W00tidy W00tidy w00t
Wow, TechnoChitlins, boring and ticking off folks since 2003- well, someone's taking a look
I give, and I give, and I give...
Just kidding- but a little proud
August 24, 2010
August 23, 2010
Just a reminder
...to you mouth-breathing idiots who seem to have trouble with the concept of "Ground Zero"
via Jim Treacher
UPDATE: I'm looking at you Ms. Jemison
August 22, 2010
Seriously cool
Be patient, wait for it at about 1:36, io9 has it right, Kubrick would have been proud
August 19, 2010
W00t!!
From Gerard-
...and Mr. van der Leun is editor-in-chief
Your celebration of your freedom violates our by-laws
From Instapundit-
Marta Jaworski, 57, said she and her husband, also 57, are “devastated” by the charge, which she called a “taste” of the oppression they felt in Poland before fleeing in 1984 to Germany and later Canada.
“It is a feeling to be hunted. They come in uniforms . . . ,” she said, starting to cry.
Surely we're better than this... nah.
August 12, 2010
Miss me yet?
You get what you ask for...
Ah, my old home town...
Where's Black Jack Pershing when you need him?
From Rantburg-
On Monday, The One refused a meeting with Gov Perry about the border situation, and after meeting him at the airport and giving him a letter about the situration, Perry met with Texas border sheriffs in San Antonio.
After 16 days of denials by Laredo law enforcement and local officials regarding a Mexican drug cartel takeover of a Laredo area ranch, a Texas police blotter proves the alleged incident did in fact happen and that multiple agencies responded to the scene of a seized U.S. ranch.Think about it for a moment. One of the most brutal drug cartels operating in Mexico crossed the U.S. border and took a ranch from its lawful owner. Intimidation has arrived along the southern border. The police blotter tells the story of the events that unfolded on July 23rd;
"On Friday 7-23-10 Laredo Webb informed that their county SWAT Team is conducting an operation in the Mines Rd. area. According to LT. Garcia with LSO (Laredo Sheriff Office) received a call from a ranch owner stating that the Zetas had taken over his ranch. As per the 17 (reporting person) he informed them that they stated La Compania (area name for Zetas) was taking the ranch and no one was permitted on the ranch without permission. SO (Sheriff Office) will have an unmarked green Ford Taurus with two officers stationed at Los Compadres and a white Chevy Tahoe with two officers stationed at Mineral Rd. The LSO (Laredo Sheriff Office) will maintain surveillance in the area and advise if action is taken. Susp (suspect) Veh (vehicle) are described as a gray or silver Audi, a BLK (black) Escalade or Navigator and a van truck with a logo of a car wash spot free on the side. Border Patrol also has their response team on scene. Also known info of BMW's and Corvettes entering and leaving the area. Auth LT Lichtenberger if assistance is requested LPD (Laredo Police Department) will secure the outer perimeter. (07/24/10 07:42:10 NR1873)"
Cartels have crossed the sovereign borders of the United States causing multiple agencies to respond and the end result was a media blackout. It's well documented that media blackouts in Mexico are happening because the cartels are threatening reporters and news outlets with bodily harm. The question is why American law enforcement agencies are giving reporters the "We can neither confirm nor deny the incident happened line?"
It was a law enforcement officer on the scene that also confirmed the incident in fact happened and officers on the ground said they "considered this an act of war."
Sooo, when do we send in the troops?
August 06, 2010
TechnoChitlins
In the mid-to-late Nineties I had small dreams of a side career in music, which never came to much. I have added some of the songs to the site now- they are playable via the music bar at the bottom of the page. Without further ado, I present TechnoChitlins! (I'll add id3 tags to the mp3s soon, so you can pick and choose songs)
In fairness, 17 was done with Friend'o'June, and 18 with June herself...
15 is of course about my lady
August 03, 2010
Losing our country
“Civil disobedience”, once a term of honor used by those who fought tyranny, now means “I’m walking out with the TV from the store and you can’t stop me.” If Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel and the “undocumented and afraid” bunch are willing to simply tear up the tickets in the face of law enforcement, and law enforcement, as typified by Sherrif Joe Arpaio are determined to issue the tickets anyway, what impends is not a simple “failure to communicate” but a warning that the legitimacy of the system is under attack. Fewer and fewer know the rules any more. And the word that everything is there for the taking is leaking out. News that a Mexican drug cartel has put a price on Sheriff Arpaio’s head isn’t really so surprising.
