deactivated munitions?  You know, old cannons, shells, bombs, that sort of thing?  Well it seems that RAF Scampton had a Grand Slam on display for a decade.  They thought that it had been deactivated.  It hadn't been.  Oops.

Relax, citizen. The State is at work for you.

Here's one for you, from the Republic's second most fascist leader:

In order to correct gross inequities and to provide for greater equality in contributing to the war effort, the Director is authorized to take the necessary action, and to issue the appropriate regulations, so that, insofar as practicable no salary shall be authorized under Title III, Section 4, to the extent that it exceeds $25,000 after the payment of taxes allocable to the sum in excess of $25,000. Provided, however, that such regulations shall make due allowance for the payment of life insurance premiums on policies heretofore issued, and required payments on fixed obligations heretofore incurred, and shall make provision to prevent undue hardship.

FDR has to play second fiddle to Woodrow Wilson for the title of Top Duce, however.  Roosevelt may have rounded up all the Japanese Americans and sent them to concentration camps, but he never jailed a political opponent during a Presidential Election.

It goes without saying that Progressives worship both of these men.  Duce! Duce! Duce!

Happy blogiversary to Denny

Grouchy Old Cripple is ten years old.  Yowzer.  He can tell us if there really was a Medieval Warm Period in the early days of the Blogosphere.

Congrats, and thanks for keeping us in blonde jokes and puns.

Facebook Protip

Lock your computer's screen if you step away for a cup of coffee.  Just sayin'.

Lamebook is, err, interesting.

Huh. Seems I'm too High Falutin' or something

You need a 9th Grade edumacation to read this here blog:

Number of characters (without spaces) :	2,459.00
Number of words :	527.00
Number of sentences :	31.00
Average number of characters per word :	4.67
Average number of syllables per word :	1.54
Average number of words per sentence:	17.00

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index :	11.20

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index :	9.92
Flesch Kincaid Grade level :	9.15
ARI (Automated Readability Index) :	9.05

I guess these folks think I should use small words so I don't lose all y'all.  Or something.  So how does this language robot deal with that classic of the English language - where the words are almost entirely of simple Angle-Saxon stock, not fancy and frenchified?  You know, this one:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Seems it's all fancy and frenchified, or something:

Number of characters (without spaces) :	720.00
Number of words :	177.00
Number of sentences :	4.00
Average number of characters per word :	4.07
Average number of syllables per word :	1.28
Average number of words per sentence:	44.25

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index :	19.51

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index :	7.48
Flesch Kincaid Grade level :	16.80
ARI (Automated Readability Index) :	19.85
SMOG :	10.75

Easier to read than Churchill.  Not bad, not bad.  History shall be kind to my blog, for I intend to write it ...

Good grief.  Sam Clemens wept.  And Steve Jobs would have had them all shot.

Enjoy the decline

Maybe it's time to just sit back and take your Captain's advice.  Here's some music to go with your drink.  Make mine a double, with extra .45 ACP.

Choose the form of the Destructor

Santorum's out, and Newt hasn't a prayer, so now it really is down to Mittens vs. TheOne.  Yeah, yeah, R0N P4uL!!!! Like I said, it's Mittens or TheOne.

Decision time.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you choose the form of the Destructor:

1. The Economy won't get much better, no matter which of these doofuses plants his seat in the Oval Office.  It's regulation that's killing this country's economy, and Mittens is a not-quite-as-big-government as Barry.  A Romney administration will preside over a continued sputtering and no job growth, and all the "green shoots" that the Press so hopefully reports on will oddly disappear next January 20 if Mitt wins.

2. For most people, the issue is jobs.  If Romney wins, the Press will be nothing but "Jobless Recovery" (remember that from 2004?) for the next 4 years.  Without job growth, that will stick, and we very well may see Romney turned out after four years.

3. A Romney administration is no chip shot for Supreme Court nominees.  Ignore that given a chance he's likely to show his true G. H.W. Bush colors and appoint another Souter; if it looks like he might lose, the liberal justices might just stagger on for another four.  A Democratic successor to Romney might appoint as many as five Justices in his first term.  That would be a record since George Washington's time.

4. Mush from the wimp. Stick a fork in him, he's done.  The Obama campaign is ruthless, and what people have so far been interpreting as Mitt's steadiness is in reality ripe to be exploited by the Democrats.  Turn out the lights, the party's over ...

5. The action that counts is in the House and Senate races, but the action that really counts is almost over - running challengers against the too-comfortable Republican fat cats that don't care about what happens to the country as long as they get their chairmanships and earmarks.  Right now, confidence is not high.

And so, we only await The Sign.



Oops, somebody just chose Romney ...



Me, I'm sticking to my original plan.

