Monday, November 28, 2016

"But Batista was a tyrant, so this doesn't count!" Or something.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported in 1966 that 166 Cuban prisoners were executed on a single day in May of that year. But before they were killed, they were forced to undergo the forced extraction of an average of seven pints of blood from their bodies. This blood was sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint. Those who underwent the bloodletting suffered cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. But that didn’t stop the executions; the victims were carried on a stretcher to the killing field where they were then shot.

Borrowing from a piece linked at Insty,

During the 1930s, there were many apologists for Joseph Stalin’s brutalities, which he committed in the name of building a workers’ paradise fit for an improved humanity. The apologists complacently said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” To which George Orwell acidly replied: “Where’s the omelet?”
Having just gone through some bullshit of "Everything you wrote about Castro is false!  He raised literacy!" etc., I think they only omelet they care about is "He was a socialist!", and all the death and ruined lives and so forth doesn't count.


Antarctic sea ice had barely changed from where it was 100 years ago, scientists have discovered, after poring over the logbooks of great polar explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. 

Experts were concerned that ice at the South Pole had declined significantly since the 1950s, which they feared was driven by man-made climate change. 

But new analysis suggests that conditions are now virtually identical to when the Terra Nova and Endurance sailed to the continent in the early 1900s, indicating that declines are part of a natural cycle and not the result of global warming.
But globular warmening is still a big threat we must act on, etc.


But I thought the science was settled!
“The idea that the speed of light could be variable was radical when first proposed, but with a numerical prediction, it becomes something physicists can actually test. If true, it would mean that the laws of nature were not always the same as they are today.”
Why, it's almost like the 'laws of nature' aren't, and there are things we just don't know yet...


Sunday, November 27, 2016

Watching people kiss the ass of a dead tyrant who put gays in camps,

tortured, murdered, was a racist bastard and looted the country has been amazing. 

And it's usually said by people who compare Trump to Hitler.

I don't know what color the sky is in their world, but it must be amazing.

From up north, in reaction to the PM's slobbering farewell to the tyrant,
For all the parochial Canadian susceptibility to the propaganda myth that pits a shabby-bearded rebel in olive fatigues against the imperialist American hegemon, by the time he died on Friday night Castro was one of the richest men in Latin America. Ten years ago, when he was handing the presidency to Raúl, Forbes magazine calculated that Fidel’s personal wealth was already nearly a billion dollars.
Which tends to get overlooked.  A lot. 


And a few other things:

●He outlawed private enterprise and labor unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.
●He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.
●He censored all means of expression and communication.
●He established a fraudulent school system that provided indoctrination rather than education, and created a two-tier health-care system, with inferior medical care for the majority of Cubans and superior care for himself and his oligarchy, and then claimed that all his repressive measures were absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of these two ostensibly “free” social welfare projects. 

You see, EVERYTHING was made better by Castro.  And if you don't believe it you're a fascist.  And probably a racist, too.  Etc.

The usual idiots are in mourning for Castro, so

I've got a couple of things in response.  First,
Outside its small tourist sector, the rest of the city looks as though it suffered a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami. Roofs have collapsed. Walls are splitting apart. Window glass is missing. Paint has long vanished. It’s eerily dark at night, almost entirely free of automobile traffic. I walked for miles through an enormous swath of destruction without seeing a single tourist. Most foreigners don’t know that this other Havana exists, though it makes up most of the city—tourist buses avoid it, as do taxis arriving from the airport. It is filled with people struggling to eke out a life in the ruins.
...
Cuba was one of the world’s richest countries before Castro destroyed it—and the wealth wasn’t just in the hands of a tiny elite. “Contrary to the myth spread by the revolution,” wrote Alfred Cuzan, a professor of political science at the University of West Florida, “Cuba’s wealth before 1959 was not the purview of a privileged few. . . . Cuban society was as much of a middle-class society as Argentina and Chile.” In 1958, Cuba had a higher per-capita income than much of Europe. “More Americans lived in Cuba prior to Castro than Cubans lived in the United States,” Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, author of a series of books about Castro and Guevara, tells me. 
...
When the ailing Fidel Castro ceded power to his less doctrinaire younger brother Raúl in 2008, the quasi-capitalist bubble expanded, but the economy remains heavily socialist. In the United States, we have a minimum wage; Cuba has a maximum wage—$20 a month for almost every job in the country. (Professionals such as doctors and lawyers can make a whopping $10 extra a month.) Sure, Cubans get “free” health care and education, but as Cuban exile and Yale historian Carlos Eire says, “All slave owners need to keep their slaves healthy and ensure that they have the skills to perform their tasks.”

And a slight modification of a shirt:
Yeah, I know, posted this the other day; I like it.


The PM of Canada kissed the dead ass of the dictator, and a lot of Canadians aren't exactly happy.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

It's chilly out there,

I'm staying in here.  Crap I've been putting off that has to get done, but I do have data for you.












































DAMMIT, 2016...