“It's offering a million dollars for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head and offering a thousand dollars for anyone who wants to join the Mexican cartel,” the man, who wants to remain anonymous, told the station.
Pinal County (Ariz.)_ Sheriff Paul Babeu said, “What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU.” President Obama who ran on being post-everything has partnered with everyone. The result is that no one knows whose side he is on; and that engenders a feeling of betrayal in everyone who thought he was on ‘their’ side.
Faster and faster...
In that atmosphere public employee unions, congress persons and the PC activist crowd can no longer get the goodies they used to. But taking it away from them is going to be like pulling teeth. ‘Whaddaya mean I can’t park where I am not supposed to park?’ One of the charges against Charles Rangel’s involved his Mercedes Benz “which was parked in a House space for roughly five years beginning in 2003″ when the limit is 45 consecutive days. When you let a guy park in one space for five years, you’ve signaled the rules don’t apply to him. The day the tow truck comes is also the day Charlie asks ‘why’? Why now when there’s a post-racial President did you remember the parking space? And five years is a short period in the history of political correctness whose motto is “once given, for always”. Taking back Hope and Change is a lot harder than promising it in the first place. In Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago the criminals have come to accept lawlessness as their due. They’ve become so brazen they are now targeting the police. That city has a murder rate in literal excess of Iraq or Afghanistan. In a 59 hour period, forty people were shot in the city.
Plain talk is punished, fawning is rewarded. It was ever thus so, but no more so, in my memory, than now. The only reason I'm not terrified is because I'm so damn mad.
Being mad, however, is a symptom and not a cure. I'll be damned if I can see a way out besides open conflict.
That does not bode well for anybody.
Like Sheriff Arpaio the robbers are after the cops. So what do Arpaio and the Chicago cops have in common? The essential is invisible to the eye; and that essence is that the current system is losing its ability to function through self-inflicted corruption and red tape. It has messed things up so badly that it is struggling to service itself. Not only is it progressively less likely to provide “free” benefits for its adherents, it may be approaching the point where it must work simply to keep the routine wheels turning. If virtue is its own reward, incompetence in a closed system is its own penalty.
This stuff will have consequences.
August 02, 2010
Are you tired yet? Run harder!
Speaks for itself
July 28, 2010
Charlie's challenge
There's a deceptively simple question that's been bugging me this week, and it is this:
What is the minimum number of people you need in order to maintain (not necessarily to extend) our current level of technological civilization?
There are huge political ramifications hiding behind this question. Let me unpack them for you.
With this, Mr. Stross opens a whole can of worms. How big would a space colony have to be to survive? There's an amazing amount of brainpower going on in the comments...
Blago who?
A small reference to someone who was a big noise. Note who didn't testify...
July 20, 2010
The Exploding Whale
This is cruel and funny
via Arghhh
July 13, 2010
Little Hitlers (was that an Elvis Costello song?)
Good ol' NASA
Feckless- who, us?
July 09, 2010
This will break your heart
... and possibly blow your mind
Once Upon a Time in Afghanistan
via KaChing!
Pensacola inbound
If this doesn't make you feel good about flying, maybe you shouldn't.
Bizarre but cool
Those were the days I guess
via BoingBoing
July 02, 2010
Tempus fugit
I don’t feel old when I think of the 80s, but maybe I should.
Perfectly describes how I feel today
June 30, 2010
LOLOLOL
Primo snark-
In sum total, what you people did was drive someplace where there wasn't a problem, complain about something you don't fully understand, get in the way of people who may actually be performing a function, and then do nothing, en masse, except hope that someone else notices your little snit and makes it all better.
My god, if there's a more perfect metaphor for the modern progressive movement, I've never seen it.
