Minneapolis - St. Paul

Ten hour round trip for a two and one-half hour field trip. The math doesn't work out logically, but the Kid loved the science museum.  He also loved the roller coasters at the former Camp Snoopy at Mall of America.  I remain convinced that roller coasters are best after-the-fact and not during.

Best part - watching the Kid manipulate the wave pool controls to adjust the bottom, frequency and size and watch the waves change shape, when they broke on the 'beach' and so on.  He went at this for a real long time.


And there is news on the dinosaur front!  Sauropods, when I was a child, lived in swamps because their enormous bulk would collapse on land.  This seemed an unlikely survival strategy but whatever. 

Sometime between 'when I was a child' and 'now' Learned Scientists changed their minds.  Sauropods are now nimble critters, bounding across the landscape like gazelle.  I'd like to see Martin Perkins capture one in a net - boy that would make a keen Wild Kingdom episode, hunh? 

Diplodocus could even use his tail like a bull-whip and slap the carnivores around like Billy Sunday whacking drunks in a saloon.

Compare and Contrast

Via.

Why I Like Living in the 21st Century Part N

Modern Dentistry.

Any era before now I'd be looking at years of grumpy misery as my gums recede in the face of plaque and bacteria and my teeth fall out, one by one.  In the end I'm drinking warm water and most of my calories come from oatmeal.

Now?  I get a dose of Novocaine, the nice lady works away for ninety minutes with an ultrasound, some minty red goop, and some mintier goop and with good luck in a few months the situation [1] stabilizes.

And you get teevee while you're tipped back, mouth open.  Can't beat that with a stick.

[1] It's my own dumb fault, of course: genetics and parents who took me to the dentist on a regular schedule gave me a good set of teeth.  Then, after the Navy stopped ordering me to the dentist annually, I just stopped going.  Don't do that.

Make the Call

Act like everyone else.  Are your papers in ordnung, serf?  When it comes to making our public spaces safe .. we're all in this together. 

Make the Call - Civilian (YouTube).

Where one can find this in the original German?

Reasons why I like my job.

Error messages!


JSON IS UNSAFE TO EXECUTE! BAILING OUT!
death not achieved conventionally at /Users/bdunbar/bin/ttytter.pl line 4678.


That one is just cute as a basket of puppies.

There is only fairness

President Obama is open about it now. There are no property rights. There is only “fairness”; the Constitution means nothing, liberty is not important; we must be ‘fair’ and that means that those who now pay most of the taxes already now get to pay even more because the government must continue to grow at 7% exponential. Forever.

J.E. Pournelle September 20, 2011

How much for that doggie in the window?

The F-35 - one expensive machine.

The air force insists that it is $65 million each, while the Department
of Defense says when all costs are included; it will be more like $111
million each.

$111 million will buy
 

• 222 MRAPs. 
• 37 Stykers.
• 1.2 million cases of MREs.
• A deployed company of grunts for a year.

That better one gawd-damned good airplane.  I mean it better poop gold bricks, whistle 'Dixie' and blow up bad guys for that much cash.

Via.

A gremlin minute?

Got a cookbook at the used book store, printed in 1966: "Uncle John's Original Bread Book" [1]

For St. Patrick's Day Oatmeal Bread we have ...

Spoon mixture into large greased bread pan and bake in 350° F. oven for 70 gremlin minutes;

What in the Wide World of Sports is a gremlin minute?

[1] By John Rahn Braue, copyright 1961.

An elephant is faithful—one hundred per cent

The text of 'Horton Hatches The Egg'.

So the next time I need to read my grandson to sleep, and don't have the book handy, I won't have to rely on memory.

RIP

I've been to funerals. Some in funeral homes with the charm of a school cafeteria. Even the nice ones are just places where you can say a few words, a prayer or two and you're done. The best you can say about them is that they're better than nothing.


Dad's memorial was at the lake, at the yacht club where he'd spent so much time. Where I spent a lot of my childhood, come to that.



I can't think of a better place for a memorial than a place the deceased loved to be at, where his presence is so close


The priest said

When Bill died he left his boat tied to the rigging dock. It took six of us an hour and a truck to haul his boat out of the water. Bill could do it in five minutes, alone, with a Mercedes.

And

Every one of us here has had a moment when Bill would wander over to what we were doing, offer some advice. And his way was always right, and easy.

And

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Bill, and we commit his body to the deep.

And we did. And it was good.


Later I'm driving home. In deep night of the Iowa countryside, behind the wheel of a truck just a little bit younger than I am. V8 motor throwing noise into the night and heat into the cab. My youngest is in the middle of the bench seat, his head leaning gently against my arm, sleeping.

With my youngest dozing at my side, I felt him one more time. Then he slipped away.


Rest in Peace, Dad.

Got a good motor and she does scoot right along

This is sitting in my driveway, now.

A 1975 Chevrolet K10 Silverado.

Real 1970s technology inside: Bench seat. Wing windows. Prominent ashtray. No cup holders.

Drive this for very long I'll be taking up manly 1970s habits like smoking, disco, and terrible country music.

Little Dog - Big Bone

This is a Happy Dog

Pixie, a Toy Fox Terrier, with a rib.

In which I am turning into an old man.

Sears is advertising 'free tire pressure checks'.  For this to be worth the money that Sears is putting into the ads all over the damn radio ... there must exist a whole lot of Americans who cannot use a tire gauge.

This is ... millions of people a day climbing into cars, hurtling all over the city in it and having no idea what makes it go. Air .. tires?  Man, that's for specialists. 

I can imagine there are people like this.  But I have a hard time understanding why someone would deliberately turn Eloi.

Morlocks are ugly.  But they get stuff done.

Thrift

Looking for cheap reading material for an upcoming trip, dropped by my local Bethesda Thrift.

Found a suit.  A nice suit.  It looks like the guy had it on once, maybe twice.  Fits like a glove.

For $6.75.  Being thrifty rocks.

That's all. Go about your business, citizens.

Clearing Tabs

Citing a 17% income tax rate, Warren Buffet wants rich folks to pay more taxes. Warren Buffet is acting coy with the truth about his taxes. And what 'rich' is.


Just in time for the back to school season, David Rosenberg's 12 Bullet Points Confirming The Double Dip Is Here. Ruh-roh.


The president bought a new bus. Made in Canada. He said he wanted more jobs in America - Canada is close enough for government work.


Say it with me: One Term President. It could happen.


55 cents of every dollar spent on 'Made in China' products stays here. Didn't everyone know this?


Max Wolf Valerio: Trans Men need to man up. Which is, yes, kind of funny in it's way but also: heck yeah. If you're going to be male, be a man, not a woman with the wrong equipment.

Customer Service and etc

Awesome

The Front Range at dawn. And sunset. And high noon. I'd forgotten what it's like, having actual terrain all around. The Flatirons ... holy cow that is a lot of rock, just poking up into the air.


Boulder. Great city. It's .. Madison. But more liberal, which I did not think you could do. Without the state capitol. And with more bike trails. A more interesting downtown [1]. And it's pedestrian friendly. Possibly to excess: you really should not take for granted that cars will just stop. Eventually some tourist is going to come along, wondering what that blinky yellow light means.

I've never seen illegal drugs offered for sale so openly. If they only had firearms so readily available it would be a little slice o' Libertarian Heaven.


BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse in Boulder. Great service. Awesome food. Try the deep-dish pizza.


