The Future Of Transportation - Guns

Now here's an experiment that just cries out to be performed. Using the recoil of a GAU-8 rotary cannon to accelerate a car.

If I mounted a GAU-8 on my car, put the car in neutral, and started firing backward from a standstill, I would be breaking the interstate speed limit in less than three seconds.

 Obviously a real crowd pleaser at the drag strip as long as there was no one waiting in the staging area.

Happy Turkey Day

The turkey run, mentioned here earlier, turned out to be about the coldest day we've had so far this winter. 22 degrees and snowing on snow packed roads in places makes for a bracing motorcycle ride. Most of us took cars. The closest I got to a turkey was a wild one seen along the side of the road.

On that note let's invoke Michael Mann and his famous "hockey stick" graph "proving " global warming. Put that together and you get:

The difference being that this one comes from reputable data sources that anyone can duplicate. The turkeys in question must have been the premium variety. Birds were available as low as $.49/lb around here.

Here's hoping all you had a good Thanksgiving, and have no trouble getting back on your exercise regimens tomorrow.

Cease Fire

There is allegedly a cease fire between Israel and Gaza. This apparently means that a reduced number of rockets are being fired into Israel and Israel has suspended counter attacks.

Just a reminder: Hudna is an Arabic word, translated in the western media as "ceasefire". What it actually means is "Oh please my enemy, I am wounded and out of ammunition. Please stop fighting until I can get medical attention and more ammo".

Reportedly the Israeli public is 45% opposed to a ground assault into Gaza. I agree. Flying over the territory and spraying it with a good strong pesticide would be far more productive in the long run.

But Billll, I hear you say, how can you advocate doing to the Arabs what the Germans tried to do to the Jews?

Easy. The Germans apologized and are now our friends. The Arabs haven't been anyone's friends including their own, since 650 AD or so. Since I can't figure out how to embed this, go to the Gates Of Vienna and watch the video lecture. It's a bit long, but very enlightening.

Now Do You Feel Old?

The first Star Trek episode aired closer in time to the ratification of the 19th Amendment—guaranteeing women in the US the right to vote—than to today.

Thanks a heap to XKCD blag. I just now found this and it was publishes back in September.

Looking Forward

Having established that my crystal ball is not the most reliable on the blogsphere, It's time to see if there's any looking forward to be had.

Now history has a way of repeating itself and the Gods of the Copybook Headings have a way of pointing out humanities collective mistakes, so first let's look back. Benito Mussolini, when he was running for office, pointed out to the Italian people that the best form of government was a benevolent dictatorship. As proof, he claimed that a problem brought to a partisan elected Parliament only resulted in partisan bickering and no actual solution, whereas a problem brought to a benevolent dictator could be addressed immediately to the greatest benefit of the greatest number, and immediately move on to the next issue.

The Italian government provided the best possible proof of this assertion and still does. The argument was a powerful one and got Benito elected. He promptly styled himself Il Duce and studiously ignored parliament from there on in. History records thet the trains never did run on time, and the experiment ended badly.

One can make the same argument today with the U.S. congress deadlocked with the Republicans in the house being ignored by the Dems in the Senate and vice versa. This leaves governing up to the President who can take your problem and turn it over to an unelected appointee in charge of an agency, ask them to make some rules, which carry the weight of statute law, and move on to the next round of golf.

If the agency's rules prove unpopular, in theory the congress can over rule them but this takes the approval of both houses and the president's signature. What do you suppose are the odds of this happening? So here we are in approximately the same state as Italy in 1935, being led forward by our own Il Douche (did I spell that right?).

Also in 1928 when everything was roaring except for unfair competition from underpaid foreign labor (Germans) providing shoddy merchandise, congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff act. Trade wars are always a bad idea, and this one was a doozy. As the bill advanced through the house, the Senate, and on to the president's desk, at every step the stock market lost about 10% of its value. Coincidentally as we proceeded, so did practically every country in the world so that within 6 months of its passage, international trade, which accounted for about 25% of the global GDP, had come to a halt, and unemployment was at 25%.

Mish Shedlock has some ideas as to what might happen next that might require the attention of the president.

1. Not Addressing the Fiscal Cliff
2. Breakup of the Eurozone
3. UK exiting the EU
4. China Growth falls to Zero Because of Rebalancing
5. Currency Crisis in Japan
6. Failure to address pension problems in US
7. Rise of the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party in Greece Leads to War

I'm not sure who Greece would go to war with, but there is a movement in Italy to split off the productive North from Rome and the Mafia-rich south. Revisions to the political boundaries in Europe seldom happen without a lot of bloodshed.
CBS also has a compilation here.

I Recycle

Reloading is recycling. Over at Peoples Cube there's a lengthy post on the topic of recycling old Soviet jokes which now make more sense here in America.

Apropos of the Ethanol post below:

What has one hundred legs and eats cabbage?
The line at the butcher shop.

Long-Range Shooting

Here's a somewhat lengthy bus quite interesting piece on long range rifle shooting from back when long range meant 100 yards to today when long range means bagging a prairie dog at 3,125 yards.

Technology

For any of you who have been to the movies and seen the dapper pilots of WWI sitting in the smoothly idling Sopwith Camel prepering to take on the Red Baron, here's the real story.

The point of this video was to show a Camel and a Spitfire flying together in formation, the Spitfire near stalling, flaps down, and the Camel running wide open. Interesting to note is the Camel's throttling system. The carburetor had no adjustment, it was wide open only, and speed was controlled by cutting the ignition on and off.

