Word of the Day

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Bit of History

In the Soviet Union, between 1924 and 1937, there was once a group of people dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Latvian language and culture. They called themselves the “Prometheus Society", and they financed themselves by manufacturing and selling various items (including slide rules), and by putting on concerts, shows, and art exhibitions.

I recently acquired one of their slide rules, and with the help of my friends Vera and Konstantin Stankevich, I found out quite a bit about this society. Their end was tragic: in one of Stalin’s infamous purges, every member of the society was either killed outright or set to gulags (most likely for a slow death there).

This is one of the most interesting stories I’ve heard associated with slide rules, and thus a particularly good example of the unexpected benefits of my hobby.

Read more about the society here, or see the slide rule here…

Word of the Day

Arachnoleptic fit, n: The frantic dance you perform just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

Please...

The year was 1980, and the FBI was running a high-level sting operation to catch government officials taking bribes. It was called “Abscam", and it was doing great work until the lamestream media exposed it. Here’s an extract from a videotape of one of Abscam’s most famous moments:

On tape, Murtha told the undercover FBI agent: “When I make a f***in' deal I want to make sure that I know exactly what I’m doing and … what I’m sayin' is, a few investments in my district …"

It is a profound and shocking fact that Murtha even showed up at this meeting, knowing he was going to be negotiating bribe money with Arabs.

Murtha added that he wanted the investment in his district to look like it was done “legitimately … when I say legitimately, I’m talking about so these bastards up here can’t say to me … 'Jesus Christ, ah, this happened,' then he (someone else), in order to get immunity so he doesn’t go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people and then the son of a bitch all falls apart."

For those of you just joining us, no, this isn’t a scene from “The Sopranos.” It’s an actual conversation between a U.S. congressman and an FBI agent posing as an Arab sheik offering a bribe.

"Murtha” is Congressman John Murtha, D-PA. Yes, that Murtha — the one that the Democrats have proudly chosen as the leader of their anti-war efforts.

Sometimes you just have to wonder whether you’re in the real world, or in someone’s demented, loony-bin dream world. Because in the real world, surely something this obviously wrong wouldn’t happen, would it?

Please, someone wake me up and get me back to the real world!

H/T to Ann Coulter…

Fortress Report

As I write this, my contractor continues his never-ending stream of lies, broken promises, and just plain immoral behavior. It’s really quite sad.

And quite annoying, since it’s my money he’s got, and my fortress he’s not building!

Several of my concerned readers have asked me privately to name this contractor, as they would like to avoid making the same mistake I did. Privately, I have responded to them — and if you’re about to make a decision on a concrete contractor, feel free to contact me!

However, I’m not quite ready to disclose his name publicly — although I’m very, very close. I’ve gotten some advice from an attorney on this matter, and there’s one more step I’m going to take before I’m ready to go public with the contractor’s name. In a few days, if I don’t have a positive response (meaning visible progress on the fortress), then I will name him here.

Quote of the Day

From Mark Steyn’s most recent column in The Australian:

According to my dictionary, the word “ally” comes from the Old French. Very Old French, I’d say. For the New French, the word has a largely postmodern definition of “duplicitous charmer who undermines you at every opportunity”.

Read the whole thing.

Word of the Day

Beelzebug, n: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Word of the Day

Caterpallor, n: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

Word of the Day

Ignoranus, n: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

Wow!

As you can see on the gauge at right, we had almost 3 inches (7 cm) of lovely, gentle rain fall on us yesterday. For once, the rainfall occurred almost exactly when the NOAA forecast said it would: midnight-to-midnight on the 19th. No forecast I saw got the amount right, though — predictions varied from 1.25 inches to 2 inches.

Our wildfire danger is now essentially zero, and it will most likely stay that way for at least a month. Hopefully more…

If our deserts to the east got some of this rain (I don’t know yet whether they did or not), then we’re quite likely to have good desert wildflowers this year.

And of course, in a few weeks I’ll be engaged in the annual battle weeds and grasses battle!

Rain!

We’ve got a very nice rain storm going right now; it’s been raining — often quite hard — since just after midnight last night. On the radar snapshot at right you can see that at 7:15 this morning we had a big old storm cell right on top of our heads. The current radar image shows more such cells on the way. The forecast says rain all day today and into tonight.

And we’ve got over an inch already!

