Lego, turned up to eleven

Why we're winning

Jetaz takes his girlfriend to the range for the first time.  Looks like she'll be back.

Well done.

Found inside the Camp Borepatch secure perimeter

We got a visit today from The Big Guy himself, Uncle Jay.  After the obligatory excursion to the range for some recoil therapy (range report anon), we returned inside the wire for fried green tomatoes from the Camp Borepatch garden and grilled pork chops.

I now regret not planting three times as many tomato plants.  Dang, they were good.  And simple:

Slice green tomatoes 1/4" thick
Sprinkle with home made chili powder (roasted dried chilis ground in the blender)
Dredge in flour
Pan fry (I used too much oil; you only need an inch in your skillet)
sprinkle with salt

They're OK cold, but they're simply outstanding hot.

Oh, and biscuits.  With home made butter (which means home made butter milk).

But conversation with Jay was an excellent time.  I thought I've been to a lot of places, but he's been everywhere, with stories to match.  Just an excellent, excellent time.

Unmistakable sounds

Some sounds are simply unmistakable.  The Rolls Royce Merlin engine is one of these.



The De Haviland Mosquito was the fastest bomber of the War, although that's perhaps a bit unfair, as it was a multi-role aircraft par excellence.  Bomber, night fighter, reconnaissance, anti-sub: it wore many hats, and wore them well.  Keep in mind that in this video, the Mosquitos could outrun the escorting Spitfires.

The also got under Hermann Goering's skin.  Angry that England was producing these excellent aircraft out of wood, while German industry struggled to build ever fewer metal aircraft:

They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set- then at least I'll own something that has always worked.

Sadly, out of the over 7,000 of these that were built, none can fly today.

Henry Purcell - Trumpet Voluntary

We had a brass quartet to do the music at our wedding.  They played this:



It was spectacular.


It's by far Purcell's most famous composition, and we were by no means the only ones who had it at their weddings.  Purcell was enormously influential in his day (the late 17th century).  While his career was short (he died at only 36), he blazed brightly.  His talent was seen as so extraordinary that his music teacher resigned his post as organist at Westminster Abbey so that Purcell could take over.

Unsurprisingly, his mortal remains are interred there in the Abbey.  You'll find him next to the organ.

His influence extends to our day.  He inspired The Who, and you can hear an echo of Purcell in the opening bars of Pinball Wizard.

The Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins penned a sonnet titled, simply, "Henry Purcell".  It opens with a headnote which can only be seen as a thank you note, down through the ages:

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man’s mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.


Have, fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.

Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I’ll
Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under
Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while

The thunder-purple seabeach plumèd purple-of-thunder,
If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile
Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.

May your Sunday morning be equally spectacular.

Carmageddon has everyone fuming

LA's "Carmageddon" - shutting down one of the major highways for roadwork - has everyone in a tizzy.  Everyone.

There is evil there that never sleeps

Pretty evil, right there.

Lightsaber duel compilation

Obnoxious music warning, but cool otherwise.



Sadly, no Lego.

Oneil Devost - Salut Trucker

Country music is a state of mind, that leaps national boundaries.  It's no surprise to find a thriving Country music scene in Canada.  You might be surprised to find a Country music scene in francophone (french speaking) Canada.

Devost is un vrai chanteur country (a real Country singer), as the say up in Québec.  The words may be unfamiliar, but the style is unmistakeable. It's about being far from home and family, and working for a living. It's not, in fact, and American style, it's a country style. 

State of mind, baby.  Formidable, y'all!




Salut Trucker (Songwriter: André Clavier)

Salut trucker écoute mes chansons
Apporte ma musique dans ton beau camion
Salut trucker t'auras un compagnon
Sur la route si loin de ta maison

Salut trucker écoute mes chansons
Apporte ma musique dans ton beau camion
Salut trucker t'auras un compagnon
Sur la route si loin de ta maison

Avec ta cargaison tu parcoures tout le pays
Roule au Canada comme aux États-Unis
Du bords de l'Atlantique au Pacifique
De l'Alaska jusqu'aux frontières du Mexique

Salut trucker écoute mes chansons
Apporte ma musique dans ton beau camion
Salut trucker t'auras un compagnon
Sur la route si loin de ta maison

Pense à ta famille à ta femme et tes enfants
Tu t'ennuies de tes parents que tu vois pas assez souvent
Écoute ma musique tu sais je te comprends
Toi et moi on est des cowboys de note temps

Salut trucker écoute mes chansons
Apporte ma musique dans ton beau camion
Salut trucker t'auras un compagnon
Sur la route si loin de ta maison
Sur la route si loin de ta maison

(image source)

John Lee Hooker

If anyone can challenge Robert Johnson for the title "King of the Delta Blues", it's John Lee Hooker who exploded onto the Blues scene in 1948 with this.



