Two words

Sidecar.

Damn, it's good. I'll do some cocktailblogging later, but if all y'all will forgive me, it's been a long week.


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It's a great day (for me to whoop somebody's ass)

Bah.  It's one of those days (and weeks).

End the War on Drugs

I mean, you can find it on every street corner.

Quote of the Day - Stupid Party edition

Ann Althouse wonders why the GOP wasn't aggressive on the scandals during the election, back when it would have done them some good:

Obama's prime target was the Tea Party (which had crushed him in the 2010 midterms), and the establishment Republicans were at odds with the Tea Party movement. I'm not saying I believe this, but sober reflection tells us we need to redraw the line between paranoia and vigilance. The theory is that establishment Republicans appreciated the suppression of the Tea Party.

Plausible.

The greatest pistol caliber of all time

Heh:



Double heh:

What happened to the Greenland Norse?

The Vikings settled Greenland around 1000 A.D. and lived there for centuries before vanishing.  It has been thought that they died out around 1430 A.D. as the climate changed and brought seriously colder winters.  Interestingly, there's a new hypothesis: they left:

In the final phase, it was young people of child-bearing age in particular who saw no future for themselves on the island. The excavators found hardly any skeletons of young women on a cemetery from the late period.

"The situation was presumably similar to the way it is today, when young Greeks and Spaniards are leaving their countries to seek greener pastures in areas that are more promising economically," Lynnerup says. "It's always the young and the strong who go, leaving the old behind."

In addition, there was a rural exodus in their Scandinavian countries at the time, and the population in the more remote regions of Iceland, Norway and Denmark was thinning out. This, in turn, freed up farms and estates for returnees from Greenland.

However, the Greenlanders didn't leave their houses in a precipitous fashion. Aside from a gold signet ring in the grave of a bishop, valuable items, such as silver and gold crucifixes, have not been discovered anywhere on the island. The archeologists interpret this as a sign that the departure from the colony proceeded in an orderly manner, and that the residents took any valuable objects along. "If they had died out as a result of diseases or natural disasters, we would certainly have found such precious items long ago," says Lynnerup.

However, a new book suggests that they didn't return to Scandanavia, but rather tried to settle Labrador or Newfoundland, under the auspices of English and Portuguese explorers in the post Columbus era:

That would still have left the problem of persuading the Norse Greenlanders to join such an overseas scheme willingly. T he Greenlanders would have known about Vínland, Markland and Helluland, but in order to pull up stakes and move westwards they would have had to be persuaded by someone with the leadership and organisational abilities of Eirik the Red – qualities that had also enabled John Cabot, the Corte Real brothers and João Fernandes to arrange their enterprises.

In addition,the Greenlanders would have had to be convinced that they were going to something better than what they would leave behind. If the Norse Greenlanders had adjusted both their domestic and export economy to English demands for stockfish and other fish products that had now dwindled to the point where the Greenlanders were facing complete isolation, they would primarily have required assurance abouttransportation and help to get started with a new life, just as theirancestors had done when opportunity called. Conditions in the Eastern Settlement would not have had to be unspeakable for a new colonising venture to appeal; the first Greenland colonisers had certainly not beenthe most desperate people in Iceland.

Those who probed the Labrador coast for new economic opportunities could not foresee the disasters that became the invariable lot of Europeans when first trying to settle year-round on shores they had experienced only during non-winter conditions. They did not know that the isotherm dips way south in that region, with winter temperatures substantially lowert han at a corresponding latitude in Greenland. If the Norse Greenlanders migrated west to a stretch of Labrador chosen by others, as it appears likely that they did, they may have ended up on the bottom of the Davis Strait before ever reaching the other shore, or they may have perished during their first winter in the new land from new diseases, from starvation or simply from the bitter cold. For them and for any who had stayed behind in Greenland, it would have been the beginning of a rapid decline – and of the end.

The Last Vikings by Kristin A. Seaver is an exhaustive, 250 page history of the Greenland Norse.  It's entirely thought provoking, and on the Internet for your reading and learning pleasure.

Hey, remember how the IRS used to be BFFs with ACORN?

Didn't have any problem with that non-profit organization, until they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar:

The IRS says it is severing ties with ACORN, the community activist group involved in a scandal after employees were caught on video giving advice to a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp.

The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it would no longer include ACORN in its volunteer tax assistance program.

