Economics

Government economic wonks have published the results of extensive number crunching and have declared that it's worse than they imagined. How much worse and in what direction is still unclear, as the results seem to indicate that 2 + 2 which was formerly interpreted as 5.8635, is in fact, closer to 8.1638.

If the above interpretation proves unsatisfactory, there is enough information here at Zero Hedge (pdf) to keep you wondering what's going on for some time. Interestingly, these folks talk about unemployment using the U-6 figure which includes people working part-time who want to work full-time, as well as the discouraged workers. Rather than the more commonly publishes U-3 figure, which is currently about 9.5%, the U-6 is running 16.8% nationally, and into the 20s in CA, MI, RI, OR, SC, and NJ.

The thing about economics is that if you want a second opinion, all you have to do is ask the same person the same question again.

Filed under Economics and Mad Science. But I repeat myself.

Gun Fun

OK this is a bit better than guns, but after Bijou Renaissance Man posted this list of things that no red-blooded American family should be without, I had to dig this up.


Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority was probably my all-time favorite clip from Elephant Parts, the video album. The perfect modern embodiment of Machiavelli's observation that "While it is best to be both feared and loved, if you have to choose between them, it is better to be feared."

Gun Fun

It has been speculated that the pea shooter pictured a few posts down might be dangerous enough to be banned in California. Well, speculate no more, it is:

12582. Any person who knowingly manufactures, sells, offers for
sale, possesses, or uses a blowgun or blowgun ammunition in this
state is guilty of a misdemeanor.

12580. "Blowgun," as used in this article, means a hollow tube
designed and intended to be used as a tube through which a dart is
propelled by the force of the breath of the user.

So, for all you Californians, the next time you're in a Dennys or something like it, and you order the club sandwich and a Coke, if you pull the extra-long toothpick with the frou-frou decoration on it out of the sandwich and put it into your large-diameter straw, you are then ready to hold the whole restaurant hostage.

So will they ban Coke, large-bore straws, or club sandwiches first?

Quote of the Week

Rahm E. to Barry O, re Health Care and Cap and Trade:

"As God is my witness, I believed that these turkeys could fly!"

Gun Fun

Thanks to Say Uncle for this one. Now this is the sort of thing that really gets my blood moving first thing in the morning:


I've built the smaller ones out of a coffee can that make a vortex about 2" in diameter, and they're fun to play with, but this is up in the Werner Von Braun category. There is a possibly higher powered version of this referred to as "compact toroids". This was described as "the nearest thing to the photon torpedo yet" but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work well except in a vacuum. The one I first saw referenced looked like 2 funnels, one inside the other. The example in the link indicates a rod inside a tube, which would have to be very carefully located to make it work,but this seems to have been done.

Coming soon to a battle cruiser near you....

Health Care

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line is proposing that we ask out congress animals to agree to a pledge:

My Pledge to My Constituents on National Health Insurance

1. I will not vote to expand the bankrupt Medicare program unless and until it is first placed on a sound actuarial basis.

2. I will not vote for any national health insurance legislation that includes a public plan unless I am prepared to enroll myself and my family in the public plan. If a national health insurance bill with a public plan passes the Senate with my vote in support, then I pledge to enroll myself and my family in that public plan.

This is very high sounding, and is probably a good start, BUT we already know that the congress cannot run the insurance industry.

They cannot run the automobile industry.

The cannot run the banking industry.

They cannot manage Wall Street.

And in spite of a preponderance of evidence that many of them are quite familiar with business practices in the industry, we have proof that they cannot operate a whorehouse a few miles from Las Vegas.

My own preference would be for a pledge to vote NO on any piece of legislation regarding business except for one calling for complete withdrawal of government involvement from business except for enforcement of contracts, but that would probably be too much to hope for.

They are supposedly coming home Aug 7th for the August break without voting on the health care bill. Most of them will be having a "town hall" meeting with the constituents while they're here, and I would suggest making it a point to show up at the meetings with metaphorical pitchforks and torches, and be prepared to give the bums a piece of your mind. Visit their websites to find the scheduled times and places.

Same tactic applies to Senators, who are sitting on the Cap and Tax bill the house sent to them.

Sotomayor

I suppose, that since everyone else has put up several posts on the topic, I have to also. Jumping off a cliff-like.

