Quote of the Day: Libya intervention edition

Sonic Charmer muses on the Rush To War For Oil™ in Libya by the International Community, and the strange lack of objection from the crowd that issued 8 years of spittle-flecked invective at the USA's foreign adventures.  He writes an open letter to said crowd that is the funniest thing you will read today.

He asks sweetly why all the silence, dudes?  Filled with concern, he slips the knife in:

Is your Dissent being Crushed ™?

But remember, they're all smarter than we are!  Or "Smarter" ...

Ouch

Ouch:

Double ouch:

Via Theo Spark.

Hogjaw - Gitsum

While there's a lot of discussion about what "the real country music is", pretty much everyone grants "southern rock" honorary membership in the club.  That's a Good Thing, because otherwise country music fans might not hear Hogjaw.  And that'd be a cryin' shame.

Especially if you like shooting your guns. 

Hogjaw does, unapologetically and with what's it to ya? gusto.  Oh, and with some good guitar riffs.  And extra points for filming the Moisin-Nagant at dusk, when the fireball at the muzzle is simply spectacular.

What more do you need?




Gitsum (Songwriters: ??? Dudes, set up a Wikipedia page for Discography)

Some say they wanna take my guns away
They will find to rue that day... yes they will

Blame it on the villain in the street
Truth is they wanna herd us like sheep

Come on, bring it on
Just getting started, I ain't done
Come on, bring it on
Step right up and get yourself some
Come on, bring it on
Seen you before, ain't gonna run
Come on, bring it on
Standin' right here, come get you some

We hold our rights and values dear
Your laws don't mean nuthin to us here

Come on, bring it on
Just getting started, I ain't done
Come on, bring it on
Step right up and get yourself some
Come on, bring it on
Seen you before, ain't gonna run
Come on, bring it on
Standin' right here, come get you some
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/h/hogjaw/gitsum.html ]
I remember real clear, years ago in the swamps of South Georgia
Cane pole and Crossman in my hands was all I need to be growed up
Home made ice cream and BBQ and the family on Friday nights
Ten lane ramp on Saturday right before the morning light

There came a time I's old enough and learned about the gun
And every night at suppertime I'd answer to what I'd done
Folks today plum forgot about the way it used to be
Got no respect and no cold steel, just games on TV

And I'll burn in hell before I sell my rights away from me
It's high time we embrace the tool that keeps all men free

Come on and get you some
Come on
Come on and get you some
Come on
Come on and get you some today

Come on and get you some
Come on
Come on and get you some
Come on
Come on and get you some tonight

Image source.  Found at Rebel Yell, who is filled with, err, Rebel-y Youtube-y goodness. 

To my readers who are veterans

This is required reading, even on a Saturday morning.  You're welcome.

Although he uses "skiff" where I used to use "SCIF".  But that's probably just me.

Friday Follies - Government Motors' electric boondoggle

The People's Automotive Collective #1 is marching shoulder to shoulder towards GOSPLAN's glorious five year target for renewable energy automobiles for the masses.  Hilarity exactly what you'd expect ensues:

Consumer Reports offered a harsh initial review of the Chevrolet Volt, questioning whether General Motors Co.'s flagship vehicle makes economic "sense."The extended-range plug-in electric vehicle is on the cover of the April issue — the influential magazine's annual survey of vehicles — but the GM vehicle comes in for criticism.

"When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn't particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it's not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy," said David Champion, the senior director of Consumer Reports auto testing center at a meeting with reporters here. "This is going to be a tough sell to the average consumer."

The magazine said in its testing in Connecticut during a harsh winter, its Volt is getting 25 to 27 miles on electric power alone.

Look at that again: "25 to 27 miles on electric power".  It seems that winter in the Northeast (note: bastion of liberal quiche-eating, electric car buying target customers) is, err, cold.  When batteries get cold, they don't work well.  Man, that sure snuck up on everyone!  But don't worry, Northeast liberals - you can freeze in the dark!

Champion noted the Volt is about twice as expensive as a Prius.

He was said the five hour time to recharge the Volt was "annoying" and was also critical of the power of the Volt heating system.

"You have seat heaters, which keep your body warm, but your feet get cold and your hands get cold," Champion said.

But don't despair, quiche eaters.  An air conditioner compressor probably takes as much juice as a heater, so the Government Motors Chevy Volt will probably be as bad a fit for all those potential customers rednecks south of the Mason-Dixon line.

