Clapton recorded Robert Johnson's iconic blues in Sessions For Robert Johnson. As you'd imagine, this is so much awesome that it's actually one of the Signs Of The Apocalypse.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Using your phone as your wallet is an unbelieveably bad idea
Peter emails to ask whether this is a good idea:
This is such an enormously bad idea that I'm not even sure where to start. Maybe with the problem that if you lose your phone, everything on the phone ends up in someone else's hands:
Maybe it's a lack of confidence in the security in the apps themselves:
Maybe it's because a bunch of Android phones come with malware pre-installed at the factory:
As you can tell from the links included here, I've been blogging about this for a very long time. It's an enormously bad idea. I go into a lot of detail here:
How your mobile is about to replace your walletSweet Baby Jesus, NO!
The days of reaching for your credit or debit card could soon be over
...
New payment systems are also appearing on mobile phones. This week, the Payments Council banking body revealed the Paym service, which will allow users to send money to their contacts using just a mobile phone number. The service will be integrated into mobile banking apps or payment apps, with nine banks and building societies signed up to the system, when it launches next month or in May.
This is such an enormously bad idea that I'm not even sure where to start. Maybe with the problem that if you lose your phone, everything on the phone ends up in someone else's hands:
It seems that Philip and Tina Sherman have an affectionate marriage. In their case, this would include Mr. Sherman taking naughty pictures of Mrs. Sherman. Nothing wrong with that if that's your bag, baby. Just don't lose the phone:If you lose your credit card, you call the credit card company and you're covered for liability. Is that what happens here? Beats me. Do you read the EULA for the apps you install or do you just click Next?
An Arkansas man on Friday filed a lawsuit against McDonald's, alleging a restaurant location uploaded nude photos of his wife onto a web site. In the suit, Phillip Sherman said he left his phone at a McDonald's location in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and that a manager promised the phone was secured for him to retrieve it. After picking up his iPhone, photos of Sherman's wife Tina Sherman made their way onto a web site -- along with her name, address and contact information, the suit claims.Oops.
Maybe it's a lack of confidence in the security in the apps themselves:
Here chez Borepatch we simply won't do online banking, because I'm not convinced that banks have sufficient security in their online systems to stop massive fraud, or have processes in place to identify and react to it. In short, I'm quite unwilling to be a guinea pig for their new Web 2.0 e-Portal.Replace "Web 2.0" with "iOS and Android Apps" and every word remains pertinent here. I don't know how secure these apps are, and quite frankly I don't think that anyone does.
You shouldn't, either. The reasons include:
The Internet applications that banks are putting online are rushed into production, and therefore are probably not well tested. The Executive VP of online banking is in a hurry to "take the company 'e'", so time's a-wasting. It's hard enough to do basic functionality testing (do all the widgets work?), let alone figure out if security is well implemented. At the extreme, security isn't an afterthought; it isn't thought of at all.
The web 2.0 technologies that techies love so much (and which provide such a cool user experience) are brand new. People really don't know what the security implications of these technologies are. But everyone uses them anyway. How secure is the app? How would someone find out? How would you find out? Unfortunately, the answers are [sound of crickets chirping].
Credit card companies have been dealing with card fraud for decades. They understand how to find patterns much, much better than banks do. If you include telephone credit card ordering, the card issuers have been dealing with fraudulent orders for 30 or 40 years. Some of the most sophisticated data mining applications are in use at Visa and Master Card. Banks are new to this - if someone figures out how to transfer cash from online accounts, do they know how to identify this? Not clear at all.
It's getting worse, not better.
Maybe it's because a bunch of Android phones come with malware pre-installed at the factory:
A wide range of smartphones and tablets manufactured by Samsung, Motorola, Asus and LG Electronics have apparently been compromised with malicious apps before being sold to unsuspecting clients.I don't know who is liable if you install this app on a new phone that's pre-pwn3d from the factory. Is it the bank? The carrier? The factory? Beats me, but I don't want to have to find out because it was my bank account that got cleaned out.
The claim has been made by David Jevans, founder and CTO of Marble Security, who discovered the problem after a potential customer complained that the company's mobile security management platform detected Netflix apps on several of its employees' devices as malicious.
As it turned out, they were malicious, and were harvesting passwords and financial information and sending it to a server in Russia. The company claimed the apps were already installed on the devices when they bought them," Jevans told Jeremy Kirk.
As you can tell from the links included here, I've been blogging about this for a very long time. It's an enormously bad idea. I go into a lot of detail here:
What's wrong with this picture?My advice is to let someone else be the guinea pig. There's a reason that they call it the "Bleeding Edge" of technology.
Both my regular readers are probably thinking what's wrong is that we're going to get another rant about online banking. Well, yes you are, but that's not the point. Buckle up, because I'm about to roll out Borepatch's Second Law of Security.
Let's think about a brick-and-mortar bank ...
Cyber attacks and you
Jester asked a question that deserves an in-depth answer.
It's possible that there are some people who would like to kill the credit system. These are almost certainly fringe States (North Korea, I'm looking at you) or terror organizations. It's unlikely in the extreme that any of these possess the capacity to do this. You need hacking skills (which they probably have), but more importantly you need a deep understanding of how the credit systems operate: IT systems, fraud detection systems, national interconnects - and especially what weak points could be exploited to lead to a cascading series of failures (which is really what you need to collapse the system).
Certainly some people know these things. They're all very well paid indeed, which is the third problem for the Bad Guys: they don't have the resources that they'd need to win.
Which brings us to the second half of this post: since the system is resilient against hacking at the macro level, is it similarly resistant on the micro level? In other words, to Joe Everyman?
No. A million times no.
The problem here isn't that Gyorgi from Bellorus hacks Big Box Realtor and gets your credit card. The fraud detection systems are quite good, loss is spread around (bank and retailer both lose here) but this is simply a cost of doing business and is factored into the quarterly earnings reports and 10K's. Unless Gyorgi wants to kill the host, but we just saw that he doesn't.
No, the problem is at a very personal level, and is quite insidious. The problem is called Resource Poisoning.
Suppose someone really hated you, hated you and had a grudge. Suppose they also had Giorgi's h4X0Rz skillz. What could they do by planting false data about you in important databases?
For 20 years there's been a saying around the security water cooler: to give someone a bad day, hack the National Crime Information System and put out an All Points Bulletin, armed and dangerous.
That would be a bad day for someone.
If someone wanted to target an individual, the bar is a lot lower. You only need to find one open system. A bogus felony conviction will probably lead to job loss, and make getting another one difficult or impossible. Most annoyingly, this might not be discovered until years later, meaning that the chances of the Bad Guy getting caught would be very low.
The movie The Net actually covered this situation very well. Considering that it dates to the early '90s, that is holding up pretty well. The scene where Sandra Bullock's mentor dies from a modified hospital medication order is based on something that already happened.
And the scene in Homeland where Damien Lewis kills the Vice President by making his pacemaker go nuts is, as the Mythbusters would say, "plausible". I don't worry about the macro level attacks. They're implausibly difficult. The micro level attacks - aye, there's the rub. We're surrounded by soft targets.
