How we win the Gun Control debate

Robb likes to say that when arguing gun control we argue facts and figures and they use penis jokes.  I think that I just figured out why this is.  Actually, Aretae figured it out two and a half years ago, and I'm only now catching up.

(Actually, that's batting above my average for catching up to a guy as smart as Aretae.)

Along the way, it also explains the mystery as to why seemingly humane environmentalists would let third world babies starve to death.  Actually, that's where I started my search - figuring that Aretae would have something that would make me think.  Boy, howdy, he sure did.

Monkeybrains:

I claim that there's a simple, easy grand synthesis that explains human behavior in 3 words:

Status Matters Most.

For 80%+ of human behaviors, when asking why did they do that...trace the status effects.  Trace the status effects in-family, in-group, on the opposite gender, in the neighborhood/community/polis.

[blink] [blink]  I hate being slow on the uptake.

We argue facts, statistics, likely outcomes based on the history of past gun control laws, historical murder rate per 100,000 population inversely correlated with historical rate of legal gun ownership, disproportionate impact of gun control on women and minorities, the racist history of gun control laws - we argue the whole works.

They argue status.

Susan Sarandon says: Guns are bad, mkay?  Barack Obama says: Guns are bad, mkay?  Donald Trump says: Guns are bad, mkay?  Perez Hilton says: Guns are bad, mkay?

None of these people know the facts, none have logic on their side.  Their celebrity appeal is to Monkeybrains.  To status.

Not everyone on our side is as slow on the uptake as me.  Buckeye Firearms Association brings some Righteous Monkeybrains to our side:

Clint Eastwood: "I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.")

James Earl Jones: "The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose."

Christian Slater: "It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."

If the NRA wanted to run an effective ad campaign, the Grand Unified Theory of Monkeybrains would suggest a series of ads targeting celebrity, cool, and status.  Ads like this:

Get celebrities to line up to support gun rights.  Get the presenters from Attack Of The Show to go to the range with some of the celebrities, and talk about how cool it is.  Fight status with status.  We'll still have logic, and statistics and the rest.  But you want to really move the meter, you need the suburban hausfraus.  Angelina Jolie's ad sort of writes itself.  Run an ad like this in the women's magazines:

Game.  Over.  Monkeybrains FTW!

And before someone accuses me of shameless manipulation of emotion, let me just point out all the facts, statistics, and logic that we've been using are still there.  The other side doesn't have that, and so does shameless manipulation of emotion as their only strategy.  Okay, then, let's play the game both ways.  Nothing says that the ads can's point to a web page with facts, figures, and arguments.

But if Aretae is right here (and that's a dang good bet) then the facts and figures will be a post hoc rationalization of a decision that most people make based on status signalling.

I bet Oleg could put some righteous ads together.  Oh, wait - he already has.  These just need to start showing up prominently in Redbook and Ladies Home Journal and Cosmo. And Game Informer.

Forgetting You

From the late, great James Carr who struggled all his life with Bipolar Disorder.

Damn

This will put me out of a job.

Security Smorgasbord, vol 5 no 1

Microsoft asks Is everything we know about passwords wrong? Interesting:

Federal Reserve Regulation E guarantees that US con-

sumers are made whole when their bank passwords are

stolen. The implications lead us to several interest-

ing conclusions. First, emptying accounts is extremely

hard: transferring money in a way that is irreversible

can generally only be done in a way that cannot later

be repudiated. Since password-enabled transfers can

always be repudiated this explains the importance of

mules, who accept bad transfers and initiate good ones.

This suggests that it is the mule accounts rather than

those of victims that are pillaged. We argue that pass-

words are not the bottle-neck, and are but one, and by

no means the most important, ingredient in the cyber-

crime value chain. We show that, in spite of appear-

ances, password-stealing is a bad business proposition.

When is it time to patch Adobe Reader and Java?  Any day that ends in "-day":

Adobe and Oracle each released updates to fix critical security holes in their software. Adobe’s patch plugs two zero-day holes that hackers have been using to break into computers via Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Separately, Oracle issued updates to correct at least five security issues with Java.

The Java update comes amid revelations by Apple, Facebook and Twitter that employees at these organizations were hacked using exploits that attacked Java vulnerabilities on Mac and Windows machines.

Related:

Removing Java from your browser

Apple finally patches Java for OS X

Adobe Reader: security is now 3% less sucky

Security infrastructure vendors under attack

We've seen attacks against security technology vendors over the last few years: RSA, McAfee, a number of certificate granting firms.  Add a new one to the list:

Bit9, a company that provides software and network security services to the U.S. government and at least 30 Fortune 100 firms, has suffered an electronic compromise that cuts to the core of its business: helping clients distinguish known “safe” files from computer viruses and other malicious software.

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Bit9 is a leading provider of “application whitelisting” services, a security technology that turns the traditional approach to fighting malware on its head. Antivirus software, for example, seeks to identify and quarantine files that are known bad or strongly suspected of being malicious. In contrast, Bit9 specializes in helping companies develop custom lists of software that they want to allow employees to run, and to treat all other applications as potentially unknown and dangerous.

It's an interesting technology, because antivirus techniques are always closing the barn door after the horse gets out.  Bit9's whitelisting technology reverses this: anything new is unusual and suspicious.  They have some clever ways to make sure that new updates from iTunes are added to the "good" list, so they've done decently well with forward thinking customers and have (so far) avoided the big problems with implementation and day to day operations that a lot of other technologies have encountered (*cough* IDS *cough*).

But their white list is only as good as the security of their list.  Bad Guys seem to have penetrated their network and added malware to the "good" list.  Several Bit9 customers seem to have been compromised this way.

I expect the trend of attacking security infrastructure to continue.  As Willie Sutton is said to have replied when asked why he robbed banks, "that's where the money is."  Penetrating technology infrastructure lets you get into the targets you really want much more easily.

Objectively racist environmentalists

George Orwell famously wrote during World War II that British pacifists were "objectively pro-fascist":

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.