IBM Business Continuity and Resiliency Service. You don't want to use their services. But if a meteor is going to hit your data center, you will be hard-pressed to find a better place to hang out and get things up and running again.


Enterprise Rent-A-Car, DIA. Offering a drink of water to customers is a nice touch. The altitude and dry air catches up to a guy just about the time you've reached the rental car building. The staff is very good. If they were any bouncier they'd be flying through the air.


Delta. You guys rock.


Meh

The restaurant that will not be named at DIA. 30 minutes for eggs? Funny how, when asked, they were ready just-like-that. Also: no refill on the water. I get that you're busy, but the waitress, while busy hustling back and forth, could have trotted around with a carafe? Maybe .. left one on the table?


TSA. Long lines while complete strangers trample one's civil rights and ... Can we talk?

The thing where you have a team of agents - like four of them - hang out in the boarding lounge and you quarter the area, with two dudes at 12 and two at 3? What are you waiting for? We've been pre-screened and scanned and wanded and shoved around like feedlot cattle. You're there because ... why? I get the 'don't want to catch the good-guys in the crossfire' thing when you're at 12 and 3: but you're not armed with anything more lethal than a badge and a radio.

It's weird to be an American, in an inoffensive place like the airport, watched like you're a potential thug, let me tell you.


[1] Imagine what Madison would be like if the best real estate wasn't occupied by a big ol' marble mausoleum and pest magnet.

To My Little Sister Whom I Love

This is how you change a flat tire.

• Activate the emergency brake.
• Activate the flashers.
• Open the trunk.
• Lift up the plywood floor.
• Read the directions printed on the underside.

Love,

Your Brother.

Fifty Years After The End of the World

The Pioneer kept coming. It was caught by an inshore current that carried it briefly to the side. Then the keel hit the bottom, and the ship drove hard onto the flooded beach, carried by its weight, slowing under full forward power until the rudder no longer functioned and the hull veered out of control and slid to a halt not a hundred yards from where we stood. Anchors the size of cars rattled down the sides and splashed into the shallows. The engine stopped, the lights switched off in succession from bow to stern, and abruptly the Pioneer lay dark and still.

The Shipbreakers - William Langewiesche

Pictures, here.

What those pictures put me in mind is fifty years after the end of the world: the last of the old world's machines are stripped to make crossbows, bolts, armor.

Who Gets the Flute?

An Open Question [1] [2] for the 2012 candidates for President.

This letter has been sent - or will be sent - to most of the candidates for the presidency in the Democratic and Republican parties in 2012. Some won't get it - their web site utterly lacks 'contact me' email or a web form.

I have no pretension that I'll get anything but a form letter back. If that.

It would be instructive if they would answer the question. But that will have to wait until a person with more umph asks the question at a debate, or a member of the press with some brass ones pitches it to them. Or, possibly, if a lucky member of the public finds themselves face-to-face with the candidate.

Or maybe you could re-blog, pass it along, send it to the candidates, put a bug in the ear of a reporter.



Sir / Ma'am,

I am asking this question of the announced candidates for President.

The answer will be very instructive, will tell the voters a great deal about your philosophy, how you will perform in office.

I will publish the results on my blog, Space For Commerce, and a mil-blog that I contribute to, The Daily Brief.



Amartya Sen wrote in 'The Idea of Justice' this thought experiment;

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because she made it.


Sen argues that who gets the flute depends on your concept of justice.

Bob will have the support of the economic egalitarian.

The libertarian would opt for Carla.

The utilitarian will argue for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can play the instrument.


Who gets the flute?


R/s

Brian Dunbar
Neenah, Wisconsin



[1] On review I see the summary owes a great deal to - if not an outright theft from - Eric Falkenstein at Falkenblog.

Sorry about that.

[2] Tip o' the hat to SouthBend7 for sparking the idea.

I found the wheat

Falkenblog

I was reading The Idea of Justice by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, now in paperback, and he starts out with the following example.

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because she made it.

Sen argues that who gets the flute depends on your philosophy of justice. Bob, the poorest, will have the support of the economic egalitarian. The libertarian would opt for Carla. The utilitarian will argue for Anne because she will get the maximum pleasure, as she can actually play the instrument. Sen states there are no institutional arrangements that can help us resolve this dispute in a universally accepted just manner.

I liked the thought experiment better when it was called 'The Little Red Hen'

“I found the wheat, I planted it, I weeded it, and when it was time to harvest it, I did that too. I took it to the mill to be ground into flour and at last, I baked it into bread.

“Now,” said the little red hen, “I’m going to eat it with my family.” And she did.


Nothing more universal and just than telling the cow, pig and cat to go f*** themselves and eating that bread with your family.


Via.

In Which My Economic Illiteracy Is On Display

If the United States can't keep it's economic affairs in order then perhaps we don't deserve to have a AAA credit rating.

Also

A solution for the problem

So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1
trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and
write checks on the proceeds.

I like it: if the government can wish money into existence then why can't it wish up more money, in really interesting denominations?

Time Passes

In a bag of tools at Dad's cabin was a hatchet. Looked at the sheath - BSA stamped on it. A thirty-year old hatchet, purchased for camping with the Boy Scouts when I was in middle-school. I never felt any particular attachment to it, but .. it went home with me.

The blade is still sharp. Gonna take care of that sucker. Perhaps my boys will find it in a bag of tools when I pass on.



My grandparents lived near here, for a while. Farming alfalfa [1] then selling / servicing irrigation equipment. Yvonne or Michelle took a picture of it - better than this one but from the same vantage point - blown up to poster size - and it hung on the wall at Dad's cabin. Now it's on the wall of my cube at work. The description of how a tuff ring forms caught my eye ...

... created when basalt magma rose to the surface and encountered the wet muds of a lake bottom. Powered by a jet of steam, molten basalt was blown into the air, creating a fountain of hot lava particles and frothy ash. The pieces and blobs of hot lava and ash rained down around the vent and formed a saucer-shaped ring of lapilli tuff and volcanic ash sitting like an island in the lake waters.

Kaboom. Nothing you'd want to stand around and watch.

That corner of the country is like that: a constant reminder of violent events in the not-so-very distant past [2].

Geologic calamity in slow motion.

[1] It does not make any kind of sense to pipe water to the desert for plants that one will turn into cow food. But there it is.

[2] And the not-so distant past. It was quite a deal, watching ash cover Vancouver inches deep.

Auden

Money cannot buy
The fuel of Love:
But is excellent kindling.

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word intellectual suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.


-- W. H. Auden, "Collected Shorter Poems"

Who would hire any of these guys to do a job? They don't know anything.

"A guy increases the debt by 40%, GDP growth is on the way down, food stamps are up 40% and to accomplish this we spent four trillion dollars!"

He sounds upset. I cannot imagine why.

A distinction without a difference

...keep it up, GOP, and you'll have me voting libertarian next year.

"But!" You say. "If you vote for a libertarian, Obama will win again!"

WHAT'S THE FUCKIN' DIFFERENCE?

The difference between Mr. Fungus and myself is that he's still got faith in the Republican Party and mine kind of flew out the window a while ago.

Going to vote for Gary Johnson.

If he doesn't get the nod I'm going to vote for whatever nut the Libertarian party cranks out.

Michaelis, what are tanks for?

"Michaelis, what are tanks for?"

"To kill, sir."

"Take your tanks to Suwon," Ridgeway said.

