Overheard in the Smallest Room...

SCENE: Roseholme Cottage interior. Night. The taller of the two residents has entered the restroom only to notice the nearly empty roll of bog paper and perform a quick about-face towards the supply cabinet.

Me: "Ha! I nearly fell for your fiendish trap!"

RX: "Trap? You're wearing socks, aren't you?"

"I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

When I was growing up, my Dad said a lot of stuff that went in one ear and out the other. I’d give you some examples, but like I said, it went in one ear and out the other.

One thing that did stick with me was (and I’m sure after all these years this is a paraphrase) “Never borrow money for a depreciating asset,” or its variant “Never pay money to lose money.”

It’s meant a life of, among other things, junky used cars, but they’ve been my junky cars, dammit.
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QotD: It's Not Alternate History Edition

Larry Correia on complaints he receives from people who are hatin' on his hatin' on FDR in Warbound:

"And I’m still getting hate mail about how FDR rounding up a hundred thousand people to throw them in prison camps is just ripping off X-Men… Thanks American education system!"

 .

The oddest Flying Malayman theory I've heard yet...

...was secondhand from one of Roomie's co-workers:

"He wants to know what's going to happen in a couple years when suddenly China releases a bitwise copy of the 777?"

"Um, tell him Chinese-flagged carriers already have, like, more than a hundred of the things. Why wouldn't they just copy one of those instead of doing all this James Bond stuff?"
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The new normal...

Our Dear Reader reminded us yesterday what is most important in life, and that is that no matter what tumultuous events are occurring on the world stage, we should keep calm and carry on like normal. So, like the president, I am not going to worry about world events, and instead I am going to fill out my NCAA squeaky round ball bracket like a good American!

You got Crimea before Ukraine joined NATO, Pootie.

Moscow signals concern for ethnic Russians in foreign countries it once carved up in a secret treaty with the Nazis: http://t.co/s0ixshCrz0
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 19, 2014

...but if we roll over on Tallinn, we might as well give 'em the keys to Brussels, too.

In related news, it's often been joked that Japan could go nuclear during her lunch hour. You might want to think about knocking off for some noodles right now, Hiro, if you know what I mean and I think that you do.
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Ghosts in the machine.

Skynet's writing poetry in my spam filter again:

We always have been and always will be. 

However, upon my arrival I was angler fish

For sale greeted by a busy car park 

And returned a last couple after 

Reverting to the dry fly once more.

The United States Of Bailout

Apparently there's some social media meme where the Yoof of America are whining about their personal debt loads, what with being underwater on everything from their Honda Fit to their Master's in Medieval French Lit. So, like some hybrid of an old INXS video and a Shopaholics Anonymous meeting, they hold up signs displaying their fiscal incontinence, thusly:

"I learned it from watching you, Congress!"

Naturally this is raising a stink, but look at what we as a country have been teaching these people!  Hey, we were fixing people's housing ****ups all through her high school and college years, so why should she think we wouldn't help her? 

The people in the house next door, the ones she baby-sat for, got bailed out when the payments on their NINJA ARM mortgage jumped and they'd both lost their jobs at the Kroger. The bank that practically chased her across the quad, tackled her, held her down, and forced the credit card into her purse her first day on campus got bailed out. Everybody gets bailed out; it's the ultimate magic unicorn Nerf universe, with reactionless actions and causality-free rewards. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are dead, or so the ad agencies and anchorpeople tell us.

Her whole life since she was old enough to understand the big words on the 6 O'clock news has been spent in the land of the bailout, and if you've grown up on participation prizes and scoreless soccer games, then there's no reason to believe you as an individual aren't every bit as important to the world as General Motors or Goldman Sachs. Heck, Congress does this stuff all the time, so where is her money, people?

"We are charging you under Article 58-10!"

@WSJmarkets @instapundit Only wreckers and counter-revolutionary saboteurs deny the glorious economic recovery! #ThanksObama
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 19, 2014

Good thing the Core CPI excludes food and fuel prices, otherwise inflation would be really bad! That dratted George Bush, still wrecking the economy with his legion of saboteurs!
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Neat!

Going through some old pics, sorting and suchlike. Just noticed a neat detail in a pic of Ambulance Driver running his fowling piece. Here, let me zoom in on it for y'all:

Tab Clearing...

• "We are within a few years of an event horizon in industry."


• There was much joy at Roseholme Cottage when Bobbi awoke to find Raising Steam on her Kindle.


• Mechanical ballistic computers: With video!


• Completely imaginary guns.

I don't know why this cracks me up so hard...

...but it does:



Self-driving cars are closer than you think, at least technologically, but there's a sociological canyon of Evel Knievel proportions to jump between here and there.

The whole thing makes me want to go hug a manual transmission.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #80...

A better picture. You can almost smell that new gun smell...

SIG Sauer SP2022 and CRKT Mah Eraser

Top. Men.

Reader ScottJ asked, not unreasonably, in comments:

"Ok, I'm feeling a bit dense on this. Why does the Crimeans voting (foolishly IMO) to rejoin mother Russia equal a return to the thermonuclear war fears from our youth?"

The validity of the election, its legality, whether it was rigged or not, and all the rest of that crap don't mean a fart in a windstorm against the fact that The Smartest Administration Ever is doing a half-assed job of flexing what's left of our war-weary military power in the face of Putin as though he's some sort of third-rate comic opera dictator like Ahmadinejad or Hussein were and not the guy in charge of almost half the strategic intercontinental nuclear warheads on the planet.

This isn't some guy you casually bully between fundraising tours for Congressional candidates and kiddie fitness photo-ops at the White House; we **** up with this guy and what's left of the human race is glowing in the dark and beating each other over the head with axes made of radioactive traffic signs. You don't put the junior varsity in against the Strategic Rocket Forces.

#ThanksObama

Hey, fallout shelters may stop being retro Cold War kitsch and start being relevant again! #ThanksObama
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 17, 2014

Oh, all you Millennial kids who were so smug about your silly paranoid elders and their worries about the looming threat of global thermonuclear annihilation, you are in for such a treat!

Good to see that region is all stabilized.

So, apparently Navy SEALs have seized a tanker full of Libyan oil that had been seized by armed Libyans before it could be shot full of great big oil-leaking holes by other armed Libyans and now the Navy is returning the ship to the Libyans. Not the Libyans who highjacked it; the other Libyans, the ones who asked for it back.

It's good to see that our time-limited, scope-limited kinetic overseas contingency operations have helped produce yet another stable and thriving democracy in the Mediterranean littoral. Maybe we can listen to the media and McCain and sometimes the president* and help do for Syria what we've done for Libya. I mean, if Syria doesn't finish doing it to itself first.