That first sentence is famous, and widely quoted.  The last sentence is neither.  That's a shame, because it cuts to the heart of his argument in a long and eloquent essay.  The problem with reading no further than quotes is that you often get the pithy at the cost of the profound.  Like later in Orwell's j'accuse:

I pass over the money-sheltered ignorance capable of believing that literary life is still going on in, for instance, Poland, and remark merely that statements like this justify me in saying that our English pacifists are tending towards active pro-Fascism. But I don’t particularly object to that. What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-Fascist, but who don’t care to say so and take refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-fascist as anyone, but—’. The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.

There's currently a debate going on in "intellectual" circles that Orwell didn't really mean what he said in his first quote.  That position quite frankly is only taken by those who have never read his essay, and the second quote given here.

There's a modern version of this intellectual cowardice, seen every day in Progressive circles.  Phrasing is essentially identical to what Orwell pointed out in the second quote above, but today it's done to put a gloss on environmentalism:

Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called “golden rice” with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines. Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency. Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?

Partly responsible?

Partly responsible?

No, they are not "partly responsible".

They are wholly responsible for each and every one of those 8 million dead children, because they actively blocked access to the food that would allow them to live.

The rest of Sam Robb's rant is even better, but it echoes of Orwell (in the good sense, not in the 1984 newspeak sense).  Let me update Orwell:

What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-infant mortality, but who don’t care to say so and take refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-infant mortality as anyone, but—’.

Objectively, they don't mind supporting actions that lead to the deaths of (it must be said) millions of black babies.  That sounds inflammatory, I know, but that's what they do.  But back to the first quote above, and that final clause of the final sentence: a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.

There's your environmentalism for you.  Today we'd call that SWPL.  The names change, but the instinct remains immutable.  Orwell again, updated for today's cowardly SWPL environmentalists:

I am not interested in
pacifism  environmentalism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’
the German armythird world infant mortality by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

I know myself all too well that intellectual conceit that progressivism dangles before you: just mouth these platitudes, support this dogma, vote for these select people and you too can be one of the Elect.  Smarter and (dare I say it) nicer than those benighted fools who refuse to genuflect.

You know, looking at it put that way makes me wonder why I was once so mesmerized by that particular Siren Song.  Young and foolish, I guess.  But no more.  I now refuse to be objectively racist, supporting (if even only passively) higher third world infant mortality because it's advocated by the Right Sort® of people.  Now if I must choose between the lives of millions of children or their ridiculous, evil dogma, the choice is clear.

There's a comfort to be found in intellectual honesty, a comfort more substantial than the empty, pretty nothings of the Siren's progressive Song.

Rantio, ergo sum

It's been a long couple weeks and a long day thrown on top of it.  My mood was most charitably described as "subdued".  Then I wrote a rant that will appear here tomorrow.

I actually feel pretty good now.  Huh - didn't expect that.

Please don't let me forget you

It's not what you read in the newspaper that proves the bias

It's what you don't see in the newspaper.  Stories that are too double-plus ungood to be allowed to see print - lest those whose faith in the Gospel of Progress is weak might begin to doubt - those are the tells.  Tacitus sees a tell on the funny pages, where the classic comic Peanuts finds some airbrushing:

Somebody appears to be messing with Snoopy.

Of course the picture should look like this:

In a stunning display of Political Correctness the bullet holes have just been photoshopped away.  Evidently the Red Baron shot him down with harsh words.

This is dishonesty on so many levels.  It trivializes an important debate, that which seeks a balance between public safety and Constitutional rights.  It totally ignores the fact that Snoopy's flights of fancy were just that, imaginary expeditions where he could be heroic. This from a society where the default activity of many young people is video shooting zombies and storm troopers.  And finally, I will just say it, Peanuts in its prime was art.  When you start messing with art who knows where it will stop.  All those Renaissance crucifixion paintings.....will we start airbrushing the wounds in His hands and side?

This is a tell, that shows what the priests in the Cathedral think.  The number of shibboleths that aligned in the mind of the Latter Day Censor is telling indeed: firearms, the military, the heroic stories of Western Civilization.  All to be hidden, lest the weak of mind and faith begin to doubt.  Lest they begin to think Unapproved thoughts.

Tacitus delves into this with the care that you would expect of an amateur archaeologist, uncovering layers of meaning from the scattered detritus of the modern Progressive Empire.  What I find most ironic is that the priests who did this have no awareness of history, of what happened to other Priests in other times, Priests who tried the same silent airbrushing technique.

"I'm not afraid of A-Bombs",
says Khrushchev, and he knows it.
"I'm not afraid of anything
except, perhaps, a poet".

This is not the work of an editor confident in the persuasiveness of his philosophy.  That's the tell.

I want one of these

It's not a 1:20 scale model of the pocket battleship Graf Spee, but it doesn't need a trailer and an outboard motor.

Cream rises to the top

So does scum.  Aretae points us to the fact that Lord Acton's famous quote is much more interesting than I'd thought:

I'm sure that most of you know the famous saying, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I'm also pretty sure that a large percent of you who know the saying also know that it was the famous 19th century liberal (we would nowadays call him a classical liberal or a libertarian), Lord Acton, who said it.

What I found striking, when I went and looked for the quote, is the line that comes directly after. In fact, it's so striking that, when it's relevant, I use it in speeches and in interviews. The immediate next line is this: "Great men are almost always bad men."

It's smart enough to be pointed out by Aretae, so get reading.

Sigh

Of course, there's always good advice from this meme:

Posting has been off

It's not just that I've been traveling (although that put a crimp in posting) or that Mom was visiting and things were on an emotional roller coaster (although that was true).  Things have been somewhat off for a year or more.

On the drives between Atlanta and Austin, I had serious down time to think through some posts.  When I was in Atlanta I didn't have all the day to day family distractions that I love so much today.  And Wolfgang needs his daily visits to the Dog Park, or he'll chew the house to splinters.  All of these changes have seriously cut into my "serious blogging".

Apologies to you, dear reader.  I do have some topics in mind that are good blog fodder - mostly from reader comments, in fact.  Treat this as a plea for help, and leave a comment with a potential topic for a post or three.

Help me, Obi-Wan Reader; you're my only hope.

When will the Democrats end their War On Women?

