July 2013

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Some real American history 
Neuro-scientists able to create false memories in mice.
Game over for Zynga? Firm loses 25 percent of daily active users in one quarter 
 Doctor Who actor warns against using social media. It makes you into a phony he says.

Det News critic: Bob Dylan's voice is shot, performances lackluster.  I found this out back in '07 myself. 

"Smart guns" not selling: Who wants one that can be hacked, won't work if the battery is dead, or that can be remotely tracked. disabled? 
More collateral damage from the drug war: Local idiot blows up his house trying to make hash oil via the butane extraction method.
Nate Silver leaving NYT for ESPN: Called Times style political reporting "useless". 
Pentagon discovers that buying weaponry from your enemies is a bad idea, even if it's cheaper.   
Book review: This Town dissects the ecosystem of America's gilded capitol city and its haughty in-crowd
Goodyear to replace its blimps with zeppelins 

 

Friday potshots

How would we in America feel about having Iranian aircraft carriers "patrolling" in the Gulf of Mexico or Iranian paramilitary commando teams operating on the border? A little empathy test for the warlike neo-cons and their dupes. Just sayin'.

Trolling on the website of a county Sheriff's Department that is trying to find and arrest you is truly stupid. But some people have this show-off mentality and so they do. Go figure?

There is a bill in the NJ legislature now seeking to ban most handgun and rifle ammo. The anti-gunners couldn't manage to legally ban guns but ammo, they say, is another story.

People who desire privacy on the Internet may be terrorists says the FBI.

The strange addiction that control and power have on some people is just plain baffling, not to mention kind of scary.

Vocal anti-gun SF sheriff is now himself disarmed

San Francisco county's sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, a loudmouthed proponent of disarming everyone  in SF, is now himself disarmed. If Sheriff Mirkarimi is convicted of the domestic violence, assault, and child endangerment charges he's been arrested for he'll lose the legal right to own, possess, or even touch a firearm or ammunition for the rest of his life. Sucks to be him but the rest of us can laugh however. Heh.

I don't have to justify what I "need" to Sarah Brady

...or any of the rest of the nannies, scolds, shrews, harpies, buttinskies, kvetchers, control-freaks, and the rest that ilk. And the Scumfuck Living In Babylon blogger puts it even more bluntly than I do. To wit:

"I'm sick of pretending", says the SFLB, "that there are sporting purposes to my shit. I'm a survivalist and my weapons are for killing motherfuckers in a theoretical Mad Max future, and perhaps most importantly of all I don't have to justify shit to you, god damnit."

Indeed. Μολὼν λαβέ you bastards!

(Via the End the War on Freedom blog of Bill St. Clair)

Libyan militias now want to keep their arms after all. Go figure?

When the armed-struggle phase of the anti-Qadaffi uprising began and the Libyan state aresenals were being liberated those people and groups making off with all the guns and ammo vowed that they'd turn them all over to the new government when the revolution was successfully concluded. Now it seems that they're having a change of heart about disarming themselves.

It seems that after nearly a century or so of foreign occupation (the Italian Fascists) and misrule by both an unelected King (Idris II) and a bat-shit crazy dictator (Qaddafi) the people of Libya don't trust governments or political elites. Go figure?

That being unarmed renders one contemptible in the sight of one's rivals is a reality of practical politics in unsettled places like Libya; A practical point of existence that you won't learn of at places like the Kennedy School of Government or the Sorbonne. 

NYT story link here.

Being disarmed renders one contemptible*

Field & Stream's Gun Nut blogger David E. Petzal explains the sad story of the disarmed citizens of the UK. BLUF: You can't defend yourself and the cops won't. 

"The mobs could break into any store they choose," notes Petzal, "serene in the knowledge that the police couldn’t stop them and that the odds they would be shot by an irate store owner were virtually nil. And the laws in Great Britain being what they are, any merchant who did treat a looter to a dose of shot would almost surely go to prison." 

Compare this sad outcome to the situation in neighborhoods where the local people rose and defended their property as best they could (albeit without firearms). They were passed over by the mobs. Like the cowards they are the mob fears a real fight and so they moved on to easier prey.

Niccolo Machiavelli

* Niccolo Machiavelli :"...[A]mong other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible." Stated  here as some practical advice to medieval princes but a firm truth for us all nonetheless, eh?