But hey, at least they weren't palling around with those racist teabaggers, right?

Is it Friday afternoon yet?

This week is kicking my butt.  The Lads have what they call FADC - Friday Afternoon Drinking Club.  Can't come too soon.

Global Warming knocks Earth on its side

Women and minorities likely hardest hit:

Melting ice in Greenland may have helped to shift the location of the North Pole.

...

Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, report that increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet — and to a lesser extent, ice loss in other parts of the globe — have helped to shift the North Pole several centimetres east each year since 2005.

Oops, there's that pesky tell again: "may have", "have helped".  I didn't catch the "perhaps coulda" but no doubt it's in there somewhere.  And peer-reviewed!  Because Science!  But thanks for all the sweet, sweet grants, American taxpayers!

Global Warming: is there anything it can't do?

It's not easy being green

Wind farms kill 83,000 endangered eagles and hawks each year:

The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a windfarm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has found.

More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's windfarms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.

It's peer-reviewed, so Science!

Each death is federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.

The law is applied equally, Citizen.  It's just that some animals are more equal than others.

In other news of "Green" power, there's so much "Green" power deployed in the UK, and it's so unreliable (no wind power when the wind doesn't blow, right?), that the power company is going to start shutting people off:

Fridges and freezers in millions of British homes will automatically be switched off without the owner’s consent under a ‘Big Brother’ regime to reduce the strain on power stations.

The National Grid is demanding that all new appliances be fitted with sensors that could shut them down when the UK’s generators struggle to meet demand for electricity.

Electric ovens, air-conditioning units and washing machines will also be affected  by the proposals, which are already backed by one of the European Union’s most influential energy bodies. They are pushing for the move as green energy sources such as wind farms are less predictable than traditional power stations, increasing the risk  of blackouts.

So the political philosophy is leading not to building actual generating capacity, but shutting people off.  All in the name of reducing CO2, right?  And it will lead to hundreds of thousands of people buying dirty, inefficient CO2 belching generators, right?

Epic fail is epic.

The smartest TV show that ever aired

This show had a huge influence on me, back when I was a teenager.  Readers with a good memory* will remember that I once posted on Martianus Capella before**. 



The Day The Universe Changed is on Youtube, and this will be a week's viewing that will noticeably move the needle of the IQ.  The companion book if excellent, although I recommend this for a second dose of Teh Smart.

* OK, maybe that was a little optimistic.  It's a reflection of my admiration of you, gentle reader.

** In a RKBA context.  Like I said, this was huge.

10 years is like a World Age

Kevin Baker has been blogging for ten years.  That's since the Neolithic Period of the Blogosphere.

Congrats, Kevin!

More on DEFCAD, the ITAR, and cryptography

Adam Shostack has a very interesting post exploring the history of cryptography and the ITAR, and what is going on with 3D printing:

Cory Doctorow has said “Impact litigation — where good precedents overturn bad rules — is greatly assisted by good facts and good defendants. I would much rather the Internet-as-library question be ruled on in a less emotionally overheated realm than DIY guns.” I think that’s reasonable, but recall that Shaw claimed that all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Doctorow also refers to Bernstein, who did good work, but his lawsuit was the last nail in ITARs applying to crypto, not the first.

There's some history there, including the Applied Cryptography floppy disk incident.  Needless to say, I agree with his analysis (and have said so here), but he gives some background that is added richness to the discussion.

What did the Romans use for toilet paper?

I've studied rather a lot of Roman history, and I did not know this.  It seems that there are at least 11 possibilities.

Plus the article has a picture from a place I remember visiting.  Ostia Antica, Rome's ancient port city.  I remember that particular latrine (no, I didn't use it, but thank you so much for your interest).

What's sad is that this isn't the first post here about Roman, err, sanitation.

In other history geekery, this is an interesting day in French Royal history.  In 1610, le Vert Gallant Henri IV (of "Paris is worth a Mass" fame) was stabbed to death by an assassin.  His young son became King Louis XIII.  Louis XIII, as we all known for Louis the XIV who by enormous coincidence became King on this same day in 1643.

Things that are scandals, and things that are not

So this past week has seen scandals involving both the IRS and the State Department (on the response to the Benghazi attack).  You might have heard about these, but you need to remember that these are not scandals.