"Fine, sir," Michaelis answered.  "It's easy to get them there.  Getting them back is going to be more difficult because they (the Chinese) always cut the road behind you."

"Who said anything about coming back?" Ridgeway answered.  "If you can stay up there twenty-four hours, I'll send the division up.  If the division can stay up there twenty-four hours, I'll send the corps up."  That, thought Michaelis, was as the start of a brand-new phase of the war, the beginning of the turnaround.

From 'The Coldest Winter' by David Halberstam.


'To kill, sir.'  Korea was a disaster for everyone involved.[1]  The clarity of purpose and will shown by Michaelis and Ridgeway must have been a ray of sunshine to everyone involved.


[1] Except the Chinese government.

Situation - Getting Better

The day before we left for Oklahoma was a series of domestic problems.

The washing machine refused to drain - the pump was issuing an ominous an ka-klunk ka-klunk noise.  Then the computer would decide to shut things down rather than continue doing whatever it was doing.

The garage door fell apart: three rollers missing, a fourth was off the track.

Couldn't stay around to fix it - family called.  Things needed to be done.

Tied the garage door up so it couldn't get any worse.  Told the kids to leave the washing machine alone.  Did a load of laundry by hand.  Spent the next day driving to Oklahoma. 

And man, nothing feels as empty as US 169 south of Iola, Kansas after dark.  There may be stuff out there, but I don't think I saw a single light until I hit Nowata.

When I got back I put off attending to those chores.  Intellectually, I know that when one's father dies it's going to cause a certain moodiness - to say the least - but I was unprepared for how badly this hit me.

Couldn't put it off anymore.  I need my garage, and I was down to my last clean pair of underwear.

Laid the washer down. Prepared myself to find a dead pump.  Found a mangled sock coiled up inside.  Removed sock.  Washing machine is back in working order.

Got new rollers from Menards.  Couldn't find my 7/16 socket.  Used vise-grips to unbolt the hinges.  Spent 30 minutes on one hinge, realized that was insane.  Got a new socket set from Wal-Mart.  Thirty minutes later the job is 90% done, with one pesky hinge up in the upper corner that requires some minor adjust before it will fit.  It was dark, dinner was ready.  Enough for the day.

And I'm no longer quite so down-in-the-dumps.   Getting something, anything, done was a big help.

 It still hurts, but I can breathe and move and think again.

Out on the ranch . . .

Out on the ranch a cowboy is facing his horse.

Cowboy: Well, you're a pretty good hoss, I guess. Hard workin', that's a plus. You aint' the fastest critter I ever come across . . .

Horse: "No, stupid, not feed*back*. I said I wanted a feed*bag*.

Applescript to connect using SSH

Assume one has a Mac. Uses iTerm2. And that one spends a great deal of time managing a riot of Unix systems using SSH.

Now use this AppleScript to launch a new terminal window, then login to your remote host. Now - as the joke goes - you have four problems.

The interesting part were variables, which I did not know how to pass to Applescript. So I learned something: hey, hey hey.

Execution

$ s2.sh hostname

Scripts

#s2.scpt
on run argv
tell application "iTerm"
activate

-- This causes script to operate on current terminal (window)
-- set term to (current terminal)

-- make a new terminal
set term to (make new terminal)

-- Open a new tab
tell term
set Lsession to (make new session at the end of sessions)
tell Lsession
set name to (item 1 of argv)
exec command "ssh username@" & item 1 of argv & " "
end tell
end tell

end tell

end run


#s2.sh
#! /bin/bash
source $HOME/.conf/remote.conf
echo "-----------------------------"
echo "Take off, hoser"
echo "-----------------------------"
cd $HOME/bin
osascript $HOME/bin/s2.scpt $1


Tab Clearing

Gary Johnson calls family leader pledge 'Offensive and Unrepublican'. “Government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults. I have always been a strong advocate of liberty and freedom from unnecessary government intervention into our lives. The freedoms that our forefathers fought for in this country are sacred and must be preserved. The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues — such a discussion is simply wrongheaded. We need to maintain our position as the party of efficient government management and the watchdogs of the “public’s pocket book”.


Scared of Freedom. There are a lot of people who consider themselves freedom advocates, who, with righteous zeal and indignation, vehemently rail against the injustice, corruption and oppression "government" continually spews forth. However, many of those same people, when they hear someone suggesting life without the monstrosity called "government," will immediately go into turbo-backpedal mode, insisting that some "government" is needed, that we need to work to fix the system, and that we need a good "government," that just does good stuff, and protects us, and so on.


BYTE is back. It's too bad it won't live. But then again, what does?


The UN has a plan. Here is the world’s most powerful intergovernmental institution essentially arguing for the destruction of the global economy, enforced rationing, Marxist wealth redistribution, greater regulation, the erosion of property rights and global governance by a new world order of technocrats and bureaucrats.


Farewell To Space-Faring. The Final Shuttle Launch for Friday has been cancelled, but it’s still the end of an era. Actually it’s the end of several eras, particularly the America as a space-faring nation era inaugurated by John Kennedy. The twist is that Shuttle killed space-faring.


Eat our Peas: Command Economy. The President of the United States has spoken. It is time to compromise by giving in to what he wants. To the various Republican suggestions regarding the debt limit, he says: (click the link)


Beyond The Big City Blues. Racial problems in the US contributed to the particular history of the urban underclass and race can never be totally ignored in this country, but the inner city today is haunted by three serious problems, none of which is racial in nature: a lack of jobs, an advanced state of social disintegration and decay, and the presence of the illegal drug industry.


House-Wring Diagrams. One came with the house. It went god-knows-where sometime in the last few years. And it's now out of date, thanks to a new panel in the basement. Time to make a new one. And this is a big ol' barn of a house, built in three phases spanning decades: nooks and crannies and cruft everywhich-where.


The Node Beginner Book. More new crap to learn. I need to be twins.

Reasons Why I Like Unix Part Umpty

Instructions at work to download a backup copy of our documentation wiki for

Windows users

8 line Powershell script
2 lines to explain how to set this as an automated task
2 lines to explain who to run an unsigned script


OS X users

curl -O http://noc.domain.com/zipfilename.zip

Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother.

Leon: My mother?
Holden: Yeah.
Leon: Let me tell you about my mother.

From the movie 'Blade Runner' of course.

Our Wobbly World - Crisis Magazine

The funny part is, our culture’s growing allergic reaction to the Christian tradition — and therefore to people who, you know, actually know something about pre-Christian paganism — makes the Allergic ignorant of the debt they owe the Christian tradition for preserving paganism. For it is, after all, the Church that preserved the wreckage
of high pagan civilization after low pagan barbarians destroyed it. Indeed, much of the “ancient mystical” paganism our culture tends to enthuse about (think Mists of Avalon, druids, Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge, various Celticized bits of rubbish, Wicca, etc.) is not Greco-Roman (which actually achieved something creative) but Anglo-Germanic and northern European in flavor. The thing is, northern European pagan patrimony to us is a few phallic standing stones. That’s because they spent most of their time getting drunk and stealing from each other, until they finally wandered in a raging stupor down to the Mediterranean to do a bit of raping and pillaging of the decadent Roman Empire.

Our Wobbly World - Crisis Magazine

You can have any color whoozit as long as it meets federal aesthetic guidelines

Let this roll around inside your head for a minute:

We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.

That is Secretary Steven Chu.  Member of the Obama Administration.  A Nobel-prize-winning knows-better-than-you arrogant son-of-a-git who would prefer that the government waste your money instead of you.