Colorado, the "Rape State".  And to answer Whoopie Goldberg, that's "Rape Rape", not "Roman Polanski raping an underage girl Rape".

Also, we need "Common Sense" ball point pen control.  Srlsy.  Those suckers can stop crimes and everything.

Dangerous.  How can you let just anyone - including kids - have unregulated access to them?

The GOP is fixin' to sell out gun owners

They will vote en masse for "universal background checks".* **

Of course, I called this a year ago:

And so, it is our civic duty to take a hit for our Country.  Put Obama back in office, unfettered.  The orgy of Progressive overreach by Regulation will be sporadically (and mostly ineffectively) resisted by a corrupt Big Government GOP.  The Agencies will rule the land, and the economy will remain seized up.

And rather than a million Tea Partiers taking to the streets, it will be two million, or three.  Rather than five or ten corrupt GOP Establishment crooks turned out of office, it will be thirty, or fifty.

And that will be the time when the calculators like Mitt Romney will get the idea that they will most likely advance their career by striking down the Progressive beast, again and again.

Remember the primaries, folks - those are the elections that count, and the ones you can win.  Remember that the local GOP Establishment has to get elected.  Organize fellow gun owners to throw them out and seize the Party.

Kill all their political careers.  As Voltaire's immortal words from Candide counsel us:

Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres

"In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."

It's the Dread Pirate Roberts school of politics: Good night Wesley. Good work.  Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.  As I wrote last year, the GOP is not our friend:

We screwed up, and believed all this, and the government never got smaller under the GOP.  It got bigger, and more intrusive, and more remote from the people, yea even under St. Ron.  Maybe it's too late for us, but if it's not then the only way forward is to burn the GOP to the waterline.  The most expedient way is to keep the Tea Party energized, and a President Romney will cause many to fall away from that movement under the eleventh commandment (another Reagan philosophy).

Well screw that noise.  We f***ed up once, trusting him and the rest of the GOP team.  How's that working out?  Rebuilding a party that Reagan might actually recognize is what this country needs - and right now, damn it - and Mitt Romney isn't the man to do it.

Barack Obama is.

And right now, the GOP is taking its marching orders from him.  The game is afoot, the battle joined anew.  The foeman is not the Democrats - we'll get to them presently.  No, the foeman is the GOP, who thinks they can get ahead by screwing gun owners.  OK, then - let's see how that works in the next primary.

Call your CongressCritters and tell them that we'll see them, and raise them one opponent come next primary.  And then do it.  They're not our friends.  Any of them.

* Which will not be universal, duh.  You don't need to show ID to buy Meth, but you do to buy Sudafed.

** I wonder if I will comply.  Hard to see how this would be enforced effectively.

Eagleheart

Stratovarius is a long-running metal band that the kids liked a couple years back.  I find the classical music themes and techniques make it pretty interesting listening.

Why I don't like computers in cars

French driver trapped for an hour in speeding 125mph car with no brakes:

The 36 year old was on a dual carriageway on his way to a hypermarket when the car's speed first jammed at 60mph. Each time he tried to brake, the car accelerated, eventually reaching 125mph and sticking there.

He used his call phone to call the police, who cleared the route ahead of him.  He kept going until his car ran out of gas.  He's suing the manufacturer, Renault.

As more an more of the car's major systems become computer controlled, we can expect to see more and more of this.  The computer software had some sort of glitch, but that's the nature of computer software.  There will be some rate of bugs per thousand lines of code.  The number will vary based on how much money the developer is willing to devote to quality; NASA was famous for a very low rate of software defects (you can't easily upgrade an OS that's orbiting Jupiter), but it didn't come cheap.  Most companies don't devote anywhere near this much money to reducing bug counts.

So how much did Renault devote?  Given that this is a pretty new field, and that manufacturers are rushing to add "cool" features like in-car WiFi and remote diagnostics and self-driving capability (ugh), confidence is not high that QA testing is high on their priority list.

Worse, it's likely that the engine shutoff is computer controlled, and so you might not even be able to turn the car off when it goes all Christine on you.

No thank you.  I think that my next car will be one of these.

It wasn't designed by incompetents.  Can't say that about today's "drive by wire" Detroit Coffins.

Best and worst presidents

Last year's list of best and worst is here.  I'm afraid I don't much care for Mr. Lincoln.

I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!

1995.  A world age ago.

It's always best to read with two:

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
"What would I do?" I said to Pooh,
"If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said to me: "True,
It isn't much fun for One, but Two
Can stick together," says Pooh, says he.
"That's how it is," says Pooh.

And this seems very bitter-sweet after the last five years (from the same source):

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

Now he is twenty,
no longer a baby.
Brainy and quirky;
staunchly a mystery.
Memories I see
always fondly.

Yeah, #2 Son was just as cute.

I'm told I do good work.

Adapt and improvise

Giacomo Puccini - Un bel di vedremo from Madame Butterfly

Puccini = Opera

That's not right, but it's a starting point.  An astonishing number of operas that are performed today are by Puccini.  This is perhaps his greatest work, which premièred on this day in 1904.  It's his Best Work.  Perhaps.



Of course, Puccini is not the sum total of opera, and Madame Butterfly is not the sum total of Puccini.  But it's not a bad start at all, which is why you hear this all the time.

Does AT&T uVerse suck canal water?

I have a screenshot from speedtest.net showing a 0.35 Mbps (!) download rate for Camp Borepatch.  With almost nobody watching TV and almost everybody doing downloads.

Hmmmm ... 350 kbps divided by  4 people [pauses to lick pencil, scratch on paper [DAMN IT TRY LONG DIVISION] means that each of us has cutting Internet technology from 1988 (64 kbps).  That was 25 years ago.

Just let me put that in perspective: 25 years before 1988 was 1963.  You know, when JFK was shot and computer dial up was rockin' at 300 baud.*

Anyone else having incredibly crummy AT&T uVerse service, or is it me (and their "fake DSL service called Broadband TV" that's the culprit)?

Hurry On Sundown

Hawkwind.  From the year after we landed on the moon.



Mouth organ for the win.  From the time before it was uncool.

