Soldier Athlete

The Army has instituted a diet system in boot camp.  It's called 'Soldier Athlete' instead of something plebeian like 'common sense'.



Oh yes!  And - being the Army - they've got color codes.

Since some high-in-fat items are still on offer, the better-for-you fare is supposed to be reinforced through a new "Go for Green" labeling system wherein the foods that should be consumed sparingly, moderately, and daily are indicated by red, yellow, and green placards, respectively.

Because nothing says 'we think the enlisted are dumb as a bag of hammers' like officers putting up color coded placards to tell them stuff they already know.

Not to get all 'old man get off my grass' but what in the world are they doing in boot camp that they have a problem with people getting fat?  They're recruits.  A messman slops food on their tray.  If they're fat bodies, you slop less food.  You turn off the soda and the ice cream machines.  Give them about ten minutes to eat.

Then you run their ass from the mess hall to whatever is the next activity.  If Robert Recruit has managed to sneak extra portions in while at lunch, trotting to the next class on a full belly will take care of that real quick.

Via the Man from Arlington.

Tab Clearing

Why Your Grocery Bill Will Double this Year and What You Can Do About It (VIDEO).


Uniform Resource Identifier.


URL Redirection.


Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is'


The White Butterfly by Pasty Dunbar


The end of the IT Department.


Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector


Moral Combat: Why do liberals play computer games like conservatives?

Snowy Day in Wisconsin

What did we do before we had the internet?

Reply to SB7

SB7 quoted a commenter on his blog. I'm putting it here because, for some odd reason I don't see his captcha or something.

Discounting the opinions of ~20k folks and telling them to go home,

Something I have noticed in video clips, but not much commented on - a not insignificant number of those at the capitol in Madison are kids from UW.

Now, some of them might be there on principle, or because they believe in the cause, but not a few of them appear to be there because it's exciting, it's a show, it beats sitting around the dorm.

I'd be there if I had copious amounts of free time and lived a short walk away: looks like fun.

But it's not that we should discount the 20k people but that their advocates appear to be saying "Look at all the people who showed up - you should bow to our will because the mobbe has spoken and be damned for the recent election: it's putting bodies in the street that counts."

What happens in Marriage Encounter stays in Marriage Encounter

A brief interlude for God and relationship stuff.  Herself wrote . . .

What is important is I have control over what I do know now. I know that I am deeply in love with my husband. I know that I have some great friends and a wonderful life. I have been blessed and instead of sweating the small stuff I just need to trust that I'm not alone when I face them. I am at peace at this moment with the decisions I have made in my life. I have a renewal in the relationship with my husband and with my family. Life really is good.

Last weekend we had our marriage in for it's long-overdue checkup.  We have had our rough patches, we'll have them again but now I have Joy.  Peace.  I'm happy and while I am generally 'ok' I have not felt actually happy for a while.

A few years ago, I almost lost her: she came this close to slipping away in the operating room.  The feeling of relief I felt then, for her still being with me, is comparable to feeling I have, now, for our marriage.  It's alive!  Hallelujah!  What a terrifically grand feeling.

To our new friends, thank you!  It was not just her, it was not just I, it was your prayers and intercession with God, that made it all possible.

A relationship, a marriage is an entity that needs care, loving, regular maintenance, and God.  If you have not done so, go get yourself some God, get your marriage fixed up: invite Him into your marriage and rejoice.

Agile PLM 9.3.0.1 Hot Fix 38

If you run Oracle Agile PLM 9.3.0.1 and you applied Hot Fix 38 downloaded before October 13, 2010 it is broken. It is bad.  Rotten like week old tomatoes in the July sun.


It is important, I'm told, to stay away from so-called pony-tail software because it's not supported.  You buy software for the support, because the vendor will fix things when they break because you're paying them for that and they will deliver really good support because you're paying them for that.

This is fine until the model fails. Then you're dodging shrapnel and angry users.  And you're all 'What the hey?' because you've been spending a metric ton of money for support precisely so the thing does not blow up on you.

I spent - no joke - eleven days running this particular problem to the ground.  Spent hours and hours on the phone with a really nice German lady [1] from Montreal, poking at this and that.  We finally uncovered the specific .jar file that was the problem, then detected it went bad right after installing Hot Fix 38.  Then we realized that - shazam - the copy of HF38 she was using to install in her test system was different than the version of HF38 I had.

Then another Oracle support guy, in a forum, with respect to an unrelated problem, said  'Why, you must have HF38 installed!  We found out that was bad, like, months ago, and reissued it.  Golly.' They didn't actually tell anyone about this because it's more fun that way, figuring out things on your own? I guess?


[1] It is just a little bizarre to work your way through a voice mail system that speaks Quebecois French only to end up speaking to a lady wit a pronounced German accent, ya.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Fourteen (Democrat) state senators remain absent, preventing debate on legislation.  I'm torn.

You can't just leave because things aren't going your way: what is this, third grade?

On the other hand, if the lege can’t pass laws, then the lege can’t screw up our lives worse than they already are.

Maybe we can convince the Republicans to join their brother legislators in Illinois and leave the rest of us alone

The weekend

I was mistaken.  Was not a convent, was an abbey.  Norbertines of Abbey of Saint Norbert Abbey.  For a marriage retreat weekend.

I highly recommend this kind of thing for all married couples.  But that's not what I came here to talk about.

We left an eleven year-old, and two sixteen year old, boys in the house.  Laid in bread, milk, cereal, and so on for them to consume.  They know how to cook.  We have stuff in the deep freeze.  What did they eat for two nights and three days?

From inventory in the pantry and freezer they drank Sunny-D, ate freezer waffles and peanut butter.

The Power of Christ compels thee!

Me: Should we take the arsenal?

Her: We're going to a convent.

Me: And if bad guys break in?

Her: They have priests.

Me: Who have guns?  The power of Christ and John Moses Browning compels thee!

The Power of Christ compels thee!

Me: Should we take the arsenal?

Her: We're going to a convent.

Me: And if bad guys break in?

Her: They have priests.

Me: Who have guns?  The power of Christ and John Moses Browning compels thee!

 

Civility is for the little people

Big doin's down in Capitol City this week.

Dear Wisconsin Voters: We're better than you.  Now go pick up our trash.

Wisconsin state capitol is in full lock down.

School closing lists: Madison Area. La Crosse Area. Eau Claire Area. Racine Unified. Wausau Area. NE Wisconsin. 

Democrats flee state to avoid doing their job.

Angry Andy Sez

. . . he sez f*ck the client server model, he sez.


'Hey, nerd boy: get ma picture outta this here attachment server!'

Check it: In order to deliver Really Important Files to a user desktop I've got to support java clients (that can't be updated (past a version now two years old) or the whole mess breaks) a service that is only supported by the vendor on Windows [1] which in turn talks to an application framework, talking about six or seven disparate components that are supposed to just snap together like lego blocks.

As if. 

[1] For a core application that requires x9s of uptime, and delivers bits to users 24x7 in six countries.  It's like opening the hood on a semi-truck to find the fan belt is made of partially digested gummi bears.

Cats and dogs living together

According to the teevee and radio people last night Scott Walker wants to

• Impoverish state employees! 
• Outlaw unions! 
• Bring in the national guard to beat up striking workers! 
• Disband the Green Bay Packers!