*Any issue that has both Obama & McCain on one side of it, you can be pretty safe looking for me on the other. Every moral compass needle needs an ass end, and they're mine.

That makes as much sense as any other theory.

Sheila Jackson Lee is actually from Bizarro Texas.

Yes, spelling does matter.

Whoever was selling morale patches at the gun show: It's "Deus Vult", not "Dues Vult". "As the membership fees will it!" makes no sense.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 16, 2014

Weak as a kitten.

We parked at the far west side of the Fairgrounds, and the Fun Show was out in the east end, so it was a schlep to get there and back. I had a spring in my step and a song in my heart on the way to the show, but after hours of walking the aisles and then loading my Maxpedition Sitka with 9mm and .22 ammo for the hike back, I could have pointed out the location of every screw in my shins and ankles.

I know part of it was that it was the first time this year I'd laced on my beloved Danner Melees. They're not exactly barefoot shoes, but they have no lift at the heel and relatively thin soles. Even the Asolos I wear in winter are like strapping boards to your feet by comparison. It's going to take some walking to get used to the lightweight boots again.

I feel like one of those emaciated grizzlies crawling out of its winter den all stiff and sore, except the grizzly's been burning calories and not spending all winter loading up on craft beer and pub chow. I need to hit the bike. I need to walk more than a few blocks at a stretch. I will be so glad to see this winter in my rear view mirror.

Houston, we have a problem...

...our desks aren't as cool as this kid's:

(H/T to Silicon Graybeard.)
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Please let us know where to mail your internet.

If MSNBC has taught me anything, it's that the Koch brothers stole the Malaysian jet to block a Jersey bridge because racism. Probably.
— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) March 15, 2014

Hey, this keyboard really is beer-proof!

BANG! Pulled the trigger.

I had threatened to buy a cheap, just-for-fun 9mm blaster at the show, and I followed through on that threat. I briefly considered a LNIB VP70Z, but the trigger on those things is like a mini Captains of Crush for your index finger, which sorta ruins the "just-for-fun" part. Another runner up was a well-worn Beretta 92 Compact with factory nights, which is a pretty sexy pistol, but this one's $459 price-tag didn't match its dragged behind a truck appearance.

For roughly the same money, you could get one of these brand new, also with factory night sights:

Haven't owned a SIG since I parted ways with my last 228 in '05 or so. I like the new grip on the revised SP2022; the old one was apparently made for people who had joints in different places on their hand than I do. Also, whose idea was it at SIG to include those cheesy Fobus knock-off holsters in the box?

It's fun show time!

Let's sing the fun show song!

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

Today I am going to buy something just for fun.
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QotD: *%&# Your Loser Talk Edition

From my friend Don, who I have known via the interwebs and real life for near a decade and a half, since a time when CCW in Illinois seemed an impossible dream, on his first day carrying on a Land o' Lincoln shall-issue permit:

I don't think my satisfaction at winning a 15-year political battle (for me--I have people in my local organization who were getting arrested at the Capitol 25 years ago) is unwarranted. There is a long way to go and more fighting to be done, and there will be wins and losses. But not today. Today is a huge win. You don't have to celebrate with us if you don't want to, but nothing you say is going to wipe the smile off my face.

The first time Illinois Carry's founder approached one of the main sponsors of this year's Firearm Concealed Carry Act, that downstate legislator from a rural district flatly told them that "People will never pass a law to let people carry loaded guns in this state." He wasn't even personally opposed, he just figured it was impossible.

But we have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty. Possibly we were just too pretty to lose. 

Alaska has won, Illinois is winning, California will win. Shut your mouth with the loser talk, hop out of the wagon, and help pull this thing.

Congrats, Don. Excelsior!
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Wiki Tab Clearing...

• Ark of Taste


• Battle of Minorca


• The Lion in Winter


• List of Old West gunfights

Work Stuff

I recently acquired an inexpensive Android tablet, and the reason I did is so that I could proof my work on the online version of S.W.A.T. Magazine which is now available on Android.

There's a trial subscription offer going on right now where, I believe, you can buy a year's subscription and it doesn't bill your card for thirty days, so you can cancel any time in there with no penalty if you change your mind. There's also a few years of back issues that can be purchased and downloaded individually. I've tested them on my tablet and my Galaxy SII telly, and everything seems copacetic.

(And, yes, although I do work for S.W.A.T., I paid for my Android subscription up front just like I did my iTunes one because it's important to me to see the customer experience from the other end.)

Late night fun with the intertweets...

#tweetanuberfact When King Kong scaled the Empire State Building, Frank Hamer climbed up after him and shot him off the spire with a BAR.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 14, 2014

#tweetanuberfact The walls of the Kremlin are actually a masonry veneer over a core of carefully-stacked potato slices.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 14, 2014

#tweetanuberfact The Swiss Alps were built by Roman slaves to serve as the tomb of mad emperor Caligula.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 14, 2014

If either of the latter gets cited in a middle school history paper, my life will be complete.
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QotD: Key Graf Edition

Bobbi gives the perspective on SB 229 here in Indiana:

"(W)hat percentage of unlawful carriers are found out, do you suppose?  One in ten?  This law won't change their behavior; all it does is keep a forgetful parent from committing a felony by doing something that's already legal nearly every other place they visit."

I'm not making a statement; I just want a sammich.

I loves me some Chick-Fil-A, and the one up on 82nd near Castleton Square is an exemplar of the breed. It's squeaky clean and staffed by insufferably polite and chirpy kids and the manager will come around asking if you want a drink refill and take your tray to the trash when you're done. I try and stop there every time I'm out at the hobby shop or the Mountain of Geese.

It's gotten harder to get in there for lunch ever since "wanna do lunch at Chick-Fil-A?" became a sort of shibboleth in the ongoing kulturkampf, because nowadays at noon the parking lot is brim lippin' full of minivans and SUVs, every man jack of them sporting an Indiana "In God We Trust" license plate and a fading Romney/Ryan sticker. I just want a taste of home, not a #3 meal with a side of dogwhistle.

Anyhow, the other day I was sitting there enjoying my Chick-Fil-A sammich, doused in Tabasco like God and Mr. Cathy intended, with a side of nuggets, and surfing the 'nets on my iPad. Lo and behold, a couple sits down at the table next to me, discussing household budgeting matters at a can't-help-but-overhear volume.

She was saying that she wanted to get an iPad because it would be good for reading books, and she was going to look into how much they cost. "Surely the money will be in the budget because we're giving up television..."

