I know where I’d like to push this

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

The AFL/CIO sponsored a poll on the euphemistically named “Employee Free Choice Act” and found that, wowzer, 78% of those polled want to ditch the secret ballot.

The trouble is that this was the pushiest of push polls. As in, the pollster made an inflammatory statement against privately owned businesses and then asked their question. Hart Research Associates did the pushing and polling (pdf)z, and this isn’t their first time in doing this for the AFL/CIO.

Don’t let someone waste your time by telling you how much “the public wants the EFCA” until you stop their babbling for a second and ask for their source. If it was from the above listed bozos, ignore this person. They’re either an idiot or they know they’re lying.

I’m still trying to figure out which side of that fence FDL is on. I’m currently leading towards “know they’re lying”.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

It wasn’t actually a roar

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

My apologies. I should have warned Goddard. But then they would have thought me crazy.

Mystery Roar Detected From Faraway Space

Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

Of course, sound waves can’t travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can’t very efficiently. But radio waves can.

Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.

Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.

But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is “something new and interesting going on in the universe,” said Alan Kogut of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

You see, I was having a couple of the Great Old Ones over for kielbasa chili & OAB the other day. I told them that there might be a reaction or few, but to try and keep it quiet.

BTW, my use of forks w/chili was regarded as “The Proper Way” by this crew.

This guy never shows up

cthulhu-6.jpg

He’s always too tired. Which is really too bad, I’ve heard he can really party-hearty.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 4 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 01/09/09

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

It’s a “Compare and Contrast” two-fer!

Intelligent speech

“Cycles of violence” continue until one side wins decisively. Personally, I’d rather that were the Israelis, since they’re civilized people and not barbarians.

Glenn Reynolds

This line was enough for puppeteer and terrorist apologist, Glenn Greenwald, to shit purple twinkies in public over at his Salon gig.

Unintelligent speech:

And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

Nobel Peace Trinket weiner, Jimmeh CahTah

I find it odd that these “defensive tunnels” are always filled with weapons and explosives and not women and children.

Apparently, Jimmeh is not.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 2 Comments

And you probably thought I was joking

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

When I told y’all about PeTA demanding that fish be renamed “Sea Kittens”.

I wasn’t. They are quite serious with this crap.

The next time you hook into a lunker, and the rod tip bends as line spools out, the folks at PETA want you to look that fishy face square in the eye and think of it not as dinner, but rather as a “sea kitten.” In fact, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals want Whitefish High School to rename itself Sea Kitten High School, encouraging everyone to refer to fish and other marine animals as sea kittens.

To clarify, that school is in Whitefish, Montana.

I’m sure that once the press got hold of the story, the PeTA-dweebies said they meant it tongue-in-cheek, but before then, someone within the organization had to think this would be a good idea.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | Leave a comment

More Rock Island

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Alaska

No, not the pistol from the company with stellar customer service.

No, this is something else, and it’s (wait for it)…

Continue reading →

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 4 Comments

The Soundboard: Mad Alice Edition

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Phil Kadath

I finally got around to hooking up the A/V room this last weekend. Of course, you need to test the acoustics once you get that done.

I chose the Alice in Chains Unplugged and have been stuck there since

OK, maybe not exactly “stuck” since I’m enjoying it.

I had to test the VCR too, so I chose Mad Season at the Moore (I really need to burn that onto DVD)

I’ve always believed that if you attend a show and they make a video of it, you should buy it. So I did.

This phase, for some unknown reason, can easily transition into being stuck in a Primus/Claypool phase. If it is still here next Thursday I’ll let you know.

In the mean time, Enjoy!

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Aquapocalypse 2009

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Phil Kadath

No one here gets out alive.

This is what Seattle looked like yesterday

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And last night was just as bad.

North/South: Interstate 5 is partially closed not too far from me, in Fife, and is completely closed for 20 miles through the Centralia/Chehalis area (exit 88 through exit 68). US 101 is washed out in a number of spots.
East/West: Interstate 90, US 2, US 12, US 97, and SR 202 are all closed because of snow.

If you have something or someone in the Seattle metro area you want to go either east or south, put them on a plane, because “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEE!!!1!’

Ok, we’re not all gonna die. But certain weather forecasters might if they don’t stop pissing me off with the fear mongering.

Fire Base Blue is hunky dory. We readied up before the snow fell three weeks ago, and we live atop a cliff that overlooks Tacoma’s Commencement Bay (though not really close enough for a decent view).

A nice little town called Orting is being evac’d because they live on a flood zone (why folks bought there, I’ll never understand). This flood zone is also know around here to be THE prime Lahar Zone, which means that if Mt. Rainier ever goes off, they’ll have about 12 minutes to get out of breath before they get dead.

In fun news, I get to drive trhough the middle of some of this so as to keep a very important appointment in just a little bit. I’m feeling kind of silly not having put the fording kit on Buddy as of yet. Let us just hope that my door seals do their job and the water stays below the headlight level (4ft).

Now all we have to do is wait for the high winds to come along and act like a lawnmower to the trees sitting in the super saturated ground. Thankfully for us, I made sure that would not be a problem when we purchased Firebase Blue.

Wish me luck!

Posted in By Ourselves, For Ourselves, Life in the Atomic Age | 10 Comments

Rock Island Update

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Alaska

So I mentioned earlier that I sent the Rock Island .45 in for warranty service. It sat unfired during the summer until Phil arrived for the Gunblogger Rendezvous and noticed that the awesomely light and crisp factory trigger came with a nasty tendency for the hammer to follow the slide when you dropped the slide release. I like full-auto as much as anyone, but this had to go back.

Well, out of the blue, I got a call Monday from Arnel at Rock Island Armory who said he’d just opened the box with my gun and confirmed that it was “badly damaged” but he’d repair it right away.
Yesterday he called again to say he’d repaired it, tuned it up, and just shot 8 rounds with no problems and would be shipping it back to me directly.

He didn’t have to make either of those calls, and I wasn’t expecting them. In addition, on a number of points, both conversations were perfect examples of consumer-oriented customer service.

Now, the company I work for has a fair number of customer-service representatives, so I’m familiar with customer service both coming and going, so to speak, and I can say hands down that Arnel provided outstanding customer service to me.

I bought the RIA because it was well-made but cheap inexpensive. With customer service like this, I would not call this a cheap pistol. Kudos, RIA!

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel, Kewel! | 3 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 01/08/09

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Phil Kadath

He’s right you know

Anyway, in the store that I went to yesterday, when I arrived at the register after raiding the pallet that had several 24 can cases (in shrink wrap) of veggies and filling my cart, the cashier said, “wow, you must really love veggies”. It’s inevitable that this will happen.  People are just trying to be friendly. So I replied uncomfortably ”they’re for the shelter”.  I felt a little guilty because she “awwwww’ed” and said how good of me it was, and all I said was “everyone’s got to eat”.  Truly, they are for my shelter…

The BadIdeaGuy

I still love hearing the story told by my mother in law about the time she was taking advantage of a sale at her local WalMart and had her cart full of Butter, Flour, Sugar and other staples. The check out guy said “Do you know something I don’t know?”.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Boomershoot Picture of the Day

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Alaska

The view downrange at Boomershoot 2007. Pic by Dave the RNS Staff Photographer.

Posted in Boomershoot | Leave a comment