Before we get all het up about this .. maybe some of those bussed in protesters and their fellow travelers in the news should read the bill they are protesting.  Nary a word in there about the Packers.

Tab Clearing

Everything you wanted to know about the Oregon & Northwestern Railroad.


What happens when mundanes try to write about the future?  Lame articles like this: Raising babies in space in aluminum tin-cans is real hard.  It's like these people have never read any hard SF.   Or put much thinking behind what they write.


Beyond Intellectualism: On becoming an anti-intellectual intellectual


61th International Astronautical Congress Space Elevator Papers Available.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

Take Me Home, Counrty Roads: my favorite-song-that-I-cannot-sing.  When I try, the dogs aroo, the cockatoo screeches.  Which is fun for them, less fun for the primates in the house.

Olivia Newton-John.  Awesome version.  Too bad it's inflicted with a 70's era breathy white people chorus.  What were you people thinking?

Toots & The Maytals.  Yes, reggae. Shut up, it works.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.  Hawaiian. Big guy, big voice.

Hermes House Band.  The set, the costumes ...  forget that: they rock the song, the lead singer fills out that dress real well. Rowr.

From Whisper Of The Heart - English.   There is, as Mr. Fungus noted, a killer Renaissance-y riff at the end that is just not long enough.

From Whisper Of the Heart - Japanese.   I'm not any kind of a sub snob, but this one works best: the girl is good, but not too good, it really sounds like an impromptu jam in a workshop.

As long as he stays away from the killer robot field we're good

Valentine's Day: dinner at Texas Roadhouse, with my sweetie.  The decor is faux-Texas Yee-Haw, the wait staff wear t-shirts and jeans.

So what: nearly every instance of so-called fine dining in the Fox Cities has turned into a horrible experience of one kind or another.  Pox on them.

Give me good food, good company: I can make my own romance.

***

My wife (I'm along for the ride and to claim credit) is raising independent-minded well-adjusted young men.

Item.  Youngest Monkey woke me up at 03:43 complaining of a hurt ear.  But first he apologized for waking me up, said he tried to take care of it himself with q-tips and hot water but it just was not working.  Broke my heart to see him hurting, happy to see that, at the age of 11, he's trying to take care of things for himself.

Item.  His older brother came to me much earlier, holding his Dremel.  He'd ripped the rechargeable battery pack out of the handle.

"The batteries are flat."

That has a recharging station?  It's in ..

"Don't need it."

??

'They're rechargeable AAs in a cradle.  I wired up regular AAs with copper wire and tape.'

And he jazzed the motor several times to show this was so.


Improvise, adapt, overcome: he now has a hacked tool that works better for him.  I am so proud.

A New Day Dawns

Governor Walker wants to cut state worker benefits, take away bargaining rights.

"I don't have anything to negotiate," Walker said. "We are broke in this state. We have been broke for years. People have ignored that for years, and it's about time somebody stood up and told the truth. The truth is: We don't have money to offer. We don't have finances to offer. This is what we have to offer."

The usual suspects in Madison can march, and bitch, and act all butt-hurt if they want, and the news can act like they're the tits and the bees knees.  Whatever.

A majority voted this guy in, voted his party into power in the lege.  We're tired of irresponsible spending and government that ignores reality.

Commentary would be superfluous

From the wiki

... the deadline for income tax form submissions has been extended three days for celebrations in Washington, D.C. of Emancipation Day.

I don't know why the grandchild does this with his lips

But it's cute.  Darn cute.



So far, being a grandfather has met or exceeded expectations. I hold him. He coos, he gurgles. When it's time to eat, I hand him back.

The Sunset Limited

Tommy Lee Jones, on filming 'The Sunset Limited' in Santa Fe, where Cormac McCarthy lives . . .

NPR: Did you choose Santa Fe for the production so that McCarthy could be there?
Jones: No, they have very attractive tax incentives.

Sittin' in the dark, living all by themselves / You don't have to hide anymore!

And who came visiting to S4C tonight?  A snipppet from my referrer logs ...

10 Feb 19:22:13 www.google.com sandra bullock zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:11 www.google.com Zombies and sandra bullock 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:10 www.google.com Sandra bullock zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:00 www.google.ca sandra bullock zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:22:00 www.google.com zombie Sandra bullock 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:21:57 www.google.com sandra bullock and zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html
10 Feb 19:21:55 www.google.com bullock sandra zombies 2006/10/zombies-sandra-bullock.html

You guys really had to look up the BBT Sandra Bullock zombie reference right then and couldn't wait for the show to be over?

Title tip o' the hat.

Gunpowder propelled arrow

These kits easily convert a Ruger 10/22 rifle into an archery rifle that can fire five arrows within a one-inch group at 50 yards.

Ruger 10-22 Arrow Conversion Kit

There is a video of this in action.  The video makes me laugh delightedly (literally) out loud.

Via.

Clearing Tabs

Tater wrote: Insane pretty girls, giant sized samurai battlemechs, steampunk dirigibles, powered armor, wrist mounted Gatling guns, rocket jetpacks, fire breathing dragons, did i miss anything?

Nope.  Sucker Punch (YouTube ahoy) looks like a movie filled with awesome.  Job Bob is gonna check it out.


Five years of very serious episodic adventure, myth and character development ensue: Visual timeline of the Battlestar Galactica universe.


Media Matters sez Fox News: Stuff Is Just Made Up.  So it's a real news organization like CNN, CBS News, Washington Post ...


“Talk, talk, talk. Fine. But if’n you need any bullets for punctuation, jes’ say the word.  'Rejiggering the Thingamajig' by Eric James Stone.


'Going Outside the Wire' by Kris Battles.  I am a Philistine, don't know Renoir from Rockwell.  But dadgum there is some really fine work done by the Marine Corps Combat Artist.  Y'all taxpayers getting your money's worth out that guy.

Stay away from my house, you freak!

The group giving away the free tanks [1] only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"

In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson.

Needed an operating system for a laptop.  Grabbed the latest Ubuntu, installed and ...

I had me a working computer without a lot of fussing around, no screwing around with drivers, or software .. it just works.  Wireless, power management, all functional.  I was expecting a bit of a tussle, a minor headache: the only thing I did 'after market' was to install SSH, Ruby, Rails, SQLite.  Copied some scripts over from my Mac that I use to launch SSH and RDP connections at work.

I continue to be amazed that people put up with having to pay big bucks for an operating system. 

Apart from parting with cash, paying for anti-malware and anti-virus software, BSODs: what are they getting for that?

[1] In this metaphor, the Linux operating system is a tank.

Coordination

The grandchild's coordination is coming along.  He's progressed from smashing his hands on his face

 


To getting fingers in his mouth





Yummy, yummy, baby fingers.

Ugly joke, free speech

Here is the thing;

A guy I know cracked an ugly joke, after Gabrielle Giffords was shot. Various people in the small pond of the comic book world turned that mole-hill into a mountain, the cops were called in, a boycott was called, it was - and remains - a huge pile of higgidly-piggidly.

Check this out: the cops suspended his firearms license, confiscated his guns. Smeared his name in the news. Trampled all kinds of civil rights. Over a joke.

I don't hold with what he said. I support to death his right to say it.