And so Jester's question is technically plausible: Resource Poisoning is likely doable by a lot of Bad Guys targeting individual Good Guys. But more to the point, is the argument of Resource Poisoning likely to help Joe Everyman dispute something with the Credit Card Company? Probably not. It's David vs. Goliath there, and Goliath's Call Center people don't know how to spell "Resource Poisoning".
However would these events, particularly with personal credit databases being hacked from one of the big three start to destroy nearly all personal credit, or at least make it so that credit history is less important to the average smuck? I'm sure it would be more work to go in and have your history "Scrubbed" but if it seems to be so easy to switch credit history, or just plain go to any creditor that "Yeah, my credit has been hacked so many times now that no one knows what is going on anymore..."Paraphrasing, could the Bad Guys destroy the credit system, or discredit it to the point where it doesn't matter to Joe Everyman? The short answer is that the Bad Guys wouldn't want to destroy it. They exist as parasites, and killing the credit system would kill the host body that supports them.
In other words, if your credit history is now suspect no matter what, or if you have suspect history you can pass it off as "Hacked" would this not really start to shake up how credit is weighed, measured and balanced for risks? Not that I feel credit damage is not too easy to accomplish anyway but I digress...
It's possible that there are some people who would like to kill the credit system. These are almost certainly fringe States (North Korea, I'm looking at you) or terror organizations. It's unlikely in the extreme that any of these possess the capacity to do this. You need hacking skills (which they probably have), but more importantly you need a deep understanding of how the credit systems operate: IT systems, fraud detection systems, national interconnects - and especially what weak points could be exploited to lead to a cascading series of failures (which is really what you need to collapse the system).
Certainly some people know these things. They're all very well paid indeed, which is the third problem for the Bad Guys: they don't have the resources that they'd need to win.
Which brings us to the second half of this post: since the system is resilient against hacking at the macro level, is it similarly resistant on the micro level? In other words, to Joe Everyman?
No. A million times no.
The problem here isn't that Gyorgi from Bellorus hacks Big Box Realtor and gets your credit card. The fraud detection systems are quite good, loss is spread around (bank and retailer both lose here) but this is simply a cost of doing business and is factored into the quarterly earnings reports and 10K's. Unless Gyorgi wants to kill the host, but we just saw that he doesn't.
No, the problem is at a very personal level, and is quite insidious. The problem is called Resource Poisoning.
Suppose someone really hated you, hated you and had a grudge. Suppose they also had Giorgi's h4X0Rz skillz. What could they do by planting false data about you in important databases?
For 20 years there's been a saying around the security water cooler: to give someone a bad day, hack the National Crime Information System and put out an All Points Bulletin, armed and dangerous.
That would be a bad day for someone.
If someone wanted to target an individual, the bar is a lot lower. You only need to find one open system. A bogus felony conviction will probably lead to job loss, and make getting another one difficult or impossible. Most annoyingly, this might not be discovered until years later, meaning that the chances of the Bad Guy getting caught would be very low.
The movie The Net actually covered this situation very well. Considering that it dates to the early '90s, that is holding up pretty well. The scene where Sandra Bullock's mentor dies from a modified hospital medication order is based on something that already happened.
And the scene in Homeland where Damien Lewis kills the Vice President by making his pacemaker go nuts is, as the Mythbusters would say, "plausible". I don't worry about the macro level attacks. They're implausibly difficult. The micro level attacks - aye, there's the rub. We're surrounded by soft targets.
And so Jester's question is technically plausible: Resource Poisoning is likely doable by a lot of Bad Guys targeting individual Good Guys. But more to the point, is the argument of Resource Poisoning likely to help Joe Everyman dispute something with the Credit Card Company? Probably not. It's David vs. Goliath there, and Goliath's Call Center people don't know how to spell "Resource Poisoning".
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
It would be fun, they said
I'm reminded of the time when my then very young niece was visiting and she asked if we could move the cat "over there" because she wanted him "over there". Life sure is disappointing sometimes.
More on Progressive "thought"
It's been a long, long journey from "The Affluent Society" to today's degenerate Progressive "thinking":
Ridicule and sneers directed at their most obvious contradictions. They already hate you, so there's no downside (other than not being invited back to the "right sort" of parties). Punch back twice as hard.I have at least two problems with people who cleave to this kind of woolly centrism. The first is that they've probably not thought hard enough ever in their lives to form a worthwhile opinion on anything. And the second is that they've clearly never experienced what it's like to be on the front line of the war on cultural Marxism.This war has many theatres: radical feminism; progressive educationalism; the Nanny State; political correctness; race; disability; Islamism; communitarianism; environmentalism; and so on. But the techniques used by the enemy are always the same: vicious ad hominems; appeals to authority; feigned outrage; legislative bullying; attempts to close down the argument; lies; threats; smears; sabotage......"But what is it about my argument that they find so objectionable?" I've often asked myself. "What exactly is so evil about arguing, say, that schools should teach kids rigorously, or that climate scientists should do more science and less political activism, or that bigger government only perpetuates the power of a corrupt elite at the expense of ordinary people?"And the conclusion I've long since reached is that there are some people out there who you're simply never going to reach through logic or sweet reasonableness or basic courtesy. These people will always hate me - and those who think like me - as a matter of fundamental principle. It's an ideological clash of total opposites: tyranny v liberty; poverty v prosperity; hysteria v reason; the state v the individual; misery v happiness.
What he said
The Deteriorating Intellect of the Leftists.
I'm somewhat older than the Captain, and so went to University when there were still first rate Intellectual Leftists (I actually met Galbraith once; he was so tall that Monty Python had a sketch where economists would decide whose theory was better by which one of them was tallest).
But yeah, they're not interested in listening or in debate. The only thing that I'd add is that now that the Long March through the institutions is complete, they think they've won. They don't think that they need to convince the undecided; rather, they need to intimidate the undecided to keep them from stepping out of line. I think that this explains the entirety of the hollowness of Progressive thought these days.
I'm somewhat older than the Captain, and so went to University when there were still first rate Intellectual Leftists (I actually met Galbraith once; he was so tall that Monty Python had a sketch where economists would decide whose theory was better by which one of them was tallest).
But yeah, they're not interested in listening or in debate. The only thing that I'd add is that now that the Long March through the institutions is complete, they think they've won. They don't think that they need to convince the undecided; rather, they need to intimidate the undecided to keep them from stepping out of line. I think that this explains the entirety of the hollowness of Progressive thought these days.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Am I hot or not?
The 103° fever seemed to break between 1:00 and 7:00 today, but is back now. I slept all morning, and the fever dream included the Nurse from Anamaniacs telling me to skip the saddle bags and go for a waterproof duffel.
She was strangely convincing. Maybe something like this? Seems good for a weekend trip.
Wonder who's going to show up tonight to help me plan the bike upgrades ....
She was strangely convincing. Maybe something like this? Seems good for a weekend trip.
"Wild" Bill Guarnere, R.I.P.
Jeff emails from Blighty:
The bubble headed newsbabe mispronounces his name (you had one job to do), but this is well worth your time as it captures the attitude not just of Guarnere but of all the men. They hated being called heros. That was my experience with the few men I knew who were in Normandy*: they thought that the real heroes were the men who never made it back. But heroes they were, nonetheless - Guarnere in particular. You don't win a Silver Star without some of that.
Guarnere was one of the few who got some extra attention late in life, because of Tom Hank's amazing Band Of Brothers miniseries in 2001.