Busy

I'm taking Mom to the airport this morning.  It's been good to see her, and we've had some fun times this week.  It's also been a little emotionally exhausting.  Kind of wrung out, actually.

Next steps: convince brothers that assisted living is less expensive (i.e. actually affordable) here rather than in San Francisco or Washington DC.  I expect that will be a fun conversation. Then convince Mom that she has to move.  That will be even more fun. 

Oh well, mustn't grumble.  Keep Calm and Git 'er Done.

Onions are tasty. So is Pie.

I wonder how an onion pie would taste.

Hat tip: The Embedded Theologian.  Her has more.

Epic rant is epic

Go read it:

Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I'd done nothing wrong.  So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.
 ~~~
Or you can commit seppuku with a chainsaw.  I really don't care anymore.  This is the end of my support for any liberal cause, because liberals have become anything but.

AMFs.

Me, I'm happy to compromise on gun control.  We just have to repeal stupid and useless gun laws, and imagine all the progress we could make!  I mean, who supports stupid and useless laws?

Fundraising at Walls Of The City

Linoge is holding a fundraiser for Honored Veterans Afield:

Starting today and running through 31MAR13, I am running a fundraiser for Honored American Veterans Afield ( http://www.honoredveterans.org/ ).  Full specifics are available here http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2013/02/honored-american-veterans-afield-fundraiser-and-giveaway.html , but the basic story is that, as we are wont to do, I am running a giveaway in conjunction with the fundraiser, with prizes ranging from a Dragon Leatherworks holster to Otis Elite cleaning kits to copies of Munchkin to Ranger Up t-shirts. 

I have to say that there are a lot of these sort of things in our corner of the Internet.  Cool.

Crossfire

Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Educating Mom

She'd never seen the Big Chicken in Marietta before. Or the courthouse square which manages to be insanely cute without being twee.

It's been nice to show her the area. There's quite a lot to like here. It's not a done deal getting her to move here, but this is making progress.

I'm hoping that the Botanical Gardens tomorrow will close the deal. Sunny and 60°. We shall see.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

What the gun control "debate" is really about

Power.

Advocates of the Second Amendment keep offering reasoned arguments, facts and statistics, and logic in this debate.  The other side ignores all of this and keeps pushing, keeps nibbling away.  They are engaged in a raw exercise of power in this battle of the Cold Civil War.  OK, then.  Both sides can play that game - and quite frankly, our side needs to start playing.

Before we apply raw political power, we need to understand where that power is applied to have effect.  Since all gun control legislation requires a vote from the  national or state Legislatures, power should be applied there.  This happened in a big way in 1994 and that gave nearly two decades before the gun banners screwed their courage to the sticking point to try again.  So how do we apply power to the legislatures in a way that needs no explanation for the point to get across?

Consider the past year.  Nearly 20 million background checks were performed as part of firearms purchases in 2012.  Suppose each one of these people - clearly unhappy with the direction we're headed and caught up in panic buying before guns are banned - suppose each of them donated $10 to a "Second Amendment Political Action Committee".  That would be $200M right there.  That's a lot of power.  You could target 200 districts with a million dollar campaign against a politician who votes for gun control measures.

But we want to maximize that power, to effect the greatest action for our side.  For many elections, primaries are a cake walk - incumbents don't have to spend anything.  Finding themselves against a well-funded opponent (and make no mistake, it will be easy to find opponents if you spot a million bucks) will sap the vitality of the incumbent's campaign and may even see challenger victories in some of the primaries.  Some incumbents who win will be weakened enough that they lose the general.

The parties will hate this and will put pressure on potential challengers not to enter the primaries.  It won't matter - for any incumbent who was unopposed in the primary, donate to his opponent in the general election.

Even a 20% success rate means 40 gun banners are evicted from office will send a huge message to the rest.  And remember, the election cycles are two years - if 20 million guns are bought next year, and everyone who buys one donates $10, that means the 2 year campaign budget would be $400 Million.  That's 400 districts that could be targeted at $1 each, or 200 districts at $2M each.  The success rate goes up.

But here's where it gets interesting.  After one or two cycles of throwing the bums out, the other bums will get the message and gun control will stop dead in the water.  After all, politicians love nothing so much as their seat, and so nailing some careers to the barn door will have a salutatory effect on the others.  So what do you do with all this raw power, itching to help out the cause of the Second Amendment?

Simple: target state legislatures.  Imagine $200 M targeting Massachusetts legislative elections, to repeal the "May Issue" concealed carry law and replace it with "Shall Issue".  Imagine how many election cycles it would take to burn the political infrastructure of gun control to the ground, and then plow that ground with salt.

Remember, we don't have to win them all, or even half.  We too can chip away, year by year, election by election, destroying the political careers of those who push gun control.  Or who refuse to roll back the worst of the existing laws.  This isn't subtle or complicated, it's a simple exercise of power. Also, this is not partisan, Democrat vs. Republican.  It's about getting rid of people who vote for particular bills.  Don't vote for those bills and you won't get primaried.

Of course, we still have logic and facts and figures on our side.  That won't win, but they're very nice indeed.  But it's time to get real about how the game is played.  If people are willing to pay $250 for an old beater Mossin, then toss a sawbuck in the coffee can.

Anyone know how to start a Political Action Committee?

Any recommendations for an RSS reader?

Google Reader is losing its mind.  Want something else.  Too lazy to do my homework.  Too lazy to use subjects in my sentences.

Anyone who wants to do my homework, please leave a comment in the, err, comments.

Mom and I made Apple Crisp

It was a real flashback, to when she was showing me how to cut apples without cutting myself.  Now it was reversed, but it was still the same moment, frozen in time.  That was actually reassuring.  It's been good to have Mom here.

Oh yeah - in the apple crisp streusel topping, try using cut oates rather than regular oatmeal.  You'll have to cook it longer but it will be nicely chewy.  And toasted pecans on top is nice.

In other unreported news ...

... Pitchers and catchers had their first workout yesterday.  Spring approacheth.

TheOnesDay® No. 22

Epic photoshop is epic.  Rumbear has more.