Det. Harris and Shepard Book have left the world.

A shirt for those feeling sad for the departed(and unlamented by his victims) Castro,

I have your shirt.

So Castro is finally a good communist

And the wailing on the left has commenced.  For everyone else,


It's like the idea of 'serving your customers' doesn't exist for idiots like Blanchfield.
He said that while he remains committed to his liberal clients, he “will no longer do business with any person that is a registered Republican or supports Donald Trump.”

“If you are a Republican, voted for Donald Trump or support Donald Trump, in any manner, you are not welcome at 1st In SEO and we ask you to leave our firm,” Mr. Blanchfield wrote in the letter, which he shared Wednesday with his 35,000 Twitter followers.
Here's hoping he loses every customer who doesn't meet his standards of leftism.


Friend told me the Atwoods in Lawton had Henry lever-action .22 rifles, the blued-steel, for about $230 the other day.  Damn.  Good thing I had the restraint not to take that drive.


When protesters are setting bombs, they're not 'protesters' anymore.  And when they damage themselves, it's their own damned fault, but they're sure to blame the LE at the site.


Since I opened this with a dead commie, I'll close with one of the results of communism: it's Holodomor Remembrance Day.
During the Holodomor millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by the independent Ukraine and 24 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet Union.

Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly; anywhere from 1.8 to 12 million ethnic Ukrainians were said to have perished as a result of the famine. Recent research has since narrowed the estimates to between 2.4 and 7.5 million. The exact number of deaths is hard to determine, due to a lack of records, but the number increases significantly when the deaths inside heavily Ukrainian-populated Kuban are included. Older estimates are still often cited in political commentary. According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficit.

Friday, November 25, 2016

What? How, even on a holiday, could you think I'd forget

the data?













































Somewhat back, and if you need bullets

X-Treme is having a sale: 15% off on everything, and free shipping on orders up to $1500


Brownell's has a 'Something off and free shipping' on lots of things.


If you wrote crap like this in a novel, people wouldn't believe it.*
Students had been invited to express their feelings about the election by writing them on post-it-notes and placing them on a designated table. The post-it-note in question appeared in the window of the Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion instead, according to Campus Reform.

College Vice President Tony Chambers sent a letter to campus condemning this "act of cowardly hatred" and "intimidation." He wrote:
A group of cross-functional college staff representing campus security, student conduct, human resources, Title IX enforcement, and diversity and inclusion measures convened Tuesday morning to discuss how to address the hateful message. This group determined that the message constituted a Hate Crime…

College officials informed the Madison police, and now the cops are investigating. They are investigating a post-it-note. With a non-threatening message and a smiley face on it. After inviting students to express their feelings via post-it-note.
$41k per year.



Now, if you'll excuse me, stuff to do.
*Well, nowadays a lot of people would.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Watch the traffic

and enjoy the holiday.

I may or may not post anything for a bit.

See you later.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Holiday week,

bloggage will probably be little-to-none for a few days

Well, that was interesting Update

Some of you may remember the Saga of the 15-22 from several years ago.  The rifle they replaced the original with has functioned flawlessly, until today.

On the range, trying out a few rounds of some new(to me) Winchester ammo, the first round fired, and then had an out-of-battery fire as the second round was still a bit out of the chamber.  Which got my attention.

No damage to me or anything other than the rifle, the extractor pin appears to have sheared, the extractor is in its groove in the barrel, and the spring is still in the bolt.  With the ruptured case sticking out of the chamber.

Pictures later, I want to contact S&W about this before I move anything more than necessary.

Update: message from S&W, "We'd suggest you return it to us for examination, provide the following information", etc.  So it begins.

When history is what you want it to be

Remnick himself described the Obama presidency as “two terms long on dignity and short on scandal.” The IRS? The State Department scandal that arguably sank Mrs. Clinton’s campaign? Again, the memory hole.

In Lima on Sunday the president himself declared: “I am extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations.” That’s either delusional or very carefully worded: To our knowledge no other administration has used the IRS to punish ordinary citizens for dissent, nor faced FBI findings that the secretary of state treated classified information in an “extremely careless” fashion. . . .
Not to mention Fast & Furious, and the other gunrunning operations the media had no interest in investigating.


Short version: "But this isn't OUR plan to fix things, and it means less .gov control, so this is BAD!"


Awww, who's a bigoted little bitch?
He wants a coup, too.


Monday, November 21, 2016

Yes, it's stupid; you expect anything else from this DoJ?

Last week the Department of Justice released guidelines for smart-gun manufacturers.
ARE there any 'smart-gun manufacturers'?  Not people doing some research, but actual manufacturers?