The attention was his due: Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts (one for leaving his leg on the battlefield). It's appropriate that he took his hit trying to bring his comrade back to safety, and if there is a single scene that sums up the title of the series, this is perhaps the most iconic of a very iconic series. The name, of course, is from Shakespeare. As you might expect, the Bard himself described what it was to be a paratrooper, jumping behind enemy lines, always to be surrounded.
Bill Guarnere was a gentle man, whose family was surprised to find out that he'd been a warrior. His nickname came from the killing he'd done, his wounds came from trying to save a Brother in arms. I don't hang my head that my epitaph won't live up to that. Few will.
But humility was always at the fore.
It seems that the complement of the Band Of Brothers of the 506 PIR is down to three present, all others accounted for. A World Age is passing before our eyes.
* 2cents is my shoolboy chum from way back when the town dads were WWII vets. We grew up in the '60s mad on WWII, and his Dad never talked about the War. 30 years later, he started to.
I asked him why he hadn't talked about it, way back when. He said that he had been getting along with life, a wife and kids and career, and it hadn't seemed too important.
I asked him why he'd suddenly started talking about it. He said he didn't want his buddies to be forgotten. The ones who hadn't come home. Regular readers know how sentimental I am, but that's a sentiment that you have to respect.
As a gentle suggestion to 2cents, perhaps if he'd post about his Dad and what he'd heard, that would be an homage to his Dad, to the men of the 506 PIR, and to all the heroes who never made it back.
This time it is one of yours. The Telegraph hasn't picked him up yet, but I dare say they will:Damn.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576947/Band- Brothers-vet-William-Guarnere- dies-90.html
The bubble headed newsbabe mispronounces his name (you had one job to do), but this is well worth your time as it captures the attitude not just of Guarnere but of all the men. They hated being called heros. That was my experience with the few men I knew who were in Normandy*: they thought that the real heroes were the men who never made it back. But heroes they were, nonetheless - Guarnere in particular. You don't win a Silver Star without some of that.
Guarnere was one of the few who got some extra attention late in life, because of Tom Hank's amazing Band Of Brothers miniseries in 2001.
The attention was his due: Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts (one for leaving his leg on the battlefield). It's appropriate that he took his hit trying to bring his comrade back to safety, and if there is a single scene that sums up the title of the series, this is perhaps the most iconic of a very iconic series. The name, of course, is from Shakespeare. As you might expect, the Bard himself described what it was to be a paratrooper, jumping behind enemy lines, always to be surrounded.
If we are mark'd to die, we are enowThe men who could not handle this idea washed out of Paratrooper school. Guarnere didn't wash out. Instead, his is the share of honor from that few, that Happy Few, that Band Of Brothers.
to do our country loss; and if to live,
the fewer men, the greater share of honour.
Bill Guarnere was a gentle man, whose family was surprised to find out that he'd been a warrior. His nickname came from the killing he'd done, his wounds came from trying to save a Brother in arms. I don't hang my head that my epitaph won't live up to that. Few will.
But humility was always at the fore.
It seems that the complement of the Band Of Brothers of the 506 PIR is down to three present, all others accounted for. A World Age is passing before our eyes.
Old men forget: all shall be forgot,God Speed, Bill Guarnere. Fair winds and following seas as you muster with the rest of your Company of Heroes. In our flowing cups this eve, let him - and them - be freshly remember'd.
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
* 2cents is my shoolboy chum from way back when the town dads were WWII vets. We grew up in the '60s mad on WWII, and his Dad never talked about the War. 30 years later, he started to.
I asked him why he hadn't talked about it, way back when. He said that he had been getting along with life, a wife and kids and career, and it hadn't seemed too important.
I asked him why he'd suddenly started talking about it. He said he didn't want his buddies to be forgotten. The ones who hadn't come home. Regular readers know how sentimental I am, but that's a sentiment that you have to respect.
As a gentle suggestion to 2cents, perhaps if he'd post about his Dad and what he'd heard, that would be an homage to his Dad, to the men of the 506 PIR, and to all the heroes who never made it back.
Requiem Aeternam dona eis, Domine
Requiem et lux perpetua luceat eis:
Requiescant in pace. Amen.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Bike project #1
I'm starting to call this my "Project" bike - there's so much I want to do with it that I have a series of, well, projects ahead of me. I just completed the first one yesterday.
While I have a tank bag, I don't have a compartment for sunglasses, sunscreen, garage door opener, etc. I picked one up at Cycle World, but it was held onto the handle bars by nylon straps. While they kept them on the handle bars, they couldn't keep it from sagging under the weight of gravity. The bag would hang down and cover up the speedometer.
And so off to Home Depot for stainless steel hose clamps and some rubber gasket. The gasket is to keep the clamps from scratching the chrome.
Then it was a simple task to screw the clamps onto the handlebars so that the excess was pointing upwards.
The bag has a new and happy home, held in place above the handle bars.
I'll probably tweak the placement, but I think we can scratch one off the list. Go team me!
While I have a tank bag, I don't have a compartment for sunglasses, sunscreen, garage door opener, etc. I picked one up at Cycle World, but it was held onto the handle bars by nylon straps. While they kept them on the handle bars, they couldn't keep it from sagging under the weight of gravity. The bag would hang down and cover up the speedometer.
And so off to Home Depot for stainless steel hose clamps and some rubber gasket. The gasket is to keep the clamps from scratching the chrome.
Then it was a simple task to screw the clamps onto the handlebars so that the excess was pointing upwards.
The bag has a new and happy home, held in place above the handle bars.
I'll probably tweak the placement, but I think we can scratch one off the list. Go team me!
Internet Security: we're losing
The bad news is that a bunch of the Good Guy troops in the trenches are draftees. They didn't sign up for Information Security, they're IT drones that are told to do it. Or worse, they're not even in IT, they're in data entry or customer support.
That is the starting lay of the land, which will help to clarify just why we're losing so badly. For example, one of the Big Three credit agencies gave open access to an identity fraudster:
In October 2013, KrebsOnSecurity published an exclusive story detailing how a Vietnamese man running an online identity theft service bought personal and financial records on Americans directly from a company owned by Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus. Today’s story looks deeper at the damage wrought in this colossal misstep by one of the nation’s largest data brokers.How did this happen? Well, it didn't involve any l33t h4X0Rz:
Last week, Hieu Minh Ngo, a 24-year-old Vietnamese national, pleaded guilty to running an identity theft service out of his home in Vietnam.
Posing as a private investigator operating out of Singapore, Ngo contracted with Court Ventures, paying for his access to consumer records via regular cash wire transfers from a bank in Singapore. Through that contract, Ngo was able to make available to his clients access to the US Info Search database containing Social Security, date of birth and other records on more than 200 million Americans.He bought access to the data, using money he got from identity theft. Since selling access to data is Experian's business model, this is pretty much assured to be happening all over the place.
Oh, and remember that line: and other records on more than 200 million Americans. That was your data.