Makes for an interesting flying experience to say the least.

Found here at Theo Spark and worth repeating.

Ethanol

It's been a while since this topic has come up here but the EPA is at it again. As we all know ethanol adds to pollution by reducing fuel economy in cars, and by extension helps fund Al-Quaida through the extra oil required to make up for the lowered economy.

The law mandating ethanol in gas was written in such a way as to require ever increasing amounts of ethanol to be added to the gasoline we buy as time goes on. There is an exception to this but so what:

The EPA said Friday it had not found evidence to support a finding of severe "economic harm" that would warrant granting a waiver of the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Rapidly rising food prices amongst the peasantry doesn't actually count as a problem. 

Secession

The latest craze is petitions from various states to secede from the U.S. and be allowed to form their own governments. Noteworthy is the lack of knowledge that the various states are sovereign and theoretically allowed to do whatever they want. Also not noted is that the federal government has specifically enumerated powers and is not actually permitted to do anything beyond what is permitted.

There are petitions from 30 states at last count including that bastion of right wing Tea-Partiers, New York.  I haven't seen their petition but if it were me writing it it would offer to leave New York City to the old country. I expect that any petition from Illinois would offer to leave Cook County behind as well.

 Unbiased reportage on the topic includes an article in Westword headlined:

Obama haters petition for Colorado to secede: More than 3,000 signatures at WhiteHouse.gov

Good opening. If you read down, second page on their online post:

The petitions, which don't mention Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, come just weeks after both candidates made commitments to bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle in their final pleas for votes.

Emphasis mine. So both candidates may be responsible for this, but probably only Mitt.

In parallel to this is a petition has been launched to charge anyone who signs one of these petitions for redress of grievance with treason, revoke their citizenship, and deport them, although no destination is mentioned.

Someone with a sick sense of humor should put together another petition demanding that the government, by executive order, have all the signatories picked up and removed to re-education camps where they will be given 6 months weeks to learn the error of their ways, or else be executed for treason. I bet you could get the 25,000 signatures fairly quickly from the Kosmonauts or the Puffington Hostesses.

Update: Seven states have now reached the 25,000 signature mark required for official notice. Colorado is 2/3 of the way there. Predictably Austin has asked to not be included in a Texas secession. Most Texans would gladly go along with that.Colorado would certainly let Boulder exempt itself.

All 50 states now have petitions in the queue. Maybe we're taking the wrong approach. Maybe we should be petitioning to throw D.C. out and keep the rest of the union.

Layers Of Editorial Scrutiny

Sometimes fail if you're in a hurry to get something published. D'wife was watching the TV news last night when a picture of P. Broadwell's book was put up. She was sure she was hallucinating or misreading as no one in their right mind would put such a title on a book, but:

Re-affirms my faith in the MSM with its multiple layers of highly paid editors.

7NEWS sincerely apologizes for a mistake that we aired in our broadcast Monday, a mistake that has gone viral on the internet. ... We are following up internally as well to avoid a repeat of this inexcusable oversight," Harris said.

"following up internally" means you are VERY happy that you are NOT the eventual scapegoat.

Advice From A Frenchman

The Dissident Frogman has an essay in which he analyzes the current state of the American political landscape and offers some warnings. It's worth the read, so click on over.

Look at the French Right. See it? Look harder, as it is now very difficult to distinguish from the Left. Back in 1981, when the French elected their first officially Socialist president in a long time, and the French Right went on a losing streak, collapsing at the polls under what was then dubbed la vague rose ("the pink wave". Rose in French meaning both the color pink and the rose flower, emblem of the French Socialists) they figured, quite cynically, that they had to give the voters whatever they demanded—and moved left. They are now only nominatively Right wing, yet are consistently chided and scorned by the French press as right-wingers, ultra conservative and free market fundamentalists.

In other words, the French "Right" is now always wrong, and only has herself to blame.

Sound familiar? Lose an election and react by becoming more like the people you lost to, tacitly endorsing their thinking. There is no Conservative party any more, just the Democrats and the Dem Lites.

QOTD

Joke of the day too:

Ben Bernanke walks into a restaurant and orders a pizza. The waiter asks him if he'd like his pizza sliced into 6 slices or 8. Bernanke replies "8 slices please. I'm really hungry".

Anyone who doesn't get it flunks Econ 101.

From the comments here.

Back To Nature

Something fairly small and industrious has dug a passage under my fence and under 2 cinder blocks to get into the old fox den under my back porch. There is enough wildlife running about in this neighborhood to make me think one of those wildlife cameras might find semi-regular use on the back porch.

Whatever it is, it picked a good time as it's too cold for me to do much about it, and I'd hate to start digging and find out it's a skunk although there seems to be no odor.

Another Political Test

This one put out by the PEW research group so it's a pretty good bet that Ted
Kennedy would be considered middle-of-the-road on this one. There were 3 areas (two actually) Fiscal, social, and combined. For combined I got:

With a pointer just shy of the right end in the "very conservative" area.  Fiscally I got an arrow at the extreme right end.

Daddy Warbucks couldn't have done any better. Socially I scored just to the right of the moderate republican.

Keeping in mind that a moderate republican, according to Pew would be Arlen Specter. Averaging the fiscal and social would put me almost spot on the "average republican, which is probably equivalent to the average Neanderthal in Pew's eyes. They seem to weight the fiscal part about 3 or 4 times the social part. I guess if I'm not willing to waste other peoples money freely, it puts me beyond the pale.

Update: Added link to test. Sorry.