We know that these are not scandals, because nobody has resigned.  This is a hard and fast axiom that we can use to see what Washington thinks is a scandal.  Remember, Citizen, Washington thinks differently than you do.  Washington thinks better than you do.

So what is a scandal, in the last week or two?  Well, sumd00d at the Heritage Foundation published a paper that says that the Illegal Immigration amnesty currently mooted by a bi-partisan "Gang Of Eight" will cost the Republic north of $6 Trillion.

And so he had to go.  There's your scandal, folks.  We know it's a scandal because someone was forced out of their job and into an Obamaeconomy breadline.

I dunno - maybe his old job was one of the ones that Americans just won't do anymore these days.

Anyone who thinks that the Republican Party will somehow save the Republic from the current Obama administration are invited to explain this scandal, and these non-scandals.

SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Pretty tasty

Tyson's Any'tizers Chicken Fries.  I got back late and #2 Son had just bakes the entire bag.  Not wanting them to go to waste (even the two kids would have a problem eating that many), and being pretty hungry, I got some salsa and sat down with them.

Pretty good, really.  Of course, the Usual Suspects tell me that they're bad for me.  Whatevs.

Not gourmet, by any means, but what do you expect coming out of a freezer bag?  Maybe helps to be hungry.

Nordstrom's snoops on where you go in their stores

I'm not sure that this is exactly bad, but it doesn't really smell good:

"You've spent quite some time in the lingerie department, but you haven't even peeked at our display of Bose® 'OE2' Audio Headphones, which were $149.95 but are now ONLY $134.96! Can we talk?"

OK, so that's not exactly what Nordstrom says it's planning to do with the information it gleans from tracking customers' movements throughout their stores.

But it certainly could market that aggressively, now that the department store - purveyor of apparel, shoes, jewelry, and the like - has implemented technology to track how much time you spend in specific departments within 17 stores in the US.

None of this is - or should be - illegal.  However, my privacy hackles are up a bit.  I sure hope they think the data is valuable, because it's burning customer good will.

Even I do a neater wiring job than this

What's funniest is that there are several cable bundles that someone spent actual time to tie wrap together.

In the spirit of the IRS apology ...

I must offer up my own to you, gentle readers.  No, my situation is nothing as nasty as the IRS one - indeed, can you even remember the last time a Fed.Gov agency publicly apologized for misconduct before a court of law made them?  I can't, which makes me believe that the IRS scandal will be a rolling thunder spread across the next 90 days.  It will be bad, then worst, then worstest, played out over the pages of a very reluctant (but helpless) Mainstream Media.

Nothing like that here.  What is here: a significant tailing off of content over the last 18 months, as family issues and job issues have consumed an increasing amount of my available energy that used to go into this blog.

As a point of reference, the high point of the content production here was probably May/June 2010.  Just in May that year there were nine posts tagged in the "Best Posts", and that's just because I don't like too many posts getting tagged that way.  May 2010 is actually under-represented.  The brain cells were firing on all cylinders then.

Today, not so much.  A recent Slashdot poll asked how many tabs you had open.  The average seems to be five or so (!) among Slashdotters.  Between the work laptop and the Linux desktop at home, I may have 40 (!) open tabs.  There are likely 3 uberposts brewing there, and I simply can't find the energy to get them actually posted.  All would be as good as the May 2010 posts, but they're all stuck in my head.

Bah.

I don't think that this is blogger burnout, because I have 3 nascent uberposts that I can't get written.  If I were burnt out, I wouldn't have the ideas.  Instead, I find that Life does not leave me the time or energy to get the posts done as I would like them to be.

Oh well, mustn't grumble.  Could be worse, could work at the IRS*.

They are telling me I need to take some time off from work.  Maybe I should take a blogging vacation day.  Man, that's a strange sentence to type.  For those of you who have been blogging for several years, is this normal?

* Poster created by your humble host, using the amazing Keep-Calm-o-Matic.

#2 Son approves this music for your listening pleasure

#2 Son and I took the dogs out for a walk today.  That wouldn't be unusual, but the vet said no walks for Wolfgang until the end of this week (because he got fixed), but Wolfie was crawling out of his skin.  And so out we went, with the dogs.  We went in the car to a great park along the 'hooch.  Stevie Ray Vaughan was the CD in the player.  To my great shame as a father, he hadn't listened to much of this before, but he quite liked this one:



He quite liked it, and made me play it again.  There's hope for me as a Father after all ...