Remember Alinksy's rules - mockery is an excellent tool, particularly when targeting someone as famously thin skinned as the current President. A weekly mocking of the First Ego is a healthy tonic for the Republic.  So go mock.

Thank you, everyone

I'm overwhelmed at how many of you left comments on yesterday's post about Mom.  I'm grateful (although not at all surprised) that JayG posted on this.  He has a big heart, as do most of you.  The comments all deserve a better response from me, but they mean a lot.

I look on this and remember the motto of the 501 PIR that I posted on not long ago: Currahee.  The old Indian word is said to translate as "We stand alone together".  That applies to our little corner of Al Gore's Information Superhighway.  It's nice to find that I'm not standing alone.

Thank you.  Thank you all.  It means more than I can say.

Muow-koan

If a cat claws his human and there's nobody around to hear, did the human scream?

Patience

Sitting quietly, doing nothing:
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

- Zen saying

Global Warming causes asteroid near misses?

Rick emails to point out this Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment:



Of course, the CNN anchor never should have raised so dumb a question.  Of course Global Warming causes asteroids.  Global Warming causes everything.

The Great Questions

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.

- William Lyon Phelps

Mom isn't really with us.  She's here, but she isn't.  She keeps calling Wolfgang "Jack".  That's maybe something that any elderly person might do - remembering things long past more vividly than the events of the current day.  But last night she told me that she's really like it if I had kids, because she wanted grand children.  The kids were shocked, not having known just what Grandma's condition had become.  I sort of knew, but hadn't dreamed it would have deteriorated so much in five months.

I look on this as a meditation.  It's not a test, sent to proof my faith (easily done, sad to say); rather, it's a lesson that can maybe lead me to a better understanding of the Great Questions: what is it fully to be Human?  What is it to be happy?  What is it to lead - and to leave - a Good Life?

Worthy questions.  Questions where glib answers dissolve in the face of Life Speaking In Its Outdoors Voice.  Questions that quite frankly have eluded me.  I like to think of myself as decently smart, but boy, howdy - this is is distilled, 100 proof Life.  If you can handle it.  Quite frankly, I'm not so sure I'm handling it at all well.



The Great Questions have hard answers.  Which is strange, because the answers are laid out before us:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

- 1 Corinthians 13

We typically see this quote presented to newlyweds, as advice on their coming life together.  That's not a bad thing, but the quote's power is perhaps greater in other contexts.  People are wired so that this advice really isn't needed regarding their small children: people naturally answer "Sparrow" over and over and over, because they know that their children's minds are a special place, different from ours.

This is a meditation for me, as I pass the day with Mom.  It's not a burden if I mind the meditation which hints at answers to the Great Questions.  In a way, it makes it easier when I answer the same question over and over.

With Dad, everything was clear.  The cancer burned his body out from the inside, but his mind was sharp, right up to the end.  He was him, even when there was almost nothing left.  It looks to be the reverse with Mom - she seems to be physically in quite good health, it's just that she fades in and out.  It's more complicated because while I see what answers to the Great Questions have been given, I do not see.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

- Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

The greatest minds, the deepest thinkers, the most subtle spirits of Civilization have grappled with these questions.  They've left their thoughts for me, as a guide on my own journey.  And I find that I have (mostly) not paid attention.

The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the Earth and men do not see it.

- The Gospel of Thomas

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  I have been prideful and have trusted to my intellect where I should have listened and learned wisdom.  That's a hard lesson that I've come to more than once in these last few years, belying all pretense of being "smart".  Mom could tell you that I was always a bit of a slow child, if you catch her in the morning.  She's better then.

And so I find myself doing what each generation has done.  I'm doing what needs doing.



The circle is closing back upon itself, and will some day be complete.  I see in that closing what may be my own future, and a nasty thought that is.  If I'm lucky, I'll be the Sparrow.  If not, I'll remark on the sparrow.

There's a reason that they're called the Great Questions.  If they were easy, they wouldn't be Great.  The greatest minds, the deepest thinkers, the most subtle spirits of Civilization have grappled with these questions.  They've left their thoughts for me, as a guide on my own journey.

Damn.

Good For Me

I was going to post some music by Massive Attack, but they're all dirty hippies and ComSymp moonbats.  Instead, Above & Beyond seems more appropriate for sober reflection on the occasion of Chris Kyle's funeral.  Above and beyond, indeed.

And while the Young Folks* are listening to this, it's not at all bad.  The first comment on Youtube captures it well: So that's what "eternity" feels like.



God Speed, Chief Kyle.  We hardly knew ye, to our inestimable loss.

* They're back on my lawn again, but they're listening to this.  For once, it's OK.

Schools and boys

Image source

The Czar of Muscovy hits on the problem of public schools and their reluctance to allow actual measures of teaching performance:

But rather than blame the teacher—the Царица consistently maintains that only about 18%–20% of teachers actually want to be in the mandatory union—the key thing here to remember is that giving students letter grades also assigns grades to the school district. If you eliminate failing grades out of the district, it is so much easier to cover up how bad liberal education is.

My take (as I told the Czar) is that teachers teach the easiest to teach kids (the smartest) when they should be focusing their efforts on the ones who need more instruction.  Via the Captain, we see that this applies to essentially the entire male gender - since little girls are more eager to please than little boys, schools devote more attention, praise, and good grades on girls even when boys outperform on standardized tests:

What public school teachers prefer is an easy day with obedient, compliant students. Unfortunately for boys, they don’t typically fit into the obedient and compliant category. So, rather than try harder, the teacher simply marks them down and leaves it up to the boys or their parents to deal with it (parents, many of whom are single mothers, definitely share some of the responsibility).

In private schools it’s a different story. Sons of the wealthy have higher academic achievement than their female counterparts. This is because teachers at private schools are informed in no uncertain terms that students’ performance in their classes is directly relevant to their continued employment. Miraculously, rich people’s sons are better educated and perform better every step of the way than their daughters.