Or maybe Cthulhu.  If I vote for him, maybe he'll devour me first.

UPDATE 11 April 2012 16:55: Robb says it with pictures.  Heh.

Eternal truths little girls learn from watching "The Little Mermaid"

Brings a tear to my eye, it's so sweet.  Especially the last one.  And actually all the Disney films are educational for our little Mickys and Minnies.

This cracks me up

The bit about Mio paying him is so over the top - camp, even - that it's hilarious.



Clever meets over the top.  There are more up on Youtube, but this one is my favorite.

A maze of twisty passages, all alike

It's amazing how the Intertubes can lead you all over Creation and back.  Via I can't remember where I ran across the Wikipedia page for Zip The Pinhead, a carnival freak who seems to have led a fairly normal life, along with entertaining something like a hundred million people (if you can believe Wikipedia), including Edward, the Prince of Wales.

That made me think of the later day Dada inspired comic, Zippy the Pinhead, whose name was inspired by the original Zipster.  My very favorite was the one where Zippy and his friend reenact scenes from the 1990s cult foreign language classic, French In Action.  That's right, there was a Yale French language class that became an underground hit, strange though it may sound.  I loved it, Back In The Day - my conversational French got good enough to chat with cab drivers.

Strangely, the Wikipedia page for French In Action didn't mention the rumors that the pretty blonde ingenue (Valérie Allain) was rumored to be a 1990s porn star, although this seems to be not true.

Figures.  The Internet leads to a porn reference, even via a circus freak and an Ivy League foreign language self-help course.  Or especially via a circus freak show and an Ivy League University.  Rule 34: it's the law.  OK, maybe one exception allowed*.

* I'm afraid that the smart money doesn't bet on even this one exception, sadly.

#OccupyMojaveDesert

Suppose you're a Progressive (no, not you - this is a thought experiment), filled with self-importance and smug assurance that you're nicer than everyone and that your Progressive Approved Policies® are all to help poor people, Mother Gaia, and baby forest animals.  You'd be horrified at the sight of Government Agents forcing poor people from their homes at gun point:

On Oct. 17, 2007, Marcelle opened the door to a loud knock. Her heart jumped when she found a man backed by two armed county agents in bulletproof vests. She was alone in the cabin, a dot in the vast open space of the Antelope Valley, without a neighbor for more than half a mile. She feared that something had happened to her daughter, who was visiting from Montreal.

The men demanded her driver's license, telling her, "This building is not permitted — everything must go." Normally sassy, Marcelle handed over her ID — even her green card, just in case. Stepping out, she realized that her 1,000-square-foot cabin was surrounded by men with drawn guns. "You have no right to be here," one informed her. Baffled and shaking with fear, she called her daughter — please come right away.

Jackbooted thugs!  Why, it's an outrage!  Quick, make up the posters, fire up Twitter - oh, what was all this about, anyway?  Seems that First Solar, Inc. is planning a massive solar generating facility, and the riff-raff have to go:

It’s hard to say what a bad week might feel like for an $11 billion corporation named by Forbes Magazine as the fastest growing technology company in America two years in a row, but First Solar Inc.’s unpleasant encounter with the Fairmont Town Council in Western Antelope Valley this week caught the eye of some Wall Street investors. The company, known as FSLR on the NASDAQ, is seeking to place a 2,100 acre, 230 megawatt system, the largest in California, in the Fairmont area.

...

In strong words, the letter said that architects of the project are obliged to make a "collaborative effort" with community members, but that they had not. The council's letter calls AV Solar Ranch One "a bullying, unwanted neighbor whose pursuit of profits apparently has blinded it to any concepts of area cooperation," then asks for an immediate review of the project "prior to commencement of construction."

That sound you just heard is the sound of leftie's heads getting all 'splody.

But wait, we're not done!  That's not even the punchline.  All that "clean" energy?  Oops:

The Chinese authorities have suspended production at a solar panel factory after protests by residents who blame the plant for fouling the air and water, a government Web site said Monday.

It's a trifecta!  Poor people thrown from their houses at gunpoint by Government agents working at the behest of corrupt politicians who are in the pocket of rapacious profit-mad corporations that are befouling the air and water with their careless pollution.

And it's all being done for the tree hugging Progressives.

Man, some days it just seems like it can't get any better.  Enjoy a nice hot mug of schadenfreude, hippies!

A better mousetrap

Designed to make it easy to shoot them at range:

The optic is also built to be very intuitive so there’s a very short learning curve. A Sergeant Major at Ft. Benning two desk clerks just in from BMT, shooters who had never shot past the 300, and in approximately 15 minutes had them engaging targets out to 800m. Admittedly, that’s not on a two-way range in bad conditions, but think about what they could have done if they’d been given two or three days to learn how to exploit the optic to its fullest advantage, to compensate for wind and environmental conditions.