The Obama Administration: knowing what's good for you better than you ever could.

Via.

The right to keep and arm bears

Six months after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, the White House is preparing to propose some new steps on gun safety . . .

Gun safety. For the children, no doubt.

Dumb motherfuckers.

(Pardon my French.)

Guns are safe.   Keep your fingers off the trigger, they don't go bang.

Problem solved.  Next?

Farewell Shuttle

A gorgeous spectacle on launch.  Poetry in air gliding home.

Too complex, too expensive, not very good at any one thing.

But she was a by-God spaceship: such a sight to see.

War On Libya Day Mumblety

This just in: The War in Libya is

Still a disorganized cluster-fuck
Still illegal
Still a bad idea

This news flash has been brought to you by the Nifty News Fifty Info team and your local 'That's Obvious' mega-store.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled krep.

Gadhafi, like Hitler, is serious about attacking Europe

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned on Tuesday that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is "serious" about attacking European cities in order to pressure European officials to cease their airstrikes against Libya.

"He actually means it," Graham said of Gadhafi. "Hitler meant it. He means it."

He broke out the H-word.  He meant it, he really did.

How stupid does he think we are?  What is that, five, six, a dozen petite dictators who have been compared to the Austrian Corporal in the last generation?  Don't you think that, by now, comparing anyone to Hitler has gotten so devalued that it's lost any meaning whatsoever?

We might be charitable and assume Graham has got some secret-squirrel data from the Cee Eye Ay: hard intel, solid data on terrorist cells, dates, times, plans, hordes of shadowy fifth columnists sneaking about in the night ...

Fuck Europe.  If they're so damned supine and disorganized that an ass-fart of place like Libya represents a viable threat, then they deserve what they get.

A Personal Note

There are some things I just don't talk about on this blog. They are just none of your business.

Unless those things are funny. Or weird.

Mostly it's because a) that's not what this blog is for [1] and b) I don't do 'feelings' in public. Remorseless repression of emotion until a culturally-approved means to blow it off is the way I roll.


[1] If it can be said to be about anything.

The art and craft and science of software

Software: art, craft, engineering?

... we've only been creating software half a century. We've only had academic departments devoted to it for half of that. And many of those still haven't figured out whether they're applied math departments, or electrical engineers who don't like bothering with all the soldiering and other messy stuff, or whether they want to teach students how software works so the students will be good at their future jobs, or because knowledge is its own reward. We haven't been making software or training programmers very long, so let's not throw in the towel on making coding into engineering yet.

SB7: Stack Exchange

It's only in the last century or so that the art of 'building stuff' has progressed from rule of thumb to engineering. And people have been building things for how long? A few thousand years. Software as engineering might happen.

But: Mike Mulligan does not have to deal with the mess made by some guy who built the old town hall on the rule of thumb method while digging the basement of the new town hall in Popperville. Nope: somebody else knocked the old building down before he even got there. [1]

Mr. Software Developer is - and will be for quite some time [2] - building his works on the foundations, if not right inside of, software developed by the rule-of-thumb craftsman method.


[1] I'm stretching a point: the site chosen for the new town hall was clearly a brand-new site: no prior construction.

[2] Thousands of years, if Vernor Vinge is right. In 'A Deepness in the Sky' the skills commanded by a programmer archeologist are very valuable indeed, guys who can dive into code hundreds or thousands of years [3] old and hack something up that works on existing problems.

[3] They use the Unix epoch as the basis for keeping time.

Epigrams

“I came here to hunt whales not my commander’s vengeance.  How many barrels of sperm oil will that vengeance yield?  What will it fetch on the New Bedford market?”

Starbuck - Moby Dick.


"It has been said an engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound...."

Nevil Shute - Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer.

Long Week

90% of what I do professionally can be done by a chimp.  I earn my salary for the other 10%.

This week I earned my living.

Component isolation: learn it, love it, use it.

Pity the Dog

The boy needs no pity. He is sixteen and should know better than to leave a pound of bacon on the counter, near the edge, to thaw. Excellent, moderately expensive bacon that was to be bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwiches for dinner.

Pity instead the dog.





A good dog. A dog who knows that food on the counter is inviolate. Who was left, alone, with a pound of thawing bacon. Dripping bacon-scented water on counter, and the floor. Getting warmer and tastier smelling by the minute, releasing it's tender meaty smell to the air. Where it flogged her her doggy nostrils, taunting her.

The torture must have been agony, waving a lit smoke under a tobacco addict's nose. In the end, her lust for raw meat overcame her inner good dog and it was gone. And she knew she done wrong: one look at her aspect when I arrived home and said 'I thought you said you had bacon out for dinner?' told the tale.

Poor ol' thang.

Tab Clearing

Simple Math: Taxes Aren't The Answer.  The point is that taxes are a symptom, not the real problem. Spending is (and has been) our problem all along. The size and scope of our government services needs to reflect our means to pay for them, just like anything else. Our politicians, both democrat and republican, want to sell us Ferraris, when we can just about afford Corollas.


Economic Freedom and Quality of Life (YouTube).  Excellent video.


Getting Truth's Pants On.  A peasant cannot stand to be reminded that there are free men out there... so watch your back.


RPG JS - Create your browser RPG in HTML5.  I need another new toy like I need a hole in my head - but oh so nifty looking.


Tigger - A beautifully simple, command-line based task management system that lives inside your git repo.  I like todo.txt but it's hard to push it off my computer to everyone else.


Haiku.  An open source operating system inspired by BeOS.  I need another new toy like I need a hole in my head . . .


Architectural Programming: research and decision-making process that identifies the scope of work to be designed. In prole terms, designing a building as if it were what it is: a system.  Throw in the inputs, out comes your design.  Fascinating.

A vulgar, upjumped, snake-oil-selling, midway-barker huckster

Congress asserted itself and declined to give the President legal cover to conduct a half-assed [1] war in Libya.  To which the Secretary of State Clinton [2] said

Whose side are you on?

The lady is doing her best to make people hate-hate-hate the current administration.  Also: fuck you, bitch.


I had to get my licks in, but I bow to Ken, who said it best, as only a finely trained legal mind with a mastery of the English language could. [3]

You vulgar, upjumped, snake-oil-selling, midway-barker huckster. You venal, amoral, mendacious harpy. You vile, preening, scheming hack. Whose side am I on? I’m on the side of fuck you, bitch. I’m on the side of the Constitution, limited government, limited executive power to kill people, limited executive power to put our armed forces at risk, and the rule of motherfucking law. I can’t believe there was a time when I couldn’t grasp why people despised you. Whose side am I on? You Senator, can you name a nanosecond when you’ve ever been on anyone’s side but your own?

That’s whose side I’m on. What’s it to you?

The shade of George Patton, who knew a thing two about language and the use of profanity in motivating men, is smiling.


[1] One of the worst parts about this whole mess in Libya is how god-awful badly it's being run.  Blow up Libyans, but not too much.  Aim at places where the Qadhafi is staying, but don't actually attempt to kill him.  Do it on the cheap, with airplanes, that don't actually win wars.  You could find better strategists at a comic book shop on Saturday afternoon than at the White House on a weekday.

[2] It is amusing that a chick who was a sort of hippie back in the day is now playing the part of Kissinger in a dirty, illegal, war.

[3] I hope Ken will forgive block quoting in it's entirety.  Excising a snippet did not do it justice.

