It very well could be the answer

As to how he got elected

1273499727332.gif

Don’t stare at it too long or you’ll start to think that a VAT Tax is a good idea

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age, Useful Idiots | Leave a comment

They grow up so fast

When your favorite childish UK automotive show host expresses an opinion like this it almost makes you wonder where all the years have gone to.

Something strange is going on in this country. In the run-up to the general election David Cameron was constantly accused of being unfit for office because of his excellent education at Eton and Oxford. Isn’t that like suggesting an athlete should be barred from the British Olympic team because they are “too fast”?

It was much the same story with Nick Clegg. People loved him … right up to the point when they learnt he had been educated at Westminster and Cambridge. Somehow, that immediately precluded him from being any good at anything. It’s hard, really, to understand what the critics are suggesting. Do they think that a fat and idiotic woman from Mansfield would make a better leader because she is thick? Or am I missing something?

And so it was with the vulgar subject of money. There was a time, not that long ago, when no one in this country ever spoke about how much anyone earned. I remember once being in a Swedish tank when all of a sudden the captain turned and asked: “Right. How much did you make last year?” I couldn’t have been more taken aback if he’d asked me how often I had anal sex.

Now, though, things are different. We are told, often, that the director-general of the BBC earns more than £800,000 and that this is an obscene amount of money. Right. I see. So what should he be paid? Half that? A quarter? Is £50,000 acceptable? To someone on the minimum wage, probably not.

Doubtless the bitter and the twisted looked at all those multi-millionaires in this newspaper’s recent Rich List and thought: “How can any one man possibly have a fortune of £1 billion?”

Why shouldn’t he? It is no skin off your nose. At the very least, you don’t have to sit next to him on a plane. And anyway, if the government took all his money away and distributed it evenly among the rest of the population, you’d be £16 richer and he’d be wondering why he spent his whole life working so damn hard.

He did. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that if you drive into London at 6am, half of the cars on the roads are Porsches and Astons. Whereas if you go in at ten to nine, they’re all Renaults. Simple solution, then. You want a nice car? Get up earlier and do more work.

Excuse me while I get a tissue. I’m just so proud. Before you know it, he’ll be voting UKIP.

Oh, and if you want to read a good review of the Porsche 911 GT3, you can click on the above link as well.

Found via the AoSHQ

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 1 Comment

Dumbstruck

As in: “I am struck at how dumb these supposedly intelligent people are acting.”

The members of the US National Academy of Sciences issued a letter denouncing “McCarthy-like threats and tactics” by engaging in McCarthy-like threats and tactics.

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past the theory of evolution. Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.

No credible alternative theory? Really? They’re going to hang their hat on that statement?

Seeing as how I can think of three very good ones off the top of my head, I am going to call bullshit.

And then there is, what I can only guess is supposed to be the laugh line: That the IPCC corrects itself when a mistake is pointed out. I have seen no corrections. I have not even seen where they admit a mistake was made. A student’s thesis paper containing only anecdotal evidence from mostly unnamed hikers and mountain climbers, which was used to “prove” significant snowfall decrease in the Andes, didn’t even get press here in the US.

I know that these lazy bastards have gotten used to Glowball Warmening being their easy meal ticket, but to whine and moan about their theory being taken down by a minuscule population of underfunded scientists while they sit upon their largess of pro-AGW study funding, which is at least a multitude more than anything an non-AGW believing scientist will ever have available to them is, frankly, disgusting.

Posted in The Global Warming Death Cult | 1 Comment

Awesome!

This is who Secret Squirrel must have learned it from.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Home Design to Reduce Annoyances

Some modifications I’m intending to make to our current home:

Translucent light switches with power to an interior LED so you can see the light switches in the dark.

Dedicated wall switch in every room to turn A/V equipment on or off.

Stack of spare TP rolls on their side behind wallboard, with neat hole in wallboard at bottom of stack (to grab spare TP roll), and opening at top (behind a picture frame) for refilling the stack.

For kitchen sinks: panels/cabinet doors for access to the plumbing on the back side of the sink, so you can work on the plumbing from a (relatively) comfortable position. (Possible even for sinks next to outside windows, although there are obvious security issues with this one, and possible code problems in new construction.)

There are lots of this sort of thing in Japanese design, especially in the infamous “rabbit hutch” apartments where space is at a premium and clever design is more valuable because of it.

Other clever ideas from readers would be appreciated.

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Not from The Onion

Lord Jesus Christ hit by car

Winning comment:

No worries, he’ll be out of the hospital in three days….

LOL!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Friday Fiction: No Comebacks

I have an inordinate fondness for short stories. Actually, I like to think that most of our popular novelists have done some of their best work in short-story form. Unfortunately, that doesn’t sell as well as the full-length novel, so I’m forced to search out gems like Frederick Forsyth’s collection No Comebacks. The title story, below, is one of my favorites. I’ve wanted for a long time to try shipping a firearm across international borders using Monsieur Calvi’s method shown here, just to see if it would still work. I think it might. Enjoy.

Continue reading

Posted in Friday Fiction | 5 Comments

Go Watch Now

Iron Man 2 is very very good. Wife and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

For my fellow code monkeys

Comparing the hierarchical nature of the command structure  of E. Coli & Linux.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Early Friday Fiction: Surrogate

I’m behind in my Friday Fiction posts, due to Boomershoot and other things. So you get a twofer this week.

The recently-departed Robert B. Parker will be sorely missed. He got lazy in his habits in his later years, but when he was on — and for most of his career he was spot on — he could write very very well.

Surrogate is a rare example of a Spenser short story.  Like most of the early Spenser, it’s tough, brutal, sensitive, and right. It’s also pretty much the way it should be, from the first words.  A gem. Click through to read.

Posted in Friday Fiction | Leave a comment