You are a high-maintenance money pit with feathers

From McSweeney's 'Dear Amazon Parrot I Have Been Supporting for Over 15 Years Who Still Tries to Bite Me for No Apparent Reason'

For an embarrassing number of years, I carefully repeated the same simple words and phrases, always hoping that someday you might repeat them back to me. One morning I would be preparing your usual gigantic breakfast assortment of tropical fruits, whole-grain toast points, and pricey organic cereals, when a wee voice would issue from your little feathered head and you would finally say to me, "You're such a pretty bird! I love you, pretty bird!" That was my dream.

Instead, over a decade later, you have apparently learned only three vocalizations: the cackling laugh of an evil hag (a sarcastic parody of my own innocent laughter?); a tuneless steam-whistle sound rising in pitch like an engine about to explode; and your favorite, the sudden, high-decibel bloodcurdling scream.

There is a hole in the bucket, dear Liza

My main computer has developed an annoying "bzz grind bbzzzzzz grind bzzzzz" noise under the keyboard. Bad fan? Failing hard drive? I only ride 'em, I don't know what makes 'em work. [1]

Just in case it's a worst-case scenario [2] I'm watching gigabytes of data slowly filter to an external hard drive and thinking a) I really should be in bed and b) I should have backed up more often.

[1] I work in IT, you'd think I would know. But, it's true: last time I touched a the inside of a laptop was 1999 and I didn't like dealing with the fiddly damned things when I was being paid to do it.

Take it to the shop? This booger is long out of warranty, it's depreciated, the cost of fixing it would not be economical.

[2] I've got options. At my left elbow is a laptop running a kissing cousin of OS X, FreeBSD. The Mac goes phht, I cuss a little, crank up the Thinkpad and I'm back in business.

Connor Meet Dog - Bella

I am biased.  But I know my grandchildren are adorable.


Connor you've met.  And now, so has Gunther the Dachshund.

 


And this is Bella.  She's not official family, yet.  And so what?  She's a grandchild in my heart, where it counts.

Family is who loves you, not a function of DNA.

Long March to Nowhere

And nowhere has that been more needed than in education, where I am happy to confess I’d like us to implement a cultural revolution just like the one they’ve had in China.

Oh, no he didn't.

Like Chairman Mao, we’ve embarked on a Long March to reform our education system. Sometimes we will have to manoeuvre less than elegantly to get around obstacles. But the alternative, simply accepting the inevitability of our decline, is not an option.

Oh, yes he did. 

We can soon expect the Ms. Spelman to wistfully pine for agriculture in England to follow the Zimbabwe Plan.

Via Inside-Out China.

I have never ridden a donkey

My wife's sense of humor, on display.

NSFW.  If 'work' is uptight about blocky-looking chicks wearing a dress with a hem that goes up to you-should-blush.

Kill Bill

It's back ...

Legislation granting the president internet-killing powers is to be re-introduced soon to a Senate committee, the proposal’s chief sponsor told Wired.com on Friday.

And it's as stupid and lame as it was the last time.

An example, the aide said, would require infrastructure connected to “the system that controls the floodgates to the Hoover dam” to cut its connection to the net if the government detected an imminent cyber attack.

The Hoover Dam is on the internet? 

We don't need a kill switch to prevent a DOS on the Hoover Dam.  We need take the Hoover Dam off the internet.

Unearthly Blue Glow

"Baby exposed to cherenkov radiation in hospital bassinet. Stay tuned to Nifty News Fifty for the story."

Talent? Who Needs Talent

By Howard Tayler

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Part Four.

Tab Clearing

Miss the bad old days of green terminal screens, with flicker, running over dialup? Me neither. But I do like glterminal.

GLTerminal emulates a 1970′s terminal monitor, complete with flaws in brightness,
warped display curvature, and flicker. It even simulates baud rate lag. And! for extra verisimilitude, the character colors can be green or amber.

How Can IQ Be Heritable for Rich Kids and Not for Poor Kids? It's hard to raise a child's IQ. It's easy to lower it.


Abstruse Goose: Neural Implant. I still want a Brain Pal.



Columbus by Joaquin Miller. Hit the link for the rest.

Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind, the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores;
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm’r’l, speak: what shall I say?”
“Why say: ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”

Connor Knoke

Born January 21, 2011. Six pounds, ten ounces, 20 inches long.  Does a great impression of Yoda.

 

"Taking pictures you must stop.  Wrap me up you will!"

Welcome to Earth, Connor.

And I'm a grandpa.  I'm supposed to feel old or something, but I don't.  Mostly I just feel like me.  The kid is pretty cool, even if he isn't doing much yet.  Plenty of time yet to read to him, rock him, teach him how to play Munchkin and so on.

Uniforms change, route marching does not

Equipment C

From 'I Was There - With the Yanks on the Western Front 1917 - 1919'

By C. Leroy Baldridge, PVT. A.E.F. together with verses by Himar R. Baukhage PVT. A.E.F.

EQUIPMENT C

The Loot is getting wabbly,

With his dinky little pack,—

He can hear the sergeant cussing

But he doesn't dare look back.

But we ain't saying nothing

Since we got the order "route,"

Too dog-dead for even wond'ring

If we'll ever hear "fall out."

My damn rifle and my helmet

Keep on getting in the way,

And my brains are numb and dopey

Try'n' to cuss and try'n' to pray.

My throat's as dry as sawdust

And my right arm's gone to sleep,

And the pack-strap on my shoulder

Cuts a slit two inches deep.

I just lift one foot and shove it

And it hits most any place,

Then I lift and shove the other

T'keep from falling on my face.

If the guide should change the cadence

I'll be damned if I could stop;

If you pushed me with a feather—

Well, I'd just curl up and drop.

And I know damn well there's stragglers

That'll ride up on a truck—

Guess if you ain't born a quitter,

You're just simply outa luck.

I suppose we'll keep on going—

Huh? The Skipper's faced about?

Halt!...I'm dreaming...in the daisies...

You don't need...to say..."fall out!"

Neenah Parking Garage

I go to work. I park in a parking garage. I've got a phone with a camera. A few days ago I thought 'picture'. Hmm.

Make a deal with y'all.  I will

Take at least one picture a day at the parking garage.
Post the pictures here.
Do this for one year.

Because I can, because I want to pick one thing and do it consistently, rain or shine for a set period of time.

Now, I am not going to be a complete nut about this: vacation days, sick days, I'm not going to trot down there. I might be weird but I am not obsessed.
.

Things I did not know this morning

Ka-booom.

Around 1952 Norman MacLeod at his company the Explosive Research Corporation began working on the concept of a small directional mine for use by infantry.

Explosive. Research. Corporation. That is an awesome name for a company.
:

Tools

The same decision further states that government may impose ‘reasonable’ regulation of weapons. No serious person can maintain that allowing a man with mental health problems ready access to a concealed semiautomatic weapon with a combat clip is ‘reasonable.’”

Absolutely! Instead, let’s allow him access to cars that he can drive into crowds!

Indeed. YT happened to be hanging around when a chick who lived just down the road from where I was stationed stopped taking her meds and drove her car into the front gate.

The only person she manged to hurt was herself: the front gate had been beefed up after 1983 to stop truck bombs.