"We're giving up cable," he corrected.

"...and we'll just see if we can find one on sale!" she finished.

At which point something happened that I had not experienced in all my borned days. The couple held hands over the table to say grace over the meal, which is not an uncommon sight in a Chick-Fil-A, but she then proceeded to act like she'd never read Matthew 6:5. Either that, or she thought God was hard of hearing, because she began to address her deity as though she needed to make herself heard over the ambient crowd noise at a fast food joint.

It started off with the normal request for God to add whatever nutrients to the food that Chick-Fil-A forgot, and then went on with a litany of requests, suggestions, and complaints until the patrons of the restaurant all knew far more about her family's bunions, boils, battles, and budget woes than any of us wanted to, I'm sure.

I sure hope this isn't becoming a thing.
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"Stop Touching It!", Episode No. Whatever

I'm sure by now everybody's seen the news video of the small town Hoosier police chief busting a cap into his own leg. Thanks to the cooperation of the chief in question and the gun store where it happened, the video of the incident has been made available and is quite instructive, like a sort of Goofus and Gallant Gun Safety Video, only without the Gallant.

Let it be a reminder to yourself to keep that mental video camera running and recording your own gun-handling procedures for constant scrutiny. Unless, of course, you're the kind of person who doesn't make mistakes.

The time tags below are from the linked RTV6 video:

0:35 I'd feel a lot better if the gentleman behind the counter passed the firearm over like it was a deadly weapon and not a can of soup, perhaps with the slide locked back and the muzzle pointing down. Maybe I'm just sensitive about .380s in gun shops?

0:39 Going to lock the slide back, the chief drops the mag in the Glock 42 and then muzzles the bejeezus out of his off-side paw by reaching over the top of the loud end to run the slide. Considering the chief put a bullet through his own mitt in this fashion some years back, this seems to reinforce the saw about teaching old dogs new tricks.

0:49 Presses muzzle of Glock 42 against his weak hand. Granted, he just checked the chamber, but why? Why would you perform that motion with a pistol, loaded or not? What does it do except instill bad habits? I mean, I avoid casually doing that with blue guns for the simple reason that I want my right hand to be really nervous about what's going on whenever it has something that feels like a gun in it.

0:52 The chief draws his off-duty gun, a Glock 23, ostensibly to check the size of it against the 42. Again, WHY? You're in a gun store! There are probably half a dozen Glock 19/23/32s in the showcase you could use for the size comparison, so there's no need to clear leather with a loaded gat on the showroom floor. Stop touching it! Bonus points for appearing to muzzle his off paw again, this time with a loaded .40.

0:55 Chief goes to holster the gun again. No attempt is made to make a visual or tactile check of the holster's mouth. The off hand is not used to lift the hem of the jacket. Instead, vague motions with the muzzle of the gun are used to get it into the holster.

1:00 Realizing his gun may not be seated and that his jacket feels bunched up, the chief now pulls up on the hem of the garment, causing the toggle on the waist drawstring, which had been holstered along with the gun, to pull the trigger, giving the chief a .4" racing stripe down his starboard butt cheek.

So, lessons learned:

1. Handle all guns like guns. Even the ones in the showcase.
2. Don't point guns at yourself.
3. No, seriously, don't do that.
4. Stop touching it! Leave your loaded gat in the holster!
5. You need to be able to verify by sight and/or feel that your holster mouth is clear before putting your gun away, and you need to be able to do this without pointing a gun at any part of your body. How you do this is going to vary with body type, carry method, and cover garment, but you need to figure out how to do it.
6. If you feel any resistance when holstering, for the sake of Baby Odin, stop and start over again when you have un-****ed whatever was wrong.
7. Cut the drawstrings off any garment you're likely to wear while carrying a pistol in a waist-level holster. Strings and triggers don't mix.

(And before everybody goes all "Ooh! GlockGlockGlock!", in the good ol' days this was caused by the straps on thumbbreak holsters getting into the trigger guards of double-action revolvers.)

Guys! You'll never guess what it's doing out there!

Of all the 12,800 hells, I never thought I'd wind up in the Hell Of An Eternity Of Pulling Your Long Johns On During The Today Show To Go Brush Snow Off The Cars Under A Gray And Spitting Sky.

Back in the land of the living, legends spoke of a season called "summer". Obviously a wish fulfillment fantasy on the part of the myth makers.
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Whimper.

A line of heavy rain just passed over.

South of town it is 61°F and raining. North of town it is 31°F and the rain has turned to snow. The last time my legs hurt this badly, I was lying in the back of an ambulance with bones hanging out.

Seriously, $&#@ this winter.
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Shake your bowcaster in the tyrant's face!

I've mentioned several times before that Michael Z.Williamson's Freehold is one of my favorite SciFi libertopias, by virtue of an interesting exercise in world-building, believable characters, and a lack of eleventeen-page soliloquies.

For the fans, a limited edition signed hardback release is coming out, and we're book-bombing it today. Mine'll go on the shelf next to my signed and numbered copy of Kings of the High Frontier. (Ownership of which is sort of a wookie nerd handshake...)

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #79...

.44 Hand Ejector, 2nd Model, c.1921
.38 Safety Hammerless, 3rd Model, c.1893
.32 Safety Hammerless, 1st Model, c.1900

I detest mother-of-toilet-seat faux nacre stocks with a vengeance. On the other hand, I've grown rather fond of real m.o.p stocks on old nickel Smiths, even though they're much more for looking than shooting when they're that old. Those N-frame stocks are worth purt near as much as the gun to which they're bolted*, and would likely crack to flinders under the recoil, being as how they're probably pushing ninety years old.


*If not more. I haven't checked to see what vintage stocks are bringing, vis-a-vis new ones, and that's not the nicest 2nd Model .44 H.E. on the planet, either.

The distant past of last week.

Brian J. Noggle links to the dusty corridors of his website from the previous millennium, with its essays and columns preserved under cobweb-covered tarpaulins.

My online footprint at the time was far less hip, being on AOL, and all...

Crazy Years.

One of the Bloom County strips I remember best from the days when the earth was young and freshly scrubbed and penguins roamed the front page of the Sunday comic section was the one where Steve Dallas laid out his rationale for suing the Nikolta camera company.

Fast forward thirty years from when that strip ran, to the dystopian future of 2014, when citizens of a Nu-Perfect America shop for cut-price goods manufactured by Chinese slave labor and drag them through the camera-monitored parking lots of a globe-spanning megacorp to put them in the trunks of their GPS-monitored hybrid cars.