What's the old engineering joke?  It's slow, expensive, and feature-poor, but other than that it's awesome!

Boy, I'm sure glad that we don't have a Village idiot from Texas in charge.  Just think about what might go wrong ...

Come on, hippies - don't you love Mother Gaia?

The posters down at your local patchouli shop tell us that Earth Hour is coming on March 26:

At 8:30 PM on Saturday 26th March 2011, lights will switch off around the globe for Earth Hour and people will commit to actions that go beyond the hour.

Some people are unimpressed:

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour. Here is my response.

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of  inexpensive and reliable electricity. Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading. Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

...

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all  other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

Kill the patients for Mother Gaia!  Of course, there is one place that is almost 100% green.  Every hour is Earth Hour:

Europeans can get ready for a more North Korean Green lifestyle, though:

The days of permanently available electricity may be coming to an end, the head of the power network said yesterday.

Families would have to get used to inly using power when it was available, rather than constantly, said Steve Holliday, chief executive of [UK} National Grid.  Mr Holliday was challenged over how the country would "keep the lights on" when it relied more on wind turbines as supplies of gas dwindled.  Electricity provided by wind farms will increase by six-fold by 2020 but critics complain they only generate on windy days.

Hey, the Operating theaters all have backup diesel generators, right?  Never mind that those generators are horrifically polluting - inefficient generators throwing out huge amounts of particulates - and (as we see at the Japanese nuclear plants) not 100% reliable.  Still, if some poor sod dies on the operating table, it's eggs, omlets, right?

I mean, this is about Saving The World™.

So hippies, here's your chance to show us that you're not idiots.  And hypocrites.  Turn off the power for Earth Month, instead of Earth Hour.

(via)

Headline of the day

Snake Bites Model in Breast; Dies Of Silicone Poisoning

There's video, but the story pretty much says it all:

A snake who bit Israeli model and actress Orit Fox in the chest died after being poisoned by an unusual venom -- the silicone in the buxom blonde's surgically enhanced breasts.

Via Aretae, who paused for a moment from his usual deep thinking to give us the really important news.

Your security update

Security news you can use ...

For Windows users:

Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal tool takes out 4th biggest malware:

Microsoft this week used its Malicious Software Removal Tool to take out the fourth-biggest threat in automated program's history, which dates back to at least 2005.

The malware, known as Win32/Renocide, is a crafty backdoor-enabled worm that spreads through removable drives, network shares and popular file-sharing applications. Once installed, it drops copies of itself on all removable drives, possibly by randomizing the the file names. It also spreads by scanning machines on an infected computer's local network and pasting a copy of a file called autorun.inf, which many versions of Windows automatically execute when the drive is attached.

This is a great free tool, and if you're not getting it, you should.  While you're there, you should try Microsoft's Security Essentials antivirus.  It's free, too.

Internet Explorer 9 comes out next week.  I quite like IE 8 (from a security point of view), so this is something to consider.  Looks like I'm mostly over my anti-IE fatwaw ...

Of course, Firefox 4 comes out next week, too.  Hmmm ... competition in the browser market?

For Apple users:

If you have an iPhone 3 (not 3GS; just the old 3 version), the new Apple security update won't work on it.  Security-wise, you're kind of screwed.  But don't try to complain on an Apple forum, because Apple will delete your posts.  Stay classy, Apple.

This also applies to older (pre-3rd Generation) iPod touches.  But remember, Apple doesn't want your backtalk.

Safari is first to fall in hacker conference "Pwn 2 own" challenge:

“Just after visiting the webpage with the affected version of Safari, we can, for example, launch the calculator or open a shell or do anything else we want,” he said a minute or two after demonstrating the exploit at the contest, which was attended by members of Apple's security team. “We have the same privileges as the user who visited the webpage.”

He said users would have no way of knowing their machines have been compromised. There is no prompt asking for a password. The only way to thwart the attack is to run Safari from an account that has been configured to have limited privileges.

On the bright side, you don't typically run as root on your Mac.  This vulnerability hasn't been patched yet.

For Linux users:

Ubuntu will tell you when there's a security update:

I'm installing it right now.

Vox Hiberionacum

The longest journey a man will ever take is the eighteen inches between his head and his heart.

The Emperor recalled the Legions from Britain in 410 A.D., leaving behind a thoroughly romanized province.  Towns continued their business the Roman way, collecting taxes, debating local policies in the forum, sending their children to study under professional rhetoricians, just as in Rome itself.