At any rate her Fiero crumpled like a tin can, the motor came loose, trapped her inside. And with the car spang across the gate the Navy could not get it's rescue vehicle out to extract her, so we had to call the local VFD and oh GOD about eleventy-dozen volunteers turned up to see the show.

Fun times. Where was I?

Oh yeah: spent eight years in the Marines. Two 'experiences' with folks trying to hurt me: once with a gun, once with a car. Ain't the tool, it's the nut wielding the tool.

Too Dumb To Fight, To Ignorant To Work

Sez here that a fourth of people who tried to join the military failed the written exam.

While the army can do something about the overweight applicants (by giving out diet plans and holding physical training exercises for the willing), there is not much they can do cheaply, and quickly, for those who learned little in high school. Moreover, the fact that a quarter of your "educated labor force" really isn't ready to handle technology (and more learning) means two things. One, employers are either going to be short of the people they need, and, two, some employers will be forced to spend more on educating new hires. This isn't easy, because many of those uneducated high school grads are not keen on more "education," having experienced so much failure with it already.

Make that three things: we're going to see some kick-ass automation running restaurants and factories and everything else because too many of the guys coming 'round to apply will be too damned ignorant to earn a wage.

Letter to Tom Petri (R-WI)

Well, poo:

The bill, unveiled by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) on Tuesday, would have banned people from carrying guns within 1,000 feet of elected officials in Congress. It had the support of New York City mayor and outspoken gun-control advocate Michael Bloomberg.

King, who is chairman of the homeland security committee, presented his bill as a means to improve public safety for elected leaders.

Sir,

I read on the news today that Representative Peter King (R-NY) announced he was going to submit a bill to outlaw firearms within 1,000 feet of elected members of congress.

May I humbly suggest you have a sit-down with your colleague and others of a like mind and tell them that if they insists on acting like a member of the aristocracy that the Republican Party is going to be one with the Whigs i.e. history.

We elect you folks to conduct the People's Business, not to interfere with ours.

Be damned if I'll support a party whose representatives are going to act like pusillanimous gentry.


Respectfully,

Brian Dunbar
Neenah, Wisconsin

Me and the Exchange Student

Me: Hey, Evan!

Evan: What?

Me: What is brown and sounds like a bell?

Evan: Let me think about it. Hmm.

Me: Dung!

Evan: What is 'dung'?

Me: Manure. Poop.

Evan: Oh. But why does poop sound like a bell?

Me: It's a joke.

Evan: Are you sure?

tab clearing

Autho.me. What the Hell is it?  Tell us, Zed.

Autho.me is a service I'm working on that will let websites setup authentication quickly and securely, but still own their users, unlike with OpenID or OAuth. In fact, when you use Autho.me your users will probably never know it's being used. You can read more about it. You can read getting started to see how to use it.

Books you should download against a rainy day.  Oh and you should also print them out because when the stuff does hit the fan you might not have a working computer.  I'm not sure why the MOUT handbook is there: is anyone going to find themselves leading a brigade in urban combat without actually being in the Army and studying this stuff? 


Little girl got a ticket for jay-walking.  No, wait: her mother got the ticket because the girl was in the hospital because she got hit by a truck while she was jay-walking.  Good one, officer: can't let the scoff law get away with shenanigans just because she's like, dying.


Restoring the Social Order: Twenty momentous years of conservative policy success in cities.


Getting Darnell Off the Corners: An America On the Rise Will Ride the Anti-Drug-War Wave

Snow - hunh - what is it good for?

Between baby stuff and a wrestling tournament and work, Herself and I spent the day apart.  So .. a love note.

You boys wanna see the inside of my tank?!

I laughed and laughed at Terminal Lance #93 "POG's Impressing the Grunts".

:

Oh, this was . . .

Via my Ohiopian Daughter

I'd call that big talk for a one-eyed fat man!

True Grit. It's by the Coen brothers.  It's about revenge, justice, trust, relationships: good stuff for the movies.

Ned Pepper: “What is your intention?”

Rooster Cogburn: “I aim to kill you in one minute, or see you hanged at Fort Smith. Which will it be?”

Pepper: “I’d call that big talk for a one-eyed fat man!”

Cogburn: “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!”

It's good. It's real good.  Joe Bob sez check it out.



This ain't your daddy's Rooster Cogburn, nor Mattie Ross, that is for sure.

Despair is a Sin

Tam writes

Dealing with a bout of insomnia the other night, I lay awake in bed reading a Pournelle-edited anthology of short stories and essays entitled The Survival of Freedom. Included in the collection is a story written in the late ’70s by F. Paul Wilson entitled “Lipidleggin’”, in which a dystopian future America has national health care and has banned cholesterol from food; the the story’s protagonist is an antique dealer who is now running a profitable sideline in bootleg butter and eggs.

Now I’m living in a future America with national health care, where cities have banned trans-fats, it’s against the law for me to throw electronics in the garbage, and people are discussing hoarding and smuggling 100-watt light bulbs.

What a gyp. I wanted the future with the flying cars, not the one with telescreens and Room 101.

Travis replies

Sigh.

We have a space station, spacecraft flying all over the solar system.

On the gripping hand, you have to be a government employee to visit the space station. The spacecraft are robots.

I specifically ordered the Heinlein future, not the Clarke/Asimov hybrid.

Top Gun is Fantasy

The Five Dumbest Management Concepts of All Time

Five. Many traditional business leaders have a militaristic view of the way the business world works. A glance at the titles of popular business books-Marketing Warfare, Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, Guerrilla PR-offer ample testimony for this widely held viewpoint. We’re told that we must imitate generals and warlords if we want to be successful managers.

Taking all this to heart, many executives talk as if they were planning the next world war: “This product will do major damage in the marketplace! We’ve armed our sales force. We’ve targeted the right set of customers! The new ad campaign will explode into the territories! This is going to be a major victory! Our troops are ready!”

Military-minded managers also find it all too easy to become control freaks. Because they see themselves as generals and officers, they tell people what to do. They think that good employees should shut up and follow orders. This behavior destroys initiative as people wait around for top management to make decisions.

People actually do this? Perhaps I've been lucky and never had the misfortune to work for guys like this. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

Most actual officers I served under did not act like that. Oh, we were not drinking buddies, and once the Man said 'jump' we asked 'how high'. Before that, if the situation allowed [1], opinions were solicited, people were listened to.

Civilians: man y'all got whacked notions of what the military is actually about.

[1] If the lieutenant orders 'Corporal, take out that enemy machine gun', well there isn't a lot of room for debate: the gun has got to go. The majority of of day-to-day work in the military is .. just work. Trucks are driven, airplanes are fixed and flown, boxes are stacked, computers are programed. It's blue and white collar work, but everyone is younger than average, in decent shape and wearing bad haircuts. Also, they cuss a lot.

..
..

Gay is not the problem

A recent former Marine on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

True liberty is people freely conducting themselves as long as they are not inflicting direct harm.  And in perspective, if someone in my squad wanted to spend the day talking about how they gargled dicks all weekend, that would have less effect on team erosion than half the shit I saw (like peeing on someone’s girlfriend or smashing the religious guy’s Christ relics he so tenderly put on his well-made rack).  If a problem does however arise as the result of a team member getting in a relationship with another team member, or having an uncontrollable pining for another uniformed team mate, deal with that.  It’s a separate issue from there.   Gay is not the problem.  The problem is the problem.