Windows Powershell - the slimy vegetable of shells

Like a kid eating broccoli and hate-hate-hating it I had a run at Windows Powershell yesterday.

And just like that kid, my very first taste caused immediate retching and revulsion. Gross - people eat this stuff? Willingly?

Launching Powershell from the command line - how? 'ps'? No. 'psh'? No.


c:\> powershell [return]


Eight letters where two would do. And not eight letters in a row, or on the home row or anything useful but spread out all over the gawd-damned keyboard. Ruthlessly condensing commonly used commands to a few keystrokes is something only hairy unix dorks do for reasons that more enlightened beings can only guess at.

I'm surprised they didn't include letters from way up on the row where the number keys hang out in keyboard Siberia.

Our lefty military

Aaron points disapprovingly at Cory Doctorow who points approvingly to a Kotte post about the leftist structure of the military.

Seems the military has a lot of tolerance, they spend money on day care, and have the World's Finest Health Care.  Hey look, the military is progressive now let's all sing 'Kumbaya'.

Health care, true.  Mostly.  Unless you are a dependent.  Then you takes your chances.

Tolerance, oh hell yes.  It's one of the very few places left where one can get ahead by merit alone.  Because it makes the military so much more efficient at the lethal business of shooting enemies of the state. 

And it only works because the military takes only whom they want, brainwashes the snot out of them, distills in them the virtues of following orders, group think, and a simplified, selective view of history.

Pity that people who think so much of the military know so very little about it.

Man is superior to government and should remain it's master

Gary Johnson is running for president. Here is a longish interview on Stossel.

He's got executive experience - two terms as governor. Started a business, grew it to a success. He's a small government guy but he's not a nut about it.  Fiscally conservative, socially liberal libertarian.

Come down to it, if you were going by issues I've got more to like about this guy than anybody else in the running.  Control spending, stop blowing people up who aren't a threat, reduce the size and scope of the government - what more could you ask for?

But he can't win the primary. Because Republicans - I am reliably informed by NPR - are a bunch of strait-laced ninnies who will get all upset because he doesn't go to church.

I think citizens are smarter than that.  Screw the pundits, vote your conscience.  I am.

Three months into a one week war

Congress asked the Executive 'Oh, hey, about that War Powers Act and the legal justification for going to war?' and the Executive replied 'Oh hey we're cool. It's not a war. Totally.'

• 2500 sorties over Libya.
• $716 million in gas and bombs.
• Providing most of the intel and refueling to support other people who are dropping bombs.
• We're only blowing up anti-aircraft missile sites.
• And whatever those sites need to function.
• And we're also using drones to drop bombs and kill people.
• But it's cool: our forces are not at risk because the wogs can't shoot back.

Not A War.

I have not seen such a generous helping of bullshit since my youngest, with a maw full of cookies, insisted that he was not eating cookies. At least the child had the morals to understand he was shucking and jiving: these guys actually believe what they are selling.

The report should have been titled 'Excuses To Do Whatever The Heck I Want To Do Now Shut Up And Let Do My Thing'.

WRONG

Oh, I thought, I know the answer to this: it's just like the previous solution.  Onward!

Onward into a bramble bush.  First out the gate with the wrong answer, that's me.

Durrrrrr.

For those playing along at home, this is the right [1] solution.

(define (sum-coins penny nickel dime quarter)
   ( + penny ( * 5 nickel) ( * 10 dime) ( * 25 quarter)))


When I learned how to write code we were expected to flowchart, then write the code down on graph paper, then enter it into the terminal. I can see the wisdom of that approach.  On the other hand, it's easy to write fast, make mistakes, then move on.  On the gripping hand it's easy to jam along and and not learn anything.


[1] For some values of right. The user must enter the number of coins in the right order, for example, which bugs me.  Also, I can see where modularizing it would help a whole bunch with readability.

Smells like something and I do not think it is teen spirit

 Can't you recognize bullshit? Don't you think it would be a useful item to add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet steaming bullshit lands on your head, 'My goodness, this appears to be bullshit'?

Aw, look at this spread of pics from The Atlantic.  Plucky rebels improvising weapons from junk.  Stalwart do-it-yourself guys whacking at tank cannons with mallets, rocket pods mounted on pick-em-up trucks. 

(Ignore picture 18 featuring some dudes firing rifles at a Libyan airforce fighter jet.  After after three months of 24x7 bombardment by NATO forces enforcing a no-fly zone and humanitarian aid from bombers there is no way for such a thing to exist.)

Plucky rebels.  Barefoot soldiers.  Clear underdogs.  Fighting mercenaries.  And a professional army.  Now what American - rooting as we do for the underdog - could not resist sending other people's sons to help those poor fellers out?

Barbie says programming is hard

Dude gets into programming and finds it's not easy to learn how to code.  C, it turns out, is complex.  Shocked, shocked I am . . .

I can’t help but think a language founded by PhD’s suffers from the ‘shield of complexity’. In other words, those who know it have little interest in simplifying it as it devalues their own knowledge.

I don't know about those guys.  I do flatter myself that I've learned a modest amount about bossing around computers that are based on UNIX, which has a reputation for being difficult to work with.  An awkward interface requiring esoteric commands that, perversely, are easier to wield than a natural language.  Complex is what I'm saying.  What I know from that is this;

The tools are complex because the problems they are addressing are complex.  Those tools are not one bit more complex than they must be.  If the problems like 'ERP for a medium-sized company' could be addressed by a process similar to picking out red peppers, lettuce and mushrooms to make a salad, they would be.  Because the people that pay the bills for all that nonsense would make sure of it.

Blood On The Gun

Blood on the gun. 

On safe.  Unfired.  Poor son-of-a-bitch did a tour overseas, came home, got gunned down by incompetent police.  Your average 19-year old grunt in Afghanistan is better trained than your local cops at fast-moving building entry, operates under stricter RoE.

Check this out: An Afghan family is safer having Marines at their door than you are when your local cops get out machine guns and the gungy gear.

Tab Clearing

The Ship of State. Can you feel it lurking just under the surface? I can and I think you can as well. The Greeks knew it as "Nemesis."


When Government Jumps the Shark. The Fanniegate debacle tells us that the progressive ideal is in the process of jumping the shark.


What the F*ck was that? What, you've never had a bad day? Also, did you really think they were buddies, looking at that video?


The Neo-Fredwinian Synthesis: Trouble at the Mind-Matter Interface


The Prophets on Motorcycles by Max Valerio. My prole philistine brain doesn't understand this, but I keep sneaking back and gawking in amazement, like a chimp staring at a Rubik's Cube.



Trotting ahead of Malthus. Speaking of gawking, Szabo comes out with these essays that leave me in awe.



Revisiting GNU Awk YouTube Video Downloader. I don't need this, but I'm sure glad things like this exist.


Slow History Extravaganza. I like the idea. I get all foundered up with two problems. Old books read slow, I get impatient. And: I have no emotional involvement with electronic books. A bound book will sit on the bookshelf taunting me as I walk by: hey, boy, whatsamatter, too good to read about the Peloponnesian War? Sissy. Shamed I'll pick it up and dig into it. Electronic books don't have this hold over me.


The Department of Education has a SWAT team. Oh, my pardon, not a SWAT team, but cops with rifles, helmets, door breakers and shotguns. Who kick down doors at 6:00 a.m. looking for chicks who are suspected of murder arson embezzlement. They look and act like a SWAT team but not really. Why more people aren't furiously angry at the government for these shenanigans I have no idea.