Add in the fact that there is a whole feminist organization to push A Nation At Risk while ignoring and downplaying the exact same issues effecting little boys, and there's a clear institutional breakage on the Left.  But I'm sure that it will be entirely different when they're running our health care.

Extra credit question: compare and contrast the expected resource allocations for breast cancer and prostate cancer in an public health institution controlled by a feminist philosophy vs. the same institution without that philosophy.  The answer? You're a patriarchal, sexist pig.

*Facepalm*

I see what she did there.

A funny thing happened when I wasn't posting much

Unexpectedly, I got some linky love from some pretty big sites:

The link pointed here.  It's odd to get that sort of attention, as I just sort of tossed the post off as a minor rant.  But thanks to Harvey at IMAO!

And then Doug Ross linked to this, which was just another sort of tossed-off mini-rant.  Thanks, Doug!

I have to confess, though - my blogging has not been at all up to par this last week with all the travel and meetings.  I guess I just don't understand what attracts a link and what doesn't; maybe that's why the lucrative full time blogging job has yet to materialize.

Busy

Mom's coming to visit.  Blog later.

This is the miracle of grace

Actually, that's about right.

Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 1

Image via Wikipedia

Suppose that you were Thomas Edison in the late nineteenth century, and you had a device that could record music for the first time ever.  Who would you ask to record?

When you think of classical music, there is the trinity called the "Three Bs" - Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.  The first two were dead by Edison's time, but Brahms was still alive.  And so Edison sent his top men to Vienna to ask the master to play one of his songs because of the huge commercial potential of a recording by the composer himself.  And you'd ask him to play one of his most popular songs, naturally.


That would be one of the 21 Hungarian Dances which were wildly popular.  They were popular because they were the perfect music for most people who could afford music.  Most music was performed in the home, and mostly by the daughters of the family.  Music was considered a major part of a young lady's education, and so middle class gentlemen ("bourgeois" in the term of the day) families frequently purchased pianos, music lessons, and sheet music for their little Princesses.  The Hungarian dances were a musical trifecta: quick tempo (in other words, challenging music that would show off the performer's mastery), upbeat tempo (fun to listen to, and therefore popular to a wide range of guests), and written by one of the undisputed greats.

Edison knew his market, as indeed did Brahms. Here is the Berlin Philharmoniker Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan playing this most popular of Brahms' works:



And here is the recording of Brahms himself playing the song for Thomas Edison's wax cylinder recording device in 1889.  It is the earliest recording ever performed by a major composer, and introduced by his voice:

Damn biased media

It must be emergency patch time for Adobe Flash

Because it's been a week or two since the last exploit-from-hell targeting Flash.  This is being targeted in the wild (against Windows and Mac; Linux may be vulnerable but there's no word that it's being exploited).

You'll want to cruise on over to Adobe and get the fix.

I did not know that I grew up on the US Border

The "border" seems to be a little bigger than I thought:

Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation’s border lines.

I grew up in the state of Maine.  There is no part of the state that is more than 100 miles either from Canada or from the sea.  Since people can come into the country by ship, literally every square inch of the state is excepted from the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of being secure in your person, effects, and home.  I'm sure that some Fed.Gov legal wiz is figuring out how they can justify not getting a warrant to enter your home because "it's on the border" - even where I grew up which is not on the ocean and is a 5 hour drive to Canada.

This no doubt will ease citizens' concerns about the growth of tyrannical government.  Oh, wait:

At the outset of President Obama's second term, he sits atop a government that a majority of Americans - 53 percent - view as a threat to personal rights and freedoms, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The American public is actually pretty sensible.  I have a suggestion, if the Fed.Gov wants to not be perceived as being a threat to people's personal rights and freedoms: stop being a threat to people's personal rights and freedoms.

You're welcome.

Do you miss Geocities?

Do you long for the days of blinking web fonts and (ahem) creative page layout?  You can find it alive and well here.  I particularly like the Chinese cover of Love Potion Number Nine.  That gets extra crazy style points for Geocities authenticity.

Hat tip: Bob, who always finds cool stuff.

UPDATE 9 February 2013 14:55: Internet Archaeology has a bunch of cached pages that give you the feel for what Geocities sites were renown for.  I particularly like #24 and #26.  That last one has unicorns, blinky fonts, and a goofy animated GIF of a broken hit counter (just like I have here!).

David Allan Coe - If That Ain't Country

If you can't laugh at yourself, you may be the only one not laughing.  Last week I posted Kitty Wells' great song It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.  It's one of the greats, filled with sorrow and regret - who'd laugh at that?  Well, David Allan Coe would.

It's sometimes said that aging isn't from the years, it's from the miles and Coe is living proof of that.  Born poor, in Reform School by age 9, in and out of prison for 20 years, he started writing songs in Nashville.  Still poor and trying to get noticed by the Labels, he lived in an old hearse that he parked out side of the Grand Ole Opry.  It worked - he started selling songs, and what a collection of songs it was: Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile, Take This Job And Shove It, Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone).

Success didn't change his always on the edge of trouble life.  The IRS seized his house for taxes and he went and lived in a cave (really).  He never lost his sense of humor.  This song captures this better than maybe any, as he mocks (with a wink) the whole genre of "I'm so Country" songs.  If anyone can write a song about the troubles of life, it's David Allan Coe.  But he threw in a final perfect verse at the end that offers a sly smile to Kitty Wells and the early Country greats - and how their songs sounded remarkably similar.



If That Ain't Country (Songwriter: David Allan Coe)

The old man was covered in tattoos and scars;
He got some in prison and others in bars.
The rest, he got workin' on old junk cars...
In the daytime.
They looked like tombstones in our yard
And I never seen him when he wasn't tired
And mean.

He sold used parts to make ends meet
Covered with sweat in the Texas heat
And mosquitoes.
