Concealable Weapons

Now that you've got your CCW, you need to get a weapon to conceal.

Here are several offerings.

I rather favored the shotgun disguised as a box of Kleenex.

Warning: Do not drink and surf. At least not while you're surfing here.

Science and Technology Marching Forward

DARPA wants to create their very own immortal bio-creations. No word yet on what form these might take, although punk hair-dos and eye shadow applied with a paint roller come to mind.

Think ahead, though, to next Christmas, when the technology gets to the point that you can start your own offspring into a career in science with the Make-A-Man(tm) toy. consists of vials containing:

• A is for adenine
• G is for guanine
• C is for cytosine
• T is for thymine

Several test tubes, and a re-painted E-Z Bake oven.

Remember how quickly the kids took to computers? Remember how quickly they became the only ones in your house who could de-bug your cell phone?

What could go wrong?

Rocky Mountain Blogger Fest

And a fine time was had by all. Delicious food was eaten, bone structures were generously nurtured, deep philosophies were waded into, sometimes knee deep before we got back to working on the bone structure.

Steve got all the hot chicks, although Jed got his frottage, and the rest of us got each others business cards.

All this in a distraction-free environment (no TV in the birthday room).

Pictures were taken, documenting most of this, unfortunately not by me. Check the other blogs to see where the hush money should go.

Thanks to all of you who came, and to the rest of you: You shoulda been there!

Murtha's Obituary

"I have never advocated killing anybody, but there have been several obituaries it has given me great pleasure to read."

Mark Twain

The news was delivered to Washington today. Hilarious.

Unemployment, Again

Return with us now, to a soapbox near and dear to my heart, unemployment. You may have heard pronouncements from the BLS regarding exactly how many people are in one state of unemployment or another. Here's a graph of recent BLS numbers:
Since nobody at the BLS is running for office, these numbers have a certain amount of credibility. It looks like the U-3 is made up of 2.6 million, and the long-term unemployed is about 6.4 million.

You have probably heard the bluebird of hopeiness telling us that the unemployment rate, U-3, has fallen to 9.7%. Let's assume, in this case, that the government is telling us the truth.

OK, when you've cleaned your drink out of your keyboard, and gotten up off the floor, let's check a number. If 2.6 million unemployed represents 9.7 % of the workforce, then 6.4 million must represent, (pull out the calculator, fumble with buttons) 23.8%. A number that hasn't been seen since the great depression.

It is possible, of course, that the larger number in the chart above is, in fact, the U-6, which includes the regular unemployed in it, but that would suggest that the U-6 is about 14.7% and even the government doesn't claim that.

I think I know what all those climate scientists do to moonlight.

Gun Fun 2

It must be 11, because the film has arrived. Our clubs Battle of Stalingrad Memorial Bowling Pin Shoot, so named because of the similar temperatures.
Here's what it's all about:
Clear your table before the other fellow clears his. This guy looks to be 1 pin ahead of the competition. Those tables are 4 ft x 8 ft, so the pins don't have to fall right off for you.
If you don't get a clean hit, or if your gun is a smaller caliber, you get something like this, with 5 "wounded" pins, taking cover so as to make your following shots both necessary and less effective. Could be worse, they could have fallen with the tops pointing toward the shooter.

We has two new shooters from Finland, bringing IPSC equipment that we don't normally see. Since we're strictly unofficial, we let anyone play.
Contest: For 500 Billll bucks, value zero, can anyone ID the gun she's using? I know it's a 9, but I missed the technical details. Another thing: She uses that gun regularly, and is very good with it. She can knock down 5 pins, then shoot them again to get them off the table faster than most of us can shoot 5 pins.
She finished 3rd overall. This was her usual finish. Her husband, using a conventional (looking) .45 auto, finished 2nd.

I use a revolver. The disadvantage is that I only have 6 shots before I have to reload, which is a relatively slow process. Hence I have an incentive to not miss. In a good round, I fire 5 shots, and clear the table, and hopefully my opponent, shooting faster, has missed enough times to be reloading while I drop the last pin. Let me point out that the ammo you use for this should be carefully selected, so as to give uniform results.
Or you can do like I do, and use whatever is on the top of the heap. Not only did I win the table I shot with this collection, I did it in 5. Practice, Practice, Practice.

The pins had been sitting in the equipment shed for 2 weeks at sub-freezing temps, and were very brittle. Hits frequently produced a shower of plastic fragments, and split the wood inside.

Money

Money is what you give to government officials in the hope that they will, in return, at least perform their function, if not perform it in your favor. In India, the public is getting rapidly fed up with this sort of behavior, a legacy of the 70s when India sought to emulate the socialist utopia of the Soviet Union. To that end, this:
is being printed in large quantities to meet demand. It is apparently a good enough copy of real currency to be snatched quickly by a corrupt official.