L’Inconnue. Taken a CPR class? You've been smooching a dead French girl. Pervert.

The New Civility

ring-ring-ring

FC: “Hi, this is Representative (D) Fred Clark.”

SS: “Ok.”

FC: “Yes, I just want to give you and John a call again tonight. You may know I’m running against Luther Olsen (R) here in the recall election in the 14th Senate District.”

SS: “Yeah, isn’t that a crime.” [hangs up]

[Answering machine still recording]

FC: “Ok. I feel like calling her back and smacking her around.”

With guys like this, recall efforts are a shoe-in. Democrats have nothing to worry about. Easy-peasy. A walk in the park, is what I'm saying. Keep on keepin' on, guys.

Happy 14th Love

Fourteen years ago herself made me the luckiest, and happiest, man in the world.

It's had it's up, it's had it's downs.  She's responsible for the former, I'm in charge of the latter.

Been a great ride.  I love her more now than I ever have.

Love is the one thing that can last to the grave, and beyond.

A good dog who loves her some bacon

The first time as tragedy, and the second as farce

Cardinal Obama: The chief martial accomplishment of my administration is Iraq ... Iraq and Afghanistan ... Afghanistan and Iraq .... the chief martial accomplishments are Afghanistan and Iraq ... and Libya .... Our *three* martial accomplishments are Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya ... and Yeman .... Our *four* ... no ... *Amongst* our accomplishments .... Amongst our accomplishments ... are such wars as Afghanistan, Iraq.... I'll come in again.

It's good to be king.

Readable Racket

The two Racket snips are functionally equal, but 'read' different.  To my ill-trained mind the logic in netpay is easier to read, while netpay2 is dense and hard to parse, on first glance.

#netpay

(define (wage h)
(* 12 h))

(define (tax h)
( * ( / (* 12 h) 100 ) 15))

(define (netpay h)
( - (wage h) (tax h)))


# netpay2

(define (netpay2 h)
( - (* 12 h) ( * ( / (* 12 h) 100 ) 15)))

Possibly the profusion of parenthesis in a LISPy programming is, for me, a pickle.

Anyway. That's another exercise from 'How to Design Programs' out of the way. My monkey-brain has got it's reward pellet for the morning. Onward, Excelsior and etc.

One word: keypunch

A new generation of farm worker training has been announced . . .

Obama today announced a series of new commitments by the manufacturing  industry and colleges aimed at providing half a million community college students with the skills needed to fill jobs in companies across the country.

Maybe keypunch operators.

Take that statement at face value: the American Corporate Empire is going to just wait two or four or six years for 500,000 people to show up?  Aw hell no: those open positions are going to be optimized right the snot out of existence.

Manufacturing jobs aren't just declining because of the economy.  They're declining because the people that run actual manufacturing companies have figured out it's a better deal to increase productivity and profits than employ a herd of schmoes.  How far can this trend go?

There is at least one boat company that employs two guys per shift to make boats.  These guys sit in a booth, run computers that drive the machines that make boats.  Raw materials in one end, out the other end pops a johnboat. 

This is not an anomaly, this is the future.

Carnivore

I'm Blue Bear and I eat thumbs. Arm-nom-nom-nom-nom.

Brought to you by the same folks that run the DMV

Who didn't see this coming a country-mile away?

Wisconsin Right to Life today praised the introduction of Senate Bill 92, legislation that opts Wisconsin out of abortion coverage in the health care exchanges created by Obamacare. The authors of the legislation are Senator Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee) and Assembly Representative Robin Vos (R-Racine).

Jeff Greason ISDC 2011 Keynote Address

Speaking of 'space' in Space For Commerce: Jeff Greason ISDC 2011 Keynote Address - A Settlement Startegy for NASA (YouTube).

It's long. It's entertaining. Jeff knows how to talk. I'd launch it in a separate window, and listen.

.....

As long as we've got a government, it is going to spend money on entitlements, and bombers, and space programs. It would be in our best interests if we made sure it was spending our money in wise and productive ways.

This bullshit of 'build a rocket and hope a space program shows up' has got to stop.

Tab Clearing

Did A Massive Solar Proton Event Fry The Earth.  Living here, on Earth, is like living in a house where, once in a great while, the furnace tries very hard to kill everyone.


J.E. Pournelle

The President is apparently proud of giving Chrysler to Fiat after despoiling the stockholders and bondholders in favor of the unions. Now the NLRB is forbidding Boeing from employing people in South Carolina on the grounds that this is a transfer of jobs from a compulsorily unionized state to a right to work state. I don't see how that's constitutional: how is it a power of the federal government to tell Boeing where to build airplanes? Suppose they decide to transfer the work to India or China? This central economic planning does not seem like a good way to recover from an economy in which unemployment is rising, job creation is falling, and although in theory we are in recovery, it sure feels like Depression to many. Perhaps I am unduly discouraged?


It's been called the scariest jobs chart you'll ever see.  As a culture we know how to govern well, how to keep an economy going.  Collectively we keep adding the wrong inputs to the controls as we fly this sucker into the ground.


Excel is not a database.  Introduced SAP at our manufacturing site.  The warehouse people decided they did not like SAP, decided to keep their inventory in Excel.  When it got to be 20mb in size, and loading that thing took 20 minutes, they called IT to 'make it work faster'.  The boss was Not Pleased.


Summer Food Service Program.  Food That's In When School is Out.  I am sure it's my impending grump-old-man-dom speaking but I bet this got it's start when the people running the regular 'feed the poor kids during school' program decided to expand their Empire.


Houses and the Holy: Pondering the reckless genuine piety of nuns, the mysteries of discernment, juicy turkey,s and where the spattered blood of martyrs may lead.


Check Out What GDP Growth Would Look Like If The Government Were Using The Right Inflation Numbers. We are so boned.

Raising Connor

Heard from the back seat yesterday

Red Bunny: Oh hello Connor, I'm Red Bunny and I'm cute. How do you do?

Blue Bear: I'm Blue Bear and I eat bunnies. Arm-nom-nom-nom-nom.

Red Bunny: Eeek!

Not his uncles, but his mother. She's raisin' that kid right, I tell you.

We're wearing something down all right

Awake from a support call.  Which was easily disposed of, handed off to the analyst who (poor bastard, sorry P) has to log in and edit ratty data.  So what's up in the wide world of sports ..

President Obama on Libya: "Ultimately this is going to be a slow, steady process in which we are able to wear down the regime forces."

Why, seems like only yesterday he was announcing the troops would be home by Christmas, we needed the militia for 90 days to put down the rebels in Richmond, Our Heroic Air Forces would be blowing up people in the name of peace for, what, five days, a week tops.  Ten days at the most, the Air Force promised that this time they could blow shit up real good pinky swear and sugar on top.


Oh and check this out: Dennis Kucinich offered up a resolution requiring us to GTFO of Libya.  Fucking aye-skippy, he got this one right.

House leaders, Republicans who have clearly lost their fucking teeny-tiny minds, postponed the vote on that one, offered up their own, asking the President, pretty-please to explain the mission just one more time and promising that this time they'll take notes.

The military, meanwhile, displaying the can-do attitude that simply does not know the meaning of the phrase 'quit while you are still loosing' insists that 'we're real close to winning this thing and we just need a few dozen more sorties and air medals to get this thing done' or words to that effect.