This is no laughing matter citizen

Mark Bennett has turned up a memo from John Pistole to Robert Mueller . . .

I mean, everything we do makes Americans safer by making it less likely that their airplane seatmates will be wearing bombs in their undies, and they keep complaining: “John, you’ve never caught a terrorist.” “John, the scanners don’t work.” “John, we don’t want screeners groping us or our children.” Waaaa, mine hurts too. Listen up, people: if you want flying across the country to be safer than driving to the convenience store, you’re going to have to give up some of your freedom and dignity. And the fact that we’ve never caught a terrorist just means that YOU NEED TO GIVE UP MORE OF YOUR FREEDOM SO THAT WE CAN CATCH SOME.

Mr. Bennett should watch his'self: Der TeeAssAy ze haf' no senze oft humor, nicht wahr?




Pic From Oleg.

TSA - Keeping us unsecure since 2001

I know a guy who thought about passenger checkpoints at the airport for a few seconds, figured out a way to sneak a pistol on board an airplane. It involved a small pistol, a pipe stem, a pocket protector, mis-direction at the right time.

He could have saved the skull-sweat.  All you need to do is to shove a pistol in a carry on, assume an innocent expression, and you're in, slick as snot.

Farid Seif, a Houston businessman, usually carries the weapon around for protection. He didn't realize he had kept the glock in his carry-on computer bag until he was mid-flight. Once he landed, he immediately reported the incident.

TSA. We haven't caught a terrorist yet.  But we will.  Real Soon Now.



The bawdy captions write themselves.

Pic from Daphne.

Battle of Lissa, 1866: d'oh

Ever had one of those days?

As the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max limped away, damaged after conducting three ramming attacks, the Ancona closed on her attempting to ram. In the excitement the Italian gunners got a full broadside off at point blank range, but while they had remembered the gunpowder, they had forgotten to load the shot.

Dress Code

Been to a few funerals. Noticed at the one small-town affair that there was a divide between the old (talking guys who are retired or nearly so) and young guys and gals in their twenties.

The older guys and gals dressed and acted in a way that said 'I don't have much money, but I can dress well and act like a grown-up.' The youth dressed and acted in a way that said 'I am wearing my best t-shirt - what more do you want from me?'

So. At my funeral there will be a Dress Code. Hopefully the people who come will not need to be hit with sticks to act like grown-ups. I will have ninjas on retainer. Show up in a t-shirt and you'll find yourself a sex-slave in Marrakesh before you can say 'Bob's Your Uncle'.

The Dress Code

Men. Suit and tie. Shirt and tie will be allowed on a case-by-case basis. Shave and haircut - mandatory. Shined shoes a must.

Ladies: Skirts with dressy tops, or a dress. Hemlines that flatter one's legs. Tasteful displays of cleavage are required.

Sturgis OS

I want to like Linux.  I really do.  And I do!  It's no longer the young punk, but it's where a lot of cool and groovy stuff is happening.

But spend a decade immersed in Solaris, with brief excursions to BSD-land, and you get used to having things run a certain way.  Spend a few hours with a knotty RPM problem and a fellow can be forgiven for thinking he's dropped into the Sturgis Rally.

Tabs. Way too many open tabs.

Focus on what you’re good at, and nothing else! - Neil Patel


TJIC on getting things done.


JEP on TSA

The TSA is only doing its job, and it's becoming clearer that that job is to make Americans understand that they are subjects, not citizens. Humiliating the Minister Plenipotentiary and Ambassador Extraordinary of the world's largest democracy fits into that: everyone is a subject to Security Theater. I know that these "officers" only mean well, and are dedicated to keeping America safe. They haven't yet caught a bomber, but they will, real soon now.

You can go strangle yourself with that yellow ribbon, or, here is what I want you to do instead of shaking my hand.

The military is ultimately a reflection of our culture or what we would like to believe about our culture. We would like to believe that our military is an all-volunteer force filled with young and old people who represent the diversity (class, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, non-religion, talent, skills or politics) of our country. We would like to believe compulsory national service has failed to win wars in the past, that a draft is the penultimate form of a dictatorship and that today's military is better than any in our history. But is it really voluntary? Is compulsory national service as threatening as some libertarians would view it? Is the all-volunteer military the "best" our country has ever produced?

Nassim Taleb looks at what will break, and what won't

The great top-down nation-state will be only cosmetically alive, weakened by deficits, politicians’ misalignment of interests and the magnification of errors by centralised systems. The pre-modernist robust model of city-states and statelings will prevail, with obsessive fiscal prudence. Currencies might still exist, but, after the disastrous experience of America’s Federal Reserve, they will peg to some currency without a government, such as gold.

Gov't crackdown spurs initiatives to route around DNS.  Beats my idea of a ginourmous /etc/hosts.


Getting Close To The Machine - Ellen Ullman

The problem with programming is not that the computer is illogical - the computer is terribly logical, relentlessly literal. It demands that the programmer explain the world on its terms; that is, as an algorithm that must be written down in order, in a specific syntax, in a strange language that is only partially readable by regular human beings. To program is to translate between the chaos of human life and the rational, line-by-line world of computer language.

Songs that make me smile

1.  LA Woman, by the Doors.  Always makes me think of one of the finest SF novels I've read, Kingsbury's 'The Moon Goddess and the Son'.  The rest of 'The Doors' catalog I could give a fig about.

I'm playing it now, and from the way Herself is bouncing around to the beat, she may agree with me.


2. Rudolph The Redneck Reindeer, via John Boy and Billy.  Because this part [1] always make me laugh:

Santy Claus saw Rudolph's bed all covered with liquor bottles, tobacco juice all over him and cigarette butts all over the floor there and he got real mad and he said to Rudolph, "You better get on the dad-gum wagon and pull my sled tonight boy."  And Rudolph didn't like this kind of loud talk so early in the morning, so he reached over there and spit tobacco juice in in the left eye of Santy Claus then took a liquor bottle and busted it over his head and said, "Get the hell outta here you dad-gum fat hippy!"

Well, see, Santy Claus didn't like that kind of talk, Rudolph coming at him with a bottle and all.  See, Santy Claus had been taking kung-fu lessons from this Chi-nese elf all summer long while he didn't have nothin' to do ...

Mayhem ensues.

[1] Read it with a southern twang for best effect.

Kinsey Sicks: Touch-a Touch Me, TSA Security

Via.

Clearing Tabs

John Steakley - RIP.


George Bush interviewed on Facebook:

"If you see me in an airport, I hope you wave with all five fingers. But if you don't, you won't be the first. I'm a comfortable man."

The Danger of a Global Double Dip Recession Is Real

The modern world has for centuries been dominated economically, intellectually, and physically by the civilization that arose in Western Europe in the wake of the Renaissance and Reformation and spread across the Atlantic.

Will that one day be seen as a passing phenomenon doomed to ascend ever upward and then slowly fizzle out like a firework?

