Sorry
I apologize for the lack of posts, we're loading in a new exhibition and I've been working like a draft animal. I'll resume soon, with pictures [grin]
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September 28, 2007
September 19, 2007
Good advice...
...from FrankJ
The threat of Iran
An interesting set of thoughts on the real threat of Iran.
Recently, someone in a comment (I've misplaced the actual link) questioned just how much of a military threat Iran can be to the United States. The question was intended to be rhetorical -- the short answer is "not much" -- but it brought up some things I've been thinking about for some time.
I tend to collect aphorisms and observations and notions, keeping the ones that I find worthy and applicable to the world at large. A don't have a definitive list of them written down or typed up anywhere, but they tend to bubble up as needed. And several come to mind that help capture the complexities of an open military confrontation between the US and Iran.
The first I stole from this book. It's a satire about Vermont seceding from the Union. Their strategy for resistance is something they call "The Polecat Principle" -- summed up as "we're more trouble than we are worth." It boils down to "yeah, we're a pain in your butt, but we'd be an even bigger pain if you try to stop us, so you'd be better off leaving us alone."
RTWT.
Uh-oh
Aarrr!
September 17, 2007
Just for grins
September 15, 2007
Just Wow
This picture is my workplace desktop-
September 14, 2007
That's SO gonna leave a mark
From the comments at Rantburg, featuring the lovely and talented Sgt. Mom:
This was my apology after the Pope Benedict kerfuffle-do-jour. It's short, so I'll put the whole thing in:
So, Pope Benedict’s apology for having the temerity to point out that Islam is kinda, sorta, just a tad bit on the violent and coercive side, and that such coercion is something that Christians do not find logically defensible is not acceptable?
Well, since it was one of those “I’m sorry you were offended by what I said” sort of apologies, yeah, I can see that you have the right to seeth and whine, and burn churches and shoot elderly nuns in the back. So, how about a real apology…
I am so sorry that you lunkheads wouldn’t know a logical theological disputation if it up and bit you on the butt.
I am sorry that large numbers of you are so illiterate that you believe any old load of old shoes that the imam tells you in the Friday sermon.
I am sorry that most of you have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and an underdeveloped sense of logic, technological skills, and smell.
I am sorry that a fair number of you want to turn Western Europe right back into the disease ridden, violence plagued, and autocratically ruled hellholes that you crawled out of.
I am sorry that your much-vaunted Caliphate was built, and maintained by a reliance on treachery, war, plunder, and the brutal oppression and economic skinning of various conquered peoples, and that when what had been conquered was squeezed dry, and the march of Islamic armies towards new sources of plunder was halted, it still took a couple of hundred years for it to rot from the inside.
I am sorry that your standing armies can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag, and that a nation and people you despise hand your own asses to you on a silver platter, every damn time. That must be so depressing for you… try valium.
I am sorry that all you have is a lot of oil, and limitless reserves of resentment. Wait until the oil runs out, my little desert chickadees, and there is no more money to buy western technology, medical treatments, and all those pretty baubles that you can’t build yourself because the education of your best minds (such as they are) is focused on memorizing the Koran!
I am sorry that I have to open the internet pages and read about Australians being blown up in Bali, teachers in Thailand being beheaded, the rape of Scandinavian school girls, the burning of cars in Paris suburbs, Afghan and Iraqi children blown up by car bombs, Spanish and English commuters exploded by bombs in backpacks left on trains, ad nauseum.
I am sorry you can’t just stay in the 7th century and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
OK, is that better, as apologies go? You’re welcome. I live to serve.
OUCH
A fine rant
Dr Helen points to a vintage class-A rant. I happen to agree with the guy wholeheartedly... he calls a spade a spade. We need more of that in this country.
September 13, 2007
As Alive as Elvis
An interesting commentary on the new Bin Laden tape. It's hard not to agree.
Hoist one to Ace
September 12, 2007
Who knew?
Interesting times
Well... Israel strikes in Syria.
Putin dissolves his government.
The Brits move to the Iranian border.
Condi and Dubya planning air strikes.
There is an old Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times. I guess we are.
September 11, 2007
September 07, 2007
Yamabiru!
Giant leeches in Japan! Send in Godzilla!
September 06, 2007
Hurricane hunting
Ever flown into a hurricane at night? Watch this video and ask yourself- could I do that? Absolutely awesome.
September 05, 2007
"Path to 9/11" down the memory hole?