The new guidelines are voluntary, so they are useless. “This project was designed to spur the growth of enhanced gun safety technology – and not to mandate that any particular individual or law enforcement agency adopt the technology once developed,” the Department of Justice wrote in a blog post.
Whatever Trump may be, say "Thank you" for Clinton not being elected, because she and DoJ would be trying to make this crap mandatory.

If there was a demand for smart guns, we wouldn't' need a government agency to study the topic and issue guidelines. What other commodity with market demand needs the government to step in and help it out? None.
Gee, I wonder why...
There are several problems with "smart" guns. Most importantly, the technology can fail as even the DOJ admits.  I expect the smart gun to fade away once the new administration takes power -- or at least we'll see if there is an actual demand for the product without the government intervening.
IF there was an actual demand, there'd already be people actually selling the things, as opposed to 'We have made this, and we need the .gov to push people to buy our unreliable crap.'

These people...

At least 16 people died and 50 were wounded in Libya in four days of clashes between rival factions that were reportedly sparked by a monkey.

According to residents and local media in the southern city of Sabha, the violence erupted between two tribes after three young men turned a pet monkey loose on a schoolgirl. Libya's government faces forced currency devaluation

The animal pulled off one of the girls’ headscarves, prompting men from the Awlad Suleiman tribe to retaliate by killing three people from the Gaddadfa tribe as well as the monkey, according to a resident who spoke to Reuters.


Speaking of 'these people',
Members of the Middle East Studies Association voted in favor of advancing a resolution to remove the word “nonpolitical” from the group’s bylaws in what opponents see as a prelude to a future vote on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. The resolution to amend the bylaws, approved by a 247-57 majority of those present at the annual members’ meeting, will next go to the full membership for a vote. An amendment to the bylaws requires the support of two-thirds of voting members.


Now, it’s about to get weirder. In a new study detailed in the International Journal of Nanotechnology, physicists note that liquid water has a whole new set of properties when it hits temperatures between 40°C and 60°C (104°F and 140°F). In that range, water goes into a “crossover” phase, essentially a second liquid state.


So, once more, "It's different and good when WE do it!"


Attorney General Maura Healey must defend her probe of ­Exxon Mobil’s climate-change policy in a Texas courtroom hearing that one prominent analyst says shows a federal judge sees “big-time political motives” in her use of power.
Well, it was big-time political motives when she screwed gun owners, so why would it be different in this?


Sunday, November 20, 2016

About Gen. Mattis:

an officer like this, no wonder the Marines idolize him.

Some of the sayings of Gen. Mattis

Apparently some leftist groups are crapping their pants over some of these.  This one in particular:
“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”

A Secretary of Defense who says things like this?   Yes, please.

So, how much are students at University of Colorado paying per year?

More 'higher' education.
A humanities course currently taught at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs teaches that the Founding Fathers were hypocrites, terrorists and money-hungry barons who used hyperbole and fear to rile up the colonists to revolt against England.

The “Resistance and Revolution” class is co-taught by history lecturer Jared Benson and sociology instructor Nicholas Lee, who also suggest that it was Mikhail Gorbachev – not Ronald Reagan — who brought down the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that wealthy CEOs deserve to be in a “moral prison,” among many other assertions.

Calling the Founding Fathers “terrorists,” Benson and Lee voice criticism and cynicism against many of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War, teaching students the founding ideals were “merely a fabrication for a social movement” — a means to an end for the colonist elites who were tired of England’s control and needed the gullible masses to help them break free.


I'd wondered just what some of the reactions would be if the Evil Party makes Ellison the head; looks like a bunch of people really don't like the idea.


Hmmm.  'Strange' would seem an understatement.
The wreckage of six warships and a submarine that have lain on the bottom of the Java Sea since 1942 is now missing, and naval authorities are at a loss to explain the disappearance.

Someone hasn't been paying attention to the warnings, maybe?


 You may have seen that Bill Gates(rich as hell due to the capitalist system) is telling people that 'socialism is GREAT!'
Hey, Bill?  You might want to take a break from that crap and see if your company can make your damned software stop doing weird crap.  Such as my Windows start button not working, and 'search' not working.  You bastard.

So NASA has tested this; and

After months of speculation and leaked documents, NASA's long-awaited EM Drive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published. And it shows that the 'impossible' propulsion system really does appear to work.
Produces a small amount of thrust.  At this point.  For a system that lots of people still say CAN'T work, any thrust is interesting.  And
But the team makes it clear that they also weren't attempting to optimise performance in these tests – all they were doing was trying to prove whether or not the drive really works. So it's likely that the EM Drive could get a lot more efficient still.

I don't get the "But it violates a LAW!" objections.  They aren't actual unbreakable 'laws', they're how we understand things to work based on what we know.  This could be something we didn't know about before showing up.

Speaking of, it could be some weird(or 'another' weird) thing about quantum effects that we didn't know about before because nobody had done a thing that would show it before this.

We'll see.