I suspect the Lawson Creek will be running tomorrow, for real…

The rain has been intense enough, on occasion, to cause my satellite Internet connection to fail — it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything like that…

Slide Rules

If you found this blog because you were looking for Tom Dilatush, the slide rule collector, you’ve found some scribblings by the right guy — but you’re in the wrong place.

Mike Konshak (the proprietor of the indispensable International Slide Rule Museum) offered to host my slide rule collection on his web site. That was such an attractive offer that I could hardly resist, and my collection is now slowly making it’s way onto the web at this new location. As I write this, I’m approaching 100 slide rules scanned, photographed, and documented.

So go take a look!

Oh My

Doomed, I tell you, we're all DOOMED!

Watch this.

Then (if you're American) weep for your country.

Gun Control

Here’s England’s experience, in a pithy summary from the London Telegraph:

We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns - either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe - with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licenses, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

This pretty much matches the NRA’s predictive slogan:

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.

The left in the U.S. never ceases its attempts — sometimes successful — to whittle away at the rights of Americans to own firearms. With the Democratic majorities now in Congress, we can expect more of the same at the national level — hopefully to be vetoed by President Bush. In 2008, should Hillary or Obama be elected (an outcome you can bet that Osama and his ilk are fervently praying for), and should the Democratic majorities in Congress be maintained, we can expect some very restrictive gun control legislation to be passed. Both candidates have, in the past, expressed support for either eliminating the right of U.S. citizens to own firearms, or for restricting that right severely, as in the U.K. today. In fact, Hillary has cited the U.K. as a model for gun control. Should such legislation be passed, the NRA and other such groups will immediately mount a Constitutional challenge, and one hopes they’d win that. But after Kelo, I’m no longer so confident that our Supreme Court will actually uphold the plain meaning of the Constitution. Event its “conservative” members are alarmingly prone to inventing new meanings and new passages…

Global Warming

On Reuters yesterday:

KATHMANDU - Snow fell on Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, for the first time in 63 years on Wednesday, stirring excitement and curiosity among residents and their children.

"I have never seen it snow in Kathmandu in all my life,” said 45-year-old housewife Manju Shrestha, playing in the snow with her young children.

Also in the news yesterday: temperatures in Antarctica are not increasing, as the climate models have predicted. Let me translate: the “evidence” for the notion of future global warming caused by human activity consists almost entirely of the predictions of computerized “models” of the Earth’s climate. For the most part, the changes predicted by these models are small and slow, and therefore very difficult to verify over the course of even several years. However, there are several changes the models predict that are larger and faster. One of those happens to be in an area where there is lots of scientific activity, and good climate records over the past few years: Antarctica. The models predicted easily measurable temperature increases over the past 10 years.

Those increases didn’t happen.

The models are demonstrably wrong.

But I don’t suppose the Al Gorians will temper their rhetoric in the slightest. After all, they’re not the type to let a little thing like some pesky data upset their gravy train certainty…

Quote of the Day

From Iraqi Konfused Kid:

I’m gonna tell you something that all the Iraqis who pretend they’re full of pride and shit don’t tell you, every Iraqi who knows what’s good for him wants the US military plan to happen - it’s a known fact today that while US soldiers do occasionally rape 15-year-olds and add naked photos of our hairy butts to their family albums, they are still infinitely more trustworthy than any Iraqi soldier from anywhere. When an American soldier knocks on your door for a search, you go 'oh thank god' but when Iraqis do the same, you are instantly on your toes.

Read the whole thing, please.

There’s a wide variety of commentary coming from Iraq these days, on blogs — military blogs, diplomatic blogs, propaganda blogs, and Iraqi citizen blogs. What’s most striking to me about all of these sources of information is this: while they all have different perspectives and different kinds of information … I haven’t found a single one that even comes close matching the awful picture painted by the lamestream media. If you read these sources, as I do regularly, you’ll discover a different Iraq. A much more plausible Iraq than the one you see on CNN, and also a much more complex Iraq. There’s good news and there’s bad news, and plenty of both. And contrary to what you’d believe if your only source was the talking network heads, there’s plenty of those most precious human commodities: hope and inspiration…

Wake Up!

Last night Debbie attempted to use our microwave oven, and discovered that it didn’t work. Oh, the lights came on, and the turntable turned, but the stuff inside stayed ice cold. Thinking that it might have gotten itself into some software failure mode, or perhaps that some electronics got overheated, I pulled the plug and told her we’d try it again in the morning. It’s amazing how often a little “rest” cures whatever ails an appliance.

