Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Is It Mutant Tuesday Already?



Time flies when you're having fun, or, as the internet would say, "your having fun."

Anyway, we always start Tuesday off with a mutant post and we've got a good one this week. She's an adult female with an asymmetrical extra leg. She seems fiercely independent ("I can get up on my own, thank you") and well adapted to her urban environment. Notice that she has a tennis shoe on the extra foot. This would tend to indicate that she has adapted that foot for uses other than ambulation; perhaps she uses it to kick down doors or push elevator buttons.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Red Elvises and a Quote



As most of you know, we like to start every week off with a picture of a really sharp looking band with a huge balalaika and a quote from Abraham Lincoln:

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
-Abraham Lincoln

So, yay, we were able to do both this week. Some weeks it's really hard to find an Abraham Lincoln quote.

The quote by the way pretty much sums up my gay marriage views. It doesn't bother me if committed gay couples want to think of themselves as married. I think they don't have a proper understanding of what marriage is, but hey, why should they care what I think? There are people out there who, if asked, will disagree with every aspect of your life; including the orientation of your toilet paper roll.

I myself recently ran into a fellow who considered my shopping cart driving criminal, even though I had broken no laws. (By the way "Back-up back-up, you're on my foot," is not an argument)

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Me Too



I went out of my way to get Chic-fil-A tonight too.

I'd never been there before but I'm glad I went. I had the char-chicken club and french fries. It was good, and the incensed-liberal sauce gave it a smokey flavor that united the bacon and tomato in a way that made me want to dance.

Really, I never get fast food, but I'm glad I did this one time. Oh, btw, they didn't need my support. When I pulled into the drive through there were seven cars ahead of me.

Truth Is, I Don't Remember This War



But Yaaay! Texaco Wins!!!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Bad News



"We shaved our heads and disguised our gender so as not to affect the readings."

The results are in: Greenpeace workers report that large areas of the Russian wilderness have become digital. A spokesperson: "And the biggest problem is that we really don't know what it means, or who to blame. And also, I suppose it would help if we knew how to work this equipment. Does it look like I'm holding this right? Look at that, it's been reading 1.22 since I took it out of the box."


And speaking of the countryside, I caught some of the opening Olympic ceremony. It looked like the good people were in harmony with the lambs and grass... but then the men in the top hats came and everything got Dickensian. The people were still there but their attentions had turned from perching butterflies on their pinkie fingers to working large levers to turn useless gears for the top hat crowd. Obviously this was the one percent. I wouldn't have been surprised to see them pull clubs from their waistcoats and set to pummeling the hoi polloi. "For sport good sir, We do it in jest!"

There's a bit of Ché's t-shirt in all that. Here you've got this huge organization enforcing their trademark, negotiating rights and licensing, floating bonds, signing contracts... And then they farm out the creative control to Joseph Stalin. (ok, not Stalin, I heard it was the director of Slum Dog Millionaire, but I don't know who he is and am too lazy to consult wikipedia) I'm sure it's all harmless. Revolutionaries don't watch opening ceremonies, or care what rich directors have to prove. "Look, I have an assistant whose only job is to fetch scented water with ice flown in from a glacier, but I know the people. Hell, I feel their pain, in theory."

So anyway, I'm going to go downstairs and run the tivo backwards to bring back the idyllic countryside. I want to see if I can spot the plague or the cholera. Maybe I just missed it.

Let the games begin.

Either That, or Get a Government Job


I think it was Grandpa who gave me the best advice ever:
"Find yourself a job where you can hide during the
daylight hours, and you'll never work a day in your life."


Olympics



If trampoline is now an Olympic sport, can ballet be far behind?

Telling it Like it Is





Thursday, July 26, 2012

Sound Advice





Close Enough





via

The Importance of Punctuation


Silly Drudge. He's all:

Feds: Drought to Drive Up Food Prices...

When it should have been:
Feds, Drought to Drive Up Food Prices...



We Were All Beginners Once





via

You Didn't Do...




OK, So sometimes I beat a dead horse... But now some are defending this,

"Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

by saying that he is referring to roads and bridges. Not to go all grammar Nazi but "that" is singular, roads and bridges are plural. What's singular? "a business"

Just sayin.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The CBO Re-scores Obamacare


Yuval Levin discusses the CBO's re-scoring of Obamacare:

... it’s worth noting how grim the basics are, even using CBO’s implausibly hopeful scenarios. The agency projects that the federal government will spend about $1.7 trillion, increase taxes by about a trillion dollars, and cut Medicare spending by more than $700 billion without any real structural reforms of the program (though it’s hard imagine that last one would actually happen in practice). It will create yet another unsustainable health-care entitlement program, expand the existing ones, micromanage the insurance industry in ways likely to make it even less efficient, employ even heavier price controls of the sort that have always failed in Medicare, and (especially through its taxes) stifle employment, investment, and medical research. And after all this, even the CBO’s very optimistic assumptions leave it concluding that 30 million Americans will be uninsured a decade from now—so we will have gone from today’s 80% coverage to 89% in 2023. If that’s what the Left means by universal coverage, there are far, far less costly and counterproductive ways to get there.