While performing this activity in the parking lot of the megacorp's Avon, Indiana outpost, two women, along with a 3-year-old child, were abducted by a monster who proceeded to inflict upon them an afternoon night* of horror that reads like a crime novelist's fever dream.

In the wake of this, following the Steve Dallas Theory of Deep Pockets, the women are suing the megacorp that owns the parking lot that was the site of the initial abduction. I mean, there are cameras in the parking lot, right? What is all this constant monitoring by every entity, public and private, for if not to keep us all safe?


*11AM, 11PM... what difference does it make, really?

AFK BRB

Gone Shootin'.

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This made me smile.

This 102 yr old man has driven the same Rolls Royce for 82 years--A 1928 Rolls Royce pic.twitter.com/HlvEWhNmrj
— History Pics (@HistoryPixs) March 8, 2014

Yikes!

Thanks to the video here, I went to look up the ocean sunfish, or mola, here. That's where I learned that the cartoonishly-harmless-looking-yet-Mini-Cooper-sized sunfish has long, clawlike pharyngeal teeth back in its throat, which are nothing compared to what a moray eel keeps back there.

I rather expect Geiger-esque oceanic fauna to come visiting after lights out tonight.
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"She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

I've heard complaining that we were going to do nothing in Crimea.

Personally? I sure hope the complainers are right.

There's not much we can do. Certainly almost nothing without EU/NATO backing, and you can get great waffles in Brussels. I mean, London's entangled financially; Paris and Moscow have been seen holding hands under the table a lot over the last few years; and I could be wrong, but I doubt that de-nuclearized Germany is willing to shiver through the winters without Russian gas just to make a point.

If Putin wants to carve off Crimea and leave a Finlandized rump Ukraine, then that's what's gonna happen after all the posturing is said and done. Unless you're willing to go toe-to-toe with the Russkies over murky party politics in a country where we have no real national interests.

A lot of people have pointed out that it's a little hypocritical of the U.S. to get on our high horse about invading other countries, to which my rebuttal is that our invasions were classic models of Wilsonian post-war geopolitics: Soul-searching, consensus-building, going hat-in-hand to the League of Nations for resolutions. If Putin had done that, we'd still be stalling him in the Security Council and demanding to see the yellowcake.

Russia, on the other hand, is playing here by the rules of geopolitics as they have been since the founding of the first nation-state: Putin saw something within his sphere of influence that he felt was in his national interest, and he used troops to effect that interest with no more concern for what the neighbors might think than Queen Victoria would have felt.

My biggest worry right now is that all these dithering half-measures with lone destroyers and partial squadrons are ramping up the possibilities for an accidental incident with no real upside for us. We'd feel real stupid blundering into WWIII because imaginary patrol boats shot at the Truxton.

Die ganze Ukraine ist nicht die Knochen eines einzigen Alabaman Grenadier.

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It's a funny ol' planet...

I was trying to google up a story from the Ambulance Driver Files, and stumbled across this headline, which was so precious I just had to share:

Ambulance caught carrying 49 live pangolins

"Run! It's the 'bolance!"

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Guys! Guys! Best idea ever!

Chipping in on pizza is passé. Who wants to go in on a turboprop nuclear bomber with me?

*checks pockets*

I got ten bucks. It's cool, though; we can do a Kickstarter or something.
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Changing definitions.

Some words are so hard to define concisely that it takes a story or proverb to really explain the concept. Sisu, for example, which I remember mostly from reading the instruction manual for Crescendo of Doom in high school.

Another is "chutzpah", which is a Yiddish word for a certain sort of... Boldness? Impudence? But to the point of recklessness?

Anyway, the standard illustrative description of chutzpah for me used to be "The kid who murders his parents and then pleads to the judge for mercy on the grounds that he's an orphan." That takes chutzpah.

Like I said, that used to be my go-to illustration for chutzpah, but not anymore! Oh, no, it's been completely eclipsed. My new illustration for chutzpah is "The senator on the Intelligence Committee complaining that having her computer spied upon in secret by the CIA is un-American." That is just some gobsmacking, jaw-dropping, breathtaking chutzpah right there, Senator Feinstein. Haven't we just been assured by you and your fellow politicos that having one's private data sifted by the State Intelligence Organs is as 'Murrican as blue nitrile gloves or standing in line at the DMV?
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"Being in the Indian navy is like taking a cruise..."

"...on the Carnival Triumph."

Indian navy
Yes, you can sail the seven seas
Indian navy
If you can put your mind at ease
Indian navy
Uses bargain electric wires
Indian navy, Indian navy
Has unexplained electric fires
Indian navy
Come on, protect the motherland
Indian navy
The CO2 leaks aren't so bad
Indian navy
The group insurance is pretty rad!
Indian navy, Indian navy, Indian navy (Indian navy)

Because I hate using my best material at an away game...

Robb quoted it yesterday, so I will, too:

The relentless pressure of centuries of party politics in the US has finally resulted in breeding a highly specialized strain of political animals.

Like a swaybacked dysplasiac GSD or a shivering teacup Chihuahua, they are perfectly adapted for winning a blue ribbon on election day and very little else.

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I don't mean to be cocky, here, but...

...this dude's link spam is a little transparent, because he's just not selling me on his complaint:

Click to embiggen.

The first robin of spring?

Or just another winter soldier?

"Think I'll drive and find a place to be Surly..."

Surly Long Haul Trucker spotted outside Twenty Tap yesterday. Side streets still had reasonable amounts of slushy icepack in the shade.

We'll use the caption above for the segue:

.

As things begin to shape up for 2016...

...I want this hung around Hills' neck like a frickin' albatross:

Reset in our time! pic.twitter.com/GuEPVD4FkN
— Robb Allen (@ItsRobbAllen) March 6, 2014

Hey, look! They already had a mug shot!

In response to the rather noisy year so far in Naptown, the IMPD has resorted to a "Flood the Zone" defense, calling in reserves to handle normal patrol duties one area at a time while the cops who normally patrol that zone squad up and fan out to round up the usual suspects.

I don't know if last night is a result of this, but while serving a warrant at what is being described as a "known drug house" in the 'hood in southeast Indy last night, four cops got shot up by a frequent flier who was killed DRT by return fire. None of the officers were seriously injured, although two remain hospitalized, but the news has implied that there were some vest saves to thank for that.

As was hinted at by the collection of mug shots of the deceased in a previous post, a combination of the War on (Some) Drugs, a revolving-door justice system, the plague of avoiding trials by getting pleas for lesser charges, and an undermanned and -funded* PD creates the typical big city problem: There are a lot of people walking around who should really be in jail, and everybody knows it.