Right now the Dems have enough votes to put Winnie-the-Pooh on the supreme court, and appear ready to do pretty much that. Sotomayors record shows her to be more of a me-too jurist than the sort of thinker who writes opinions. As long as race doesn't get brought up, she rules fairly conservatively, but if that or some issue of government power is at question, she will be a reliable vote for the statist left.

Overall, she will likely be a politically safe replacement for Souter, in that she will vote pretty much the same way he would have. What I don't see is the kind of sharp mind that persuades the other justices to a more extreme position on an opinion.

When Alito and Roberts were up for confirmation, it was obvious that the lefty members of the committee didn't like either of them much. It was also obvious who the smartest person in the room was each time, and it certainly wasn't any of the Senators. This time is was pretty clear that most of the senators rated higher than Sotomayor, with only Senator Franken being obviously lower on the IQ food chain.

During the Viet-Nam war there was a story about a Viet-Cong sympathizing farmer in a rice paddy off the end of the runway of an American air base. Whenever an airplane would take off, this farmer would pick up his rifle from the paddy and take a shot at the plane. A new pilot, observing this, reported this to the base commander and asked that the farmer be arrested.

The commander informed the lieutenant that the farmer had been there, shooting at the planes as long as anyone could remember, and to anyones knowledge, had never scored a hit. The feeling was that if he were picked up, the V.C. would send in someone else who might be a better shot.

In Sotomayor, we have that farmer.

Reading the Bills

John Conyers says that reading the bills congress passes is more trouble than it's worth.

"What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?"

After all it's not like they apply to them.

Pink Pistols Bikini Picture

The other McCain has declared an International Rule 5 Bikini-fest Week, and since you're probably all tired of reading my rants and raves on the impending apocalypse, and would much rather read about the fully automatic AA-cell rifle, or the motorized Rube-Goldberg inspired can crusher, both of which are unfortunately still under construction, here's a bikini picture which, since I'm a big fan of diversity, sort of invokes the Pink Pistols.

The rules state that the picture can't be too racy, and yeah, this might be pushing it just a bit, but it's the thought that counts.

And if Smitty thinks this is too much, I'll see if I can dig up something (slightly) less likely to have you joining me at the unemployment office.

Oh yes, and remember, when selecting a gun for concealed carry, keep in mind that you have to conceal it somewhere, and if this proves non-feasible, consider living in an open carry state.

Sasquatch

An article here references another "scientific" paper using the latest and greatest computer modeling techniques to predict habitat for wild animals, and impact on the habitat due to outside influences such as the construction of a Wal-Mart or global warming. It seems that if Pope Prius I is right, the habitat for the Sasquatch will be adversely impacted, and the denizens of the Pacific Northwest will be forced to move.

Biogeographers are among the many scientific disciplines that have been employing increasingly sophisticated computer algorithms to predict the ecological niche of species. The algorithms take information about sightings or recorded incidences of a species, find commonalities among those sightings against maps of other ecological data (i.e rainfall, forest type, presence of other species, etc.), and produce a geographic distribution for the target species.

The software is reportedly quite sophisticated, and even produces reasonably accurate predictions of where, for example, one might expect to meet a black bear while hiking through the woods.

“This Bigfoot paper is really good,” writes anthropologist John Hawks, who notes that the authors intended the piece as a tongue-in-cheek’ example, and an illustration of the problems presented by the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ principle.

The output apparently lacks a response of the "You've got to be kidding!" variety, and will cheerfully process anything you put in without snarky comments or anything. It's the sort of thing that should be nominated for an Ig-Nobel prize in biology, at the very least.

Based on the recognized infallibility of anything produced by a computer, I expect that we shall soon see a budget item in the Washington, Oregon, and Idaho DOT budgets to have made up a number of Sasquatch x-ing signs to go with the rest of the warnings to motorists, as the elusive beasts begin to migrate northward to more favorable climes.

I also propose a special prize, consisting of a gift certificate good for a complete repair and detailing of your vehicle to the first person who bags a migrating Sasquatch with his or her vehicle.*

Extra points if you provide us with the cooking recipe and a report on what it tasted like.

Contributions to the award fund should be made to my bank in the Barbados.

*The head must be provided to Billie and Bobs Taxidermy, Bait, Liquor, and Guns, Coolin, Idaho, for authentication.