Hackertopia: Creating a City as a Startup

Of all the better mouse traps that need to be invented, perhaps the most important is a better city. Americans choose between soulless suburban strip malls, and expensive and congested city centers. Over the past 30 years real estate and property taxes have consumed an increasing portion of our incomes. Houses in hacker friendly cities with good school districts are frightfully expensive. The Boston metro region has median home prices of 400K, and typical San Jose home prices surpass 700K. Yet the price of building a home can be as low as 70K. This disparity hints at an opportunity.

Americans, and Hackers in particular, are on a treadmill. Productivity increases year by year, thanks to the magic of Silicon Valley. But the cost of living increases faster thanks to an out of control regulatory state. Zoning laws, the deterioration of public schools, the growth of guilds and cartels in the health care industry, rising taxes, etc have all made it harder to make ends meet.

Hackertopia is the better mousetrap. The city will provide a remarkably quality of life for an unbelievably cheap price.

Crispy Critter

Good: Thanksgiving Holiday with my wife's family. Good people, good times.

Good: Firing up the oven to make dinner for the kids the evening after a long, long, drive home.

Bad: Discovering that a mouse crawled inside the oven to die.

Good: I've used the phrase 'crispy critter' before but I have never-ever been able to use it in a literal sense. 

And now I have.

If Conan were around today . . .

Mongol: Conan! What is best in life?

Conan: Theraflu.

Mongol: ...

Conan: It is great stuff, my friend.

It is!  A bottle of that stuff, a laptop with wireless, hulu and you are set for a sick day in bed.

This is not Mick Jagger

And it is a pity

Keith likes to talk a lot about his getting clean from heroin. It is not correspondingly apprehended that he replaced the heroin comprehensively with liquor. Given a choice I select the slurring alcoholic over the comatose junkie as a lifelong professional partner, and I say this with some knowledge of the two alternatives. But neither is strictly desirable.

Later, one grows older and becomes more informed about such things, and I saw I was supposed to have held an elaborate ceremony called an "intervention." Society could have effectively halted the upheavals of the 1960s simply by requiring all of us to "intervene" with one another. In any event, considering half our circle was on heroin and the rest were coke fiends, I think it wouldn't have efficacious in our circumstances.

Breaking up a dreary drive

I am nine, staying with my grandparents. Grandpa driving to town, I'm along for funs and grins. Grandpa asks if I want to see a short cut and so we drive off the highway and around and up and up a butte and onto the top. Park. Stroll to the edge. Grandpa points to the horizon.

'There's your shortcut - straight down.'

He laughs and we drive down the road and into town.

I come from a long line of men who only think we're funny, it's true.


The week of Thanksgiving myself and three boys are going to park our butts in a car and drive, man, for about sixteen hours to grandma's house.

A side trip on the way to my mother-in-law's is planned, no time for other dilly-dally on the outbound leg.

Our over the river and through the woods coming home will take us roughly D.C. - Hagerstown - Morgantown - Wheeling - Columbus - Indianapolis - Chicago - Home.

Is there anything to see on that route?

• Not far off the road.
• Can be seen in less than an hour.
• Free.
• Bonus if I can break open a lame pun or joke.

Anyone can drive for sixteen hours and see nothing but dreary rest stops, fast food joints and asphalt. How often can you give a kid a memory like the one grandpa gave to me?

41 years old? What the ...

Terminal Lance: All That Salt.

Check this out: a herd of 18 and 19 year old brand new Marines are being introduced to their platoon sergeant at Infantry Training School (ITS).  Like Max's fictional Gunner Quigley the man looked old.  Wrinkled, leathery skin, grizzled hair, shot through with grey.  Dude looked weathered, man.

I am Staff Sergeant Mason.  I am twenty-eight years old. I have spent the last ten years in the Fleet.  You all will look like me in a decade.

Mason was a darn good boss.  Knew his stuff, knew how to lead [1].  Didn't believe in head games: Charlie (Kickback Charlie, thank-you-very-much) Company got base liberty when we were in garrison.  By contrast, Weapons company upstairs got to spend their nights cleaning their area over .. and over .. and over again.

Still ... dude looked old the first time we met him, ya know?

[1] Also, Staff Sergeant Mason was responsible for my first nickname that didn't include the words 'shit head'.  Humping out to the range early one morning I found myself near the head of the column, stepping out lively [2].  He said, 'Hey, you, Dunbar, look at you steppin' out like a big ol' damn bird.  We gonna call you Big Bird.'

[2] Marines on the march scoot along at a clip most of us would describe as 'running'.  You want to idle along, see the sights, join the Boy Scouts.

Poo. Take a dump. Etc.

When the school year ends, Evan is going to return to Shanghai.

One of the first things, I imagine, his parents will do is sit him down and ask him 'What did you learn in America?'

And he will reply 'I learned American slang for 'poop'.

Don't imagine his parents will be exactly pleased, but that genie is plumb out of the bottle, now.

When the main gun pops, a tank stops being so humorous

A long time ago, my recruiter smiled at my ASVAB score and said 'Well, now.  Looks like you can pick your MOS: what do you want to spend the next four years doing?'

I briefly entertained armor. The idea of zooming around the battlefield in a 52-ton death-dealing machine was really appealing.  In hindsight, and having some experience with flat tires in January in Wisconsin, going infantry was a good idea.

Working on a tank is not like working on a '53 Chevy.  The parts weigh tons.  If the cupola needs work, a crane lifts it off.  If the crew watns to see the engine, a crane lifts the armor covers.  When the tracks break or wear out, which they constantly do, it is back-breaking work to replace them.  Tracks are deceptively fragile.

Maintenance is hard, knuckle-busting business:  In addition to bum ears, tankers tend to have scarred hands and joints that don't work just right.  Day in and day out the crews sweat over their machines.  If they aren't just repairing them, they are cleaning them with high pressure hose at the Birdbath, a concrete washing area.  It's not fun, not even interesting.  It's just work.  In some respects, being a tanker is like having one long flat tire in January.

The Litlest Statist

My son is 10, decked out with a crown, cape, breastplate, five o'clock shadow.

Monkey: Trick or Treat!

Older Dude on Porch: Oh, are you a knight?

Monkey: No. I'm the king, collecting taxes.


He wins scary costume of the night in my book.

Clearing Tabs

Haw!

Unhappy with President Obama’s failure to get any real laughs on The Daily Show, Democrats are asking Vice-President Biden to appear on Jeopardy.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5. PDF at the link

So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous view of the authors is that our nation's outlook has worsened. The present volume, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, explores the tipping point America now faces. Addressing America's competitiveness challenge will require many years if not decades; however, the requisite federal funding of much of that effort is about to terminate.

Malthus and capital

Why did agricultural civilization remain mired in the Malthusian trap for over 5,000 years? And how was it possible to eventually escape from it?

Barack Obama: the language a fella uses says a whole lot about his internal head space.

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're going to punish our enemies and we're going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,' if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's going to be harder."

Awesomely funny clip: Everything is amazing yet nobodys happy.


The greatest science-fiction story every written


John Carmack

... trends do matter. Small, nearly painless losses accumulate over the years, and the world can slowly change into something you don’t want while you weren’t paying attention. It doesn’t take a cataclysmic crash, just a slow accretion of over regulation, taxation, and dependency that chokes the vibrant processes that produce wealth and growth. Without growth, you get a zero sum game of fighting over the pie that breeds all sorts of problems in government and society.