Most people have heard how one local boy - son of a town councilor - was seized by a raiding party and carried off in bondage to Ireland.  Most people have heard how he escaped, only to return to convert his heathen captors.  That's not the interesting journey.

St. Patrick wrote in his Confessions of how he was perhaps the least likely to become the Voice of the Irish, Vox Hiberionacum:

1 I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement [vicus] of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our desserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

2 And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

It may be that he returned to Ireland because his former schoolmates were so far ahead of him that he could not realistically find work as a rhetorician.  Patrick's latin is famously bad, but this memoir survived from around 450 A.D. not because of its quality as literature, but because of how he described that eighteen inch journey that he himself took:

12 I am, then, first of all, countryfied, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and,indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.

And a good thing for Ireland, and indeed all of Europe and western civilization.  Thomas Cahill writes in How The Irish Saved Civilization of how the Irish monasteries kept the flame of learning burning through the Dark Ages.  More remote (and more importantly, less wealthy) than the old Roman provinces, Ireland suffered less from Viking raids.  Where Viking plunder raids ultimately completely destroyed the great monasteries like Lindisfarne, the Irish monks kept their steady pace of copying the old works.

Including, of course, Patrick's Confessions, with its story of transformation by Grace.

(Image source, which has some pretty interesting background)

Spring has sprung

The flowers are in bloom, and a kid needs a rescue inhaler for his asthma, brought on by the pollen.

No emergency, but back in a bit.

On the Internet, nobody knows that you're a dog ...

... but everyone knows that you're a jerk, because you told them:

[Gilbert Gottfried] made headlines this week when a series of offensive jokes he posted on Twitter about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan cost him a job as the voice of the Aflac duck.


Hard to blame Aflac – Gottfried's jokes were tasteless and ill-timed, and Aflac does about three-quarters of its business in Japan. Gottfried later took the jokes down and apologized. (You can read some of them here, but fair warning.)

Here's an example of Gottfried's "humor":

Not only do we know that Gottfried is a jerk, but because he tweeted this, we know he's a twit.  Dude, teh Intarw3bz go everywhere.  That's the point of teh Intarw3bz ...

For the three readers who have never run across the post title, here's the original New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner.  It was published in the summer of 1993 (!).

Note to Gilbert Gottfried: teh Intarw3bz went everywhere in 1993, too.

I for one welcome our pwn3d robotic car Overlords

That's not a Photoshop.

The rush to computerize your car is basically over, which means the rush to pwn it has begun in earnest.  Fortunately (for the Bad Guys), security was never part of the design - for example, all of the non-critical components (like cell phones, music players, and GPS nav units) are on the same network as the critical ones (brakes, throttle, transmission control).

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Researchers who have spent the last two years studying the security of car computer systems have revealed that they can take control of vehicles wirelessly.

The researchers were able to control everything from the car's brakes to its door locks to its computerized dashboard displays by accessing the onboard computer through GM's OnStar and Ford's Sync, as well as through the Bluetooth connections intended for making hands-free phone calls.

Sigh.

Yes, I've been harping on this for some time now, but that's about as precient as predicting that the Sun will come up in the east or that Democrats will raise taxes.

So you might want to rethink that sweet Z4, and get one of these instead.  At least it can't get hacked wirelessly.

Quote of the Day: (Media) Meltdown edition

Sonic Charmer looks at the reaction by the media to the earthquake damaged reactors in Japan, and is unimpressed:

We already knew that nuclear accidents could happen. That is not new information. Nuclear accidents happening once-in-a-whatever is a totally-expected phenomenon and should have and would have already been factored into the calculations of anyone advocating nuclear power use. So, now we have come across that once-in-a-whatever event we already knew would come along from time to time. There may be and probably are things we can learn about nuclear plant safety from it, but the idea that it forces us to rethink all nuclear power in general is daft. For how many safe operating-hours has the collection (all nuclear power plants in the world) been running before this? Is the post-Japan observed frequency of accidents (once you put in appropriate error bars) even out of line with what we already thought about nuclear safety? Must we now statistically reject the null hypothesis that nuclear power plants are no-more-and-no-less-safe-than-we-already-thought? You have to at least try to do that calculation before sounding off about it, I would have thought.

There is something annoyingly innumerate about the tendency to greet events such as these with claims that they must change all our thinking. It’s like being surprised that there’s a lottery winner, or thinking it was a bad idea to buy insurance if you don’t get sick, or thinking we need to throw all of society’s efforts behind building a planetary lightning defense system if someone gets struck by lightning. There is no sense of proportionality or statistics behind any of the commentary I’m seeing, it’s all dumbly, robotically reactionary.