Lucky Moms

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms, the lucky and the rest.

I sure do Miss Calvin and Hobbes.  You can find them via a search engine here.

Gun control sanity breaks out in Massachusetts

Actually, in my old stomping grounds, where the citizens of Sudbury voted down the latest nonsensical proposed gun ordinance:

Victory!. The good citizens of Sudbury soundly defeated the anti-Second Amendment article that came to vote last night - preserving their right to lawfully discharge a firearm within town limits.

How nonsensical was it?  It classified air soft and bb guns as firearms and would have made it illegal to discharge them within city limits.  The kids spent a lot of hours on air soft hunts in the back yard.

So gun control loses even in Massachusetts, when the people get an actual vote (as opposed to being steamrolled by the Political Machine).  Even in Massachusetts.

Racist gun controllers: still racist

Via Blue:

I'm reminded of the racist roots of gun control, and how women are the fastest growing demographic in gun ownership.  Perhaps it's because they have the smallest penises. 

Why do gun controllers hate African Americans and women?  It's a bit of a mystery, at least if you listen to the gun controllers talk about how nice they are.  And don't say anything ugly about Class - the Left sees itself as Class Liberators, not Class Oppressors.  They won't like it if you go there.  Won't like it at all.

Johann Baptist Vanhal - Organ Concerto in C Major

Image via Wikipedia

Johann Baptist Vanhal (Jan Křtitel Vaňha in Czech) is simply an astonishing story, perhaps unique in all of classical music.  Born to a peasant family, his music ended up being conducted by no less than Mozart himself.

Bohemia (nor in the Czech Republic) was one of the major regions of the Austrian Empire.  It was then and remained (until the disaster that was Communism) one of the most prosperous regions of Europe.  It was into a prosperous peasant family in this most prosperous part of the Empire that Vanhal was born. 

His family was well off enough to get his musical training, which showed his genius.  Soon he found employment in a town as organist and choirmaster.  By a stroke of luck a visiting Countess heard him (no doubt playing the organ at Mass) and took him to Vienna.  Vanhal never looked back.

He played with Haydn and Mozart.  He wrote symphonies and operas, voluminously - 73 symphonies, 100 quartets, almost innumerable other works.  Doubtless his peasant upbringing impressed on him the need to be productive if he wanted to eat, and so produce he did.  It's remarkably good - musically well educated people will find him similar to Haydn, and in fact his reputation at the time was comparable.

He was successful enough to end his days relatively well off in Vienna itself.  All in all, an astonishing story, rarely told.

It's the State Department that caused the 3D printed gun design to be pulled, right?

Vox makes an observation:

Keep in mind, this is the very same State Department that sends tanks, jet fighters, and missiles to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.  But the freely distributed plans for a single-shot plastic pistol is somehow considered sufficient cause to justify violating the First and Second Amendments.

The Ship of State is captained and crewed by fools.  But it will be totally different when they run your health care.

Quote of the Day - printable gun version

Roberta shoots, and scores:

Yknow what the little plastic gun is good for?  Saying, "Leave me alone," or "No, you can't rob me," or, if you're really, really brave, shooting a jack-booted thug from behind and taking his big fancy gun for your very own.  Y'know how to avoid that last one?  Get outta the jackbooted thuggery business.

Sadly, it seems that there's no shortages of applicants to the Jackbooted Thuggery Ministry. And Lawdog brings the snark (for a double barrel QotD) drolly remarking on the impact of the State Department's draconian invocation of the ITAR:

I'm pretty sure that today a whole bunch of folks are irritated by having to pick gun designs out of their pirated music and porn downloads, but macht nichts.

I guess that officially makes the Liberator pistol design into gun pr0n ...

Pleistoceneblogging: Widespread Panic - Big Wooly Mammoth

I'd never run across them before, but this swings.  Paleontology for the win!

Lester Flatt - Dueling Banjos

Lester Flatt passed away on this day 34 years ago.  That's a third of a century that's passed since one of the greatest musicians of our day played for us.  This video is particularly poignant as it features a very young Marty Stuart on mandolin.



God speed, Lester Flatt.  Thanks for all the great music.

Boot note: no post on this song would be complete without a reference to the oft-posited "Dueling Brandos".  This one is particularly good:



And here's Steve Martin getting schooled by one of the up and coming banjo virtuosos.  Awesome.