My core thesis is that the federal government delivers very poor value for the resources it consumes, and that society as a whole would be better off with a government that was less ambitious. This is not to say that it doesn’t provide many valuable and even critical services, but that the cost of having the government provide them is much higher than you would tolerate from a company or individual you chose to do business with. For almost every task, it is a poor tool.

Law of Three

I don't believe half of what I see and none of what I hear.

But I do, I do, I do, believe that what you do comes back to you, three-fold.

Stuff like that will come back on you like deferred maintenance, like bad oysters, like a bad penny, ya dig that, my semi-anonymous stalker from Massachusetts?

Go find a priest: he'll give you the peace you need.

Meaty Emotion

My wife has discovered Korean soap opera: Cinderella's Sister on Hulu.

Kang-sook and her daughter Eun-jo are running away from the abusive Mr. Chang, whom they live with. Mr. Chang realizes that the two ran away with his diamond ring and sends gangsters to catch them. While running away from the gangsters, Eun-jo runs into Hyo-seon in a toilet stall on the train and tells her to keep the ring for her. Kang-sook later visits Hyo-seon's house to get her ring back and finds out that Hyo-seon's father is a rich widower. She successfully lures and marries him. Hyo-seon's father dies years later, and leaves his beloved daughter behind with a mean stepmother, an aloof stepsister, and a large inheritance. The melodramatic tale of two sisters forced to become family through marriage captured the attention of South Korea throughout its run, as it told the classic tale of Cinderella through the eyes of the stepsister, Eun-jo.

Joe Bob says 'check it out'.

My takeaway from casually watching up to episode 16 is that Korean is an excellent language for expressing strong emotion in.

Home, Again

Bi-Lateral knee surgery on the the 11th, home on the 15th. Patient is doing very, very, well. Playing nursemaid until November 1st, enjoying every bit of it.

Convalescence room - Convalescent not shown.

Clearing Tabs

Ken Langone:

My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a "reckless" group that had made "bad decisions" and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop "resisting" it.

We entrust an M1A1 to a sergeant leading a team of enlisted - why are airplanes different?  It's Hap Arnold's fault.

As the Army Air Corps changed into the mighty Army Air Force (2.4 million troops and 80,000 aircraft at its peak), its capable and persuasive commander (General Hap Arnold), insisted that all pilots be officers. Actually, he wanted them all to be college graduates as well, until it was pointed out that the pool of college graduates was too small to provide the 200,000 pilots the Army Air Force eventually trained. But Arnold forced the issue on officers being pilots, and the navy had to go along to remain competitive in recruiting.

10 Search Engines to Explore the Invisible Web.


Transaction cost - am I the only one that finds this kind of stuff fascinating?

In economics and related disciplines, a transaction cost is a cost incurred in making an economic exchange (restated: the cost of participating in a market). For example, most people, when buying or selling a stock, must pay a commission to their broker; that commission is a transaction cost of doing the stock deal. Or consider buying a banana from a store; to purchase the banana, your costs will be not only the price of the banana itself, but also the energy and effort it requires to find out which of the various banana products you prefer, where to get them and at what price, the cost of traveling from your house to the store and back, the time waiting in line, and the effort of the paying itself; the costs above and beyond the cost of the banana are the transaction costs. When rationally evaluating a potential transaction, it is important to consider transaction costs that might prove significant.

The Radio Voice

Heard on the radio this morning

"In response to violence in schools, Frank Lasee proposed to arm school teachers!"

Women with guns. Sheltering their charges from predators not by locking a door and hiding under a desk but shooting them dead, dead, dead. 

Sign me up.

Except that as the ad went on it became clear the radio voice was telling me this was bad, and Frank Lasee was living in some place called 'Crazy Town' and I sure don't want to live there.  The radio voice told me to vote for the other guy.

They didn't say who this was, which was very confusing.  Because they can't just say 'Lasee is a nut, vote for Joe Blow who is not' because of some crazy descision by the Supreme Court that, the radio voice told me earlier, allows shawdowy, clandestine, anonymous, evil conservative groups to flood a political race with money.  They are using this evil machination to attack a Republican candidate.

I will keep listening to NPR.  Perhaps the radio voice will clear this up, later.

Visiting Hours

Can you tell that the kids have been in for visiting hours?



Number 3 is on the sticky: Get Better.

I have no idea what Evan wrote for Number 5.  Familiar with hanzi, I ain't.

Anathem

"Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible," I said, "using Saunt Lesper's Coordinates, so that when she teaches you how it's really done, it'll seem that much easier."

Barb was dumbfounded. I went on, "Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer - it feels so good when you stop." This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn't heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited an had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy.

Yeah, I'm reading Anathem. Only a quarter of the way in, I have confirmed a long-held opinion: anything Neal Stephenson can write, I'll consume.

Is a book different than a shoe?

President Obama nearly got "booked" during a rally in Philadelphia on Sunday, after someone in the crowd threw a paperback his way.

A flung book. A tome given the old heave-ho. A flinger-ino.

Blondie ventures: “Maybe a copy of that craptacular autobiography and they wanted a refund!”

If so they should talk to the author.

Pasty Update

Between my wife and I, we have friends and relations scattered from hell-to-breakfast across the country.

We love you all, but keeping in touch with just the phone takes forever.  It is inefficient. We miss people, sometimes, with important news and I am very sorry about that.

Happily, most of us have adapted to the interwebs and we use this new-fangled stuff to keep tabs on each other.

So. Late last week they had an opening at the hospital and Pasty was asked 'would you like us to schedule your knee replacement for Monday, or do you want to be in constant and irritating pain for another month until your scheduled appointment?'

Which put everything into a state of higedly-pigedly at the house.  We think it's worth it.

She's out of surgery, doctor says she is doing fine. She's in the recovery room, more updates when she's actually awake and in a real room.

I could never do that

"You were a Marine?  Oh, I could never do that, X."

Where X is a phrase like 'I could never stand the discipline' or 'I could not stand being yelled at' or 'I hate it when people tell me what to do'.

This is bullshit.

All of us put ourselves under discipline for one reason or another, and we do it willingly. 

If you can make the team, hold down a job, graduate college, learn a skill, you can certainly stand four years in the military.  Don't have to be an automaton, don't have to loose your individuality, neither.  Me, I had a problem with authority [1] for  few years, until I settled down: I did okay.

It's just that the consequences of screwing up in the military are more immediate.  Present a failure to adapt in the office, the consequences are slow or no promotion, loss of pay.  It's all very slow and gradual.  Failure to adapt in the military and you will find yourself doing many, many, push-ups with a metaphorical boot up your ass.

Funny - I have only heard this from younger people who have not found themselves, or older folks who are clearly losers.  Adults making a living . . . not so much.