This year in Indy, they've been killing each other at a fairly brisk clip, but unfortunately the incidents known euphemistically as "NHI" (for "No Humans Involved") or "misdemeanor murders" still count against the city's homicide total and therefore there is a public outcry, fanned by the cheerleaders in the media, to Do Something. And so something gets done, and you get what we got last night.

Personally, I find it hard to get all hand-wring-y and do-something-ish about murders of the sort where the cops arrive and know the decedent by name, but maybe that's just me.


*But don't come whining to me for more funding when your spending priorities with what you do have are so whack.

Sowing the wind...

So Hillary is trying to run around and buff up her Serious Foreign Policy Hawk credentials by comparing Putin to Hitler?

Are you sure you want to be drawing that comparison, Madame Former Secretary?
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As has been mentioned before...

...the single most dangerous thing one can be doing in the city after dark is Minding One's Own Business, because apparently that's a surefire way to get someone to spray bullets at you, at least if the eyewitness testimony of survivors is to be believed.

The second most dangerous thing to do is Turning Your Life Around. Going by local news reports, if you start Turning Your Life Around, you will inexplicably wind up face down in a convenience store parking lot at 0300 with a bag of somebody else's money in your hand, a chalk outline, and half a magazine's worth of the taxpayers' bullets in your ass.

Primitives amazed by technology.

I had no idea that there was a big kerfuffle in some European countries about Google Street View.

I had heard that foreigners were ignorant hill tribesmen with bones in their noses that thought cameras stole your soul, but I'd always thought those were just crazy traveller's tales.

Photography is not a crime, remember, hippies?
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That's the guy!

So, you might remember our little primer on "How To Not Wind Up A Homicide Victim" the other day, offering such easy-to-follow tips as "Don't Do Drugs" and "Don't Stand Around On A Street Corner Minding Your Own Business, Not Doin' Nothin', At 1AM."

The problem with both of these activities is that they exponentially increase your contact with criminals of the sort that might be a little hazy on the whole "Thou Shalt Not Kill" concept.

Some further things to avoid:

• The guy with the shaved head, crazy eyes, and facial tattoos. I hate to sound judgmental, but I could pick that dude out of a lineup, and I wasn't even there.


• Family members who get matching airbrushed hoodies to go get in tag-team Jerry Springer-esque brawls at the county courthouse.

Knowing Ambulance Driver...

...I can't believe his post title "Kids and Old People" was not intended as a reference to this scene from one of the most underrated comedy films ever:

QotD: Already On The Books Edition

Unc on the NICS changes:

(W)hy maintain a database of those who have been denied? I mean, it’s not like ATF pursues those people in the first place.

That would probably be too much like work. Besides, you have to go out and find those guys; it's easier to hassle FFLs because buildings are usually right where you last saw them.
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Continuing edjumacation...

The other week we went to a class on Indiana firearms law. Next month, at the NRA Annual Meeting here in Indianapolis, the world famous Ambulance Driver is going to be putting on a class on Shooter Self-Care First Aid.

You should sign up! I did!
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Bad faith discussion.

So a campus carry bill is wending its way through the legislature of the Gem State and the New York Times, obviously concerned with the goings-on of colleges 2,400 miles from Planet Manhattan, published a guest op-ed from Boise State professor Greg Hampikian:

In light of the bill permitting guns on our state’s college and university campuses, which is likely to be approved by the state House of Representatives in the coming days, I have a matter of practical concern that I hope you can help with: When may I shoot a student?

Ignoring the fact that the professor went on in the same vein, trying hard to be arch for another several paragraphs, my first impulse was to take his opener at face value.

Well, professor, since the whole point of campus carry is that you have the same rights on a college campus as you do elsewhere in the state of Idaho, understand that the Idaho Code lays out when you may shoot a student in Title 18, Chapter 40, under "Justifiable Homicide", 18-4009:

18-4009. Justifiable homicide by any person. Homicide is also justifiable when committed by any person in either of the following cases:
1.  When resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person; or,
2.  When committed in defense of habitation, property or person, against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence or surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends and endeavors, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter the habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any person therein; or,
3.  When committed in the lawful defense of such person, or of a wife or husband, parent, child, master, mistress or servant of such person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished; but such person, or the person in whose behalf the defense was made, if he was the assailant or engaged in mortal combat, must really and in good faith have endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was committed; or,
4.  When necessarily committed in attempting, by lawful ways and means, to apprehend any person for any felony committed, or in lawfully suppressing any riot, or in lawfully keeping and preserving the peace. 

Seems pretty clear.

Then I Googled up the good professor who, as it turns out, is not only a professor of biology but also of criminal justice, working with DNA evidence on the Innocence Project. Now, I'm generally in favor of seeing innocent people not incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit, but this guy has the earmarks of a crusader.

If you read some of his other opinion pieces on firearms, you begin to hope that he approaches biology with more rigor and logic than he does gun control, because his opinions on the latter are definitely shaped entirely by his widdwe fee-fees.

In other words, his whole "when may I shoot a student" thing is schtick. He knows damned good and well what Idaho law is on the subject, but he fears his own emotional incontinence and projects it onto everybody else, and that is why he refuses to engage in a good faith discussion on the topic.
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The cherry on the icing of the cake of that story.

Top. Men. http://t.co/4foi4GYJLB
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 3, 2014

Truly the smartest people in the room.
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Sigh.

I can't scream into a pillow because it would freak the cats out.

I am so done with winter it's not even funny.

Foregone conclusions.

Didn't watch the Oscars. I generally don't, but you pretty much can't avoid mention of them on the TeeWee this morning.

I'll admit that of the Best Picture nominees last night, I'd only seen Gravity and American Hustle. The former was a great cinema experience, but struck me as a little SFX 'splodey for a Best Picture; everyone knows that if you're having fun and sitting on the edge of your seat, it must not be Art. The latter, however, had a combination of great acting and moral ambiguity that should have been crack for the voters.

In retrospect, it never had a chance, of course.

I've got a script that should be sure-fire Oscar bait. It's just one dude sitting in a chair in an empty room, looking at the floor, and muttering "Racism... Racism... Racism..." for 90 minutes. Not a cracker in Hollywood would vote against that, for fear of appearing... well, you know. If I can get Spike Lee to direct, it'll be a slam dunk.

Sorry about that...

I was worse than useless this morning.

And this afternoon.

Fairly far into the evening, actually.

It's safe to say that Sunday was pretty much a wipe. We'll try again tomorrow.

