Don’t ask me to explain it:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdjY6oy4Y2c?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Tag: miscellaneous
Barsoom!
I caught John Carter at the last matinee this afternoon. I have not read the Burroughs novels, so I had very little preconception walking in to the theater that was not part of the trailers I had seen. My take on it: four out of five stars. The suspension of disbelief was not onerous (yes, I’ve studied physics and the leaps were just not plausible, but I was able to go along for the ride anyway.) I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will be seeing it again with my wife. Generally, action movies give her motion sickness, but we’ve discovered that if she views them in 3-D, they don’t. (I would expect the opposite, but hey, whatever works.)
One other comment: Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) – WOOF!
This About Says It
Yours truly turns 50 years old today.
I remember when I hit 40, it hit back. Oh well, “Keep Calm and Carry On” indeed!
This WAS Me, Last Week
I’m out sick for a couple of days, and WTF?!?
On top of that, I’m buried in work. Normal blogging to resume some time in April, probably. I’ll post what I can, when I can.
Oh, and if you’re interested, the next Bowling Pin match is Sunday, March 11. Hopefully the tables will all remain standing this time.
$134 Billion? Chicken Feed!
Back in June of 2009, I linked to reports that $134.5 billion in U.S. bearer-bonds were seized by Italian authorities from two Japanese men on a train from Italy to Switzerland. Another $116 billion were seized in August of that year. Now the Italians have found another $6 Trillion in bonds in safe-deposit boxes in Zurich, Switzerland.
The bonds in these cases are fakes (which means they’re worth about as much as real ones today), but wow. It takes a lot of chutzpah to print six trillion dollars worth of counterfeits.
Almost as much as it takes to print sixteen trillion worth of real ones.
From the comments, if you want to take a fascinating trip down the rabbit hole, check out the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System post on the topic. Fascinating.
The Decline of Violence
Instapundit links to an interesting Reason piece on the decline of violence throughout history, as chronicled by Harvard University cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker in his new book.
The book is entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Ronald Bailey, the author of the piece writes:
Human nature did not change, but our institutions did, encouraging people to restrain their natural tendencies toward violence.
I am reminded of a Usenet sigline by one Trefor Thomas:
To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated.
I get the uncomfortable feeling that the decline of violence is due to that violence being banked away for a rainy day. As Bailey notes, human nature hasn’t changed.
What has changed is that violence has largely gone from from personal, retail events to state-level wholesale slaughter. As Tam has noted,
Central governments have managed to turn murder from a hobby pursued at home by individual craftsmen into a wholesale industry churning out slipshod and substandard corpses in numbers that can’t be read without sounding like Carl Sagan.
True, the overall percentages have declined, but when violence is really unleashed the casualties are overwhelming. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from economics, it’s that past performance is no guarantee of future results.
If When Iran does go nuclear, for instance ….
The Best Idea I’ve Seen So Far This Year
From Victor Davis Hanson:
A small suggestion: given that we have let in 11 million illegal aliens without legality, capital, education, or English, why not announce that we will fast-track into citizenship 100,000 Europeans a year who speak English, have a BA degree, and can come with $50,000 in capital? Set the immigration at exactly the same number we do for legal immigrants from Mexico — and then listen and watch what happens!
Discuss.
Camoflage and Pearls
Cowboy Blob has an excellent example of why we’re winning – The Debutante Hunters, a 12 minute short-subject from the Sundance Film Festival. Go. Watch. Make Sarah Brady cry.
I Bet There’s an Interesting Pucker Mark in His Seat
5 Most Wanted
What 5 firearms would I purchase, should price nor practicality be an issue?
Well, I’m a practical kinda guy, but here’s my list:
1) Single-shot falling-block type rifle. For me, this is a tossup between a Ruger No. 1 in a varmint caliber, or a Shiloh Sharps .45-110 Quigley. (Or, in AR15.com tradition, BOTH!)
2) A semi-auto combat-style shotgun. I’m not a shotgunner and I don’t follow 3-gun so I’m not really sure what’s hot right now, but I have only one scattergun in my safe at the moment – a Mossberg 590 pump. I’m open to suggestions on this one.
3) A 4″ barreled Colt Python in Royal Blue with the roller-bearing action job. (Did anybody ever make a 5″ version of this revolver?)
4) A really nice full-custom Browning Hi-Power, like this Cylinder & Slide Peerless Grade. After all, price is no object, right?
5) Uncle wants a full-tilt G.E. Minigun. OK, I can see that. But I think I’d really like something similar, but not as big. Lakeside Guns makes firing miniature replicas of 1917, 1919 and M2 Browning belt-fed machine guns that fire the .22 Long Rifle cartridge. I’d like a six-barreled 6,000 round-per-minute mini-minigun that shoots the .22 – complete with backpack power supply/ammo hopper so it’s man-portable. I want to carry it and to be able to shoot it like Jesse Ventura in Predator.
Damned Hughes Amendment….