[1] And I have the Page 11 entries [2] to prove it.
[2] Page 11 is page in the Serviceman's Record Book (SRB) where the bad stuff [3] is chronicled.
[3] The Corps, in it's wisdom, arranged the SRB very neatly.  Page 11 - the bad stuff - comes first.  The page with the good stuff, next.  The first thing your new C.O. sees as he pages through is the list of bad stuff, neatly typed and arranged line by line.  Which totally eliminates any kind of distance between one's youthful escapades and the present day.  The first thing any CO will say is 'Hmm.  I see offenses X, Y, and Z.  (long pause)  We going to have any problems?'[4]  [5]
[4] I do believe they rehearse this line at The Basic School.
[5] The one exception to this was Master Gunnery Sergent Howard, then the (so I was told) senior WM in the Marines, or at least in the 4000 MOS.  She said 'I see you had offenses X, Y, and Z.  (short pause)  Clean slate as far as I am concerned.  Don't fuck up anymore.'  Gob'less you Master Gunnery Sergeant Howard.

Rage

I wonder who my dear wife can be thinking of when she posted this? 

Message noted, dear one.

From.

Agility

He's cleaning a bird cage.

I love the demonstrated flexibility and inventiveness.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out

Dude gets a map showing that certain (redneck) states (bumpkins) have (red states) more military (warrior class) personal (lower-income poorly educated rubes) than others. 

Disregarding common sense, cost of living, availability of ports, large tracts of land to be used for training areas, history, the obvious conclusion is that there is a growing social division of class and income between the military and 'the rest of us'.

Oh, there is some division going on.  But it is Mr. Florida and his peers that are receding out of the mainstream, not the military.

Burn Notice

Jurisdiction lacks a fire department.  Guy fails to pay the $75 bucks a year that would get the nearest department to respond.  House burns to the ground.  It is so very sad.  Clearly a failure of Libertarian ideals.

Except the fire-fighters work for the government.

And .. c'mon .. the victims would have paid out the nose for service and you think Fred's Fire Service Inc. would just ignore the found money?

Request from a Marine

“Lindsay Lohan, 24, is all over the news because she’s a celebrity drug addict. While Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Chase Stanley 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23, Sheldon Tate 27, they are all Marines who gave their lives this week, no media mention. Honor THEM by reposting…”

Done.

Sharing

Noting Randy's interest, Doug Shaftoe squats alongside it to point out the features. "It's neutrally buoyant, so when we have it alongside like this, we have it in this foam cradle, which we will now take off." He begins jerking loose some quick release bungee cords, and molded segments of foam peel away from the ROV's hull. It drops lower in the water, nearly pulling the crewman over the side with it, and he lets go, keeping his arms extended so he can prevent it from bumping into them with each swell. "You'll notice there's no umbilical," Doug says. "Normally that is mandatory for an ROV. You need the umbilical for three reasons."

Randy grins, because he knows that Doug Shaftoe is about to enumerate the three reasons. Randy has spent almost no time around military people, but he is finding that he gets along with them surprisingly well. His favorite thing about them is their compulsive need to educate everyone around them, all the time. Randy does not need to know anything about the ROV, but Doug Shaftoe is going to give him a short course anyway. Randy supposes that when you are in a war, practical knowledge is a good thing to spread around.

~Cryptonomicon

I don't miss the Marines, much, but I do very much miss the culture of compulsive sharing. Out here in the civilian world sharing job-related knowledge is the exception, not the rule.  So much so that people act surprised when it happens.

Little Voice

When one does X, where X is a system start up that takes a real long time, and then one immediately opens that system's status page, and that shows the system is running just fine, thank you, and then one mutters "Wow - that was quick", one should pay attention to one's inner voice when it replies 'Mmm that was a little too quick.'

This Scout Could

Niece Heather spent a few minutes last night chuckling at Boy Scouts: only nerds, dorks, and goobers are Boy Scouts, in her world.

She's now in the backyard trying (trying) to start a fire in the out-of-doors fireplace.

Who's going to help her?

Not this Scout.

In Your Heart You Know It's True

Progressives are vampires.  I can prove it.

Accept that vampires are real. Ignore the mystical mumb-jumbo krep about souls: merely hyper-intelligent apex predators.

Being not complete dummies, they wish to conserve their stock of prey, homo sapiens.

Western Civilization is about progress. More social integration, better technology, members are citizens, not serfs.  There are more of us, we're healthier.  But we're better armed, now, and can effectively fight back.   A society that can effectively organize to eliminate blood-sucking ghouls is, from vampire-kind's point of view, double-plus un-good.

Western Civilization is a danger to vampire-kind.

Eliminating this threat is tricky.  Push one way, anniliation and mass die-off.  Push too hard in another, you get a stronger culture.

The prudent thing for Vampires to do is slowly devolve this civilization into a mass of superstition, gullibility, and malleability.  People who will depend not on themselves for their needs and their thinking: the President, the pop star on teevee, someone.  They require prey smart enough to feed themselves, but not so smart they question what goes on around them: dumb down the schools, eliminate critical thinking.  

The end-game is a gentle decline into fuedalism and a new Dark Age.  Ideal hunting grounds for vampires. 

Serfs, not citizens.  Prey, not competition.

I submit that the actions of certain elements of the Progressive wing of politics in America are indistinguisible from the actions of blood-sucking ghouls.

Progressives are vampires, man.  The majority of humans in that wing are, at best, deluded dupes.

Rant

Sweet Jesus and His Disciples in a side car: I hate ignorant people.

Like this guy at Boots and Sabers.  Thinks that because you are in a family restaurant in Madison that you get a magic cloak preventing crazy people from loosing their shit around you.

A Son of Liberty: People don’t carry a firearm because their rights are threatened… they carry one because THEY feel threatened.

liberalssavetheword: In a culvers…..in madison. RIGHT.

Have I mentioned how much cute non-informative nicknames piss me off?  Sign your name or shut the hell up.

In a culvers…..in madison. RIGHT.

Do not be a nimrod

Violence happens everywhere, not just on dark cloudy nights on the wrong side of town. 

One of the worst massacres I have heard of happened in a Luby’s of all places: a cafeteria full of senior citizens and families on a budget eating lime jello and pretty good meatloaf.  Dude went mental, crashed his truck through the front window, started shooting people.  This was before Texas got some sane gun laws so he shot people dead for a real long time before the police arrived.

Think a Culver’s in Madison has a ward preventing insane people from strolling in?  What is it like in Happy Land?

What else pisses me off?  The Army.

Several hundred newbie troops at Missouri's Fort Leonard Wood and Oklahoma's Fort Sill will soon get either the popular Apple gimcrack or an Evo Android smart phone to make their transition into the Army go a little more smoothly.

They are giving IPods to recruits.  Yeah,we will give an expensive toy to a lazy, fat-headed civilian kid to make the transition to Army life easier.  Maybe they can have the drill sergeants make their beds for them and wake them up gently in the morning.  Maybe they can bring them a cup of water at night, just like mommy does.

 It is like they forgot that their job is to close with and destroy the enemy though fire and maneuver, or to repel the enemy's assault with fire and close combat. Actually go and and shoot people and hit them on the fucking head, slash open their guts with bayonet.

Except, oh wait, they are not teaching them to do that anymore.

When a US Army general made the decision recently to remove bayonet assaults from the array of skills soldiers must learn during basic training, it seemed like a no-brainer.

Because, in the future, all war fighting will happen in some magic happy place where you don't have to get dirty: Our Brave Soldiers will point their fingers and say 'phsssssh', loud noises being aggressive and we couldn't have that in Our Army, now could we? We are too busy stroking our IPODs and wishing for an imaginary future that ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN.

Jack wagons.