But it doesn't seem to help to have a business model that relies on security. Target got hacked, and information that's coming out suggests that it was a rookie security mistake made by their CIO, keeping security under her duities:
That's like having the financial auditors reporting to the CFO. The financial auditors are there to check up on the CFO, and that's the reason that most companies have a CISO reporting directly to the Board of Directors. Target's IT was well funded enough, it just wasn't focused correctly. Target may not have been in the minority as far as companies, either.CISO duties at Target previously had been split among multiple people. The new CISO at Target will have centralized oversight and responsibilities for the retailer's information security, as Target's executive VP of Target Technology Services and Chief Information Officer Beth Jacob has now left the post she had held since 2008.Raj Ramanand, founder and CEO of Signifyd, said it's surprising that the CIO was managing security duties at Target. "In most large enterprises, the CISO has a direct reporting line to the board of directors and to the CIO of the company," he says. "I'm surprised by the fact that this was all being managed by the CIO and they didn't have separate officers in charge."
But it gets even worse. What if your company could go bankrupt if your security were bad? Wouldn't you pay very close attention? Some people didn't:
Yet another cryptocurrency has come forward and admitted that security and system problems have led to customer funds being pinched by hackers.Millions of dollars worth of Bitcoins were stolen by hackers. With Bitcoin, there is no physical object (that's the whole point), and so this is really electronic bank robbery. All the security problems are digital. The people involved know this, and we should assume that they are all very competent and very well funded.
Poloniex, a Bitcoin trading post similar to Mt. Gox, has lost 12.3 percent of the Bitcoin stored in hot wallets on the website. However, in stark contrast to how Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles handled his company's Bitcoin losses, the owner of Poloniex, Tristan D'Agosta -- a.k.a. Busoni -- admitted to the loss and asked users how they would like to be compensated.
In a forum post, Busoni said that a hacker took advantage of a processing flaw in the Bitcoin exchange post. When users submit a withdrawal request, the input is checked against your balance, deducted, and the new amount recorded within a database. However, it was discovered that placing several withdrawals all in practically the same instant meant each request was processed at more-or-less the same time, resulting in a negative balance but "valid insertions into the database, which then get picked up by the withdrawal daemon."
The still got robbed. And they were the third Bitcoin exchange to get hacked.
And so we're seeing a more or less complete failure of security, whether it's low level people getting scammed, or Fortune 500 mid-organization, or the impossibility of very good people being human and not closing 100% of all possible bugs.
The implication is that security failure is a cost of doing business. The IT Security budget needs to have a line item for expected legal payout to settle potential lawsuits.
Sad
How did I miss it that Ye Old Furt passed away? Months ago.
We met in Texas, at a blogshoot where he was generous enough to let me shoot his Sharps .50-90. He was as solid and down to earth a guy as you could ever find.
This makes me sad. Fair winds and following seas.
We met in Texas, at a blogshoot where he was generous enough to let me shoot his Sharps .50-90. He was as solid and down to earth a guy as you could ever find.
This makes me sad. Fair winds and following seas.
Motorcycle windscreen bleg
Damn, Uncle Jay sure is pushy. After dawdling and agonizing for months over which bike to get, he has the audacity to say "Meet you next weekend in Athens". The nerve of some folks ...
The issue is that the top priority for my new-to-me bike is a windscreen to reduce the wind buffeting on the 2 and a half hour ride. I imagine that they're not hard to install, but there's not a lot of time between now and Friday.
So what do riders think? How big is too big? How small is too small? Which manufacturers do you like? Which do you hate?
The issue is that the top priority for my new-to-me bike is a windscreen to reduce the wind buffeting on the 2 and a half hour ride. I imagine that they're not hard to install, but there's not a lot of time between now and Friday.
So what do riders think? How big is too big? How small is too small? Which manufacturers do you like? Which do you hate?
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Who's up for a bike ride from Atlanta to Athens?
The Big Guy himself, Uncle Jay will be in Athens starting the beginning of April. Who is up for a motorcycle trip from Atlanta to Athens for a meet up?
Jay suggested this coming Saturday, March 15. Anyone in Atlanta area, or Athens, or in between who wants, leave a comment.
Jay suggested this coming Saturday, March 15. Anyone in Atlanta area, or Athens, or in between who wants, leave a comment.
I sense a great disturbance in the Force
Seems Sumdood posted something about how your gun sucks and you're holding it wrong, or something.
Don't feed the trolls, folks.
Don't feed the trolls, folks.
Das Bike
This is my Honda Shadow 750. I'd decided on a cruiser style, and there was a selection of these for small money. Since Honda has been making variations of this model for over 40 years, there's a huge after market for customization options.
It weighs about twice what the Rebel does, but has three times the horsepower. This makes it both peppier off the line as well as having a higher top end. I rather doubt that I'll ever test what that is - I was doing 60 in third gear yesterday. The Honda wouldn't top out there, but would be getting close. I haven't gassed it up, and so don't know the mileage it gets. I'm sort of expecting 50 MPG or so, compared to the 70+ I get from the Rebel. The engine sounds much more like a "real" motorcycle (throatier) without being obnoxious.
It was an almost effortless step from the Rebel - controls are essentially identical, so it was just size and weight difference. The bike is very well balanced and easy to control even at very low speed (as opposed to the V-Strom I tried some time back). The seller was quite some distance away - almost to Alabama - but this gave me a ~ 80 mile ride to get used to things. This is going to work out just fine.
One difference between this and the Rebel is that the Shadow has a shaft drive (just like your car) rather than a chain. This will reduce the maintenance (nice), likely at the cost of a lower top speed (additional weight and more power loss between engine and wheel). Since the Shadow has more power than I'm likely to need - at least until I get it loaded with luggage - this isn't really a concern.
It also has a rear drum brake instead of the typical disk break. I'm not sure that this will make any difference. Feel free to chime in with a comment on this.
Another difference (and this is a big one) is that the engine is liquid cooled, with a radiator. This will add some maintenance (flush the cooling system) but hopefully will help the engine run cooler than an air cooled V Twin. We'll see when things warm up later this year.
This bike had essentially no customizations. I picked it over others that were kitted out pretty nicely because it had very low mileage, and was the newest of the bikes I was looking at. While I'm pretty confident in Honda's reliability, newer and ridden less seem to be an investment that's worth while.
The ride home convinced me that my upgrade priority list needs to look something like this:
1. Windscreen or fairing. This easily cruises at highway speed, but the wind blast at 70 MPH is pretty bad. If I want to take this on trips, this needs to be reduced.
2. Saddle bags. The Rebel doesn't have them, and while I sometimes take a backpack to the store, bags will be a lot more convenient.
3. Sissy bar. I have the original rear seat, but a back rest for anyone riding 2 up is a nice addition. I'm not sure how frequently this will happen, which is why it's down the list.
4. Luggage rack. A weekend trip probably will take more luggage than will fit into the bags.
5. Bluetooth speakers for my helmet. Long rides, tunes. 'Nuff said.
So there you have it. Trip reports as I take them.
Josef Mysliveček - Symphony No. 5 in B flat major
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| Image via Das Wik |
Josef Mysliveček was a composer from Bohemia in the Austrian Empire. Giving up a promising (if boring) career in industry, he traveled to Italy to study composition, becoming known as Il Boemo ("The Bohemian"). It was here that he met the 14 year old Wolfgang Mozart and his father. He quickly became a close family friend, and Mysliveček's already well developed musical style became a major influence on Mozart, and therefore on the entirety of Classical music.