Felix
Doomsday
Dear god in heaven, I thought we were done with this. A taste of the article-
In the course of talking to Minuteman commanders down in their underground launch capsules, I'd glimpsed what they might be called upon to do. They had the ability to launch from their underground pods up to 50 missiles able to kill 200,000 or 300,000 people each. You do the math.
They certainly had, and it showed beneath their black-humored jokes about coming above ground after a nuclear war and finding "only huge mutant bunny rabbits alive."
They were, thank God, not automatons. As Blair points out, their training system was designed to turn them into automatic button pushers, but the ones I spoke to retained a sharp sense of skeptical individuality. About the gravity of their "mission": killing that many people. And about the sketchy mechanics of it.
One crew member even disclosed to me a flaw in the "command and control" "permissive action" system that was supposed to prevent a madman missile commander from launching his "birds" and starting an apocalyptic nuclear war all by himself. The flaw: the system's susceptibility to the "spoon and string" improvisation.
So much focus has been placed—in film, fiction, and nonfiction—on our supposedly "failsafe" barrier to a lone-madman launch. We'd been told that to launch a missile, two keys must be inserted simultaneously into their slots by two separate launch officers, and that the slots for the keys were located at a sufficient distance from each other that one madman couldn't, say, shoot the other crewman and then use both his arms to twist both the keys simultaneously.
But the missile crewmen I talked to told me they'd figured out a way to defeat that impediment with a spoon and a string. Not that they were planning to do it, but that they knew someone could do it.
You just shoot the other guy and "rig up a thing where you tie a string to one end of a spoon," he told me, "and tie the other end to the guy's key. Then you can sit in your chair and twist your key with one hand while you yank on the spoon with the other hand to twist the other key over."
Shades of the nightmares of my childhood. Like we don't have enough on our plates. You couldn't pay me enough to be President in these times.
via Insty- thanks a pantload, pal...
September 04, 2007
From Jules-
Ahh, kids today
Restores my faith in young folk, yes it does.
Hoist one to Ace
Pride goeth...
As my guildies are wont to say, LOLOLOLROFLMAO!
Spousal abuse
Well, all I can say about this is I'm damn glad I'm a nobody and can seem to make it through life without this kind of excitement. Old times though... let's just say I was once in a relationship where I pretty much demolished a wall rather than strike a woman. The relationship ended shortly afterward. I've been paying for it ever since.
They're both dirty
Yes, Sen. Craig is gay or bi or whatever, and yes, he should go, but Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head here:
The human comedy is not to be disdained. Nonetheless, after listening to the post-arrest audio tape of Craig's interview with police Sgt. Dave Karsnia, I find myself inclining toward Henry Kissinger's pronouncement on the Iran/Iraq war: It's a shame they both can't lose. As it happens, I passed by the very same men's room at the Lindbergh Terminal only a couple of months ago. I didn't go in, however. My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. "Never go to a public lavatory in London," warned Professor Jackson. "I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him."
Just so. Sgt. Karsnia is paid by the police Department to sit in a stall in the men's room all day, like a spider waiting for the flies. The Baron von Richthoven of the Minneapolis Bathroom Patrol has notched up a phenomenal number of kills and knows what to look for – the tapping foot in the adjoining stall, a hand signal under the divider. Did you know that tapping your foot in a bathroom was a recognized indicator that a criminal act is about to occur? Don't take your iPod in with you! Or, if you do, make sure you're listening to the Singing Senators: Hard to tap your foot to "Sweet Adeline," and if you do it's unlikely to be in a manner sufficiently frenzied to attract the attention of the adjoining constables.
What else is a giveaway that you're a creep and a pervert seeking loveless anonymous sex? Well, according to Sgt. Karsnia, when the senator entered the stall, he placed his wheelie bag against the door, which (according to the official complaint) "Sgt. Karsnia's experience has indicated is used to attempt to conceal sexual conduct by blocking the view from the front of the stall."
No doubt. But, if you use the men's room at the airport, where are you meant to put your carry-on? There's not many other places in a bathroom stall other than against the door, unless Minneapolis is planning on mandating overhead bins in every cubicle. In happier times, one would have offered some cheery urchin sixpence to keep an eye on one's bags. But today if you go to the airport bathroom and say to some lad, "Would you like to take care of my wheelie for five minutes?" you'll be looking at 30 years in the slammer.
I've had my own run-in with the cops and, trust me, while most of them are decent upright men and women doing a hard job, there are those who will ruin your life for the sake of a score. I know. Got the T-shirt. And I think in this case the arresting officer is just as much of a slimeball as the Senator. Listen here and see if you don't agree.