Nationalized Health Care

On a state level, such as what you find in Mass. or Oregon. From Oregon, here's proof that this sort of thing leads only to shortages and rationing.

Opponents of physician-assisted suicide are fired up this summer, and rightfully so, over an ethically questionable provision of the Oregon Health Plan.

The conflict came to light in a recent report in The Register-Guard of Eugene. The newspaper described the sad plight of Barbara Wagner, a 64-year-old Springfield woman with lung cancer.

After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that would cost $4,000 a month, the newspaper reported, "Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn't cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide."

RTWT. Perhaps they thought that if they helped this lady shuffle off the mortal coil by subsidizing the purchase of a handgun, they'd be getting more bang for the taxpayers buck. Perhaps her doctor could assist her by advising against the purchase of a .25 auto.

Work is the Curse of the Drinking Class

Posting will be sparse the next few days.
13 hour days at work will do that to you.

Motorcycles

Went out to prep the Honda last Friday, and noticed a bit of Bondo flaking off the right front frame down tube. This is not a place one usually associates with Bondo, so I chipped it off, and found it was covering a 360 deg. fracture of the frame tube. I mean it almost looked like someone had cut the tube in two with a hacksaw.
Finding this somewhat disconcerting, and thinking it probably had something to do with the remarkably mundane handling the bikes had been exhibiting, I made a quick check of the rest of the frame. Of the four backbone tubes, 2 were fractured completely through, and the other two were fractured about 2/3 of the way around.
It appears the bike had been in an accident with the prior owner, who, of course, assured me it hadn't, and the stresses induced in the modest bending of the frame had resulted in the fractures, over time.
I pushed things back toward where they belong, and welded up the damage as best I could, which results in a much better handling bike, but nevertheless, one that needs a new frame.
Crud.
One more unwanted item on my "to do" list.

Small Gods

My squirrel trap is working impressively well, bagging one every couple days, I'm up to eight in 2 weeks now. The problem is disposing of the bodies. I got 2 in quick succession near the beginning of last week, and facing 5 days of 90+ degree weather, elected to bury them. Then something came round, and dug one up. Again, Friday PM, after trash pickup, I got another, and thought to myself: "Self, I bet if I just leave this one under the Walnut tree where the other one was dug up, I bet he'll be gone tomorrow morning."
Sure enough, it worked. Likewise with the next one.
One of Terry Pratchetts characters from the Discworld series is Offler, the crocodile god. His followers have a small statue of him in their houses with a platform in front of the figuring, and honor him by leaving a small bowl of food there at night. In the morning, the food is gone, and life goes on with minimal disturbance for the follower.
This is getting to be like being a follower of Offler. Leave the offering, and in the morning the offering is gone, and my peaches continue uneaten.
My only worry at this point is what happens if the supply of squirrels dries up, and Offler doesn't get fed? Does he come looking for me or what?

Squirrel Trap

Got another one Friday PM, just after the trash pickup. Dumped the water and the squirrel out on an under-watered walnut tree where I had buried the last 2 (see comments in Squirrel Gun post below) and figured I'd bury the varmint the next day. Suspected I wouldn't have to. I was right. If you feed them, they will come.

Guns and crime

Violence in Chattanooga is apparently reaching levels heretofore not seen outside of Falluja, and the Chattanooga PD is “gunning up” with Bushmaster “urban assault rifles” which have an operative range between 400 and 696 meters (440-760 yds, 2.5-4.3 city blocks). Watch the video clip for a demonstration of the guns "range and effectiveness" at 25 yds on the police range.

They also fire rounds that either do not penetrate past the intended target, assuming you hit the target, or else penetrate through some implied levels of cover, depending on which ammo the gun is loaded with when the officer brings it into play. This is described as an improvement in public safety as you will now be able to proceed about your business while the gunfight rages, knowing that the cops never miss, their bullets never over penetrate, and if they do miss, they also claim that the strays quickly disintegrate in the air in embarrassment. What effect this has on the guns effective range is not mentioned.

Columbine is trotted out as justification for all this, notwithstanding that by the time the cops actually entered the school, the shooters had finished for the day, and courteously offed themselves. Additional justification is the increasing number of mass-murdering psychopaths the officers are allegedly encountering, although the only cited use of the weapon so far was against a suspect in a house, who came out peacefully when ordered. A revolver was found in the house, which in Chattanooga is considered a “powerful and dangerous weapon”.

The rifles are to be kept locked up inside the officers patrol cars until needed, and will eventually be issued to all patrol officers including the bicycle officers who patrol downtown.

Monies for this upgrade to the police “tacticoolness quotient” comes from federal forfeitures from gun dealers, purchasing agents, and anyone else who can’t produce an a permit to carry over $10K in cash. People like this are described as “drug dealers”.

Annonymous Gods

The 4th circuit has ruled that prayers in public places must be strictly non-denominational to the point that the Deity being supplicated may not be named. Hmmmm:

"O He-that-must-never-be-named*, we beseech you to reach across the vasty void and take those who meet here today to make the weightiest of decisions, and draw them near to your scaly breast that they may see, in your gaping maw the wisest course of action. With fondest hopes that they may be pleasing to your palette, Amen."