Friday night blues, baby.

So when does the Obama meltdown happen?

"No drama Obama" was supposed to be the cool, intellectual, rational choice for President in 2008.  He even kept an even keep when questioned by Joe the Plumber, although he didn't answer very well.

That whole image is fraying now, and fraying badly.  It seems that pretty much everyone is posting about his "Call my bluff" statement.  Gotcher drama right here, bub.

So the interesting question is when will the frayed threads snap?  Obama hasn't had to deal with any sort of real crisis during his entire career, and it's apparent that he's thrashing about like a drowning man.  For someone with as inflated an ego as he has, this has to be an incredible source of frustration.  And an unfamiliar one.

So when does he snap, and just plain lose it in front of a camera?  More importantly, what should people be doing to hasten the snap?

The problem with Facebook

This is a long presentation, but one of the best I've ever seen.  It nails the real problem with Facebook, and gives a hint about what Google+ might be.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams

Via Isegoria, we don't often see something that so brilliantly cuts to the heart of a problem:

A few years ago, before the CEO cared a whit about social networking or identity, a Google User Experience researcher named Paul Adams created a slide deck called the Real Life Social Network. In a very long and well-illustrated talk, he makes the point that there is an impedence mismatch between what you share on facebook and your interactions in real life. So when you share a photo of yourself doing something crazy at a party, you don’t intend for your aunt and uncle, workmates or casual acquaintances to see it. But facebook does not do a good job of making this separation. This, in essence, is what the slide deck says and his point is made with great amounts of detail and insight.

So when Google began its social effort in earnest, the powers-that-be seized upon Paul’s research and came up with the Circles product. This was to be the core differentiator between Google+ (then codenamed Emerald Sea) and facebook.

Whether Google+ will actually do this well, or whether it will succeed in the marketplace, remains to be seen.

Borepatch: Now 3% more evil

I used to only be 34% evil.  I think it's the Political Class that's doing it to me.

$7M per household from Stimulus funding

Part of the Stimulus was spent to increase access to broadband in rural areas.  A study has analyzed the cost per household served, and it's staggering:

Eisenach and Caves looked at three areas that received stimulus funds, in the form of loans and direct grants, to expand broadband access in Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northeastern Minnesota. The median household income in these areas is between $40,100 and $50,900.  The median home prices are between $94,400 and $189,000.

So how much did it cost per unserved household to get them broadband access?  A whopping $349,234, or many multiples of household income, and significantly more than the cost of a home itself.

Except it's worse.  It seems that Montana has 7 service providers.  In the whole state, it appears that only seven households had no access to any of them.  If you divide the Stimulus funding by those households, you could have bought each of those families a condo with a nice Central Park view.  Maybe two.

Admittedly, it wasn't just 7 families that benefited.   There was a whole set of broadband providers that lobbied the government for free cash.  Millions went to rolling out a service that may or may not be actually being used by formerly unserved households.  But the investment in lobbyist budget clearly seems to have paid off handsomely.

Back at the startup companies I've worked at, a common theme was "spend money like it was your own".  Prioritization counted, because otherwise the company might not make it.  The Fed.Gov is completely incapable of this sort of prioritization, which is the best argument against the expansion of the Fed.Gov.

Sadly, this is likely to be the best case scenario

We're living in the future.  That's not always a good thing.

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet ...

... à mes amis français!  J'èspere que vous allez faire le pont!

Our miserable political class ...

... makes me depressed.  The current debt ceiling negotiations are a clown car act:

Why can't they take the deal?

There's one semi-fair reason, which is that the Democrats and the GOP leadership got entirely too cute with the last round of negotiations, finding a bunch of fake "cuts"--and then bragging that they hadn't really cut anything. Their fans in the commentariat joined in the gloating.  So this time, the serious cutters aren't going to settle for anything except massive cuts, right now--they don't trust the other parties in the deal to carry through on anything less draconians.  Nice job guys.

Chris Byrne adds the context that I endorse with a hearty "Amen, brother":

It's rather simple really...

The government spent everything they could squeeze from us when the economy was good. Then, when the economy went bad, instead of cutting back like all of us had to, they convinced a bunch of people that the way to make the economy better was to spend MORE.

Look, I put on my Big Boy britches this morning.  I know that actually courageous politicians are scarce as hen's teeth.  But we've already been through the budget cut kabuki - Obama's own Deficit Reduction Commission has a plan that, while not ideal, is plausible.

Obama won't touch it.  Instead, he's saying they'll cut off Grandma's Social Security check.