Obviously, I took today as seriously as the leadership of the European Union took the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when they announced on Saturday that they would hold a meeting about what to do about it first thing Monday morning. Way to let Vlad know how important this is: "We're going to talk about writing you a stern note when we get into the office on Monday!"

From the Beeb.co.uk:

"This situation is so important we're going to have crisis talks... in a couple days."

Meanwhile, here's my impression of Secretary of State Kerry on Meet The Press this morning:

"Hold me back, bro!"

Guns don't kill people, crazy knife-wielding maniacs do.

These brutal massacres would stop if we'd just make guns illegal! http://t.co/VsDMhpZnVH
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 1, 2014

Strange Dreams...

I was living in some little suburb of some weird dream version of Nashville that looked more like Taos, New Mexico, only greener, with mountains ringing the horizon. I'd get together with some neighbors every Monday night to play Scrabble, and among these neighbors were Johnny Carson and Kathy Lee Gifford. I borrowed the USB adapter for Johnny's Kindle and had to sneak it back into his house one Tuesday morning without waking up his Lhasa Apso and triggering a spastic barking fit.

There was an early Cold War propaganda film about the US Navy's powerful new fleet of supercarriers that were going to keep the Russian bombers away from our eastern seaboard, complete with five or ten Forrestal-class carriers starting in stern-to-stern star patterns and steaming away from each other while launching synchronized pairs of F8U and F3D fighters.

There were also these giant fixed pentagonal platforms, like carrier decks on oil rigs, that had five outward-facing catapults launching A4D Skyhawks. There was no way the aicraft could recover on those platforms. I guess they were supposed to shoot down Russian bombers and ditch or fly back to the mainland or something? The whole thing was like some Brobdingnagian techno-mechanical Esther Williams production.

Later, I was standing in a park overlooking the ocean. The slope down to the waters of the bay was covered in loose rock. There was a plane overhead, an early prototype jet with twin tails like a de Havilland Vampire, that came roaring across at treetop height. It had a red fuselage and yellow wings and empennage. We were watching one of the first jet flights in the U.S. and the plane was moving faster than anything anybody's ever seen. I remember I knew the pilot and waved as the plane streaked overhead.

The plane pulled straight up and over into a loop, and then roared straight down into the waters of the bay a few hundred yard away at full throttle. Debris went flying everywhere, including something skipping and bouncing into the rocks on the slope below us. Someone else in the park went scrambling down to get it as my brain processed what the lime-green missile I had just seen lodge itself in the rocks below was. "No, don't!" I yelled, "that's his helmet!" And yes, like the airborne song, his head was still inside.

And then some other stuff happened.

And then I woke up.

I realized I had just had a dream that would make Absolutely No Sense Whatsoever to a human living a hundred years ago.
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It's déjà vu all over again...

BREAKING: Ethnic Germans in Danzig Corridor call on the Fatherland for protection from their neighbors.

Meanwhile, the president has announced that this aggression will not stand and that, if necessary, we will join the League of Nations in drafting an even stronger condemnatory resolution.

The posturing from the White House is... well, I just don't get it. We're not going to war with a nation that commands the second largest intercontinental thermonuclear arsenal on the planet over the sovereignty of a nation most Americans couldn't point to on a map if you gave them three tries. And the EU isn't going to boycott trade with their main energy source in the middle of Fimbulwinter. Tsar Vladimir knows all this.

Putin is going to do whatever Putin wants to do in Ukraine and all the rest of the world can do is talk about it.
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Thank heavens Archdukes are thin on the ground...

...'Cause it's feeling like it's about time for one to get shot.

The world's media is falling all over itself in fits of euphemism as "groups of armed men" riding in Russian military aircraft seized airports in Crimea.

I want to retcon history with this phrase!

• Paul Revere riding the streets of Boston yelling "Groups of armed men are coming! Groups of armed men are coming!"


• FDR speaking to Congress: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by groups of armed men riding in airplanes of the Empire of Japan."


• James Forrestal and Howlin' Mad Smith on the beach at Iwo Jima looking up at the flag raising on the mountain: "Holland, the raising of that flag on Suribachi means groups of armed men for the next five hundred years."

The U.S., who is going to sit this one out and everybody knows it, issued some pro forma boilerplate Stern Language and then underlined that we didn't really mean it by having FLOTUS send POTUS scurrying around the White House halls like a bichon frise after a ball:



Brrr! Fearsome!

Well, Ukraine, looks like you're on your own. Call Angela and François; maybe they'll get your back.
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If this flops, at least I know who to blame.

My friend Marko and I are very bad influences on each other when it comes to firearms and consumer electronics purchases.

Last couple times I've visited Castle Frostbite I've returned with some purchase from Best Buy that I bought because... well, I can't really remember why. "Should I buy this?" is just not a question we ask each other because we know the answer will be somewhere on the spectrum from "Sure, if you feel like it..." to "Oh, dude, yes! That's awesome! Of course you should buy it; I'll get one, too!"

I'm happy with my smart phone. I'm good with my old and mediocre cameras. My desktop machine should be good for several years yet... But ever since I shelved my key lime G3 iBook, I haven't had an easy time with finding a good mobile device to do everything I wanted. I've tried a few solutions:

• Eee 900: Too small for extended writing. Eebuntu requires more involvement than I'm willing to give. My computer nerding days are more than a decade in the past; I just want to do stuff on them, not futz around with them.


• 17" HP laptop: Good for a desktop replacement while actually on vacation, too big for the seatback trays in coach while getting there. Look like a douche busting out that suitcase-size screen in Twenty Tap. Don't need a portable productivity machine that has World of Warcraft loaded on it, thankyouverymuch.


• Kindle Fire: Good for reading books you'd normally read in paperback and watching Archer episodes. Too small for reading illustrated books you'd buy in coffee table format, and writing on it is a pain.


• iPad 2: Best all 'round solution thus far. Good for reading and watching video. Big enough to surf the web without having to use Tapatalk and other mobile browser shortcuts. Office for iPad is vaporware so far and, if history is anything to go by, will be buggier than Maine in June and priced like imported sin when it gets here. Best keyboard is Apple Bluetooth piece that's a separate item to lug. No expandability; no ports; you will conform to the vision of the Masters, hipster.

Still wanted something that would run Office, and have a decent yet portable keyboard as an option... So in a conversation the other day, I mentioned to Marko on Facebook that I'd seen some awfully low prices on refurb'ed Microsoft Surface RTs and... should I buy one?

Captain Enabler replied "At that price it's like you're buying Microsoft Office and getting a free tablet!"

Powerless in the face of such logic, I did. I'm willing to give it a shot.