Robotically, it's dialing up the alarm to 11 in order to sell newspapers.  Should the alarm be dialed up to 11?  I don't know, but don't expect that I'll figure out the answer by listening to the press ...

Consequences

In 2002, The Boston Globe broke the story of Catholic priests who had been abusing children.  When their bishops found out about the crimes, they moved the priests to new parishes (allowing the abuse to continue) rather than report the crimes.  It was an enormous scandal, and the Globe deserves credit for their reporting.

Ultimately, several priests were convicted.  In the end, at least some of the predators paid the price.

So what happens when the abusers work for the government?

Nearly 40 years after New York emptied its scandal-ridden warehouses for the developmentally disabled, the far-flung network of small group homes that replaced them operates with scant oversight and few consequences for employees who abuse the vulnerable population.

A New York Times investigation over the past year has found widespread problems in the more than 2,000 state-run homes. In hundreds of cases reviewed by The Times, employees who sexually abused, beat or taunted residents were rarely fired, even after repeated offenses, and in many cases, were simply transferred to other group homes run by the state.

The police wouldn't investigate, and when finally forced to, botched the case.  A perpetrator walked, even with DNA evidence to establish his guilt.

At a home upstate in Hudson Falls, two days before Christmas in 2006, an employee discovered her supervisor, Ricky W. Sousie, in the bedroom of a severely disabled, 54-year-old woman. Mr. Sousie, a stocky man with wispy hair, was standing between the woman’s legs. His pants were around his ankles, his hand was on her knee and her diaper was pulled down.

The police were called, and semen was found on the victim. But the state did not seek to discipline Mr. Sousie. Instead, it transferred him to work at another home.

I would like to think that there's a special place in Hell for someone who would rape a mentally handicapped person in their care.

But punishing these animals is difficult, it seems, because they work for the government and are protected by the union.  The Organs of the State do not self-correct.  Unlike with the Catholic church, individuals and institutions escape the consequences of their actions.

I'm sure it will be different with Obamacare, though.

(Via)

UPDATE 16 March 2011 12:45: The Six has a post up about how to protect your loved ones from this sort of thing.

Farewell, Cap'n Crunch

Doubletrouble tells us that it's not long for the world, killed by pressure from the Nanny State.  Now, I must admit that I was never a big fan, even as a kid.  I also must cop to the charge that I hate the dang meddling Gubmint - my body, my self!

Still, it reminded me of an early security post that I did here - I'd only been blogging for maybe 2 weeks or so.  And it involves Cap'n Crunch.  So as an homage to Doubletrouble's eagle eye (not to mention ability to make my blood pressure spike), here's the intersection of security and breakfast cereal.

------------------- Repost from July 2008 ------------------

Airline security: smart or not?

Not.

Bruce posts about some idiots that want to set up an Invisible Fence in a commercial airliner and give y'all a shock collar:

The bracelets remain inactive until a hijacking situation has been identified. At such time a designated crew member will activate the bracelets making them capable of delivering the punitive measure - but only to those that need to be restrained.

Bruce makes great points about qui custodiet ipsoes custodes, ending with the Question Of The Day:

I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Well, Bruce, as a Full Service blog covering security issues, let me count the ways:

• Listen in on private communications sent via wireless? Check.
• Send Way Too Much electrical energy through the air via a directional antenna? Check.
• Figure out how to use "sooper sekret" wireless commands to reprogram medical equipment that can hurt or kill someone? Check.

I'm just waiting for those crazy kidz at Defcon to make a homebrew airline "Shock 'o Matic" for everyone to take home on the flight from Vegas. Don't believe me? Follow the link: "Real time social networking for Ninjas". Cool time. Check out the lockpicking and hardware hacking sessions.

Let me close with a story from the Old Days of computer security - so old, it was even before my time (yes, kids, it's true!).

This man called himself Cap'n Crunch:


The reason is that he figured out that he could program the long distance telephone switches (remember, kids, these are computers) to give him free long distance calls. This was back when long distance was muy expensive.

How did he reprogram the switches? What specialized hax0R tools did he need? This:

That's right, the prize in the cereal box.

How on earth was this possible? Well, it mostly boiled down to:

• "What if someone tries to ..."
• "Don't worry. Nobody would ever try that."
• "Besides, how ever would they get a whistle that plays precisly 2600 Hz/figure out the right combination of bits to beam via a laser"?

