Not false, just misleading
It's the kind of thing that sneaks up on me, slowly emerging in my consciousness.

The white-on-blue road signs posted along interstate highways, indicating which services are available at the next exit, use a fork and a knife resting on a plate to show that food is ahead.

Very rarely is that food served on a plate; more rarely still is it eaten with a fork and knife.

It's like how synthetic flavors have asserted themselves on our tastebuds---there's an artificial blueberry flavor, for example, that anyone can identify as "blueberry" even though real blueberries, with which the taster is perfectly familiar, are a completely different taste, also known as "blueberry." Perhaps a "blueberry one" and "blueberry two" or "blueberry (synthetic) and "blueberry (actual)."

Things I learned on the television the other day
Regis Philbin is the Green Wiggle.

Life sciences lesson
Firstborn is becoming familiar with the plants and animals of the Eastern US. I've shown her plantain, burdock, tulip poplar, and sumac. She already recognizes poison ivy, creeping charlie, prickly lettuce, and lamb's quarters.

We are also visiting land that has enough wet spots that she hears peepers at night, and we can see lightning bugs. She saw one hit the windshield a few nights back.

Update on the notebook
The Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform now bears 3 OS's, namely Lycoris, Win98, and Win2k.
Interestingly, when Lycoris is running, any USB device that I jack in causes the CD-ROM to rename to the manufacturer of whatever USB I plug in. The Samsung CD-ROM player becomes a Fujitsu when the digital camera is inserted, or an IOMega when the CD-RW is inserted.
And it stays that way until KDE is restarted.

Annoying.

Happy blogiversary to me
Sorry for the light posting of late. I fear that I've been dropped from some blogrolls, and that stings, but that is the nature of the beast. If I'm not producing enough to keep the hits coming, I am just taking up space.

I am also not willing to move from Blogger, despite several entreaties to do so. It's not an option, for one technical reason: I don't know the tech and haven't the time to learn it. As I travel (as now) Blogger is accessible to me practically anywhere, whether I am traveling with the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform or working from a morale desktop in a God-forsaken downrange location. I don't think other blogging platforms allow this. So I stay at Blogger for the time being, or I take WUTT dark.
Tomorrow will be the first blogiversary of Weck Up To Thees!
Thanks for the hits, the links, that strange cameraderie. And keep coming to visit, even if it isn't as often as it used to be.

we're still just ahead of the replacement level of 2.1 live redneck births per breeding pair
In the contest of Wal-Mart versus Target, we do drop more dollars at Target than at Wal-Mart. They are within a few hundred meters of each other, neither is harder to get to than the other, both are right on our way to I-25.

But please allow your humble narrator to point out that Target's sporting goods section has Pilates accessories.
Wal-Mart's sporting goods sections stock Mini-14's. Target may be hipper, trendier, neater, and all that, but they can also be too "city mouse" for me---they can give me the same cloying sensation that accompanies an Old Navy commercial.

The Wal-Marts that feature "dingy aisles loaded with cast-offs and marked down boxes of cereal" (say, Dell Range Boulevard in Cheyenne, Wyoming), usually redeem themselves by including an aisle of reloading equipment, right down to blister-packed replacement decapping pins for RCBS dies.

Alas, Castle Rock's 24/7 Wal-Mart supercenter has no dingy aisles (Firstborn likes to coo over the live lobster tank). Instead of a reloading section, it has an expanded golf aisle. As best I can determine, the customers still have all of their teeth, normal or better-than-average body fat indexes (visualize trophy wives driving Escalades and Hummers), and no domestic violence convictions (one terrible incident in the parking lot, however). In short, a redneck level waaaay below the national average.

The clerk in Sporting Goods there today replied instantly, "no reloading", so quickly in fact that

• it was clear he knew what "reloading" was
  
• he knew whether any Wal-Mart anywhere would stock reloading merchandise
  
• this Wal-Mart, serving the Douglas County demographic, would rather stock velvet Elvis paintings, or Nine Inch Nails CDs, than reloading merchandise, and
  
• I should have known better than to ask.
  

So no RCBS decapping pins for Fuz today, grumble grumble.

When it came time to load up Linux for the new Clandestine Media Access Platform, to what reseller was Fuz referred by Lycoris? Wal-Mart.

I know that some fellow bloggers refuse to give Wal-Mart business because they import heavily from the People's Republic of China. Point well taken. Just remember that they sell Linux-equipped PCs too. Give them some credit---though they may be selling products of slave labor, they are also, in a sense, selling handcuff keys.

And the pissants who militate against the esthetics of Wal-Marts (excepting blogrolled comixho, of course) are often the same busybodies who form homeowners' associations, and whine over the decline of quote small private downtown shops unquote while kvetching over a recycled paper cup of something syrupy at Starbuck's. If they give a rat's ass about workers' rights, it will not be those of the Chinese who chafe in the PRC's collar.

honey-dews
Update on the Clandestine Media Access Platform: Lycoris runs the CD-ROM and the floppy just fine. The CD's must be ISO-9660 formatted, though, it reads no CD-R's left open by DirectCD, or burnt with a UDF reader on them. Unless there's a downloadable Linux widget for that somewhere . . .

Boy child can load and run his Putt-Putt games on the Mac clone without supervision, including smudged fingerprints on the CDs, and dropping the CD to the concrete floor when he switches from Putt-Putt to Pajama Sam. He has destroyed two games in the last two weeks. On the up-side, he can click through Save the Zoo in about 15 minutes.

Oh by the way, S.22 doesn't do a damn thing about
. . . identity theft other than to limit who can have or sell Social Security numbers, and specify harsher penalties. No reform of tying this number o' th' Beast to one's credit in the first place, which makes it so potent a weapon against its assignee (I hesitate to use the term "owner" or "bearer"). No pilot program to compel the military to return to a DoD-issued service number for all routine admin actions.

"I'm worried that, if this cleverly-named bill gets to the Senate floor, several Republicans might vote for it because it has a popular-sounding title."
This from a fundraising letter from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Your humble narrator would dispute that the name is clever: "Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003." Rather, that it is bland, general enough to be meaningless. All the better for pulling a fast one or making one's vote deniable.

It's also saying a lot that a lobbying organization will admit that some Senators will vote for something without even a superficial familiarity with its contents.

I've long agreed with a proposed Congressional rule that would require every bill to be read aloud, in its entirety, to the Committee of the Whole before it is put to a vote, as well as to the Committee that is responsible for sending it to the floor for that vote. It is one of those commonsense measures that will go nowhere. This Senate bill is the latest example I've taken the trouble to even skim. So be careful if you browse to that link up there in the title of this post, its fat ass spreads across 486 pages.

For Chrissakes, it's got a bit of everything: identity theft, telemarketing fraud, Nationalizing the Amber alert, protecting senior citizens from whatever distracts them from their oatmeal, and shielding whistleblowers. In addition, of course, to the usual suspects, ballistic fingerprinting and The Gun Show Loophole, whatever that is held to be in Senate bill 22.

It's a wholesale bid to overhaul Federal criminal law, including the laws of evidence and sentencing.

To your humble narrator, "Federal crime" is supposed to be an oxymoron anyway, with the exception of those few Constitutionally enumerated offenses such as treason and counterfeiting; and judges are supposed to have control of the sentencing process.

Guard bummer
My trips to Cheyenne are coming to an end. I will spend a few weeks this summer to read Hank the Cowdog to my girls, take a few road trips, work with a few rifles, and start job-hunting.

I will be temping for another entity beginning midsummer, on a military pay status known as MPA (translation not available at this writing). That means a new Schlumberger combined access card with all the bennies, and a new stack of business cards. The insiders' term is Guard-bumming, or working on a succession of active duty or manday periods rather than holding down a continuous job.

During that time, though, I will be sleeping in my own bed, continuing to read Hank to Firstborn and Middlechild, and developing the resume.

Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform update
The Dell notebook's 6GB drive has been scrubbed clean and reloaded with Lycoris.
Am blogging through Mozilla at the moment.
A few hardware items remain to be cleared up, namely the CD-ROM and the detachable floppy. All else seems to be tits.

Then a repartition and an installation of Win98 or 2k to run the stuff I really bought this platform for in the first place.

While I'm at it
Hearty agreement with Will Baude about attempts to amend Senate rules governing the filibuster.

. . . after nine days, any filibuster can be broken by 51 votes. Even if the time limit were double or triple that, I think that this completely obliterates the purpose of the filibuster rule. Let us be clear about something. The filibuster was not designed to ensure "full and fair debate".

Emphasis mine. The Senate as a legislative body is supposed to put a specific minority, the population of a smaller state, on equal footing with those of larger states. The filibuster is one form of leverage to accomplish that end.
The filibuster ain't broke.

Less than optimistic
In fact, I'm full-blown ambivalent about the prospects of Silveira v Lockyer if it goes on to the Supreme Court.

If conflicting Circuit court rulings on the Second Amendment force the Supremes to rule on the question of whether it protects an individual right, they will probably find a way to answer that yes, the Second Amendment is an individual right, but that it can be so thoroughly circumscribed by State and Federal law as to have no meaning.

The ruling would have to discuss the purpose of the Second Amendment, which is a reset button. Judge Kozinski's description of the right protected (not granted) by this amendment, necessarily puts a choice before any other judge who must rule upon it. What judge would rule that a person has a right to challenge with force a hypothetically tyrannical government that might be paying that judge's salary?
What judge would rule that a person has a right that therefore pre-exists the government?
What judge would rule that people should be allowed to make arrangements today, in case of a possible tomorrow "where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees"? What judge would admit that he or she could someday be cowardly or irrelevant?
What judge would rule that the great unwashed masses have an explicit right to access a reset button that could put all them out of their robes, their chambers, their jobs?

I admit that I know few judges, and only a handful of attorneys. Like most people I've had unkind things to say about them as a class, until I needed one, and since recanted on those unkind utterances. But are there many more judges whose opinions agree with Kozinski's? Are there many judges and lawyers who can visualize a time or a circumstance wherein a Doomsday provision would be needed?

If there are, I owe them apologies and gratitude. And pose a further question: what would it take? what would make a judge reach for that reset button himself? I know, I know, courts examine specific real cases and will not rule on hypotheticals.

Side note: Kozinski's dissent is also the first place I have seen a convincing distinction between a State's power and so-called States' rights.

Spam haiku

The other white meat
square meal in a can
The raven quietly contemplates

Found on the Gunsite email list. More at www.spamhaiku.com.

Viddy well, O my brothers
This passage caught my eye, in an article describing the impact of the massively multiplayer online game:

Unlike single-player games, these virtual environments don't go into cryogenic suspension in your absence. Events transpire. Battles are fought. Rivalries flare. Alliances are formed. In a world that can't be flicked on and off, actions have lasting consequences, both narrative and social.
As players build ther characters, accruing strength and skill with experience, they also build reputations and relationships. Survival depends on whom you know, and how much they trust you, rather than simply on the weapons you're carrying. Success depends less upon combat skills than on social interactions.

So I offer some observations.

• Parents of children who have immersed themselves in Dungeons and Dragons fear that role-play games are corrupting them. Even those who dispute that role-play games corrupt children strongly agree that role-play can modify behavior.
  
• Children who misinterpret facial expressions tend towards violence and delinquency. They perceive threats where there are none, making them more prone to violence; they receive stress and dissatisfaction from human company. Prenatal exposure to alcohol is a culprit, though I suspect that other, non-organic causes exist, and under controlled circumstances it may be unlearned, even if organic in origin.
  
• The free market relies as much on one maintaining one's reputation, as on one having recourse to unfair dealers through the courts. Businessmen who deal unfairly or without goodwill get fewer and less valuable deals, even if they operate well within the boundaries of the law. To prosper, one must be trusted and one must trust.
  

Put these all together and what might they spell? Massively-parallel multiplayer games have evolved to the point that a player's actions have consequences that the player may not notice immediately. Among those consequences, a bad reputation. People who do not value, therefore do not cultivate, a good reputation will become life's losers.

By engaging in role-play on this scale, with real people at the millions of distant ends of the game, he will learn real-world values, but in a way that he can afford to lose a few times, come to understand why he lost, and not suffer (or cause) real violence or hardship. She would learn that by giving someone else enough rope to hang himself, she fastens the other end of the rope to herself.

The kid may also learn what many ordinary adults (including many therapists) have not: cultivating and protecting one's reputation by serving others is not tantamount to kissing ass, castration, or selling out. It demands bravery, singlemindedness, and an erotic drive; if more adolescents and teens saw this, they would perhaps be more enthusiastic about growing up and being responsible.

The "unpacking of the face," can make this game therapeutic, can intervene with those troubled juveniles who misinterpret the face. As a game, the kid will likely stay with it longer than he would with interacting with real people. As the game unfolds, the kid learns better to interpret others' emotions and intent, and to work towards longer-term goals; he or she might also benefit from a choreographed "replay" of the poorer decisions and the consequences that they precipitated.

A massively-parallel multiplayer approach is preferable to one manipulated by few people or only one person, even if that one person is a credentialed therapist, because it would better mirror the real world the kid will (re)join. Even some bad actors should be admitted, because we can't keep them out of the real world. Let the therapist moderate, not create, this world.

This is just a thought, of course, and I do not claim it as my own. Many libertarians would find the idea chilling, like the Lodovico Technique made warm and fuzzy by hiding it behind a StarWars videogame, and handing the joystick to the subject. But as a parent, I can sympathize with parents who somehow failed to intervene in the right way, at the right time.

Aaahhhh, much better
Your correspondent has upgraded the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform, aka notebook computer, from a Jurassic-era Compaq Pentium at 66 to a refurbished Dell Latitude, PIII at 500, thanks to a quick drive to Fort Collins. Was leery about the Windows XP, but it seems not to have stolen my soul just yet. It's busy deducing my Social Security number for later upload to its Master.

Aaaaarrrrghh, WTF?
The URL for my blog today returns a web page for Aaron's Bible. Maybe they found Raed . . . .

Unintended mirror site
With a tip of the hat to Swen, your correspondent has found that WUTT, among other blogs, has a mirror site in Japan.

David Brin, please call your office
A proposal for ubiquitous webcam surveillance reminds me of Brin's Transparent Society.
Found via Instapundit.

Bigger than my britches
Your correspondent is inserting Weblog Meta Data Initiative meta tags into WeckUpToThees! just for grins. Wish me luck, hope I don't munge the template again.

Could this be the beginning of a personnel reform?

The armed services "make a terrible mistake" by "having so many people skip along the tops of the waves in a job and serve in it 12, 15, 18, 24 months and be gone," he said. "They spend the first six months saying hello to everybody, the next six months trying to learn the job and the last six months leaving. I like people to be in a job long enough that they make mistakes, see their mistakes, clean up their own mistakes before they go on to make mistakes somewhere else."

Rummy suggests reforms in the assignment policies of military officers. Did he read, was he influenced by, Path to Victory?

Mr. Rumsfeld has made no secret that he views his personnel decisions as equally significant to changes he may bring to weapons procurement strategic doctrine

Mmmmmmmaybe.

We'll know for sure if, some years onward, the policy of "up-and-out" is replaced by "up-or-stay." I see the spectacle weekly, of effective, determined, fit professional men and women who can't juggle themselves into a "slot" that allows them to make lieutenant colonel, even slots in units or responsibilities they do not enjoy, and consequently are contemplating retirement. These are people my age, hell, even younger than I am. We ought to find a way to keep these people in uniform, doing what they like and what they do well.

Rummy's apparent distaste for zero-defects philosophy is also refreshing.

One possible downside:

Reservists could opt for specialties that guarantee more active service time and mobilization if that fit their lives; others . . . would be confident of less time on active duty beyond the weekend a month and two weeks a year of training now.

Rumor has it that Rummy has some "issues" with Reservists. They are harder to mobilize because they, er, have civilian jobs and commitments and mortgages and such. Most of us would have no quarrel with a restructuring that takes us away from private life less often than has been the case for the last decade.

But the DoD's present heavy dependence on reservists is intentional, a lesson learned from Vietnam. If mobilization incurs a widespread social and economic impact, our leaders will be less prone to overseas adventurism. Our experience in Iraq seems to bear this out, that in Kosovo far less so. Would the United States be safer or richer if it were "easier" to go to war?

Found via Donald Sensing.

Aside: even the Gray Lady has a smidgen of difficulty with homonyms.

The idea of merging personnel, which was viewed by some officers as an attempt to reign in the independent analysis of the military's Joint Staff, is not in the proposed legislation.

That would be "rein."