QotD: Bantha Tracks Edition

Do you really think that the Huts would have put up withTuskan Raiders for more than a couple of weeks before they got into their sandbarge thingies and had themselves a Tuskan shoot?

Thank you, Goober. You have absolutely made my day.

Go read that post, because it's laugh-out-loud funny.
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Well, this is new...

I've never been accused of being a Politically Correct Diversity Weenie before; this feels new and strange. Why has this happened?

Allow me to put on my "Speaker To Dorks" hat for a minute. And if you get that, you should be a little embarrased.

My normal readers may not be aware that there is an ongoing flap in the Parliament of Nerds that is the community of SF (that's Science Fiction here, not Special Forces) writers and their orbit of hangers-on and wannabes. I have not been following it closely, but it has consumed a goodly portion of the bandwidth of sites dedicated to those topics for months. Because of this apparently everything on the internets, including my post from the other day about the Planet of Hats trope, is being viewed through this lens by the participants.

Now Sarah Hoyt, who I will admit I haven't read and so have no clue what she's all about, is apparently sending out email fire missions to rebut... what she thinks I wrote. Which was apparently a cri de couer for Diversity Rainbow Message Fic or something, rather than a comment that people don't seem to be so hot at imagining The Other as real, three-dimensional individuals because... well, we just don't. Dunbar's Number and all that.

Apparently some people got a raging case of butthurt at my use of the word "bigot" because they're uncomfortable with their paleolithic underpinnings or something? I dunno. This is why I don't go to sci-fi conventions and rennfairs anymore, though. Most of these people didn't get half the swirlies they had coming.

I commented over there:

What a great Rorschach blot of a post that turned out to be. Some people look at an inkblot and see a clown face, others see two nuns having sex with a Shetland pony on a rubber sheet.

Why does the mention that humans are xenophobic bigots who view outsiders as something other than real people make folks so defensive? It’s merely a fact.

You people are so wound up over SFWA WTF-ery that you’re drawn into a defensive circle and shooting at shadows.

Oh, and thanks to an Instalanche the comments section from my post has picked up near a hundred comments overnight, turning into what PDB so aptly called "Comic Book Guy Thunderdome". Because don't you dare make offhand comments about D&D or Star Trek that are not 100% approving and absolutely technically correct, you... you... Mundane, you!

Hoosier boomstick legal news...

...Roomie has the dirt.
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Realpolitik

BREAKING: Polish army troops have attacked the radio tower at Gleiwitz!

I'm sure the EU is busily writing a condemnatory resolution that informs Putin in no uncertain terms that if he doesn't knock it off, they'll draft an even stronger resolution.

So it seems like while a majority of the people of Ukraine want to join the free-trade union that is run by finance ministers, deputy ministers of the interior, community organizers, and other student government types, the minority of the people of Ukraine want to join the insular trade organization that is run by the ex-KGB light colonel. And the minority seems to have most of the guns. And the backing of the ex-KGB guy, who is no longer constrained by having to participate in the International Civilized Nation Lookalike Contest down in Sochi.

Good luck Ukraine, you bunch of crazy dreamers.

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” -Osama bin Laden

"America... (w)herever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." -John Quincy Adams

Sorry, guys, but we're all warred out right now.

Interesting times, indeed.
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Photographic proof.

Things have been pretty sporty on the homicide front so far this year here in Naptown, with stiffs turning up in almost Chicago-esque numbers.

Most recently was a flurry of murders that had the newspeople decorating their cupcakes like something out of a Don Henley lyric when the police reported eight murders in a twelve-hour period, a clip that would entirely depopulate the city in just over 140 years if left unchecked.

I would like to note an interesting factoid: Police already happened to have mug shots of seven out of the eight corpses on file. Apparently none of the deceased heeded my advice.

It'd be interesting to know what having a mugshot on file with the po-po does to your chances of getting iced, statistically speaking.
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Why is politics like living near a paper mill?

Because after a while, you don't notice the smell of home.

So, some writer of "literary mysteries" wrote a whining screed about how J.K. Rowling was taking up all the shelf space that was rightfully owed to little people like herself and should stop writing and let other kids have all the fun. It was several paragraphs laced with the politics of envy and zero-sum economic theory that could have been titled #OCCUPYBARNESANDNOBLE.

Larry Correia delivered a classic Larry Correia fisking of her little text-based hissy fit, which was widely linked, and the comments section filled up fast. Among the commenters was some guy signing himself "orangemike" who described himself as a writer and reviewer and was saddened that Larry's castigation of the woman's admittedly noxious screed couldn't be done without dragging ideology into it.

It was pointed out to him that, uh, she'd kinda started it with the ideology, actually, to which he replied "That's not ideology!"

I snapped.

“That’s not water,” said the fish…

That is too ideology. That lady's whining column-ette is the entire foundation of leftist ideology in Cliff's Notes form. That is the Reader's Digest condensed version of Das Kapital and the French Revolution and Cap and Trade and every UAW contract ever written and the Democratic Party's national platform: You've got too much stuff and you need to give some of it to me.
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I pity the archaeologists of the future...

An interesting category of collectibles is "ephemera": Postcards and brochures and those printed family newsletters you get every Christmas from your second cousin in Dubuque*.

Will future archaeologists mine e-cards from some dusty, bit-rotted corner of the internet?


*Firefox's spellchecker does not know "Dubuque". Perhaps I meant "Albuquerque"? it suggests, helpfully.

National Association for the Advancement of Pointy-Eared People

A post at Lurking Rhythmically reminded me of a lesson that SF/Fantasy/Role-Playing Gaming had been (completely inadvertently, I might add) trying to teach me since adolescence, and yet I only really began to grasp fairly recently:

Us humans, we can do anything. I can't, for the life of me, remember the source of the quote, nor can I the quote itself, but on Star Trek, probably Deep Space Nine, there was a quote about humans that's stuck with me. You take 10 Klingons, you've got 10 fierce warriors. 10 Ferengi, you've got 10 shrewd businessmen. 10 Romulans, 10 expert spies. But you take 10 humans, you don't know *what* you're dealing with. They could be anything. 

What you get is ten bigots. Because, see, humans, specifically the humans that wrote that script, look at ourselves as "people" and the other people, the ones with the pointy ears or the furry feet or the bony ridges on their foreheads, as "archetypes".

All Klingons are honor-loving warriors. All dwarves are beer-swilling Lawful Good blacksmiths with, for some reason, bad fake Scottish accents. All elves are ethereal granola-munching bunny-hugging archers. But humans are people and therefore can be good or evil, horticulturalists or mechanical engineers, priests or physicists, saints or monsters.