Glenn Reynolds suggests it might make a good envelope stuffer for American pols seeking contributions to their re-election funds, and darkly hints it might be good for paying this years taxes, too. Well, maybe not good, but certainly appropriate.

Anyway, such a bill should be developed for use here, too. Maybe starting with the U.S. $100, revalued to zero.
Maybe I can get a Nobel prize in Economics for finally inventing fiat money with an actual value on it. Maybe I'll get arrested by the Treasury department for giving the game away.

Gun Fun

Back East, Global Warming is in full cry, and people who forgot to stock up on french toast are being forced to eat their pets. Here, where hunting the mighty Mastodon with anything more aggressive than a sharp stick will get you laughed at, we all got together and went out to hunt the wily wild bowling pin.

Foggy this morning, which coated everything with the kind of photogenic layer of ice that poets like to write about, especially from a warm loft with a hot beverage in hand. It's enough to convince you that being a poet is not without its advantages.

NOTE: At low temperatures, the plastic sheathing on bowling pins gets quite brittle, making for rather striking explosions of plastic from struck pins. Pictures, still and moving were taken. Film, as they say, at 11, whenever that turns out to be.

HOV Lanes

There's an article here about the Suffolk County (Long Island N.Y) cops making the bust of the day, catching a driver using the HOV lane with a metabolically-impaired passenger. Worse even, the passenger wasn't even a dead human (it's been tried) but a rather lifelike mannequin.

I'm guessing that the perp had been getting away with this for a while, but let me offer some hints that might help here. First, signs of life include subtle little movements. So fix your "passenger" up with tinted glasses to cover the fixed stare.

Second, the cops get paid to observe and report, so help them out here by giving your friend a regular change of clothes. Maybe even a regular change of wig, too.

Third, don't use one of those inflatable dolls from the alternative book store. This will get you pulled over quickly so the nice policeman can find out who's two-timing his girlfriend.

Fourth, babies tend to look a lot alike, and don't have large wardrobes. Get a child carrier, and install one of those large, lifelike dolls in it. Use one that actually looks like a baby. Do not use one that looks like Barbie. Even an empty carrier can be covered with a blanket, which means you may only need the head, and the rest of the space can be used to hold ice, and bottled refreshment. Properly mounted, the head can even bobble and turn in a lifelike manner.

One more thing, once you arrive where you're going, put the carrier in your trunk, or at least remove the dolly and stash it where it either can't be seen, or is obviously a doll. You don't want to be explaining to an amused cop and irate social worker that the "baby" you abandoned in the carrier in your car is actually your car pool passenger. Place the doll next to the carrier when you park, and everybody will assume it belongs to the absent occupant of the carrier.

Big Breasts 2

Well, of course they are.

It seems the post below, while not entirely true, wasn't that far off.

It looks like the Aussies don't mind small breasted women in the porn industry, but they don't want to be mistaken for Arkansans.

Big Breasts

Yeah, that'll bring in the hits. Anyway Australia is setting minimum standards for women working in the porn industry. They're proposing a minimum breast size, below which a woman would be denied a job. Several women I know have suggested that a variation on this already exists in the general job market in which if multiple women apply for the same job, the nod goes to the one with the best rack.

This is not new.

Wannabe bride: "I'd like a marriage license, please."
Clerk: "O.K. but you'll have to fill out your form first."
Wannabe Bride, now nearly in tears:" But my boyfriend likes it just the way it is!"

When I first heard this, I lived in the south. I assumed the story was from Arkansas, where 10-year-old brides weren't that uncommon, although it was discouraged. Good girls waited until they were at least 13.

All The News That's Fit To Drink

I've been asked where I get my news (the internet) and why. Well it's like this:

Internet news is like moonshine. It's fresh, strong, sometimes harsh, and sometimes not so good, in spite of how carefully you pick your suppliers.

Network news, print or TV, is like fine sipping whiskey. Smooth, tasty, and easy to swallow. And like fine whiskey, sometimes it's 12 years old.

Moonshiners knew that the first stuff to come off the still was the bad part, and threw it away. The trick to maximizing your profit was to know when to start collecting the product. To this end they would sometimes give a shot of their freshly minted product to the dog. If the dog didn't go blind, then they were good to go.

I think I'll name my next dog Snopes.

Rocky Mountain Blogger Fest

So far I have 7 or 8 guys, and one very opportunistic hot chick. Anyone else want to admit to attending?

Latest Economic News

The CBO is the bluebird of happiness this week with news that will reassure you that the recession is over and job growth will soon take off.

Before clicking on the above link, hit this:

(Reference link deleted for being excessively annoying.)



Then go read the report.

Gunny Girl 2

I promised more guns and more hot women, so in keeping with that here's the Gunny Girl for February, shamelessly pinched from Theo Spark:
She might be an expensive date at $0.60 / round for that bandoleer she's holding though, but worth it, I'm sure.