So this morning I plugged it back in to try it out. Of course it won’t do anything until you set the clock, so I had to figure that out again. Thank goodness for Google’s ability to find a manual on the web — because there’s very little chance we’d ever find the manual for this 8 or 9 year old device in our house! So, with multi-page clock-setting directions in hand, I managed to get the clock set. Now we’re ready to test it, and hopefully we’ll be cooking with hard radiation!

But such was not to be…

I put my test container of water in the microwave, and pressed the two buttons that would make it heat for one minute on 'high'. For the first couple of seconds, everything acted perfectly normal. Then there was a very loud kra-a-a-ck!!! and a jet of blue flame shot out the right side of the microwave. Our microwave is sitting in a recessed cabinet, so the blue flame quickly filled the small space between the microwave and the cabinet, and then changed direction to the only escape it had: straight out the front. This flame jumped out perhaps 18 inches, right past my right hand (which was still up at the control panel) and just a few inches from my eyeballs.

I don’t think my heart rate has ever jumped quite so much, quite so quickly.

The microwave is now sitting ignominiously out by our trash cans. I will buy us a nice, shining, new, non-exploding microwave this afternoon.

And I will never, ever have an unguarded microwave moment again!

Plan Two

The Democrats' actions don’t match their rhetoric? I know, I know, big freakin' surprise! I can hear the peanut gallery already… They’re politicians, for crap’s sake! What was I expecting? Leadership? Aw, come on, be reasonable — these are politicians we’re talking about!

For all their “deeply felt", “moral” rhetoric during the last election campaign about the need to end the war in Iraq, and for all their self-congratulating talk about the “mandate” the voters handed them, the Democrats have just shown us how shallow their actual commitment to the cause really is. In four months the Democratic leadership has made the transition from in-your-face anti-war agitation to a kind of political “guerrilla war”. They don’t have the votes — or the Constitutional authority — to force an actual end to the war. So they now have the objective of preventing President Bush — the Commander-In-Chief duly elected by a majority of the American people — from prosecuting the Iraq war as he decides. From The Politico:

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration’s options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition’s goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself.

The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable.

As described by participants, the goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the anti-war movement — the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field. That fear is why many Democrats have remained timid in challenging Bush, even as public support for the president and his Iraq policies have plunged.

Translation: the Democrats have figured out that their bring-the-troops-home-right-now position is not the position of the majority of the American people (and possibly not even the majority of the lefties — barking moonbat rhetoric notwithstanding). So they can’t take on the issue directly, as they would lose. Rather than accept this outcome — which is after all just that pesky “will of the people” thing, not the view of the “elites” — they will instead try to hobble President Bush with their version of the legendary Chinese torture: death by a thousand cuts. Financial cuts, in this case.

Their political courage in office doesn’t even come close to matching their rhetorical courage while running.

What disturbs me the most, though, isn’t this specific tactic; I’ve come to expect such bullshit from this crowd. No, what disturbs me the most is that my fellow Americans keep re-electing these bozos, despite their repeated failure to live up to even their own side’s expectations! So far as I can discern, there is simply zero accountability amongst our elected representatives.

Sort of like the Post Office.

Now there’s a scary thought for you…

Simple Joys

A friend passed along this story…

One sunny day in 2008, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench.

He spoke to the Marine standing guard and said, “I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton.

The Marine replied, “Sir, Mrs. Clinton is not President and doesn’t reside here."

The old man said, “Okay,” and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton”.

The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mrs. Clinton is not President and doesn’t reside here."

The man thanked him and again walked away…

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton."

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mrs. Clinton. I’ve told you already several times that Mrs. Clinton is not the President and doesn’t reside here. Don’t you understand?"

The old man answered, “Oh, I understand you fine, I just love hearing your answer!"

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said … “See you tomorrow!"

Trouble is, this story would be just as funny — and comforting — with almost any of the 25 (or 45, or whatever it’s up to now) announced candidates for President in 2008…

Quote of the Day

On Saturday, I chanced to hear a prominent politician say this:

If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Mr. Obama but also for the Democrats.

Can you guess who this was?

It was that well-known American patriot, John Howard. The Prime Minister of Australia. Leave it to an Aussie to have the political courage to speak the truth, however inconvenient or politically incorrect it might be…