In Dungeons & Dragons, dwarves can't be rangers and halflings can't be magic users, but humans can be any character class. In Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets is a galaxy-spanning polyspecies polity, but the officer's mess on any Starfleet vessel looks more like a board meeting at Augusta National than it does the cantina in Star Wars. The most homogenous, conformist technological society on planet Earth has everything from tattooed yakuza to sumo wrestlers to lolita cosplayers, but you could title a documentary on Klingons Fifty Shades of Worf.

A perceptive Younger Me would have tipped to this earlier, and maybe wondered if it had any application in the real world whenever I heard "All men are..." or "All redheads are..." or "All Chinese people are..." Ah well, we live and we learn. Or at least one would hope that we do.
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...and more sad news.

My buddy Barkley passed yesterday. Y'all keep Brigid in your thoughts and prayers.
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I has a sad.

I am saddened to hear that Dr. Egon Spengler, great man of science, has crossed the streams.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) February 24, 2014

Link.
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This picture reminds me...

...that I don't currently own an SKS.

I've had several Chinese ones, but these days I don't have any real interest in a commercial SKS (unless your Chinese SKS came back from Vietnam, odds are good it was produced specifically for commercial sale and was never issued to a soldier.)

I want a milsurp one, a legitimate C&R, which means a Yugo or other Euro Combloc gun. Unfortunately, the most common Yugos are the 59/66's and I don't want all that extra grenade-launching goofiness hanging off the end of the gun. Some people dig it, and that's cool, but for me it's just weight and stuff that clutters up the rifle's lines.

Russkie ones are bringing blood money these days, and I haven't seen an Albanian or East German one in the wild in years. This will be a fun stalk.

(I'm not going the internet auction site route, because it always feels to me like the gun collecting equivalent of hunting over a baited field. It'd be like having a computerized database of exactly what old sports cars are in which barns across the country, or having clear wrapping paper on your Christmas presents.)

Against interest?

Why would the owners of a gun store and firing range constantly write big checks to the election campaigns of people who want to ban those very things? Mysteriouser and mysteriouser...
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Care Bear fascism...

Me and my fellow Americans of the gun nut wookie suiter variety have been watching the dramatic events playing out in Ukraine with the smug "I told you so" feeling you get when you see the reason for the Second Amendment piped into living rooms across America in live digital full color surround sound.

Thing is, we brace ourselves for the wrong kind of totalitarianism. The American flavor doesn't do razor wire and cattle cars. Even when Uncle Sam does overreact in a spasm of jackbootery, it is usually followed by hair-shirted self-loathing, investigatory committees, show trials, and damage awards to the survivors: More often than not, American jackboots are cartoonishly over-sized and have great big red, white, and blue pompons on the toes.

American fascism is of the smiley-faced, good for you, eat-your-vegetables, low-fat, mandatory fun variety. In the USA, it's already a borderline crime to do unhealthy things and not like people. This is a country where you can get a ticket for not wearing a seat belt on the way to watch the X-games and it is only a matter of time before, bereft of a national sense of irony, a SWAT team is dispatched to put a stop to a report of bullying.

Therefore, when zampolits come to the American broadcasting industry, they're not going to be Sam Brown-wearing extras from a documentary about the RMVP:

See, when The Censor shows up, she'll have nothing so crude as a red grease-pencil or a razor blade.  She'll be wearing a nice business suit, not a brass-buttoned black uniform and shiny jackboots -- and she may well have no idea what she's really there to do.  It's the soft fascism of dim expectations.

The thing is, the American national media is so in the tank already that the only way they'd make noise about something like this would be if it happened while the dastardly Republicans were at the helm. (Can you imagine the howls that would have gone up from Rockefeller Center if this had happened under the previous administration? Much like Gitmo, drone strikes, and the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, this stuff is apparently only bad when the other team does it.)

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "Ĵɑраηέѕҿ Ӟ ɭɞѵєІ Ϸїᶊḩ ḏᶉǡɨɳɘʀ"

Me: "Huh-wha...? Ohhh... 'Japanese three-level dish drainer'. For a second, I thought you'd said 'three-level douche strainer'."

RX: "They're a very thrifty people."

Blogiversaries...

Silicon Graybeard has turned four.

That's a long time to be turning out regular content that is intelligent and thoughtful. Here's to seeing more in the years to come!

Keeping your toes out from under the wheels of justice.

Apple puts a lo-res camera on the iPad 2 and passes the savings along to you!

In my handy-dandy little pocket-size copy of the Indiana Criminal Code, pages 238 to 258 are largely taken up with offenses relating to firearms. Mind you, this is just the specific firearms-related stuff; general self-defense law is a whole 'nother ball of wax. If you're going to go carrying a gun around on the theory that you might someday need to use it for self defense, wouldn't it be a good idea to know these laws?

Having had a couple of rather high-profile cases involving people with toter's permits in the national news in the last few years, it did my heart good to see the Comprehensive Indiana Gun Law class put on by Guy Relford of TFT packed with eagerly note-taking students.

I'm still processing my notes, which I plan to append to my notes from MAG-40 this past summer. While an 8-hour classroom seminar can't be as in-depth as twenty+ classroom hours, it can be a lot more state-specific. Is it a crime to point a gun at somebody in Indiana? Depends. Is it a crime to shoot somebody in Indiana? Depends. Can I sell this gun to that guy in Indiana? Depends.

The class covered all that and more, and was presented not by some random dude with an NRA certificate, a rubber-stamped state licensed instructor, or a retired reserve deppity, but by a lawyer specializing in 2nd Amendment stuff who's doing the Lord's work on the RKBA front here in Hoosierland. Guy is as hip to the current gun law situation as it applies to Hoosiers as anyone and provides the cites for everything he says. Recommend.

School daze...

At a seminar on Indiana firearms law, learnin' stuff.

Tribal codes...

Pashtunwali is the code of the mountain tribes of central Asia. It is a complex set of obligations one must follow, such as showing hospitality to guests and defending them from enemies, and one spurns it at the cost of outcasting and ostracism.

By comparison, Hoosierwali mostly just asks that you keep your sidewalks free of ice and snow or people will talk bad about you on the internet. Like now.

The picture below, showing the neatly shoveled and salted walk from the front door down to the curbside, while the walk in front of the house remains uncleared, displays the snow-shoveling neighborliness equivalent of wearing a ribbed condom inside out:

Not that I'm bitter or anything, but that pic was taken a few days ago, before the Great Thaw began, and so this afternoon that shady stretch of walk is covered with a lumpy, rock-hard, translucent coating an inch or two thick with the same coefficient of friction and amount of "give" as oiled glass.