Read the whole thing if you can stand it. I already know what has to be done, and it happens in November.

New ATM Skimmers



The guys after your money aren't all in the government:

It’s getting harder to detect some of the newer ATM skimmers, fraud devices attached to or inserted into cash machines and designed to steal card and PIN data. Among the latest and most difficult-to-spot skimmer innovations is a wafer-thin card reading device that can be inserted directly into the ATM’s card acceptance slot.

That’s according to two recent reports from the European ATM Security Team (EAST), an organization that collects ATM fraud reports from countries in the region. In both reports, EAST said one country (it isn’t naming which) alerted them about a new form of skimming device that is thin enough to be inserted directly into the card reader slot. These devices record the data stored on the magnetic stripe on the back of the card as it is slid into a compromised ATM.

I suppose it's a silver lining that these are starting out in Europe. Maybe there will be fixes in the works by the time they make it to America. Plus, successful enterprises on these shores require government assistance. ("That criminal empire? You didn't build that, somebody else, uh, made that happen.")

Anyway, one more thing to watch for at the ATM, and gas pump. And, by the way, I'm not terribly impressed by the antifraud efforts at my local gasitorium. They put antitamper strips across the door to the credit card reader: just little strips of tape with their name and a serial number. The first time I saw them I was reassured. But within a week all the strips had been broken. This could be because the door needs to be opened to replace the printer roll, or it could just be that you've got teenagers standing around for 3 minutes with a key in their hand while the tank fills. Or it could be because some enterprising young thug just installed a skimmer. So much for security tape.

ATM security is a pain in the butt anyway, and raising usage rates to offset fraud is unfair to the consumer. The ATM industry has data lines and sophisticated computers already in the machines. They need to be half as creative as the digital thugs and start catching them and putting them in jail. And I'm not talking about country club jail; I'm talking about the less desirable kind as referenced in Office Space.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Explanation


"And when I said, 'You didn't build that,' I was obviously
referring to the teleprompter. You didn't build the teleprompter, ok?"


Chris Matthews



Waiting for the stupid train at the station.

Nine Minutes You Won't Be Gettin Back




What do you get when the Irish overdub a Polish soap opera? I don't know. May as well watch an episode of Soupy Norman while you ponder it.

h/t: I Have Seen...

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Neo Hides From Lumbergh




Umm-yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Saturday...

h/t: Unique Daily

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Wedgies in America


"And these girls from Baylor University didn't give
me a wedgie. Uh, somebody else made that happen."


Hunting is Easier




Hunting is easier when you hunt in packs.

I'm overdue for cute, (something the lumberwife has been complaining about for ages) and nimos just sent me a bunch of them... standby for overload.

Goggles




Amusing, but somebody else made that happen.
And more...


Back at Party Headquarters




I respect and admire the president. Not in the way that a street criminal might respect and admire a really good pickpocket; but that's only because I'm not a street criminal.

If that sounds somehow derogatory, I apologize to the president. I wish he had the attributes of someone who could be admired and respected by a sober person.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Just One Moment Batman



You didn't build those roads.

About the President's Divisive Remarks


Don't wonder if the president inadvertently told us how he feels with:

If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

He knew just what he was saying. He knew it was insulting. But how many people have started a business? Not that many. Obama goes for the numbers.

I think his calculations fail to carry the 1 though: True, people who have started their own business are in the minority, but most people are sympathetic to the idea. Joe the Plumber hasn't (yet!) started his own business but I bet he still contemplates the dream.

Wouldn't you like to take a bat to the fax machine, wedgie the boss, and strike out on your own? Maybe sell artisan muffins out of a kiosk at the airport? Wash dogs? Whatever your daydream was, or is, chances are you can identify with the business starter.

It's tempting to run the numbers. That businessman couldn't have his business without a police force, could he? He needs an orderly society to sell his widgets in right? And a fire department to put out his widgets should combustion happen, right? And roads? Water and sewer right?

Well yes. But it's the same thing as school funding. On the surface it appears that people without children are being shortchanged. They pay the same taxes as the guy with a dozen children, but they don't get the same benefit, or so it seems.

But stand back and look at the whole thing in one go: What you pay in is one lifetime of school taxes, everyone does. And what you get out of it in one person's education, your own. Everyone pays the same, everyone gets the same thing. Roughly.