Well, maybe it's a better "rattrap".

Of Arms and the Man

Aretae asks a question that makes me think.  He answers it in a way that I disagree.  Now when you find yourself on the opposite side of an argument with someone as smart as him, you need to think twice, or thrice.  Having taken the weekend to think, I still disagree with him.

As a starting point, here's his thesis:

What is the virtue difference (in WWII) between a Nazi volunteer soldier, a Soviet volunteer soldier, and a American volunteer soldier?

I would assert that it's fairly obviously none.  All three are doing what they believe to be right, which is to defend (?!?) their country.

It's a thoughtful post, and you should read the whole thing in its entirety.  My point of disagreement comes from first premises: Aretae is focused on the individuals, and I'm focused on the societies.  He sums it up here:

As a universalist, I categorically reject the affiliationist argument (They're MY team, and right/wrong have nothing to do with it).  However, that's the only path I see to not celebrating Nazi soldiers equivalently to American ones.

I don't think that this is true.  While I am not really temperamentally suited to the rigorous logical proof that is Aretae's stock in trade, my argument really boils down to this: social organization matters.

Consider a society.  It consists not just of the individuals, but in their interactions.  How they interact is critically important to not just their own success and happiness, but to the long term success of the society in general.  This topic is toxic in Politically Correct circles like the Academy, but unless we deal with it head on, there are questions that simply cannot be answered.

For example, why was Western Europe the first to industrialize?  Nobody in 1000 AD would have predicted that Europe would come to dominate the globe; even in 1500 AD the smart money would still have bet on China or India.  By 1700, it was all over but the shouting, and by 1870 the sun never set on the British Empire.

Remember, in the 1400s while Prince Henry sent his tiny Caravels tentatively down the west coast of Africa, the Ming Dynasty sent huge treasure fleets all the way to Mogadishu.  Nobody with a brain would have picked Europe for world domination.  And yet then the Chinese fleets were gone, as if they had never been.  Why?

How come India - perhaps the wealthiest land on earth in the 1600s - why did they not send armies and fleets with advanced weapons to subject Europe, rather than the other way around?  Scholars claim that the sub continent was divided, but so was Europe.  So why did the tipping point arrive in Europe, and not India?

And why did the fledgling American Republic become the world's strongest power by 1900?  Starting from literally nothing in the 17th century, it came to dominate Europe by the early 20th.  Why?

Today's Academy is so caught up in feel-good multi-culturalism ("Everyone's a winner!") that not only can these questions not be answered, but they cannot even be asked except by old, tenured professors who are a hold over from the days when the lamp of learning burned brightly.

The answer is, of course, that social organization matters.  Societies that give more freedom to their members do better.  Europe did this better than China or India, and the results showed.  Northern Europe did this better than Southern, and the results showed.  Britain did it better than anyone, and that's where the Industrial Revolution started - not in London, the seat of the Realm, but in villages like Manchester and Birmingham and the Black Country of the west. Precocious young America did it better than Britain, and so leadership lept the Pond, taking firm root in the soil of the New World.

So what does this have to do with Aretae's question about Nazi vs. Soviet vs. GI soldiers?  On the surface, nothing.  All soldiers fight for their families, their homes, their society.  But that's not what the Nazi society did, or the Soviets after them.  Germany invaded most of Europe, acting as an Imperial power.  Subject nations were plundered - directly or indirectly (via trading relationships) to support the Reich.  After the Great Patriotic War, the Soviets established their own Empire in Eastern Europe, plundering the subject nations - more crudely than the Nazis, if that can be believed - to support International Socialism as directed from the Kremlin.

It's quite a long way from defending hearth and home to the SS in Sant' Anna or Guards Tank Divisions in the Prague Spring.  While the record of American military engagements is not unbesmirched, there's nothing that compares in the long history of our Armed Forces with what we saw in 1939-1945, or from 1945-1989.

And to my point regarding Aretae's question, this is no accident.  Social organization, the network of interactions and expectations of how those occur inform actions.  Even assuming that most Germans weren't Nazis (they weren't, at least in any meaningful way) and most Russians weren't Soviet Communists (ditto), the expectations of German and Russian soldiers were simply different from those of American soldiers.  The Intentional is Extensional.

And so, from a predictive perspective, "My team" does not explain or anticipate how different societies will engage in military adventures.  Smart Munitions are a uniquely American approach to warfare: the Soviets were happy to flatten Grozny, and while it's been a while since we've seen German military adventures, they were the ones that pioneered the blitz at Guernica. 