Of course, nobody who says anything like this has ever been to Defcon. Remember, kids, don't try this at home!

So Bruce, the answer to your question is "more than you can possibly imagine."

UPDATE, 7/10/2008 19:24: Looks like this is busted. Seems that someone proposed this to the TSA a while back, and the TSA said "thanks but no thanks." I still stand by the assertion that whoever proposed it had never been to Defcon.

------------------- /Repost from July 2008 ------------------

Yes, I'm a lazy blogger, digging up almost three year old posts.  Why do you ask?

Enemy of the People

Aretae looks at Gender differences, from an evolutionary point of view.

Gender Differences

Gender Differences part II

This is all double-plus ungood stuff, and all Right Thinking People™ will unhesitatingly condemn it.  The rest of us will go "hmmm", particularly on his conclusion:

Our current society makes lots of noise about shunning:

1. violence
2. real risk (of failure)
3. competition
4. real autonomy

Conclusions?

That's one smart dude.  The unstated, but related, topic is the belief that's at the core of the Progressive movement, and has been since the beginning: that millions of years of hominid evolution on the African savanna can be overcome by the correct social indoctrination.  I'd love to see some sort of metrics on that one.

Incentives matter

There's always an incentive structure, whether it's been carefully crafted by Deep Thinkers, or cobbled together piecemeal over decades.  The people in that system will respond to that incentive structure.  Quite frankly, this is the best argument against larger government, as Philip Greenspun writes on public schools:

I talked to a Spanish teacher in a suburban Boston public high school last night. She expressed her disapproval of the idea of merit pay for teachers. “Some of my students hate their parents and some have been sexually abused,” she noted, “but my salary is supposed to be based on their performance?”

I responded that I thought the deeper question was how school administrators would evaluate merit. I asked “What incentive does a school administrator have to do a good job evaluating merit, or indeed, to do any work at all?” The teacher said “none, especially if they are a member of a protected minority group. They can’t be fired, no matter how little they do.” That made sense to me; the school is guaranteed to get nearly all of the students in the town regardless of whether or not the administrators do anything (few parents can afford to pay property taxes that fund public schools and then pay private school tuition as well). Wasn’t a teacher also guaranteed customers even if she didn’t work? “You have to try to sell the students at the beginning of the year that the class will be fun. Otherwise it is just unpleasant to sit with them for the remaining 8 months. If I’m incompetent and lazy, I will still get the same paycheck and the same number of students, but it will be tedious to share a classroom with unhappy students. That’s my incentive to work.”

Reflecting on this conversation, I was surprised that anyone thinks merit pay will work.

Ignore what's going on in Wisconsin, as public "servants" riot to keep their higher-than-market wages in the face of a government fiscal crisis.  Assume for the sake of argument that the government was on a sound financial footing; public education would still be irretrievably broken, because the incentive structure all points in the wrong way.

The only question is why anyone would expect any reforms to improve the system.

The Department of Bad Ideas

To Old To Work, Too Young To Retire lays out the "brilliance" of the Harvard Men who see themselves as our betters.  From the People's Republic of Massachusetts, comes this:

I agree that this is bad policy and will put EMTs and paramedics in a bad position when a patient or their family decides that the questions are being asked so that care can be withheld or patients be directed to specific hospitals.  For example, if we have a patient that needs to go to a trauma center, specialty cardiac hospital, or stroke center because of the condition, we are likely to see resistance because that speciality hospital is not “their” hospital. We get some of that now, this will only make it worse. This will generate complaints which management will be obligated to investigate and do something about in order to appease the offended party.

In other words, it’s just the kind of stupidity that we’d expect from officious officials who know nothing about the industry that they are regulating. When the people at OEMS first started talking about this, they were warned that it would be a sensitive topic and that most EMTs and paramedics would balk at doing this.

He offers specific proof.  He also offers the opinion that the Right is stupidly demagoguing the issue.  Lastly, he offers proof that this demagoguing is at least temporarily effective:

I was going to include a link to the OEMS training Powerpoint, but suddenly it’s no longer available. Here is the link, so you can see for yourself. The fact that OEMS has killed the link and hidden the Powerpoint should tell you something about what kind of Crap Cyclone they are experiencing at their headquarters. Nothing says, “We’ve screwed up” if you’re from the government like taking down a web page containing embarrassing information.

Offered as a homework assignment to the discriminating reader, is to find said Powerpoint still cached on Al Gore's Intarw3bz ...