WE'RE DONE SIR. CAN WE GO HOME NOW?

An apology the alliance published was its third for such an incident in the past month. Karzai said he was issuing his “last warning” to NATO and would further restrict its ability to conduct attacks.

'Last warning?'  Dude, my people don't well to being threatened.  Let's see ...

• Bushy Whiskers dead, check.
• Taliban pee-pees smacked hard, check.

You want us gone, fine.

...


A long time ago I was assigned to JTF Sea Angel, in Bangladesh. We came ashore, we fed the masses, we drilled some new wells, we done some good.

By week six it was clear the job was done. The ops officer hung a banner, made of fan-fold paper, above his desk, where the general passed by daily.

'WE'RE DONE SIR. CAN WE GO HOME NOW?'

The general laughed: he was a stand-up guy and knew the score.

...


Enough blood and treasure have been spent.  It's time to leave.

What do Chtorrans call Oregon?

Natural food.

Duke Nukem Forever went gold.

Can the next installment of The War Against The Chtorr series be far behind?

It should not be but it is

I want - need - for a shell script [1] to modify an xml file. 

It's ASCII so I thought 'awk'.  Got into it a bit  and thought 'this is nuts',  Then 'well poop I can't be the first guy to hit this pain point' so I went looking and would up here and holy jeezum crow I gotta learn an entire new language just to modify a stinkin' file?

Well, why not?  It's how I learned the very modest amount of awk that I have in my skull.

Still.  It's ASCII.  I can cat that bitch and everything. 

To slightly misquote my very first boss [2] in the LAN business 'It shouldn't be this hard'.  But it is.

Improvise, adapt, overcome.


[1] Or PERL.  Or Ruby, Python, Racket, something.  Hell it can come wrapped up in a box with a pretty pink bow, whistling 'Dixie', I don't care.  Long as my hell-spawned legacy linux liability can launch it.

[2] SSgt Lingle, 3D FSSG, Okinawa.  Wonder where he is today?  I actually learned more from my 2nd boss in the LAN business, MSgt Tim Martin but oh well.

The Not-So Grand Old Party

The Czar

Neither Romney nor Gingrich seem to understand that they represent a GOP the country frankly doesn’t think much of, anymore.

That would be the GOP whose members ignore their oath to the Constitution, want to keep us peasants unarmed and spend tax money like drunken sailors with a hefty re-enlistment bonus.

I don't know about the rest of y'all but I am so taken with those guys.

Taxes and Gunfire

A newly rich person, on paying taxes in the UK

"Trains are always late, most state schools are s**t and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid? Are you having a laugh?  When I got my tax bill in from 19 I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

Quit your complaining, get back to work and make another few million 'quid': people on the dole are depending on you.

Tab Clearing

Meghan Daum: Obama inserts a lot of 'ah' noises into his speech because he's got a big brain.  Like Woody Allen.  And university professors.  He's too smart to mentally insert a pause, and would rather open his pie hole and make inarticulate noise.


Deadline came, deadline went.  Laws are for little people.


New Normal: The President Can Bomb Anyone Anywhere for as long as he wants.  It's good to be the king, baby.


And what did Our Representatives do in the face of law-breaking and Constitution Ignoring and oath-breaking?  Issued a non-binding resolution in favor of blowing up Libya to make it safe for Libyans.  Thanks for nothing.


Stagnation Explained at 30,000 feet.  See also the comments where at least one guy writes like a Looter from 'Atlas Shrugged'.


How is the government interpreting the Patriot Act?  They won't tell us.


Country Behind a Mask.  Daphne is on a tear.


Different ways to take thread dumps in WebLogic Server.  Oh, Java, without you to make life complicated what would I do?


Standard streams.  Having them around seems so natural it's difficult to imagine life without them.


BareMetal OS.  Looks interesting. I'd have to learn Assembly to even begin fooling around with it.


"The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday!


When you spend US$1.8 million to identify the causes of a crisis, you expect more for your money than, “well, you know, it’s really, really complicated."  Church, pedophiles, number crunching.

English is the only major language to capitalize its first-person singular pronoun.  English speaking areas are the cradle of Freedom, Liberty, and uppity peasantry.  I'm sure there is no connection.

Everything you know about fitness is a lie.

Har

Being a terrorist is like being a Chinook salmon.

Your longevity depends on keeping away from seals.

From.

Influence

Dinner Time.

Youngest Monkey holds up a steak knife: Is this for 'shanking'?

How do you know about shanking?

The two most reliable sources in the universe: video games and my big brother.


Gonna have a talk with that boy.

Everything you know is wrong: Newt Gingrich edition

Everyone Knows this story about Newt Gingrich.  Like this:

His wife had cancer.  He visited the hospital, where she lay abed sick as a dog, served her divorce papers, left.  Golly, what a cad, a bounder, pond scum.

The story Everyone Knows is wrong.

Avast me booty yar

Her dream, related to me via IM

Anyway, you and I were pirates on different ships. You overtook mine and captured me.
I tried to get away, but you found me anyway. Your ship left without you.
So, we decided to go to the movies.

Angry, drunk and violent is no way to go through life son

What is one to do when one finds oneself at loose ends in Augusta by the mall on a week night? The non-obvious answer is to replicate a scene from the Blues Brothers.

The SUV zoomed down the length of the mall and rammed through the west entrance by the food court.

Police say 47-year old StephenLowe was behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi that suddenly crashed through the American Cafe entrance on the second floor.

Brilliant!

The report described him as angry, drunk and violent.

This goes without saying.

Catchy anti-abortion slogan here

The Czar sez . . .

The Czar is curious that members of San Francisco lefty lefts think that surgical and safe removal of the foreskin is detrimental to the child, but that cutting out the rest of the baby before birth is perfectly acceptable.

Catchy anti-war slogan here

‘1, 2, 3, 4, We Don’t Want Your Illegal Kinetic Military Action!’

“This week, the War Powers Act confronts its moment of truth. Friday will mark the 60th day since President Obama told Congress of his Libyan campaign. According to the act, that declaration started a 60-day clock: If Obama fails to obtain congressional support for his decision within this time limit, he has only one option — end American involvement within the following 30 days."

I, for one, look forward to our representatives doing the Right Thing and Bringing Our Boys Home. Or if not home then at least stopping our desultory campaign to blow stuff up in Libya to support some guys - whoever they are - as they fart around and pretend to be an army.

Any day now.  I won't hold my breath.

Annulment

I've done harder things than filling out the paperwork the Church wants for an annulment.  But not many, and not recently.

It's almost like they want you to take this marriage jazz seriously.

I was born too soon

The Army is sending a brand-new weapon to the field. But check this out: it is awesome, effective, the troops love them some bad-guy killing computerized Buck Rodgers grenade launchers.

It was obvious that the XM-25 was a success after only 55 of the 25mm rounds were fired in combat. The users protested having to give them up after the few months of field testing. All this because the XM-25s work as advertised, firing "smart rounds" that explode over the heads of Taliban hiding behind rocks or walls, or hiding in a cave or room. Enemy machine-guns have been quickly knocked out of action and ambushes quickly disrupted with a few 25mm shells. Encounters that might go on for 15 minutes or longer, as U.S. troops exchange fire with hidden Taliban, end in minutes after a few 25mm, computer controlled, rounds were fired.

Twelve pounds of computerized 'can't hide behind walls or inside buildings or caves' mayhem.

Is this a great country, or what?