*Lest he interpret the naming as a summons, which the Scriptures assure us, will make anything Al Gore has threatened us with look like a walk in the Elysian Fields.

Dorwin Award

In the spirit of the Darwin Awards, this one goes to the politician who can speak the longest without saying anything. You can probably think of people with looooong careers in the government who have never actually said anything that wasn't hedged to the max, but we'll limit this to whatever they said, or didn't say, at one sitting.

Extracted by Watchman's Words from Asimov's Foundation series.

Flying

Cruise the Antarctic in a plane with Terrain Following Radar. Keep between the peaks and follow the valleys or go directly over the peaks to get a view of the terrain. Left-right steering using your mouse, no up-and-down. You can't crash. After a while you begin to wish for a 20mm on the space bar or something, but still, fun for a while.

Squirrel Gun

Squirrel trap, to be more correct, even if the parts came off my squirrel gun.
Progress report; Got 2 more the next day and two more the day after. Didn't see one all weekend. This thing is like a black hole for squirrels.



















Here it is Tuesday, and 2 new ones have shown up. I don't expect them to be here long. If I was into that Foxfire stuff, I could have a squirrel coat by winter.

It could always be worse. Over the weekend we discovered that the fellow behind the man across the street from me has 2 adult and six baby skunks living under his backyard shed,
and the folks down the block have a family of four foxes under their front deck.
Wifey-poo said something about a coon on the back porch. Can the lions and bears be far behind?

Motorcycles

Darling Daughter, as you may know, has a learners permit, which means she can ride her bike only in the company of dually licensed riders. So she went off yesterday with B.F., and several co-workers for a short jaunt around town. Two of this motley crew have sport bikes, and have discovered how easily they get up on one wheel. One of them is so good, he wants to become a riding instructor.
The instructor wannabe was demoing his skills on the rear wheel, when he over-cooked it just a bit, and demonstrated the meaning of the phrase "ass over teakettle", and "parked in a tree".
He was not seriously injured, just seriously embarrassed, and once the road rash was scrubbed away by the helpful medics at the local e-room, he was back assessing the damage to the bike, which did not fare so well.
What are friends for if not to help. I get a call to hurry up and come retrieve a crashed bike, I believe, on the theory that if the evidence is gone before the police show up, then no one will have to explain very much of what was going on. Nice thinking, but I'm 11 miles away, and need to uncap the truck before I can get going. Did I mention this happened in rush hour traffic? By the time I get there, the light show rivals the 4th of July, and the ambulance is ready to leave. I show up, loading ramp and all and the nice (burley) firemen helped me load the bike and everything.
The crew, the motley one, had been warning our hero for some time about his flirtation with disaster, and, as soon as it appeared he was OK, began carefully documenting the damage to the bike, hes gear (he was wearing all of it), and his dignity with their cell phones. They're also lamenting that none of them have a Facebook page to post them on. Who knows, they may get one, now that they have some good material.
Our "instructor" is showing great promise, as by his example, the other sportbike rider has learned to keep both wheels firmly on the ground at all times.
It also appears that the word "motley" isn't being abused here, as 2 of the 6 in the crew, upon assuring themselves that our hero was essentially undamaged, decided that, since their own circumstances would not bear too close a scrutiny by the police, they could hear their mommies calling them to dinner. Or something.

The experiences of my own wasted youth being such that absolutely none of this was the least bit novel or surprising, I had to laugh.

War in Iraq

At some point it becomes just impossible to hide the truth. When you hear about the commercial success of the first KFC to open in Falluja, you've got to believe the good guys are winning.

Obama probably thinks a fried chicken franchise is racist.

Future economies

I read science fiction a lot, and over time some things begin to pop out at you. The flying car, which I've been promised since the 40's, still isn't here yet. You read about flying cars, but you never read about the schmuck working in the flying car factory.
You see the starship captain ask for, and get, a cup of tea from the matter generator, and think;"wow, everything is free for the asking. No it's not. The matter in the form of tea, formerly existed as energy in the starship's engines. No engine, no tea.
Imagine a future in which Quai-chaing and Mei-lee are sitting in their apartment in Hei Lung somewhere, bemoaning the fact that everything on the shelves at the local Wal-Mart is marked Made in Aldebaran any more. And talk about lax border control, half the aliens on the streets are there illegally.
The possibilities here, just go on and on.

Alternative Energy

A friend of mine sent me a link to a piece by Steven Den Beste on alternative energy in which he sets forth his criteria for an energy source to be viable. He doesn’t use the word viable, but in the end this is what he’s looking for. A generator on a bicycle is an alternative energy source, it just isn’t viable unless that’s all the energy you need, and you have the spare time to do the pedaling.

A truly viable energy source is one that produces enough surplus energy, after supplying the surrounding society, to support the manufacture of its own replacement. Machines wear out, after all.

Always remember, when you hear someone going on about alternative energy, that the word they’re leaving out is “viable”.

What's News

What do you know about what's going on? Here's a quiz from the liberals at the Pew Research center to find out just how much, or how little you actually know. It's 12 questions, so it'll be quick.
I got 91% or 11/12.