While America has been accused of being an empire, it's a ridiculous charge that has been pretty much demolished.  For the rest who are unconvinced - bitterly clinging to their anti-American ideology, we might say - let me just say that the last time I gassed up, I paid $3.81 a gallon.  If this was a war for oil, I want my oil.

I guess that this post puts my libertarian credentials at risk.  I do think that societies do better when they maximize the space for their individual citizens to do what they want.  I think that we do that decently well here, although not as well as we used to.  The alternatives that do better seem generally smaller and localized, and reliant on a more peaceful world order than history has shown in the past - in other words, they are flowers blooming in the Pax Americana.  The interesting question is whether they could continue to thrive if America withdrew from the world stage, as many libertarians would like.

Because then you'd see American soldiers replaced with those from other societies.  History suggests that it would be unlikely to be an upgrade.  That's a discussion for another day.

Woah

And the weather is perfect here - no bobbing flight deck to deal with.

Same planet, different worlds

The Buddha would say that it has the Cat nature.  And she has the Little Girl nature.  Me, I'd love a Universal Translator understood did feline, because I expect the conversations would be exactly like this.

Via Married To The Sea, which is darn funny for a bunch of commies.

Leg of lamb with pomegranate molasses and root veg

It's what's for Easter dinner, here at Camp Borepatch.

Ingredients:

One leg of lamb, 5-6 lbs.  Have the butcher de-bone it for you.
A mess or carrots, chopped into thumb-sized pieces
A mess of parsnips, chopped into thumb-sized pieces
A mess of potatoes, chopped into thumb-sized pieces
One large sweet onion, chopped into thumb-sized pieces
Salt and pepper
One bottle of Pom pomegranate juice
2 tbsp sugar

 Making the Molasses:

Combine the sugar and juice in a sauce pan and reduce by three quarters.  This may take as long as half an hour.  You'll know that you're getting close when the bubbles pile up on each other.  Remove from the heat and let cool.

Important: the reduction will thicken when it cools.  Don't cook it too long or you'll get pomegranate candy.


Assembling:

Toss the veg and potato with olive oil and spread in a roasting pan.  Lay the lamb flat and pour the molasses over the lamb.  Close the lamb back, and truss with butcher's twine.  Don't worry about how the twine looks, just lash it closed - it's all getting cut off in the end anyway.  Pour more molasses on the outside of the lamb and put on top of the veg.

Bake at 350° for an hour, and then test with a meat thermometer - it's very hard to do this by time, so you'll have to get all scientificy and everything and collect data.  Just don't play Climate Scientist and "adjust" the data to what you want it to be - at least if you want something decent to eat.  You want this to be 130° for medium rare or 145° for medium.

Personally, I think that most people over cook lamb, but chacun à son goût. Let rest for ten minutes after removing from the oven, and serve to your admitring public.


This goes very nicely with a good Spanish rioja.  I particularly like Marques de Riscal, around $20 at Trader Joe's (who knew that Trader Joe's had wine that expensive?  But this is worth it, and remember that this is not your every day meal, it's a feast.  So feast).

Triumph

(Image source)

Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.

- John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights

Nietzsche famously wrote that which does not destroy me makes me stronger.  That's almost certainly not true, but even if it is it's a cold comfort.  Some tasks laid at our feet are hard, maybe hard unto death.  Things that are easy leave no mark but we find ourselves branded - sometimes to our core - by the critically important but seemingly impossible.  The Quest with no end in sight, that promises no victory, and maybe not even survival.

If Woody Allen's dictum is true that eighty percent of life is showing up, we see around us people who didn't, or who did for a while and then stopped.  Whether they are destroyed by defeat, or simply overwhelmed by a lifetime of trouble compressed into a few years, human strength has a limit.  The unlucky among us will find that limit of our own strength - the lucky ones manage to get through without ever being tested to the breaking point.  The question before us, as we gaze into that Abyss is what will we do, now at that critical moment?

Our heroes are those who keep going past that 80% mark.  They are the ones who keep going, even in defeat and hopelessness.  They are the ones who when the Quest looks broken and the end is upon them, they go forward anyway.  Heroes are rare because it's not easy.

The purpose of religion is to put us in tune with what it is to be fully and completely human, as we would wish to be.  To take the defeats and turn them to our own spiritual enlightenment.  Those who do this we call saints. 

The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

- Frederick Buechner

Nietzsche understood many things, but not saints.  That's a hard road to walk, and most don't.  We can learn from those that do, that despite the difficulty do it anyway.  We can take what we learn from them and turn it around for our own Quest.  Because in that unexpected persistence, even in the face of despair and defeat - especially in the face of despair and defeat - there we find heroes and saints.

There we find triumph, triumph of the soul.