Sure the widget factory uses the roads more than you. But what you get out of it is a world with widgets, a job, (possibly) and widget factory taxes to build the next road or sewage treatment plant.

You should want the print shop down the road. You should want the drugstore.

Can you imagine opposing a supermarket because the produce trucks will be using the roads more than you? Obama thinks you might.

Personally, I don't mind the $ 0.03 of my taxes that the produce truck consumes in order to transport my years worth of tomatoes. Wait, you don't mind either? And you? And wait, doesn't every tomato consumer feel the same? Don't we all grant that road wear in order to live in a world with tomatoes? Sure we do.

Go back to square one Mr Obama. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Anything for Votes



"Don't think of it as kissing a man, Joe. Think of it as sewing up the gay vote."

I would have used those initials, (LSMFT?) (GTBLT?) (LGTCB?), but I plainly have trouble remembering them.

I Knew I'd Seen that Expression Somewhere Before



"Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability."


Just for Laughs




h/t: Unique Daily

The Balance Shifts



This doesn't surprise me:

‘In the last 100 years the IQ scores of both men and women have risen but women’s have risen faster,’ said Mr Flynn. ‘This is a consequence of modernity. The complexity of the modern world is making our brains adapt and raising our IQ.’

One possible explanation is that women’s lives have become more demanding as they multitask between raising a family and doing a job.

Another is that women have a slightly higher potential intelligence than men and are only now realising it.

After all - the women have Lumberkid on their team, and our side has got Barack Obama.

Simple math. If you don't understand, ask a woman to explain it to you.

Monday, July 16, 2012

GWB




Been waiting for this one. Compare and contrast.

And catch the rest of the series here throughout the week.

The Business That Guy and I Built



By now you've probably heard it:

If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. -Barack Obama

So NOW you tell me about this other person? Because I started my business working in the middle of the night so that I could save the money I needed for tools and equipment. I kept my day job and slept in the gaps. If I had known I had that helper I sure would have given him some of the load.

Maybe the guy who really built my business could have gotten the insurance policy, or the accountant, or even registered with the county for me. Maybe he could have made the rounds giving out my business cards. Maybe he could have read the contracts, or bought the truck.

Color me stupid then, because this guy who built my business didn't even make a pot of coffee. And I was too clueless to complain.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Cain and Abel



I've got a working title for Will Smith's movie about Cain and Abel: The First Racists

No need to thank me Will, no, really.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

UN to Regulate US Gun Owners?


Won't it be wonderful when we have a global government?:

UNITED NATIONS – A treaty being hammered out this month at the United Nations -- with Iran playing a key role -- could expose the records of America's gun owners to foreign governments -- and, critics warn, eventually put the Second Amendment on global trial.

International talks in New York are going on throughout July on the final wording of the so-called Arms Trade Treaty, which supporters such as Amnesty International USA say would rein in unregulated weapons that kill an estimated 1,500 people daily around the world....

President Obama, in a rare instance of consistency, suggests that we first study the problem by facilitating illegal arms sales to criminals and terrorists for a few years so that we can exploit the ensuing chaos. (pronounce the "h")

Here's the president, explaining how Fast and Furious was just the same as a Bush administration program to procure hydraulic lines for an earth mover in Minot, ND:


"It's the same dam thing people. Except that our operation involved sending assault weapons into the wild and resulted in the death of Agent Brian Terry."

(flop-sweat added)

XKCD


What would happen if you could throw a baseball at 90% of the speed of light?

The ball is going so fast that everything else is practically stationary. Even the molecules in the air are stationary. Air molecules vibrate back and forth at a few hundred miles per hour, but the ball is moving through them at 600 million miles per hour. This means that as far as the ball is concerned, they’re just hanging there, frozen.

The ideas of aerodynamics don’t apply here. Normally, air would flow around anything moving through it. But the air molecules in front of this ball don’t have time to be jostled out of the way. The ball smacks into them hard that the atoms in the air molecules actually fuse with the atoms in the ball’s surface. Each collision releases a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles...

Read the whole thing but the short version is that everything nearby is incinerated; cats, especially so.
A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered "hit by pitch", and would be eligible to advance to first base.
Yep, first base, which is by now a cloud accelerating upward and outward from the ball park.

It's good that we have cartoons to explore these questions. Liberals (aka "the science guys") love thought experiments like this because they can pretend to understand things like angstroms and joules, and at the same time get ideas for new areas to regulate and tax. (since a speeding baseball is capable of this sort of carnage, doesn't it make sense that a curve-ball traveling at 82 mph is safer than a fastball in the mid 90's? Doesn't it make sense to ban fastballs now, before they cause a problem?)

Next up? I'd like to see an exploration of the phenomenon of lid-ice cream being much better tasting than the main body of ice cream in the tub.

fighting101s.jpg