He filled this with smart, yessir.  Our "betters" from Harvard Yard keep telling us that they understand things better than we, because of their exceedingly large cranial capacity.  I keep waiting for a higher caliber of nonsense from tehir policies.  Still waiting.

Still, there does appear to be a musical way to address the invasion of super-cranial would-be Overlords ...

And thus it started

I found his blog via the sorely missed Kim du Toit's place, and had been reading him for a while when he posted about Massachusetts gun laws:

This time [the letter is] from Ahab over at Call Me Ahab.

So I'm reading this article in Boston online about what a clusterfuck it is to get a carry permit; and I was wondering if you could shed some light on the laws surrounding that.

I'm working up a post on why pre-emption and "may-issue" sucks so hard, but since I don't live in Mass. I'm not that familiar with your silly-assed gun laws.

"Silly-assed" is being charitable, Ahab...

Anyhoo, because

a) I'm always hard up for good blog fodder; and
b) I'm a lazy sumbitch at heart and couldn't bear the thought of not milking my keystrokes for all they're worth,

I'll reproduce my response here...

Being still stranded behind enemy lines in the People's Republic, I sat up and paid attention.  Soon after, he posted an invitation to all New England gunbloggers to attend a "blogshoot".

Well dang, I said to myself, I've been meaning to start a blog ....

Happy 4th Blogiversary to my Blogfather.  I wouldn't be writing every day if he hadn't done the hoodoo that he do so well.  May the Road Rage never cease, and may you experience it in Steve McQueen's Porche.  It's not quite the same as your Dodge Earth F**ker™, but it'd do ...

Thanks for everything, Jay, especially your friendship.

Blogroll updates

Guffaw in Arizona is an interesting name, which our host kindly explains:

I had a job once, years ago, as a chief investigator for a process service company.  Mostly locating people for process service.  The job didn't pay much, but, the boss was terrific!   He very much wanted to positively reinforce his staff.  I initialled documents with my initials:  GFA.  His reaction was to christen me guffaw, or sometimes chortle.  So, this weblog is Guffaw in AZ .  Welcome!

He's brand new to blogging - still has that new blog smell! - so wander over and welcome him to our little corner of the Internets.

Involuntary Transformation writes about mental health issues.  She brings a lot of sense:

There are so many things glaringly wrong with this post, it's hard to know where to begin.  I take particular exception to his characterizing, parents, (abusive or otherwise) of a person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, as "unfortunate."   Obviously, if a person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia has abusive parent/s, it is not the PARENTS who are unfortunate!   If the person has unsupportive and /or controlling parent/s, who believe they are "unfortunate parents;" it is still not the parents who are "unfortunate," IMHO.   They are infected by the same kind of shitty, discriminatory attitude toward those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia which this phrase exemplifies.  The truth is, by having this false perception; i. e. "I am so unfortunate, woe is my sorry parent self," hurt everyone.  It seems to me, the 'parent as victim mentality' would place and additional burden on the person with the diagnosis, and keep the parent from ever being truly supportive of their son or daughter.  A minor or adult child with a diagnosis, is the reason they are: "unfortunate parents" after all...

That's Big Stuff, right there.  OK, it's Big Stuff in a (ahem) boisterous color scheme, but still ...

Tin Can Assassin is another new-ish blogger, at Nine Pound Sledge.  He's another gun enthusiast, but pauses every now and then to bring teh Smart:

According to this article, what used to take seven years now only takes 3. God I love the efficiency of the internet! Seriously though, I fail to sympathize. When DW and I got married, we made a pact with each other to take our vows seriously. Or, in the words of Jeff Dunham's character Walter, "You remember when you said 'Till death do us part?'" "Yeah." "When you get to be my age you realize you were setting a goal."

Marriage is WORK. Which is probably why most people nowadays suck at marriage, as they are allergic to work.

A Jeff Dunham reference not involving Achmed the Dead Terrorist (Silence!  I kill you!!).  We can call that "well rounded".  Heh.

The Shekel describes himself as "focusing on numismatics, and commenting upon current legal and world events, not to mention asides into the world of scuba diving and fine firearms."  A bit of a Renaissance Man, right there.  He proves it by asking the question di tutti questions.  Seriously, some choices are hard.


Welcome to the blogroll everyone!  I'm pretty sure that I've forgotten some other folks who've linked to be.  If you're one of them, please shoot me an email or leave a comment, and I'll add you here.