But as with Mozart, Mysliveče's musical brilliance did not extend to the fiscal realm. Successful with a whole series of operas and other compositions, he spent freely and ended his days in poverty. This likely was an influence in his falling out with the Mozart family, after he more or less stiffed them on an opera commission. His peccadilloes also included a voracious taste for the ladies of Rome, and may have suffered from syphilis(according to letters from the Mozart family).
But his musical brilliance is unmistakeable, as is his influence on the young Mozart. It is a safe bet that Classical music would not have developed the way it did without his groundbreaking experiments.
Note: if you like this music and want to buy some of it, please consider using the Amazon link on this blog. It doesn't cost you anything extra and helps support this.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
BBQ and Blues
These guys are good. And this is the best BBQ I've had in Georgia.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
UPDATE 8 March 2014 20:48: This is at Spiced Right BBQ on Roswell Road bang in downtown Roswell, GA. The ribs that the Missus ordered were superior, some of the best I've had anywhere. Tender and moist but very good smoke flavor; not too much sauce. My brisket was OK, not as good as the last time. Very moist but seeming more a braise than smoked (???). The smoked turkey was outstanding. Fried okra were done in a professional manner. #2 Son liked his pulled pork.
You order at the counter and they bring it out, so this is probably a 4 out of 5 on Bob's BBQ scale. I'd rate it a 4 of 5 overall on my scale (admittedly more impressionistic than Bob's). If you're in the area and like BBQ, this is worth seeking out.
Local live band doing a mix of blues and old time rock 'n roll. Pretty good for old guys - the guitar guy got in some licks.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
UPDATE 8 March 2014 20:48: This is at Spiced Right BBQ on Roswell Road bang in downtown Roswell, GA. The ribs that the Missus ordered were superior, some of the best I've had anywhere. Tender and moist but very good smoke flavor; not too much sauce. My brisket was OK, not as good as the last time. Very moist but seeming more a braise than smoked (???). The smoked turkey was outstanding. Fried okra were done in a professional manner. #2 Son liked his pulled pork.
You order at the counter and they bring it out, so this is probably a 4 out of 5 on Bob's BBQ scale. I'd rate it a 4 of 5 overall on my scale (admittedly more impressionistic than Bob's). If you're in the area and like BBQ, this is worth seeking out.
Local live band doing a mix of blues and old time rock 'n roll. Pretty good for old guys - the guitar guy got in some licks.
I didn't know that the Gormogons rode motorcycles
Detail:
Come to think of it, not having a mouth means you don't have to pick bugs out of your teeth. Clearly part of your Gormogon's plan of World Domination.
And for Erin, Motorcycle Name or My Little Pony character?
Toby Keith - Time for Me to Ride
All y'all have been helpful and patient as I've tried to figure out which motorcycle to get. I've found one that I like, and JayG gave some carefully considered advice:
Time for Me to Ride (Songwriters: Toby Keith, Chuck Cannon)
Yeah, well OK then. Bike pix later today, but until then here's some bikin' music.BUY IT NOW. NOW.NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW
Time for Me to Ride (Songwriters: Toby Keith, Chuck Cannon)
Ain't got no tricks left up my sleeve
Ain't got no reason to believe
Yeah I been lookin' for a sign
Love shouldn't be so hard to find
I've been sleepin' on your couch
Just been layin' here alone
I been doin' without oh you've been doin' me wrong
Nothing left here to decide
Think it's time for me to ride
Put my back out on the highway
Feel that wind all in my face
Breathe some air that tastes like freedom
Yeah let that be my saving grace
Somebody loved, somebody lied
I believe it's time for me to ride
Should've known right from the start
I couldn't tame your faithless heart
I could see the writing on the wall
Never been the kind to crawl
Girl you're never satisfied
I believe it's time for me to ride
Put my back out on the highway
Feel that wind all in my face
Breathe some air that tastes like freedom
Yeah let that be my saving grace
Somebody loved, somebody lied
I believe it's time for me to ride
Put my back out on the highway
Feel that wind all in my face
Breathe some air that tastes like freedom
Yeah let that be my saving grace
Somebody loved, somebody lied
I believe it's time for me to ride
Friday, March 7, 2014
So if Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize ...
... will Putin get a Grammy?
Via Chris Lynch who (correctly) labels it "creepy". Of course, this is just more evidence that Vlad is gay.
Via Chris Lynch who (correctly) labels it "creepy". Of course, this is just more evidence that Vlad is gay.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Blogging may be late today
I usually queue up posts the night before but I'm, err, distracted ...
Damn, they're good, and
I can walk here. Life is good.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Damn, they're good, and
I can walk here. Life is good.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Lonnie Johnson - Falling Rain Blues
No school like the Old School, and he's said to be the first to play blues on an electric guitar. Not many every had as much reason to sing the blues.
The utter futility of "Gun Free Zones"
Elusive Wapiti brings the Hammer of Science® down on this foolishness:
2.5M : 168. That's the ratio of Florida CCW permit holders to firearms crimes committed by those permit holdersThat's 0.007%. Seven thousandths of one percent. Gee, I wonder what might explain that?
Clearly, the law-abiding, by definition, obey the law. Zones where the legitimate possession of firearms is prohibited are in fact a soft target, ripe for the picking by the not law abiding.If you can force a business owner to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because "protection of rights" and "commercial association isn't like private association" then the above statistics are a prima facie case to outlaw commercial businesses setting up these zones. At the bare minimum it justifies making business owners strictly liable for gun violence by unlawfully carrying persons, since they have intentionally disarmed the lawful.
Frivolity, matched only by viciousness
Your Volgi has an outstanding post on how to contain the Crimean crisis, and is filled with winning strategies like this:
That is matched by a rather astonishing viciousness - the late Christopher Hitchens described this sort of person:
And so alas, the Volgi's excellent essay would be good counsel for previous Administrations, or even a Romney one. The chances that the current crowd will take any of this advice is nil.
Meanwhile, Iran watches the carve up of a Ukraine which gave up its nuclear weapons, and a Europe unwilling to engage in economic sanctions. It is doubtful that this will spur them to give up their own nuclear program. Our foreign policy is frivolous, but since it's the Tea Party and not Iran who are the enemies of the Administration, all is well Citizen. Relax. The circuses are entertaining and the bread is free.
The entire post is filled with this sort of excellent analysis. The problem, sadly, is that his post is aimed at, well, grown ups. The people handling this Republic's foreign policy are not. What they are, well, that's described in this post's title. The State Department reflects the preferred future state as envisioned by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and the Progressives inhabiting the Faculty Lounge. That vision is frivolous, in that it has no understanding that actual work of production has to occur to keep society running (so long, Keystone XL); instead, a well placed Op Ed or a peer reviewed paper on some factor of Gender Studies receives pride of place. As I said, frivolous.First, make life unpleasant for Putin’s silovik and oligarchal cronies through an expanded Magnitsky Act. Encourage our allies in Europe where significant Russian assets are held to pass similar laws. Restrict their travel. Make their personal finances difficult. Consider occasionally revoking the visas and university admissions of their children.Second, attack Russia’s lifeblood—petroleum profits. Massively expand the export of U.S. natural gas to our European allies. Stop goofing around with Keystone XL and other oil-and-gas exploration and transport licenses. Encourage our Arab allies (if we have any left) to open the taps. Impoverish the Russian state—and its corporatist cronies—to defang their military and their ability to buy political power.