Here's the calculus: you can't fix the budget without addressing entitlements.  You can't fix the budget without raising some taxes.  And you can't fix the budget without reducing Government headcount, because guys like me won't believe they're serious without it, and will be incandescent with rage that "shared sacrifice" doesn't include Governmental Regulators.

Full stop.

But here's the calculation that depresses me: our miserable Political Class doesn't see political gain in that calculus, and so they're playing Chicken with the Train.  

I look at #1 Son and wonder if he'll be able to get a job when he gets out of college.  Heck, will I have a job when he gets out of college?  Default is one huge rotating fan, and there's one big old pile of something that will hit it, if it gets to that point.  And both parties are driving us down that road - I've never seen such an abdication of Presidential leadership as we're seeing here.  And I've never seen a Republican Party that is willing to sell the country out for short term political gain.

Quite frankly, Paul Ryan looks to be about the only Grown Up in Washington, D. C.  At the risk of repeating myself, let me repeat myself:

All of them.  I get comments when I post this, with people pointing out the evils of the Democrats.  Fair enough.  But what this Republic is desperate for is leadership and political courage, and we're sure not seeing it from the GOP.  So fire them, too.  Eventually, we - like Abraham Lincoln - will find a General that will actually fight for us.

Until then, they'll all just keep playing chicken with the train.

The evolution of the user interface

Heh.

I keep saying ...

... that the problem is not the Democrats, and the solution is not the Republicans.  The problem is a permanent Governing Class that has increasing contempt for you and me, and a sense of entitlement to exceptions to the rules that apply to us unwashed masses.

Case in point, a Republican State Legislator who thinks it's funny to pull a gun on people:

A politician pulls a Rule 2 violation on a reporter, and now is having to defend herself, rightly so. This is America, dammit. Stunts like that happen in 3rd world banana republics, not here.

If you click through to the story, you find this:

Klein, a freshman lawmaker, said she has heard and read comments from people who don't understand why she feels the need to constantly walk around armed, even on the secured floor of the legislative chamber.

"They kind of look like everybody who does carry is some kind of hick or hillbilly or cowboy type," Klein said, "and they don't identify."

No, I understand why you'd want to pack heat.  Even on the floor of the legislature, which quite frankly would be an admirable political statement in support of liberty.

What we object to, Cupcake, is brandishing and muzzle sweeping (if you can even call it that - it looks like you deliberately aimed your gun at something that didn't need any holes installed in it).  And we object to the fact that you're free as a bird while I would be looking at the inside of a jail cell and loss of my carry permit had I played that particular game.

What I object to is the sense of entitlement of a Political Class that thinks it's just like me, only better.  Voters of Arizona, here's some advice that applies to Sen. Kline next election day:



You know what to do.

In all fairness, her side of the story is somewhat different than the reporter's.  But she's dumb as a box of hammers if she thought that showing her gat to a reporter would get her good press.

The "Second Draft of History"

It's said that Journalism is the "first draft of history", which makes the bias of the news media a big concern.  The best demonstration of bias isn't what's written, but what isn't written - subjects deemed unworthy of examination tend to fall on one side of the ideological mid-line.

Historians write the second draft of history, as it were.  With the far leftwards slant of Universities in general and Liberal Arts in particular, it's no surprise to find precisely this same sort of problem.  Foseti observes it in action, in a history of the War Between the States:

Goldfield, our author, suggests that the Civil War was caused by religious zealotry in the North. The religious zealots could not stand slavery. Their religiousness made them willing to go to great lengths to perfect their society – this meant ending slavery by force, if necessary.

I’ve covered this before – abolitionism is obviously the cause of the war though it’s currently fashionable to blame “slavery” while ignoring the fact that every other slave-holding country ended slavery without resorting to the mass slaughter of its own citizenry and that slavery had existed in the US for a very long time without requiring mass slaughter.
One point for Goldfield for correctly understanding the causes of the war.

Goldfield’s story gets absurd when he discusses the end of the war. He believes that after 4 years of war that killed the modern equivalent of 10 million people, Northerners gave up their religious extremism, went home, and started the industrial revolution.

...

Instead, what happened was that the Northerners continued to try to perfect the conquered South. The results were devastating and continued for years. Read the intro to this book for the best short description that I’ve found. Only after many more years of failure and destruction – and how could they not fail at making model citizens out of people who were just removed from slavery? – did the Northerners give up. Ignoring the tragedy of reconstruction is fashionable, but inexcusable.

Good luck finding this discussed in the classroom, though.  A history of the Progressives' many and bloody failures would be interesting indeed.  But it's what isn't published that tells the tale.