It's easy to say this, and hard to do it.  The eighty percent from showing up is just eighty percent, that last twenty percent sometimes feels like the other eighty percent.  Sometimes the only company we have with us on that impossible road are the footprints of heroes and saints.  Footprints left by those who when faced with as bad or worse as we are, did it anyway.  Who even in defeat found triumph.

Holidays are a meditation, if we bother.  The meditation of Easter is not the joyous renewal; we've been given a great gift, but now we need to ask ourselves what will we do with it.  The hard slog begins again.    But in that journey we walk with saints and heroes.  May the walking be easy.  If not, let it be a triumph.

(Image source)

UPDATE 8 April 2012 11:20: This is worth your while, saying the same thing, differently.

Charles Wesley - Jesus Christ Is Risen Today

If there's a single word that sums up the spirit of Easter for me, it's triumphant.  It must be said that much of any hymnal will be pretty uninspired, but the music that gets rolled out for Easter service will usually be the best of the best.  If you're lucky to have an organist and choir of superior quality, this hymn will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  At that point, you will understand the day's meaning entirely, from your toes to the top of your head.

This is very often chosen as the recessional music, which is fitting.  While everyone will have to return to their own lives and problems, for one glorious moment the world is fresh once again, and it's grand to be alive.  Triumphant, even.



May your Easter Sunday be spectacular, and triumphant.

Wonder what Thing 1 and Thing 2 look like

Careful about that particular reddit site, though.  Seems a bit less, err, buttoned down than most of what we're used to.  This one seems a lot more normal.

So when does the Progressive Bubble pop?

Foseti writes a long and very interesting post that I suspect will infuriate most of my readers.

Progressives have won. No one disputes that USG can take all your money and use it completely own the healthcare market. Medicare, for example, is legal. The only issue under dispute is whether healthcare can be nationalized in this particular way. Even if it can’t, the result is the hollowest possible victory for non-progressives: congratulations, the healthcare industry must be fully, not half-assedly, nationalized. Victory!

The weakness in his argument is that he assumes that the Progressive one-way ratchet is in fact a one-way ratchet (or more likely, cannot be broken).  If the true definition of a bubble is when everyone acts like there's a bubble (see Barney Frank and the Community Reinvestment Act) then Progressivism is a bubble - even people who hate it with the fire of a thousand suns simply assume that it's a one-way ratchet.

So when does it pop, how spectacular will the pop be, and how many lives will be destroyed when it happens?  Because the second thing that we know about bubbles is that they can't ever be safely deflated to a "soft landing".  They always pop.

What would a Text from your dog be like?

Maybe this:

Via #1 Son.

Martina McBride - Anyway

(Image source)

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

- Sir Francis Bacon

Test pilots are a strange breed.  They take a new, unproven airplane up in the sky and force it into impossible situations.  On purpose.  Their job is to make the plane stop flying.

Because then their job is to get it to fly again.  They have a checklist of things to try that are intended to restore controlled flight, and they start working down the checklist.  If one doesn't work, they try the next, and then the next, and so on.  At the extreme, they hit the ground trying the next.  Even if the last thing didn't work - especially if the last thing didn't work - they try the next one anyway.

Life is like that, sometimes.  People all over Dallas are homeless today, because tornadoes flattened their neighborhoods.  Other people find themselves sick, or trapped in dead-end jobs, or seemingly impossible family conflict.  Life sometimes speaks to us, using its Outdoors Voice, and those are the times that can make you want to just give up.  I know this all too well from my own life, when you pray Please Lord, just make it stop.

I think that the Lord must also know that feeling.  It's true that out of the crooked timber that is man no straight thing was ever built, but that's what He wants from us.  It's impossible to know if the Deity gets frustrated with us, but it would be impossible to blame Him if he did.  It would be impossible to blame him if He gave up on us.

Instead, he sent His son as the ultimate Test Pilot, with an infinite checklist to fly. For us.  Despite everything, He did this for us anyway.  There's a message there: that we have our own checklists, and even when we want to just give up, we can hear His voice whisper to us if we'll listen.

Do it anyway.  I did.

Maybe it won't work, maybe we'll hit the ground. Do it anyway, for your loved ones, for those that need you.  He did.

Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils.  But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God?