That is matched by a rather astonishing viciousness - the late Christopher Hitchens described this sort of person:
We're in power because we like it. We're in power because we enjoy punishing people. We're in power because we enjoy owning people. We enjoy telling them what they can do.This is actually the bigger problem, because the strength we found to stare down the Russian Bear back in the Cold War was the strength that came from people who did things, rather than people who talked about things. The current Administration seeks to leash those who would do things. They are like a medieval doctor bleeding a sick patient, only more cynical - a weakened polity is easier to dominate and control.
And so alas, the Volgi's excellent essay would be good counsel for previous Administrations, or even a Romney one. The chances that the current crowd will take any of this advice is nil.
Meanwhile, Iran watches the carve up of a Ukraine which gave up its nuclear weapons, and a Europe unwilling to engage in economic sanctions. It is doubtful that this will spur them to give up their own nuclear program. Our foreign policy is frivolous, but since it's the Tea Party and not Iran who are the enemies of the Administration, all is well Citizen. Relax. The circuses are entertaining and the bread is free.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Motörhead - Iron Horse/Born to Lose
I think I've figured out the motorcycle situation, and should have it taken care of sooner rather than later. That calls for a musical interlude.
The Progressive Inquisition
I was at my local pub, and ended up in a delightful intellectual discussion with a guy at the bar. It was a nice change from talking about guns, motorcycles, and sports (not that there's anything wrong with that) until he asked about my political leanings. I said "libertarian-ish", and I watched him shut down.
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome 414 years ago. His heresy was that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and that the Sun was just a star like many others (as opposed to being the center of the Universe). A century earlier or later and he probably would have survived the auto da fe but in 1600 the Catholic Church felt besieged by the Reformation as a fragmentation of doctrine spread across Christendom.
And so the Church Establishment decided that Bruno had to burn. One of the Cardinals who passed sentence on him later went on to become Pope Paul V. Bruno knew what was happening and replied to the council when they passed sentence: Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.
The Inquisition was born not from a sense of confidence, but of fear. The Church's power was threatened, and that led to a disproportionate - and bloody - counter reformation.
We see this going on with today's Progressive intellectuals, as with my pub acquaintance. This modern Inquisition springs from that same fear as Pope Paul V felt those centuries ago. A world view is under assault, and increasingly severe punishments are mooted for deviations from Orthodoxy.
For example:
Nowadays, not so much. And so the urge to suppress comes to the fore.
An alternate explanation is that today's Intellectual Establishment is simply lazy. Unwilling to do the heavy lifting of logical reasoning, they take the easy path of suppression. I don't think that this is right. The Establishment does not appear to promote based on intellectual horsepower, but rather on compliance to the Approved™ canon of dogma. Remember that the video was filmed at Harvard. Certainly the typical Progressive Intellectual rarely displays - very likely because he cannot - what Galbraith packed into his book. On the contrary, the reaction when challenged is to shame and ostracize.
I can't believe that you're one of those crazy right wingers.
What's funny is that I'm not a conservative. But it doesn't matter, because I'm a heretic.
To this day,the Catholic Church has come down on the side of culture, not civilization:
I can't believe that you're one of those crazy right wingers.And that was that. All subtlety and nuance went out the window as his brain went into lockdown. It was a disappointing but all too common Progressive reaction to heresy.
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| Image via Il Wik |
And so the Church Establishment decided that Bruno had to burn. One of the Cardinals who passed sentence on him later went on to become Pope Paul V. Bruno knew what was happening and replied to the council when they passed sentence: Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.
The Inquisition was born not from a sense of confidence, but of fear. The Church's power was threatened, and that led to a disproportionate - and bloody - counter reformation.
We see this going on with today's Progressive intellectuals, as with my pub acquaintance. This modern Inquisition springs from that same fear as Pope Paul V felt those centuries ago. A world view is under assault, and increasingly severe punishments are mooted for deviations from Orthodoxy.
For example:
... today I want to highlight Naomi Orekses and Suzanne Goldenberg, who seem seem to like the idea of having climate “deniers” arrested under RICO act for thought collusion, all under the approving eye of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.Translation: burn the heretics. Their statements aren't just wrong, but are dangerous:
Watch the video: The RICO quote is about 1:12:30 in the video. Note that none of the panelists blinks an eye at the suggestion. They are all smiling after Oreskes finishes.
You heard right. RICO-style prosecution. For what tangible crime? Well, heresy.And so back to my acquaintance at the pub: I can't believe that you're one of those crazy right wingers. His was a self-defense mechanism against heresy. Jeff Cooper described how this was used by the Warsaw Pact: in To Ride, Shoot, and Tell The Truth he wrote about the heavily guarded border designed not to keep the West out, but to keep the Warsaw Pact populations in:
(Has to be heresy. The amount of money I have extorted from my skepticism hovers between nada and nil.)
This put me in mind of a passage from from Dawn to Decadence by the indispensable Jacques Barzun (pp 271-272):
The smallest divergence from the absolute is grave error and wickedness. From there it is a short step to declaring war on the misbelievers. When faith is both intellectual and visceral, the overwhelming justification is that heresy imperils other souls. If the erring sheep will not recant, he or she becomes a source of error in others….[P]ersecution is a health measure that stops the spread of an infectious disease—all the more necessary that souls matter more than bodies.Even though not all admit this, their actions prove that souls are more important than bodies. Thought crimes are in many senses worse than physical crimes; they excite more comment and are more difficult to be forgiven for.
Behind the inner fence lies a belt of Zombie-land five kilometers deep. No one moves here except those whose duties demand it. The fields produce. Roads and roofs are mended. There is an occasional dilapidated vehicle in motion. At first glance it seems a viable countryside. On closer inspection, however, it is death-in-life. There are perhaps two lighted windows where there should be scores. Such villages in which there are lights are inside electric fences. The sickening effect grows as the sun sets. ...Good Progressives do not engage in Thought Crime. They do not do this not because they fear being burned at the stake, but because they are good Intellectual Slaves. It didn't use to be this way:
With exquisite cruelty the very existence of The Line is concealed from those it contains. The east border of the 5 km Zombie zone is marked - from the east - simply as the border. Good slaves do not cross it, not because it is fearful to behold, but because they are good slaves. Bad slaves sometimes do cross it, but because they do not know what they face they usually die.
What it ironic is that one of the giants of progressive intellectualism showed them the error of their ways, more than half a century ago. John Kenneth Galbraith was very possibly the last of the first rate progressive intellectuals. His 1958 The Affluent Society is something that somehow I'd missed reading. Dad told me to take whichever of his books I'd like, and I grabbed that one for the plane ride home.Giordano Bruno would not have been burned in 1550, because the Church did not feel threatened. John Kenneth Galbraith was not burned fifty years ago, because the Intellectual Establishment did not feel threatened. Unlike my acquaintance at the pub, intellectuals did not shut their brains down fifty years ago, because they felt that they had reason and logic on their side.
Reading it, it's easy to see why it was so hugely influential. It is clear, it is logically consistent, it progresses step by logical step towards its conclusion. Much of it has turned out to be wrong in the last 50-odd years, but none of it is the weak beer offered up by today's progressives.