Kids contest

OK it's open to the inner children too. Here's the world pea shooting contest at Witcham, England. Most folka just use a plastic tube to shoot the peas, but some of them unleash their inner Mad Scientist, and produce the sort of Tacti-cool implements you normally only see at the gun range:

Competition is fierce at the World Pea Shooting Championships on Witcham's village green, where contestants shoot a pea through a tube, 12 feet towards a 12-inch target. Laser-guided shooters are not unknown, taking the sport into the 21st century.

It's enough to make you think there might be some unregistered firearms still lurking around in Merrie Olde England, and the bits and pieces are now finding their way back into the public view. Makes you wonder if the fellow shown above wasn't afterword paid a precautionary visit by the police. Next year, I suppose they'll ban pea shooters over there.

Not that I would ever do such a thing, but say, if you used soft peas, you could put rifling into your straw.....

Gadgeteers Contest

Here's a notification of a contest that should appeal to the builders of the world:
NASA would like you to build a mechanical monkey capable of climbing a 1 Km rope.

Here's the catch: The "monkey" cannot carry any internal power source, and before you ask, extension cords aren't allowed either. What they're looking for is "beamed" power to be transmitted from the ground, to the climber.

LaserMotive is an entrant, and plans to use high-power laser beams to drive high-power solar cells.
This, however, isn't the end of it. The rope is to be supported by a helicopter, which implies that it will be subject to twisting and swaying in the wind.

Winning is worth $2,000,000.

The video from this should be fun to watch.

Mission Accomplished

Obama is on TV telling us all how he saved the economy from certain ruin, and answering pre-selected questions from pre-selected "journalists".

Meantime, go here where AT&T and Yahoo are conducting a poll evaluating how the War on the Economy is going.

National CCW

We lost this one, but narrowly. 58 Senators voted for the amendment, but under Senate rules, you need 60 at this point.

Happily, both of our Senators, Bennet and Udall, both democrats, voted for the amendment, and for this they should get a nice thank-you. Interestingly, two of the no votes were Republicans, Lugar of Indiana, and Voinovitch of Ohio. I'm sure they'll be getting some mail about that too.

Here's the detailed breakdown of who did what, both alphabetically and by position.

Update: It appears that both Udall and Bennet brokered their votes, that is, enough votes were there to stop the amendment, so the remainder could vote the other way in order to polish their images with the rubes. Thanks to Sebastian for pointing me to this article in the Washington Post:

Only two Republicans went against the gun lobby, but that was enough to leave supporters just short of the 60 votes they needed. The slim margin was no accident: Other Democrats, such as Pennsylvania's Bob Casey and Colorado's Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, were said to have been willing to vote "no" if necessary. Twenty minutes after the voting began, Bennet and Udall left the cloakroom together and walked into the chamber. Bennet went to the well to consult with Schumer, who indicated that it was safe for Bennet -- a product of D.C.'s St. Albans School -- to vote with the NRA. Bennet looked to Udall, who gave an approving nod, and cast his "aye" vote.

So remember when they try to tell you what staunch 2-A people they are, that their votes meant nothing.

Gun Fun

OK, it wasn't fun for somebody, but this note from the CO RKBA list:

Oops, Wrong House, Kentucky Version: Kentucky State Police are investigating a shooting early Tuesday in Garrard County in which one man died. Dallas Richard Helton, 40, of Paint Lick was pronounced dead at 1:42 a.m. Tuesday at the scene of the shooting, Coroner Daryl Hodge said. The shooting occurred at 1524 Old Richmond Road North in Cartersville, about 8 miles east of Lancaster, Hodge said. At 12:46 a.m. Tuesday, the homeowner, Hurlin McQuerry, called 911 to report that a man had forcibly entered his home and that the homeowner had shot him with a .410-gauge shotgun, state police said in a release. Upon arrival, state police found Helton dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Helton was wearing a ski mask and gloves and had a crowbar when he entered the house, state police said. At the time of the shooting, two people were waiting outside in a vehicle, state police said… (I’m gad to hear that the .410 shotgun did the trick – it would not be my recommendation for a defensive firearm.)

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At the kind of distances one expects indoors, I would think of a .410 shotgun as a .41 magnum with a really long barrel.