- John Wesley

Anyway (Songwriters: Martina McBride, Brad Warren, Brett Warren)

You can spend your whole life building,
Something from nothing
One storm can come and blow it all away,
Build it anyway
You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not ever come your way
Dream it anyway

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray;
It doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway,
I do it anyway

This world’s gone crazy
And it’s hard to believe
That tomorrow will be better than today.
Believe it anyway
You can love someone with all your heart,
For all the right reasons,
And in a moment they can choose to walk away
Love ‘em anyway

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray
It doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway,
Yeah I do it anyway

You can pour your soul out singing
A song you believe in
That tomorrow they’ll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway,
Yeah sing it anyway

Yeah! Yeah!
I sing, I dream, I love
Anyway

Macintosh Zombies

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about fanboys, but about a massive Mac botnet:

Two months ago, a new variant of the Flashback Trojan started exploiting a security hole in Java to silently infect Mac OS X machines. Apple has since patched Java, but this was only yesterday. As of today, more than 600,000 Macs are currently infected with the Flashback Trojan, which steals your user names and passwords to popular websites by monitoring your network traffic.

I've been saying for a long while that this sort of thing was inevitable, and have been saying that Apple is pathetic in how slowly they patch security holes in Java - Microsoft patched this weeks and weeks ago.

If you run Mac OS X, you can find details on uninfesting your machine here.  And remember that this is no longer operative:

Life imitates art

Over at Theo's, we find this:

That made me think of this:



I love the part at 3:45 where the crock makes goo-goo eyes at the hippo.

Chag Sameach

To my Jewish readers, may you have a joyous festival with family and friends!

Image via Wikipedia

Dallas Blog Shoot - now with more HopeNchange™

For anyone who's on the fence about coming to the Dallas blog shoot, here's the target:

Err, the stuffed child's toy, not the chair.  We like the chair, but we're fixin' to shoot the HopeNchange™ unicorn.  I suspect that every time we hit it good with a .30-06, we'll get some more unicorn farts to make the day even happier.

I think bad thoughts

Specifically, I think that I haven't been to the range since December.  That's 100 days, more or less.

Bad thought!  No biscuit!  Got to fix that.

And this is a reminder that the Dallas area blog shoot is only two weeks and two days from now.  Anyone who would like to come but is some ways away (45er?  Ye Old Furt?) please contact me or the Texas Gunblogger Community Organizer.

Math is hard, Green Energy division

So, what's the break-even analysis on wind power?  That's where you add up all the costs of the system (initial capital plus operating expenses plus fuel costs over the life of the project) and add up all the revenue generated by the project over the life of the project, discount our year costs and revenue for the time value of money (interest rate), and then use that to identify the point in time where net revenue exceeds net costs.

Is it one year to break even, ten years, longer?

ASM826 does the math for all the Progressives.  Shockingly, this single number explains the entirety of why wind power produces far less than 1% of the world's electricity.  I won't spoil the surprise by giving you the number, but will say that this is very likely an existence proof that Progressives are not smarter than all of us.

Huh. Justice was done. Who saw that coming

During hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans police department didn't exactly cover themselves in glory.  The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they seem to have ground exceedingly fine:

Former New Orleans Police Department Officer Robert Faulcon Jr. was sentenced today to 65 years in prison for his role in the Danziger Bridge shootings. Officer Faulcon shot Ronald Madison, a mentally handicapped man who was 40 years old, in the back with a shotgun. Faulcon was convicted of six counts of depravation of rights under color of law, three counts of using a weapon during the commission of a crime of violence, one count of conspiracy, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of civil rights conspiracy.

There's more - specifically, four other officers sentenced.  RTWT.  I don't think I can recall anyone convicted for deprivation of rights under color of law before, and this is serious jail time.  Good for the prosecutor.

Background on the whole sickening story is here.  Rest in Peace, Ronald Madison.

The Unbearable Lightness of Blog Comments

Years ago I put up a post, How to hack your neighbor's wifi in seven minutes.  Perhaps sadly, I get a lot of incoming hits from Google search strings for this, so much so that I put up a "You'd better read this, srlsy" comment for all of them, the parable of Master Foo and teh HaX0R.  You might want to click on that before you read any further, because it sort of sets the stage.

Well, due to the magic of this series of tubes, some J. Random Anonymous d00d up and leaves this comment:

This video blowd You are calling this hacking when all you do is to access a wife with no key password protectinet? Tou are jucking. The lemest hacker ever!

And so, we have Internet proof that I am teh lemest [sic] hacker ever.  I read it on the Internet somewhere, so it must be true ...

In other security blog comment news comes this one, dredged from the Spam filter (no, I'm not publishing it*):

Let's see: I'm supposed to trust my security to some guys who spammed me?  Really?  Really, Mr. Anonymous Internet Spam D00d?  As our hero from the previous example might say, Tou are jucking. The lemest spammer ever! 

Err, or something similar in his barbarous tongue.  No thanks.

* But I am posting their name in the PNG file, so you know who is the lemest spammer ever.