I am in awe of folks who can put, in a few words, all I see my misbegotten boomer brethren have gotten wrong in the past forty years...
via the impeccable Glenn
June 28, 2010
Gallopin' Gertie
Break the laws of physics and you're busted, baby-
June 24, 2010
A New Hope 1800's style
Guard Down
An interesting take on McChrystal, at Blackfive
via Rand Simberg
June 21, 2010
Blast from the Past
When Indy cars were still cool...
via Tim Blair
June 15, 2010
Can of Whoop-ass
via Rand
June 13, 2010
Awesome
This makes me proud
via Ace
June 07, 2010
This makes me
...totally unwilling to leave the house
Steampunk
Lileks waxes poetic-
The movie has a bit of “steampunk,” a term that’s annoyed me for years, partly because the “punk” suffix has morphed into meaninglessness, and partly because it replaces the perfectly good use of “Jules Verne” to describe late 19th century speculative technology. (Or “spec-tech,” as no one calls it, but should.) (Until it gets annoying.) Which reminds me of this piece I read on i09 concerning the next thing we will all tire of, once we’ve had our fill of steampunk and zombies. I was never crazy about zombies anyway, less so when people started appending them to everything as they did with bacon: add it and it’s awesome! Bacon zombies are inevitable, I suppose. (Sigh. Googling . . . . of course.)
Anyway, it seems steampunk represented a cool hopeful future we never got, and zombies represent our pessimism about the future. So the article says. This is the problem with nostalgia and futurism: it’s either Cool or it’s Bad. It’s either Good or it’s Dystopian. It’s inevitable, with speculative fiction, because you have to come up with something that defines the future, some twist, some condition, some invention, some new idea that dominates and animates the culture.
In “Clockwork Orange,” for example, it’s the government’s use of mind-control training to remove the individual’s ability to use free will to choose evil. Are you less human if you are unable to be anything else but good? More moral? It’s a book about ideas and language, but it’s known mostly for the “ultra-violence” of the film version and Malcolm McDowell’s turn as yet-another-charismatic-70s-antihero. But the society in which the story takes place is not dystopian. There are trashed public-housing complexes and tony private homes. Violent gangs in the bad part of town. Drugs for some and civilized claret for others. It was set in the late 70s, and aside from the oversized codpieces and fancy forms of drugged milk, it more or less came true. Yet no one would say we live in a dystopia now, or in 1978, because it never arrives all at once. It happens in the margins of the big places; abetted by celebrants in the high and low culture, it happens in small place. And then it becomes the norm, neither dys- nor u-, but just where we all are.
In my younger days I thought A Clockwork Orange was a cool movie- very modern, very post-what's-going-on-now, and all us totally hip people "got it". Now I see it as a tragic example of how unmoored we have become, when the celebration of the ol' "ultra-violence" seemed to be the cutting edge of hip. Now it makes me cringe- how could I have paid good money to go to the local cinemaplex and watch this? It now comes off as a celebration of all that want to diminish and trash what little we have left of a civil society. It is made just a little bit harder by the fact that I suspect we are living those times now.
Whew!
/rant off
I suspect that we, like the Victorians, will come to terms with our Brave New World and maybe make something better of it. I hope so, anyway.
June 03, 2010
Boggles the mind, it does...
From the Just When You Thought You'd Seen The Stupidest Thing Ever files, there's this-
Four months after a devastating earthquake ripped apart their country, the people of Haiti are still suffering, so you’d think a multi-million-dollar donation of vegetable seeds would be welcome news. But two Haitian groups, backed by the activist group Grassroots International, are urging farmers to do the unthinkable: burn the donated seeds.
This evil campaign puts politics ahead of humanity, and it is sad that charities like the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the New York Community Trust are funding Grassroots International’s perversely named “social justice” campaign.
The two groups, the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) and the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPMKP), argue that the hybrid seeds donated by Monsanto will somehow undermine the “food sovereignty” of Haiti. They also assert, without any scientific basis, that the donated seeds are somehow unsafe. Nothing could be further from the truth, as seeds like those donated have been used safely for generations.
When do we finally get to the point of saying F'em, we've had it, don't ask for our help in the future? I'm pretty much there...
June 02, 2010
Money for Nothing
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