And the neighbors said we lived like hicks
But they brung their cars for Paw to fix
Anyhow.

He was veteran-proud - tried and true;
He'd fought till his heart was black and blue.
Didn't know how he'd made it through
The hard times.
He bought our house on the G.I. Bill
But it wasn't worth all he had to kill
To get it.

He drank Pearl in a can and Jack Daniels Black,
Chewed tobacco from a mail pouch sack,
Had an old dog that was trained to attack...
Sometimes.
He'd get drunk and mean as a rattlesnake
And there wasn't much that he would take
From a stranger.

There was thirteen kids and a bunch of dogs,
House full of chickens and a yard full of hogs;
Spent the summertime cuttin' up logs
For the winter.
Tryin' like the devil to find the Lord;
Workin' like a nigger for my room and board;
Coal-burnin' stove - no natural gas -
If that ain't 'Country', I'll kiss your ass.

If that ain't 'country', it'll hair-lip the Pope.
If that ain't 'country', it's a damn good joke.
I've seen the Grand Ol' Opry, and I've met Johnny Cash.
If that ain't 'Country', I'll kiss your ass.

Momma sells eggs at the grocery store.
My oldest sister is a first-rate whore.
Dad says she can't come home anymore
And he means it.
Ma just sits and keeps her silence.
Sister, she left 'cause Dad got violent
And he knows it.

Momma, she's old far beyond her times,
Choppin' tobacco and I seen her cryin'
When blood started flowin' from her callused hands
And it hurt me.
She'd just keep workin' - tryin' to help the old man
Till the end of one row then back again
Like always.

She's been through Hell since Junior went to jail.
When the lights go out she ain't never failed
To get down on her knees and pray
Because she loves him.
Told all the neighbors he off in the war
Fightin' for freedom and he's good to the core
And she's proud.

Now, our place was a graveyard for automobiles.
At the end of the porch there was four stacks of wheels
And tires for sale for a dollar or two
Cash.
There was fifty holes in our old tin roof,
Me and my family was livin' proof
That people who forgot about poor white trash,
And if that ain't 'Country', I'll kiss your ass.

If that ain't 'country', it'll hair-lip the Pope.
If that ain't 'country', it's a damn good joke.
I've seen the Grand Ol' Opry, and I've met Johnny Cash.
If that ain't 'Country', I'll kiss your ass.

An' I'm thinkin' tonight of my blue eyes,
And flyin' with the gray speckled bird.
I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels
And went back to the wild side of life.

Ah, home

#1 Son picked me up at the airport, we went to dinner for shish kebab and felafel, and stopped at Krispy Kreme on the way home.  Yeah, I spoil 'em rotten.

Wolfgang and Crash the Wondercat gave me quite a nice greeting. 

Now it's bourbon and Krispy Kreme.  What a long week.  Blogging will be back to a regular schedule tomorrow.

Weer'd things seen in the Atlanta airport

They make the jazz swing. The bassist is particularly good.




And the T Gates are pretty cool, too. Non-musical, yes, but requiring no subway ride to the terminal.

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Weer'd things seen in the Vancouver airport

Remember, you are not a duck. But these are:




It's going to be a good day, Scooter. My return connection in the Toronto ZOMG Blizzard is now via Dallas. And I'll be back 3 hours earlier. Win.

And the normal rule of business travel applies: it's always a good flight when you're heading home.

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Snow? What snow?

Vancouver needs a higher caliber of beggar

I met reader Ron for dinner last night which was quite good fun.  He is in Vancouver regularly, and so we got together for burgers and beers.  It was great fun, and always fun to meet someone from our little corner of Al Gore's Information Superhighway.

And there's a decent blog post that will come out of that, where some ideas I'd been having crystallized.  That will have to wait for another day.  Instead, I have to make a statement about the low caliber of the beggars on Vancouver's streets.

Like other pretty but hippy-dippy cities (San Francisco, Boulder, Portland) it attracts middle class kids who get a kick out of slumming as pan handlers.  Easy to pick them out: well dressed, well groomed, well fed.

I actually find this seriously annoying - there are people who actually do need help.  I remember one in Austin whose face was a study of misery and shame.  She's the type that I don't think twice about giving some cash.  Or the guy by the side of the road with the sign saying Wife and dog kidnapped by space aliens.  Need cash for martial arts lessons.  I gave him a sawbuck because his street theater made me laugh.

The punks last night?  They weren't clever, they weren't in need, they weren't even good liars, and they didn't even remember that they'd tried to hit on us before.  And one of them didn't seem to appreciate my single word "No" answer.  It seemed to somehow offend his sense of dignity, or something.

Look, yuppie hippy dude - no means no.  Sheesh.

The weather in Vancouver: Blizzard of the century

Well, the weather here looks to be pretty nice, actually.  The weather in the northeast looks to be considerably less nice.  Normally this would be Yet Another time to congratulate myself for moving back south, but my flight tomorrow is through Toronto.

Expecting almost a foot of snow and 25 mph winds tomorrow.  Somehow, confidence is not high for a smooth changeover to the return leg to Atlanta.  Oh bother.

And after being on hold for an hour, the travel agent said that Delta had released the reservation to Westjet (who?) and they couldn't reroute me.  Westjet's automated system tells me that hold times are running 40 minutes or more.  Oh double bother.

Any fliers/road warriors have any opinion as to whether Toronto will keep operating normally in these conditions?

I still suck

No time to blog makes me a sad panda.


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Quote of the day

It's the regulation, dummy:

Regulation has a far higher impact on the life, quality of life and wealth of the citizenry than does taxation and transfers.  Depending on how whether you use conservative or radical estimates and how bad your tax bracket is, the numbers are somewhere between 2x and 40x differences.  Anyone talking about government problems in terms of transfers is playing in the kiddie pool.

There's more which explains in part the deep pit of FAIL that the GOP is stuck in.  RTWT.

I want one of these

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Observations

0530 feels just like 0830 when you're jet lagged. Felt like sleeping in.

There's lots of hockey on TV here. And cars racing on a frozen lake.

I did not know that you needed an ice racing license from the Canadian government to race on lakes.

I had the friendliest cabbie last might. Canada, eh?

I seem to type in cliches when I'm sleep deprived.


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Location:Vancouver

Mmmm, curry

I guess it's not the land of barbecue anymore.




That's OK. Chicken Tikka Masala and decent beer. Go local, eh?

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I suck

Traveling, no time to make ice cream. Hopefully later during my 3 hour layover in Toronto.


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I confess

I didn't watch the game last night.  I was getting ready to leave for Vancouver, and that combined with fatigue led to an astonishing level of don't-give-a-damn.  Even for the commercials, which I've live blogged in the past.

I have to say that I'm not looking forward to a week long series of meetings when I'm starting out this tired.  Oh well, mustn't grumble.

- xvf [filename]

I must be missing something.

The woman who saved Britain frm Hitler

Image via Wikipediah

Tilly Shilling was an aeronautical engineer who fixed the Rolls Royce Merlin engine.  Unusual for her day, she studied electrical and mechanical engineering and found herself in the aviation industry in the 1930s.

The Merlin engine had a problem that it would lose power or even stall when the plane experienced negative G forces as the engine got flooded with fuel.  Shilling devised a restrictor disk - basically a washer whose center hole was just large enough to pass the fuel needed at maximum power.  The restrictor was attached to the carburettor's fuel intake.  Problem solved.

This meant that the Spitfire fighters could now shoot down Luftwaffe planes that would otherwise have escaped and winning the Battle of Britain.

Miss Shilling also raced motorcycled in the 1930s.  Quite a pioneering woman.

Pew, pew, pew!

I am so glad that we have a President that understands the American experience.

Found on Twitchy

I sure hope that his shotgun isn't semi-automatic or that the tube magazine doesn't hold more than seven rounds.  It would be too bad if New York or other Blue States had to come and arrest a sitting President.  Likely would cause some sort of unpleasantness or something.h

But if he's so good at the pew pew pew thing, go sign the petition to get him to invite someone skeet shooting.  Because he totally wouldn't lie to use that he could, you know, shoot or something.

Fritz Kreisler - "Liebesleid" (Love's Sorrow)

Image via Wikipedia

It's arguable that Fritz Kreisler was the greatest composer for violin in the 20th Century.  It seems a good bet that he's the greatest composer and performer of the violin in the 20th Century.  It's quite strange that he's almost unknown today, perhaps because he really only recorded through the 1940s, and the technology then was much more primitive than later performers had to deal with.

But in his day, he was considered to have the sweetest tone of any violinist.  He also wrote compositions, influenced by the turn of the century composers like Sir Edward Elgar, Léo Delibes, and Jules Massenet.  Austrian by birth, he served briefly in the Great War until he was wounded and then moved to America.  Returning in the 1920s, he once again moved to the New World's shores (this time for good) at the outbreak of World War II.  These shores were a haven for his gemütlich style of music.

It's very easy to listen to, particularly on a weekend morning with a good cup of coffee (also a very Austrian thing). Me, I like to add a pinch of salt, a pinch of ground cinnamon, and a pinch of sugar (as a spice) to the coffee grounds before brewing. The resulting coffee is remarkably delicious.  Gemütlich, even.



Fritz Kreisler's birthday was yesterday, so my timing is not so sweet.  May your morning be more gemütlich.

Currahee - Three miles up, three miles down

This is what it looks like in an SUV.



Currahee Mountain is in northeastern Georgia, and was the site of an Army training camp in World War II.  The camp became famous as the training camp for the 101 Airborne, a story well told in Stephen Ambrose's best selling "Band Of Brothers" (and outstanding HBO dramatization).  The troops there had to run the mountain: "three miles up, three miles down".

Today the nearby town of Toccoa has fallen on somewhat hard times.  There is still a summer camp there on (more or less) the same site as the old base.  #1 Son went there a couple times a decade or so back, living like the recruits in non-air conditioned barracks (cabins) in the Georgia summer heat.  They didn't have him run Currahee although the road is still there.  Still three miles up, three miles down.

Canis Newavicus

Kitty Wells - It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

Image vie Wikipedia

Kitty Wells is perhaps the second major female country star (after Patsy Montana).  She was so big that she's only the eight woman to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  The music sounds very dated now - both musically and lyrically - but captures the manners and mores of the early 1950s when this topped the charts.

Her life also sounds dated: daughter of a railroad brakeman, married at 18, her husband died a month short of their 74th (!) anniversary.  She died last summer only a few miles from where she was born.

Her commercial success was due in no small part to identifying with (and being identified with) the role that a woman was expected to take in America at that time.  It's perhaps not surprising that her popularity waned as the attitudes about "Woman's Lib" waxed.



It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (Songwriter: J. D. "Jay" Miller)

As I sit here tonight the jukebox playin'
The tune about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are sayin'
It brings memories when I was a trusting wife

It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame

It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

Happy Groundhog Day

I hope you have a great day.



Again.

Boy, it's cold

Even here in the heart of Dixie, it may get down to 20° tonight.  Baby, it's cold outside.



Rod and Dolly. 

About the Jeep

Seems a caliper was locking, which is why the brakes got destroyed.  Seems fixed.  Doesn't seem like they fixed the magic smoke problem - still smells like magic smoke. Bah.

And I didn't want those two field grade M1 Garands. Bah again.

Some people aren't happy unless other people have less

Oh good grief:

DENVER -- JetBlue Airways Corp. says a flight from New York to San Diego was diverted to Denver because of an unruly passenger.

...

Passengers tell KMGH-TV (http://tinyurl.com/avfy7bx ) the woman was seated in the premium section when another passenger was moved to the same row because his TV monitor didn't work. Passengers say the woman became angry that the man was moved to her premium section without paying extra and she got into an argument with the flight crew. A federal air marshal intervened and the flight was diverted

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/01/3211808/new-york-to-san-diego-jetblue.html#storylink=cpy

She lost nothing when that other fellow was upgraded, nothing except for exclusivity.  What a waste of a soul.

Randoms

Because I suck (and I've been busy).

Wolfgang has been eating 20 lb of puppy food a week.  He's rather suddenly scaled back to 20 lb every week and a half.  I don't know whether that's because he's 9 months old and his metabolism is starting to slow down or because he's eating Ivan the Terrier's food (I haven't been tracking that).

Squirrel Report is cutting into my blogging time, at least on Thursday nights.  Just saying'.  I blame Alan, Breda, Jay, and Weer'd.  Not my fault at all, no sir.

The Jeep "only" needs $700 in repairs.  Anyone know why I need to replace the brakes every 20,000 miles?

Got to go to Vancouver next week.  It's like Seattle, only with friendly hippies.

The Missus was out last night with her girlfriends.  They all drank wine and painted on canvas.  It's like Seattle, only with less rain (and the hippies are friendly.  And cute).