Airport musings

There's something creepy about Orlando's airport. The lobby where the crowd mills waiting to get through security is overlooked by a Hotel. There are probably a hundred balconies overlooking the lobby. The "security" measures ensure a constant good sized crowd. And terrorist group that wanted to go out in a blaze of CNN has a captive, err, audience. An audience filled with families and kids. Every time I fly through here,'it feels like I shift into Condition Orange. It's quite demoralizing to see the TSA dance the Bad Guy's tune - someone brings box cutters on board and mustache scissors get banned; they bring a bomb in a shoe and we have to take off our shoes; they bring bomb chemicals in bottles and mothers are forced to drink breast milk. Meanwhile, those same "security" measures vastly increase the public's risk. The lack of imagination is stunning. TSA is caught up in a stupid game, and they should stop playing.

Speaking of stupid TSA rules, I ate my dinner tonight with a plastic knife and fork (the restaurant is inside security). Like anyone trying to take over a plane with a steak knife wouldn't be beaten to death by a plane full of guys like me. It's a stupid game, and we should stop playing.

Some how, I managed to not drink too much with the sales teams. Must be getting old.

It's always a good flight when you're going home.

Something is terribly broken in the Science Publishing world

Breaking news about the Titanic, coincidentally just in time for the centennial of its sinking.  It wasn't an ice berg whut done her in, it was bad rivets.  Srlsy.  I mean, this is peer-reviewed science:

We learn this courtesy of Physics World and metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty, who trawled through some old shipyard records ahead of the centennial of the Titanic's sinking to produce an article which you must pay to read - and a press release which is free. This has naturally been picked up and reprocessed elsewhere by other publications all across the science beat.

...

Even so, though, you might be saying to yourself: this is thin stuff. These are not proper reasons for people to be going on about the Titanic under the headings of "news" and "science". These "scientific discoveries" about rivets and conjunctions etc are plainly being fabricated in advance and put out on a pre-determined timetable.
But that doesn't happen with proper science news, of course - oh, wait.

Actually it does, certainly the predetermined-schedule bit. Science news deemed to be of any significance is almost always released to the mass media under scheduled embargo agreements dictated by the major specialist publishers. Quite why they get to be in charge (even to the point of bossing around agencies such as NASA) is something of a mystery as they don't pay for the science to get done, nor for it to be peer-reviewed, though they are at least notionally in charge of supervising the peer reviewing. The publishers do get to charge hefty sums for access to the papers that they often hype so aggressively, however, a fact which handicaps scientists in doing their work and costs taxpayers even more (it's the taxpayers who pay for the research and editing, and then again for scientists to read the papers thereafter).

All this means that science "news" for laypersons is one of the most debased forms of reporting there is, with spoon-fed hacks mostly processing what they're given by a mixture of university, funding-agency and and publishing PRs with very little question - and we here on the Reg boffinry desk should know.

In other Junk Science news, it seems that The Journal Of Irreproduceable Results has some competition - from the entire scientific publishing industry:

During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications - papers in top journals, from reputable labs - for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.


Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated.

In entirely unrelated news, conservatives are idiots for being skeptical of the scientific community, while liberals are Einsteins for swallowing this pap with nary a glance sideways.

Seems that the reason the Titanic's rivets are suddenly suspect is the same as the reason that the experiments couldn't be replicated: any spurious finding, no matter how implausible or unreproduceable can be "news worthy" is you have the right PR firm.  But hey, someone padded their scientific resume and maybe even got tenure - particularly if they pulled in some sweet, sweet grant funding.  Amgen needs investment to pay, but grant money doesn't.

And pay no attention to the Climate Science over in the corner.  It's all settled, I tell you, settled!  It was peer-reviewed and everything.

Got to go now - it's those pesky Deniers, back on my lawn.  If only I could be so clever as the liberals, they'd go bother someone else ...

One year

It was a year ago that I started my current job. I was told to head to the airport to fly to the company's big annual meeting in Orlando. When I got there they gave me a PowerPoint slide deck and told me that I was briefing the sales force the next day because I was "the security guy".

Hi, guys.

I'm here again, a year later. This time I have my own slide deck. I have to say, it's a fun job - other than the whole being away from home for nine months - the company is growing like gangbusters, everyone likes the "here's what our security strategy should be and why", and working from Atlanta will be fine. I mean, we do video conferencing and everything.

But I'm too old to be drinking with the sales teams until 2 AM. Yowzer.

Posting wont be so sporadic today, but will probably take a couple days to get back to normal.

All work and no play

Makes for a very dull blog. I'll try to do better.

Busy

Dinner with blog friend Lissa (another refugee from the People's Soviet of Massachussets) in Orlando. Big meetings the next couple of days, but I'll try to load up the free ice cream machine anyway.

Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists

Why is there a Bill Of Rights in the Constitution?  Why, for example, explicitly prohibit Congress from passing any bill respecting the establishment of religion?  Where in Article I is Congress granted the power to establish religion?

This was the crux of the debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in 1789.  The Anti-Federalists insisted on what are sneeringly referred to as "negative rights" by today's Left, embodied in the Bill Of Rights.  The Federalist position was perhaps best stated by Pennsylvania's James Wilson:

A proposition to adopt a measure that would have supposed that we were throwing into the general government every power not expressly reserved by the people, would have been spurned at; in that house, with the greatest indignation ... If we attempt an enumeration, every thing that is not enumerated is presumed to be given.

Looking at the Left's astonishment that the Interstate Commerce Clause doesn't give Congress the power to force you to buy broccoli shows that Wilson was sadly wrong.  Thankfully, the Anti-Federalists won, and the Bill of Rights is no longer dead.

Musing

Has a Federal Agency every been mocked more brutally than the TSA on South Park?  The "Toilet Security Administration"?  "Sir, I need to check your asshole."

I wonder what Blogger Bob has to say about this.  Me, I think this is unspinnable, but I'm dying to get his take on it.  I expect his explanation will be dazzling.

Gun Show AAR

The AR pattern carbine in .300 Blackout was pretty easy to resist, although the more I see about that cartridge, the more I like it.  But coming home with a new $1300 rifle would likely cause "words" from my lovely spouse.  No no big deal passing it up.

Passing up the $250 Krag - yeah, that was hard.  Someone had "improved" it, shortening the barrel and the stock, and so its collector's value was gone.  However, it would shoot just like it ever did, and everyone needs a 100 year old rifle, don't they?  Sigh.  Maybe some day.

But it was all in all a successful outing.  I picked up some .303 Brit for the Dallas blog shoot, so now I have going on a couple hundred that I can reload which might almost be enough.  I picked up a sling mount for #2 Son's Ruger 10/22 for the Appleseed shoot, and a web sling to go with it.  Nobody had military style iron sights for it, so I'll have to order that online.

And I scored some pre-ban AR magazines.  Dallas Blog Shoot attendees, bring your pre-ban mags to enter the blogshoot raffle.  We'll send the mags up to our brothers and sisters stuck behind enemy lines in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

#2 Son got a t-shirt, but no knife.  Life's a drag when you're 16.

But he and I had lunch at the Big Chicken, and drove with the top down on the Jeep.  All in all, a good day, even if I have to spread some more mulch.

Your Must-Reads for the day

Aretae (unsurprisingly) brings Teh Smart showing the utter bankruptcy of the Progressive Vision.  It's impossible to excerpt, and so blindingly obvious that anyone who doesn't have a Progressive Education will grasp it in a moment.  This is The Answer to all "Social Justice" arguments.  The only thing that I would add is empirical proof of his thesis: the inflation adjusted per capita GDP in the USA in 1800 was about $850; the inflation adjusted per capita GDP in Mexico in 1800 was about $840. (source)

Man, that's one scary smart dude.

Your other read is the flip side of this coin, about human dreams and hopes.  I used to say in my younger and stupider days that a lottery is a "tax on stupid people".  After all, the math always works against you.  Always.

Well, that's not the point.  Bob is convincing that a lottery is a Hope Tax.  There's a social justice argument in here, too, that Progressives are quite frankly evil in creating such an intensely regressive tax system.  The libertarian counter argument, of course is who are you to take a man's hope from him?

Read them both.

A good day

2cents wanted to know what other long lost blasts from the non-digital past I have around here.  This one has been a running joke for 20 years or more, and now it's online.

Go, Internet!  Sadly, The New Yorker has been replaced by LOLcats.

Joseph Haydn String Quartet opus 33 nº 2 "The Joke"

April Fool's Day has been observed for centuries.  It's been famously said that the term refers to adherents to the old Julian Calendar after the introduction of the corrected Gregorian calendar; New Year was celebrated on March 25 under the old calendar, and those seen celebrating at the end of the week long holiday were said to be called April Fools.  Likely this story is wrong, but the day has long been notorious for practical jokes like the time in 1698 when people showed up at the Tower of London "to see the lions being washed".

Heh.

And so we need a joker for this April Fool's Day, a classical music joker.  Of course, that means that we need Joseph Haydn,  His "Joke" Quartet has an ending that's not an ending, but would cause audiences to begin their applause just as the music began again.  It would have frequent long pauses, and eventually the audience would catch on to the joke, and often begin to laugh.  It's a thoroughly enjoyable experience to be in the audience, and watch looks of delight start to cross other people's faces.



After the "Grand Pause" (about 8:40), the quartet continues: