20040925
20040923
Make way for another poster
Barbaloot amazes me. She texted me last week: "I want you to help me set up my own blog."
She's been listening to Dennis Prager, some Hugh Hewitt, some Glenn Beck. Her dander is up, dogs. She's gonna do something rash unless she gets to post.
FWIW, she's been following the story of how Dan Rather is imploding, and she now "gets" what web logs can do. She looks at my blogs differently now; she no longer regards the time I spend at them the same way she views playing Harry Potter or Diablo. Blogs have crossed the line from interesting geeky diversion to, well, something deeper, more important, engaged with the world. Those who dismiss arguments that blogging has had its watershed in RatherGate should interview Barbaloot about it.
We discussed it some, and she chose to post here for a while, taking the pseudonym I have always used for her. If she wants, we'll launch her on her own blog later.
I'm hunting antelope this weekend, and plan to have her set up before I go, so watch this space.
Did I mention that she's the best thing that ever happened to me, and that I don't deserve her? And that if she finds out I got that MP3 player she'll kick my ass?
She's been listening to Dennis Prager, some Hugh Hewitt, some Glenn Beck. Her dander is up, dogs. She's gonna do something rash unless she gets to post.
FWIW, she's been following the story of how Dan Rather is imploding, and she now "gets" what web logs can do. She looks at my blogs differently now; she no longer regards the time I spend at them the same way she views playing Harry Potter or Diablo. Blogs have crossed the line from interesting geeky diversion to, well, something deeper, more important, engaged with the world. Those who dismiss arguments that blogging has had its watershed in RatherGate should interview Barbaloot about it.
We discussed it some, and she chose to post here for a while, taking the pseudonym I have always used for her. If she wants, we'll launch her on her own blog later.
I'm hunting antelope this weekend, and plan to have her set up before I go, so watch this space.
Did I mention that she's the best thing that ever happened to me, and that I don't deserve her? And that if she finds out I got that MP3 player she'll kick my ass?
Buy only the amount of electronics you must have to survive to your next paycheck
Consumer electronics prices continue a weird downward spiral. I posted recently about my beloved iRiver iHP120. I scored an open-box special from BestBuy at just under $300---new ones went for $339. When I was choosing a new LeapPad book for Boy's birthday, I glanced at the MP3 players again and got one of the nastiest buyer's remorses of my life.
They had put their existing stocks of iHP120's on clearance for $269. Making room for the 40GB model? Maybe. Or maybe they're making way for a player with a screen that shows JPEGs and BMPs too. Same MSRP as the audio-only player.
That remorseful incident was last Friday. Today, browsing at a CompUSA, I saw they still had their iHP120's at $329.
They had put their existing stocks of iHP120's on clearance for $269. Making room for the 40GB model? Maybe. Or maybe they're making way for a player with a screen that shows JPEGs and BMPs too. Same MSRP as the audio-only player.
That remorseful incident was last Friday. Today, browsing at a CompUSA, I saw they still had their iHP120's at $329.
20040922
Roxaaaannne
More men than women have failed to reproduce in each generation.
This item from FuturePundit is not news, it's merely repeatable objective proof of something geeky men have always known:
"There are men around who aren't able to have children, because they are being outcompeted by more successful males."
Any bearer of a Y chromosome who's seen Roxanne can tell you this, though in less charitable terms: "You wanted it all. All the romance and emotion, all wrapped up in a cute little nose and a cute little ass!"
[FuturePundit's] guess is that the legalization and increasing use of divorce has increased the gap between what percentage of women and what percentage of men manage to reproduce in each generation.
Think of the thousand Princes in Sa'udi Arabia, and how they came to be. Then think of the millions of poor schmucks in such countries, who will never get laid in their lives, let alone sire children, because of a paternal religious/political system that treats women as property and allows men to hoard them under polygamy. Liberalized divorce simply means shifting the balance of power over procreation from man toward woman. Clearly, having all of the power rest with the man has not been beneficial there.
A shortage of females will very likely select for genes carried by males who become more successful.Check out the quote from Roxanne above. Shifting the balance completely over to the woman will result in attractive, hunky guys who know how to talk women out of their clothes. Is that how brutal Mother Nature would define success?
20040921
I don't deserve her
Barbaloot and I celebrated eleven years of marriage this weekend. I chose Moroccan, and suggested to her to invite Firstborn. Like a shot Firstborn agreed.
I am lucky to have this woman. I don't deserve her, but she's mine.
20040918
20040917
Add one more industry, Laila
We would also like WUTT! to be recognized for our opinions on Film and Television. To wit:
Which supporting actor do you think most deserves a lead role in a major Hollywood motion picture?
It's time for the Baldwins, Travolta, Cruise and the others to step aside and let some sunlight reach through the canopy of this knotted forest. These people deserve Star Vehicles.
Winner: !
Runner-up: !!
Actress: !
Please offer yours in Comments.
Which supporting actor do you think most deserves a lead role in a major Hollywood motion picture?
It's time for the Baldwins, Travolta, Cruise and the others to step aside and let some sunlight reach through the canopy of this knotted forest. These people deserve Star Vehicles.
Winner: !
Runner-up: !!
Actress: !
Please offer yours in Comments.
20040915
Ownership society
If a company finds that a particular property has become a liability to the point it affects the company's stock price, it can spin the property off.
Chaz reminds me of a grassroots plan to buy a major anti-gun broadcast network and assign proxy to the fire-breathing gun lobbyist Neal Knox. He'd take the network in a new editorial direction.
The plan looks more feasible today than it did when it was floated years ago. The network? CBS.
I advise holding out a while longer. If VIA goes below 30?
Chaz reminds me of a grassroots plan to buy a major anti-gun broadcast network and assign proxy to the fire-breathing gun lobbyist Neal Knox. He'd take the network in a new editorial direction.
The plan looks more feasible today than it did when it was floated years ago. The network? CBS.
I advise holding out a while longer. If VIA goes below 30?
Yes we do, but . . .
Orin Kerr asks at VC, regarding RatherGate: C'mon, folks: don't we have more important things to blog about?
Remember why we Americans in general and bloggers in particular are obsessed with media dishonesty and inaccuracy. That election over which Orin expresses concern cannot be expected to conclude fairly or peacefully if a major media outlet is carelessly reporting a fraud passed to them. The power of the media in political affairs is a given. The responsibility that
the media have in these affairs is unenforceable.
As far as I am concerned there is prima facie that the memos are frauds. Consequently the network that relies on these memos should answer challenges to their validity, and challenges to their fairness in other reporting about the memos' subject as well.
If true, their errors need to be detected and corrected, and I'd rather have bloggers doing it than Congress or the courts.
If false---if the influence of the network media is diminshing, and that of decentralized media is increasing---media consumers are making it so, and should articulate why.
Either way, I don't see this as a matter distracting the body politic from the truly salient issues of a presidential election. I see this as a message to the body politic to be aware of the curvature of the lens through which they view the election, and to either correct that lens or discard it if they feel it cannot be trusted.
The only way to do that, within Constitutional constraints, is to point out the distortions, in painful detail, over and over and over, right now. It will not interfere with discussion of genuine campaign issues, it can only help.
20040913
Haven't seen any yet
I was hoping to see some Kalashnikovs in the streets---Sarah Brady said so---but none have surfaced just yet. At least on my usual route along Mississippi, Chambers, and Parker Road, and if there are any in Aurora or Parker, that's where the little bastards would be. Right on the sidewalks. Were they supposed to be falling from the sky?
To anybody reading, if you do see one and don't really want it for yourself, hold it for me, would you?
Maybe I have to wait until after midnight tonight. Tomorrow's another day.
To anybody reading, if you do see one and don't really want it for yourself, hold it for me, would you?
Maybe I have to wait until after midnight tonight. Tomorrow's another day.
Time for some nomenclature, OK class?
Alphecca rates the Manchester Union-Leader highly in its politically balanced approach to reporting on firearms issues. However, their editor needs some schooling:
The thingy that that is projected from the gun, travels to the target and hits it is a bullet. In shotguns, specially built to throw multiple projectiles in a single discharge, the many projectiles are called pellets of shot.
The device that contains the projectile along with a measured quantity of propellant is the cartridge. A shotgun cartridge is called a shotshell.
In a self-loading firearm, such as that class of self-loaders that is now legal to manufacture and market with military cosmetic features, the device that holds and feeds cartridges into the firearm is a magazine. A common misnomer for magazine is clip, which actually refers to a device used to stack cartridges together for insertion into the magazine.
So what the sentence should have said is:
The editor surely did not mean to refer to the Salvo project, which sought to fit multiple bullets in a single cartridge. This was not a shotgun, in that the cartridge contained a number of simple spherical pellets of lead that are thrown from a smooth barrel in a spreading pattern, but an axial stack of bullets, each fitting the bore of a rifled barrel and taking spin from it.
But I digress. If the press wants to be taken seriously, they need to get even the simplest facts straight, even if didactodorks like me can still figure out what they are trying to say.
About the only material difference New Hampshire gun enthusiasts are likely to see after the federal assault weapons ban expires tomorrow are lower prices for high-capacity gun cartridges that hold more than 10 bullets, gun owners and dealers said.
The thingy that that is projected from the gun, travels to the target and hits it is a bullet. In shotguns, specially built to throw multiple projectiles in a single discharge, the many projectiles are called pellets of shot.
The device that contains the projectile along with a measured quantity of propellant is the cartridge. A shotgun cartridge is called a shotshell.
In a self-loading firearm, such as that class of self-loaders that is now legal to manufacture and market with military cosmetic features, the device that holds and feeds cartridges into the firearm is a magazine. A common misnomer for magazine is clip, which actually refers to a device used to stack cartridges together for insertion into the magazine.
So what the sentence should have said is:
About the only material difference New Hampshire gun enthusiasts are likely to see after the federal assault weapons ban expires tomorrow are lower prices for high-capacity gun magazinesthat hold more than 10 cartridges , gun owners and dealers said.
The editor surely did not mean to refer to the Salvo project, which sought to fit multiple bullets in a single cartridge. This was not a shotgun, in that the cartridge contained a number of simple spherical pellets of lead that are thrown from a smooth barrel in a spreading pattern, but an axial stack of bullets, each fitting the bore of a rifled barrel and taking spin from it.
But I digress. If the press wants to be taken seriously, they need to get even the simplest facts straight, even if didactodorks like me can still figure out what they are trying to say.
20040912
"There will be a next move. Count on it."
In reference to the forged Bush TXANG memos, Sandy at comments at ChicagoBoyz that "we're going to see attempts to bring the blogosphere/net under gov't. control."
Could gigital rights management could be applied to this task somehow?
Oh and remind me again how the current McCain-Feingold-reformed situation is better, wherein Big News has a free hand to report on candidates, but certain other entities have legal limits imposed on their political speech within X days of the election.
Could gigital rights management could be applied to this task somehow?
Oh and remind me again how the current McCain-Feingold-reformed situation is better, wherein Big News has a free hand to report on candidates, but certain other entities have legal limits imposed on their political speech within X days of the election.
Red sails in the sunset . . . .
I like Geek's postcard to DiFi.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead. The 1994 AWB sunsets.
Oddly enough, as I've shopped for these dreaded weapons during these ten years, prices spiked on the pre-ban weapons early, but the free(er) market reacted. Rule-beating weapons (no flash hider or bayonet lug, some domestic parts) otherwise identical to the banned weapons appeared promptly and prices quickly settled down, even to levels below those for the pre-bans.
Without realizing it, the proponents of the AWB energized a domestic industry in weapons that used to be strictly imports. Of course they didn't anticipate this unintended consequence. Will they learn from it?
So what will happen to prices? Up, or down? Supply increased during the ban, as companies set themselves up to manufacture domestically what the AWB would not allow them to import, and that capacity isn't going away. It was more affordable for me to get an FAL during the ban than before it. With the AWB sunsetting, some products will be legitimate to import again, so overall supply increases.
On the other side of the price curve, will demand increase simply because a law changes?
My prognostication: many people who get their news from the major press have assumed that these weapons have been unavailable for the last ten years, and now that the ban is over, they'll buy. Prices will spike, but this time the domestic manufacturing capacity will ramp up to absorb it faster than when the ban was imposed (easier to add a shift to machines already tooled up, than to set the tooling up in the first place). Prices won't spike as high and will fall sooner for end items.
Meanwhile, owners of post-ban guns will want to refit theirs with post-post-ban features. Many of these are bolt-on, such as stocks and bayonets. That capacity is there, in fact the products themselves are, since they were removed from complete weapons or parts kits to make post-ban weapons in the first place, as well as third-party firms making domestic parts for rule-beaters.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead. The 1994 AWB sunsets.
Oddly enough, as I've shopped for these dreaded weapons during these ten years, prices spiked on the pre-ban weapons early, but the free(er) market reacted. Rule-beating weapons (no flash hider or bayonet lug, some domestic parts) otherwise identical to the banned weapons appeared promptly and prices quickly settled down, even to levels below those for the pre-bans.
Without realizing it, the proponents of the AWB energized a domestic industry in weapons that used to be strictly imports. Of course they didn't anticipate this unintended consequence. Will they learn from it?
So what will happen to prices? Up, or down? Supply increased during the ban, as companies set themselves up to manufacture domestically what the AWB would not allow them to import, and that capacity isn't going away. It was more affordable for me to get an FAL during the ban than before it. With the AWB sunsetting, some products will be legitimate to import again, so overall supply increases.
On the other side of the price curve, will demand increase simply because a law changes?
My prognostication: many people who get their news from the major press have assumed that these weapons have been unavailable for the last ten years, and now that the ban is over, they'll buy. Prices will spike, but this time the domestic manufacturing capacity will ramp up to absorb it faster than when the ban was imposed (easier to add a shift to machines already tooled up, than to set the tooling up in the first place). Prices won't spike as high and will fall sooner for end items.
Meanwhile, owners of post-ban guns will want to refit theirs with post-post-ban features. Many of these are bolt-on, such as stocks and bayonets. That capacity is there, in fact the products themselves are, since they were removed from complete weapons or parts kits to make post-ban weapons in the first place, as well as third-party firms making domestic parts for rule-beaters.
20040911
What separates the clueless con-man from the professional
Note to those who aspire to professional con-man status:
If you're going to hack together a smoking-gun memo backdated before about 1990, use the Courier font. It probably monospaces and it does not kern or ligate.
Ligate, you ask? Quick and dirty: typesetting allows the joining of an "f" and an "i" for example. Another thing typewriters can't do. I don't have the time to scan all of the subject forgeries for ligatures (I have a day job, dammit) but it's another thing to look for, y'all.
Further: Hugh Hewitt's drive-time show last Friday night reminded me of what the cost was, to Michael Gartner, when the NBC fraud of exploding gas tanks in pickup trucks was discovered. Mr Gartner had to find a new job---not in internet time, of course, but the internet didn't move as fast then as it does now. The 48-hour estimate from Instapundit reader John Steele sounds sluggish in comparison.
20040910
What we celebrate defines us
In my mailbox this morning:
CES is tasked with 5 personnel for
Saturday's Patriot Day Observance.
Somebody has taken to calling 11 September Patriot Day. This is wrong, folks. "Patriot Day" or "Patriot's Day" is taken. It's 19 April.
Y'know, shot heard 'round the world and all that? Battle of Lexington and Concord, Paul Revere's midnight ride? Or maybe that has become politically incorrect, and now we are directed to celebrate victimhood, to commemorate the times we get struck, instead of celebrating a moment when we fought back.
20040908
Quick hits
I'm not done exercising, by a long way. Next week will be hell, but I'll sleep in my own bed. I can see the cardboard sign: "Will do ATP-45(b) plots and VLSTRACK 3.1 fans for food."
Toad has a date for surgery, to knit the roof of his mouth together. He can propel himself toward the cat food bowl.
Mlle Sklodovska is making progress with physical therapy to improve her balance and posture. But she's not getting what she needs in the G&T department. Barbaloot checked out some books on how we need to handle her, and I'm reading the best she found.
Boy is calming down a bit, but Mlle Sklodovska's occupational therapist suggests we'll be sending him to her too.
Firstborn is, as Professor Henry Jones puts it, "becoming interesting."
Several friends from my days in the cable industry have surfaced again, wondering what I've been up to. I tell them I'm staying out. This is probably permanent. The package is going in for 179 days for next fiscal year, and Prairie AFB is asking me to transfer to AF Reserve and serve them as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee. As long as it remains more of a challenge than drudgery.
Toad has a date for surgery, to knit the roof of his mouth together. He can propel himself toward the cat food bowl.
Mlle Sklodovska is making progress with physical therapy to improve her balance and posture. But she's not getting what she needs in the G&T department. Barbaloot checked out some books on how we need to handle her, and I'm reading the best she found.
Boy is calming down a bit, but Mlle Sklodovska's occupational therapist suggests we'll be sending him to her too.
Firstborn is, as Professor Henry Jones puts it, "becoming interesting."
Several friends from my days in the cable industry have surfaced again, wondering what I've been up to. I tell them I'm staying out. This is probably permanent. The package is going in for 179 days for next fiscal year, and Prairie AFB is asking me to transfer to AF Reserve and serve them as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee. As long as it remains more of a challenge than drudgery.
20040905
I'm in love I'm in love I'm in love with a . . .
The market is way ahead of me, or perhaps I'm waaay behind it. Since I no longer subscribe to Shotgun News, I wouldn't have known that a domestic manufacturer is assembling Galil clones. TCM and I took a road trip to an out-of-the-way dealer who had a V73-110 in the rack. Love at first sight, but love that must remain unfulfilled until I win either the race for the US Senate, or the Powerball.
Vulcan must chamber one in 6.5mm Grendel.
Vulcan must chamber one in 6.5mm Grendel.
Things they need to add to MREs
Single-serving packets of Nutella.
Instead of the pitiful little index-card-sized alcohol towelette, how about a full-sized baby wipe?
Please add your own.
Instead of the pitiful little index-card-sized alcohol towelette, how about a full-sized baby wipe?
Please add your own.
20040902
Quote for the day
Richard Posner guesting at Lessig Blog:
And of course once we decide that the way to prevent terrorism is to change our way of life, we create new incentives for people who want us to change our way of life to resort to terrorism.
I used to think, like many Libertarians, that if America behaved differently in the rest of the world, we would inspire no animus against us.
I thought that, in one version or another, with one or more qualifications, right up until shortly after I began this weblog.
No more.
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