Hey, ORACLE

So I'm in 'My Oracle Support', that flash-driven monstrosity that I loathe, and I'm cranking away, and I'm SRing and updating and clicking and them BAM I get a message saying 'Dude, you logged in 8 hours ago, you need to login again'. And I'm like 'You kick me out after eight hours of use, while I'm in the middle of working on stuff? Who does this?' And Oracle is all like 'phhtt whatever you dance the tune we play, fool.'

I hear that in the Big City people pay good money to specialists to be treated badly with unkind words and paddles. We get the same sort of thing but without having to leave Wisconsin, and my company foots the bill.

You see tenderness I see a chance to use my flamethrower

Monsters (2010 film) Spoiler Ahoy!

Andrew and Samantha phone their families. As they finish their calls, an alien appears at the gas station, but it turns out there are in fact  two aliens who are communicating with each other - rather than being monstrous, the giant creatures display tenderness, even beauty.

I didn't see beauty.  I saw a perfect chance to napalm critters who are groping tentacles.

Just call me a xenophobe.  Humanity uber alles!

Tab Clearing

10 Top Photography Composition Rules.

Still in the Fight: Art and Music Supporting Our Wounded Warriors.

Will China's rise eclipse the United States?  My answer - and theirs - is nope.  The 21st Century is going to be an American one.

Why the US Can Beat China: The Facts About SPACEX costs.

GM's profits are still a huge net loss for taxpayers.

Cumulative Index of Parameters Articles and Review Essays.  Everything from 1971 on up is online.  In pdf format, but you can't have everything.  And search is broken.  One step at a time in government IT-land.

Remy: Why They Fought.

Phytelephas.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead, Vader says.

bin Laden Evil incorporated

A lengthy, over-wrought, explanation of how bin Laden used email. Short version: text to thumb drive. Couriered elsewhere. Emailed. Replies come back the same way.

Navy SEALs hauled away roughly 100 flash memory drives

What kind of a criminal mastermind doesn't think to destroy flash drives after use? These guys are savages using tools they can't make, don't understand, and utterly lack the mental head-space to effectively utilize.

For all that they got lucky and won big on 9/11, these guys are less 'SMERSH' and more 'Doofenshmirtz'.

"Ah Navy SEALs, how unexpected. By which of course I mean, 'Completely expected'!"

Things I did not know this morning

At Issue with Ben Merens had a spokesperson on from the Brady Campaign on today.

I learned that the Second Amendment now reads "The right of the People to keep and bear arms in their homes shall not be infringed and if you're outside your home only police get to have guns because they are the only people in the room professional enough to carry a weapon."

I am Arthur, Organizer of the Community

I Literally Laughed Out Loud [1]

TJIC:
Look, a bunch of lefty Com-Symps writing sheepskins ... that's no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power is inherent in each individual, it doesn't come from some farcical academic ceremony.

Progressive Elitist:
Be quiet!

TJIC:
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power over a bunch of individuals just 'cause some aged Hippy  threw a degree at you!

[1] Your laugh might vary. Limit three guffaws per customer. Void where prohibited.

It is a mystery

JoAnne Kloppenburg on election night: "An unofficial 204 vote lead is a clear victory: I win!"

JoAnne Kloppenburg after the official tally: "My opponent leads by 7,316 votes, too close to count: I demand a recall."


Do politicians wonder why they are held in low esteem by the rest of us?

Sarcasm motherf***er - do you speak it?

Owen links to ugly news: Concealed Carry on the Way.

I, for one, look forward to mayhem, a sharp, nasty, spike in the murder rate, carnage at stores as frustrated lumpen gun down surly clerks, road rage fueled shootouts, husbands shooting wives by accident, wives shooting husbands 'by accident', children carrying assault rifles to school, cats and dogs living together.  All the stuff that has happened in the rest of the country.

Welcome, Wisconsin, to the Wild, Wild West.

Y'all behave like you got some sense

What He Said

As overjoyed as I am at the death of Osama, I am somewhat disconcerted at the partying around the country. What does it remind me of? Ah, yes: the Palestinian celebrations after 9/11.

Don't get me wrong: I understand we are the Good Guys. But this ain't the World Series. Killing people is an ugly business. The SEAL who busted the cap on OBL (new handle: Hottest Stud in the World) probably isn't dancing in the streets. Although he probably IS smoking a fine cigar or two.

Just seems unseemly to me. Kill the fucker, bow your heads, savor the moment with Grace.

They can school them on field days

This is one scene that will greet British, French and Italian military advisers dispatched to Benghazi in the latest show of support for those seeking the end of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi's 42 years in power. British and French officials have made it clear that while some of the military experts have combat experience, their mission will not include weapons, combat training or operational advice.

Can't teach 'em how to shoot, who to shoot, how to herd people around.  I guess this leaves, what.  IG inspections?  How to properly conduct Mess Night?

Can we have constitutional rights in this modern era?

From Breaking Things and Killing People by J.E. Pournelle
March, 1998 [1]

We can hope that this whole performance was mere incompetence (and casual disregard for long disregarded constitutional rights to decent treatment), and not a media circus designed to distract our attention from the latest tricks with White House interns. It was farce, except of course to the people involved, and we note the curious similarity between the statements of Leavitt and the performance of POW's praising their captors while admitting to anything their jailers demand of them. I kept watching for Morse or POW tap code messages.

The farce does raise a serious question: Can we have constitutional rights in this modern era?

But surely, it will be protested, this is different: Harris and Leavitt may not have had "military grade" anthrax, but might not the authorities have believed they did? And doesn't the potential damage that might do justify almost any action, just in case?

If so, we surely must give up the whole notion of individual rights, and return to some more ancient system. Bring back lords, who will know and protect their subjects. Revive the ancient Norman cry of Haro! Have ways to earn status, and thus be exempt from suspicion: because the simple truth is that as of this afternoon, everyone in this forum has access to means of causing as much damage as Harris and Leavitt could have caused had they possessed "military grade" anthrax.

[1] Could be ripped from the headlines, today, hmm?

No one cares about this

I have been using the same keyboard at work since 2003. I've rubbed the ink off, or partially off, on the following keys;

r, t, u, i, a, s, f, h, j, k, l, c, v, n, m, ., 'delete'

Days not weeks

When the United States and its allies went to war in Libya five and a half weeks ago, it wasn't supposed to be much of a war at all. U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to intervene was based on the assumption that nearby states more directly impacted by the state of affairs in Libya, such as Britain and France, would lead the charge. The United States, according to Obama, would lead with "days, not weeks" of military action, thus "shaping the conditions for the international community to act together."

I see the Current Occupant [1] did not have this excellent book on his required reading list before he took took office:

Still clouded by obscurity and confused by myths, the process of warfare is misunderstood by most of us. The mass media helps create and perpetuate many myths. Often the appointed experts are equally ill-informed.

When a war breaks out, these myths gradually become apparent as distortions. Operating on these misunderstandings, leaders and citizens are much more likely to get involved in wars, or make the ones they have forced on them even more expensive. One of the constraints of history is that a nation rarely goes to war until it has convinced itself that victory is attainable and worth the cost. In reality, warfare is never worth the cost for those who start them. Instigators of wars invariably come to regret it. Real warfare is ugly, destructive, and remembered fondly only by those who survived it without getting too close.

'How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare in the Twenty-First Century' by James F. Dunnigan.

[1] I don't keep up: is Garrison Keillor still calling the President this?