Nowadays, not so much. And so the urge to suppress comes to the fore.
An alternate explanation is that today's Intellectual Establishment is simply lazy. Unwilling to do the heavy lifting of logical reasoning, they take the easy path of suppression. I don't think that this is right. The Establishment does not appear to promote based on intellectual horsepower, but rather on compliance to the Approved™ canon of dogma. Remember that the video was filmed at Harvard. Certainly the typical Progressive Intellectual rarely displays - very likely because he cannot - what Galbraith packed into his book. On the contrary, the reaction when challenged is to shame and ostracize.
I can't believe that you're one of those crazy right wingers.
What's funny is that I'm not a conservative. But it doesn't matter, because I'm a heretic.
To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori...
- Edward Abbey
To this day,the Catholic Church has come down on the side of culture, not civilization:
In 1942, Cardinal Giovanni Mercati, who discovered a number of lost documents relating to Bruno's trial, stated that the Church was perfectly justified in condemning him. On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, in 2000, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode" but, despite his regret, he defended Bruno's prosecutors, maintaining that the Inquisitors "had the desire to serve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save his life."Today's Inquisitors like Naomi Orekses no doubt feel that they too are serving freedom and the preservation of life.
INFIDEL, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. (See GIAOUR.) A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and pumpums.Or of Ivy League credentialed Progressives.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
New Sponsor
You will notice a new banner at the top of the posts. This blog has a new sponsor, Sledge Hammer Performance and Custom Cycles. They specialize in Custom Chrome brand Harley Davidson parts and accessories. Since a number of you are Harley sort of folks, you might want to check them out.
A shout out to Captain Capitalism, who told me that I should look into ads here as a way to help scratch the motorcycle itch. And my copy of Worthless should arrive today ...
And thank you to the people who have clicked the Amazon link to do their shopping. As an Amazon affiliate, it doesn't cost you anything extra but it helps support this blog. I'm very grateful to those of you who have gone shopping from here. Thanks.
A shout out to Captain Capitalism, who told me that I should look into ads here as a way to help scratch the motorcycle itch. And my copy of Worthless should arrive today ...
And thank you to the people who have clicked the Amazon link to do their shopping. As an Amazon affiliate, it doesn't cost you anything extra but it helps support this blog. I'm very grateful to those of you who have gone shopping from here. Thanks.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Chuck Berry - Reelin and Rockin
The fact that he was born two years before Dad is something that simply doesn't register.
Inappropriate humor in 3 .. 2 .. 1 ..
Disclaimer: no bloggers were harmed in the production of this post. Yet.
Fair winds and following seas
Irving Mitchberg, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto:
This was brought to my attention by reader Jeff, who emails:
Irving Milchberg, who has died aged 86, was the wartime leader of the “cigarette sellers of Three Crosses Square”, a gaggle of Jewish youths who sold smokes to German officers in wartime Warsaw while covertly spiriting food into the city’s ghetto and smuggling arms to the resistance.It's quite a remarkable story about a remarkable man. RTWT.
...
The Ostbahn workers became a channel to resistance units within the ghetto. Using a network of contacts, including an uncle and a tram-conductor , Milchberg smuggled in small arms hidden in hollowed-out loaves (the only food allowed through the barricades). The weapons added to the cache used by the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Uprising of April and May 1943.
To the other boys and girls he was a natural chief. “In their eyes he was grown-up and experienced,” wrote Ziemian. “Bull had authority.” Milchberg, however, took a practical view of his wartime bravery. “To tell you the truth, I never thought much,” he said last year. “If I had to do something, I did it. I didn’t have time to analyse it.”
This was brought to my attention by reader Jeff, who emails:
As the reference to the cobbler shows, Many Poles were far from anti-Semitic. For some years in the 1980s and later, I took subcontract work from a Polish accountant living and working in Edinburgh. George had been an infantry officer at the start of the War, and had escaped encirclement by the Jerries. He and his company moved east, towards the Ukrainian border.Another remarkable man. We are surrounded, but tend not to notice.
Round a bend, they came to a village on fire. It had been attacked by Ukrainian bandits. George led his company in an immediate charge, and they wiped out most of the Ukrainians. The village Jews had been slaughtered before George arrived, so he put the remaining bandits up against a wall.
You will probably guess that the Soviets were coming west, and George had to lead his men south. Decent, presumably anti-Soviet Ukrainians helped them. Eventually they escaped to Britain, and after service with us in North Africa and Italy, invaded France.
George himself did not make it to Germany: a shell went off close to him and left a dent in his forehead which never came out. I think I am right in remembering he had the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Given that the standard Polish military condition is Insanely Brave, that is remarkable.
Monday, March 3, 2014
You know how the dark night of fascism is always descending on America ...
... but always landing in Europe?
Honestly, are there any grown ups at all on the Left? The World wonders.
(via)
At March Against Anti-Semitism, Jewish Leader Told To 'Get Lost'Hey, but Arizona wanted to oppress teh Gheys, right? [rolls eyes]
Participants in a march against anti-Semitism in Toulouse hurled anti-Zionist insults at a Jewish fellow demonstrator.
The insults were directed at Nicole Yardeni, who heads the local chapter of the CRIF umbrella group of Jewish communities, during a march by 2,000 people in Toulouse. The march was organized on Saturday by a gay group, Arc-en-Ciel, following the spraying of anti-Semitic and anti-gay slogans in several locales in Toulouse last week.
Honestly, are there any grown ups at all on the Left? The World wonders.
(via)
30,000 comments
Tony Tsquared left a comment to yesterday's post on motorcycles, making 30,000 comments left here by all y'all. Thanks for stoppin gby - it wouldn't be the same place without you.
The Elder Scrolls Online review
I'm not a WoW player but I know that some of you are. #2 Son has enjoyed the Elder Scrolls games, and The Register has an interesting review of the new MMOG Elder Scrolls Online game.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Things I didn't know, vol, XCIII
Riding a small motorcycle over 100 miles of twisty roads can let your muscles tell you just how old you are. It's not the miles, it's the years. Fortunately, I have a cunning plan to recover.
So riddle me this, Harley riders all: should I buy the big-ass bike with all the bells and whistles (for bis-ass $$$) or should I get a modest bike for half the price and invest $1500 on a good seal with back rest for two up, bags, and a faring? I can plausibly install these (and floor boards) by myself.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
So riddle me this, Harley riders all: should I buy the big-ass bike with all the bells and whistles (for bis-ass $$$) or should I get a modest bike for half the price and invest $1500 on a good seal with back rest for two up, bags, and a faring? I can plausibly install these (and floor boards) by myself.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Twistes
I'd only ever come to Dahlonega via Georgia 400, a pretty boring divided highway. Because I don't like taking the Rebel on the highway I struck out north from Roswell on Route 9.
What I found was a delightful back roads approach to the cute old mining town, an approach packed with twisties. And packed with bikes
Life is good.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
What I found was a delightful back roads approach to the cute old mining town, an approach packed with twisties. And packed with bikes
Life is good.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
So the Lefties are still on that "What's The Matter With Kansas" thing
They are so enclosed in an intellectual bubble excluding Unapproved Thoughts™ that they simply cannot fathom someone with Unapproved Thoughts™.
The Middle Class votes against Democrats in their own economic self-interest, for example. Yeah I know, math is hard. And seemingly Unapproved™ as well. And they're all smarter than you and me, too. They'll tell you, if you ask.
[rolls eyes]
And this analysis completely ignores the way the Left is attacking employment (especially through EPA regulations on manufacturing) and applying the law inconsistently to benefit particular minority groups at the expense of the Middle Class.
Action, reaction.
Of course, it's so much easier to Leftie self-esteem to say that Kansas is full of racist dog-whistles than, you know, voters whose votes need to be earned.
More here on the Tea Party as the true party of the Proletariat and a Marxist analysis of the Progressive State.
The Middle Class votes against Democrats in their own economic self-interest, for example. Yeah I know, math is hard. And seemingly Unapproved™ as well. And they're all smarter than you and me, too. They'll tell you, if you ask.
[rolls eyes]
And this analysis completely ignores the way the Left is attacking employment (especially through EPA regulations on manufacturing) and applying the law inconsistently to benefit particular minority groups at the expense of the Middle Class.
Action, reaction.
Of course, it's so much easier to Leftie self-esteem to say that Kansas is full of racist dog-whistles than, you know, voters whose votes need to be earned.
More here on the Tea Party as the true party of the Proletariat and a Marxist analysis of the Progressive State.
Gilbert and Sullivan - I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General
The duo of Gilbert and Sullivan was bade up of plain old W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. And therein lies the tale.Gilbert was already a noted playwright when they formed the team, and Sullivan was a noted composer of light popular works. Their first joint works were wildly successful (particularly H.M.S. Pinafore and Pirates Of Penzance, from which this song comes). However, Her Imperial Majesty thought that a Knighthood might cause Sir Arthur to return to composing "respectable" music.
It didn't, but he did at least have the decency of feeling guilty about it in the finest Victorian tradition.
But Gilbert was never considered for the Honours List, because he was the one that wrote lyrics like this:
Yes, that's Linda Ronstadt in the 1982 revival that was made into a film. More than a couple of you will recognize this tune in a different form.
It didn't, but he did at least have the decency of feeling guilty about it in the finest Victorian tradition.
But Gilbert was never considered for the Honours List, because he was the one that wrote lyrics like this:
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,It was satire sharp as the finest English cheddar, mocking the new fangled tendency to educate military officers in everything but in matters military. No Honours List for Gilbert.
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;a
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, (bothered for a rhyme)
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's;
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore, (bothered for a rhyme)b
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you ev'ry detail of Caractacus's uniform:c
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
In fact, when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin",
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a Javelin,d
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery –
In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy – (bothered for a rhyme)
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.e
For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
Yes, that's Linda Ronstadt in the 1982 revival that was made into a film. More than a couple of you will recognize this tune in a different form.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Want
Why that Harley whispers to me in the wee hours of the night.
Sure it's riskier than driving a car. What, you think you're going to live forever?
Sure it's riskier than driving a car. What, you think you're going to live forever?
Best dog movies
As I sit here watching Wolfgang sleep, the mind wonders to strange places. It ended up thinking about the best films with dogs. Here's my list:
Cats and Dogs
Secret Squirrel meets dogs. It's a goofy film that I enjoyed when #1 Son and #2 Son were younger.
Best In Show
This is perhaps the funniest dog movie ever made, lampooning the stuffed shirts who inhabit the Dog Show universe. From the folks who brought you Spinal Tap.
Babe
Yeah, it's about a pig, but the dog parts are particularly good.
Lilo And Stitch
Is it a "girl and her space alien" story, or is it a "girl and her dog" story? I know which way I lean. #2 Son loved this movie more than any other, back in the day.
Where the Red Fern Grows
This is a serious story about a young boy's passage to manhood, from the days when those films were made. The original 1974 film was actually remade in 2003, which is a glimmer of hope for Hollywood.
Lady And The Tramp
Too sweet to be made today, even for children. Perhaps especially for children. That's perhaps the best evidence on display for the Decline of the West.
101 Dalmatians (original animated version)
We sure watched this a lot when the kids were young, and somehow it never got old. It's entirely satisfying: the Good Guys are good, the Bad Guys are bad, and the young uns learn the difference, as well as how to face what needs facing.
Far From Home
This may be the last truly serious film about a dog, or more precisely of a young boy's journey to manhood accompanied by his dog. I doubt that a film like this could be made today, unless the star was a Hunger Games type heroine. If you have boys (or girls) growing up in your household, this should be high on your list for Family Movie Night.
Old Yeller
There's so much more to the film than just the ending, there's a wisdom about growing up that gets captured in scene after scene. But if you didn't cry when you watched this growing up, then you and I can't be friends anymore.
Leave your favorites in the comments.
Cats and Dogs
Secret Squirrel meets dogs. It's a goofy film that I enjoyed when #1 Son and #2 Son were younger.
Best In Show
This is perhaps the funniest dog movie ever made, lampooning the stuffed shirts who inhabit the Dog Show universe. From the folks who brought you Spinal Tap.
Babe
Yeah, it's about a pig, but the dog parts are particularly good.
Lilo And Stitch
Is it a "girl and her space alien" story, or is it a "girl and her dog" story? I know which way I lean. #2 Son loved this movie more than any other, back in the day.
Where the Red Fern Grows
This is a serious story about a young boy's passage to manhood, from the days when those films were made. The original 1974 film was actually remade in 2003, which is a glimmer of hope for Hollywood.
Lady And The Tramp
Too sweet to be made today, even for children. Perhaps especially for children. That's perhaps the best evidence on display for the Decline of the West.
101 Dalmatians (original animated version)
We sure watched this a lot when the kids were young, and somehow it never got old. It's entirely satisfying: the Good Guys are good, the Bad Guys are bad, and the young uns learn the difference, as well as how to face what needs facing.
Far From Home
This may be the last truly serious film about a dog, or more precisely of a young boy's journey to manhood accompanied by his dog. I doubt that a film like this could be made today, unless the star was a Hunger Games type heroine. If you have boys (or girls) growing up in your household, this should be high on your list for Family Movie Night.
Old Yeller
There's so much more to the film than just the ending, there's a wisdom about growing up that gets captured in scene after scene. But if you didn't cry when you watched this growing up, then you and I can't be friends anymore.
Leave your favorites in the comments.
Libertarians and the "Open Borders" argument
One of the reasons that I'm not a libertarian is that they tend to support open borders and free migration. Sonic Charmer has an example of this in action:
I hear some Russian men have decided to cross the border of Ukraine. That’s nice because, as I’ve been duly instructed that migration is a natural inalienable human right, it would have constituted an initiation of force to have tried to stop them anyway.LOL.
The best laid plans of mice and men
Oft gang aglee. I was supposed to be test riding one of these today:
That's not happening, with Wolfgang in the Cone of Shame and not eating yet. I'll be watching him like a hawk today. Damnitall.
UPDATE 1 March 2014 11:06: The patient has a considerably reduced energy level.
That's not happening, with Wolfgang in the Cone of Shame and not eating yet. I'll be watching him like a hawk today. Damnitall.
UPDATE 1 March 2014 11:06: The patient has a considerably reduced energy level.
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