Random Nuclear Strikes

RNS Quote of the Day: 11/17/08

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Phil Kadath

On Saturday night, The Wife and I were storming some ideas in relation to a big project we have coming up.

We were at the dining room table eating homemade pizza. She was having a Coke and I was drinking a 20oz Boont Amber Ale, which was putting me well on my way to decent beerbuzzinski (yes, it’s a word. google it!).

Oddly enough, the solutions for the three most difficult problems came up clear as a bell one right after the other from my mildly slowed mind. When the 20 was emptied, she noted

You should go and get another beer. It’s like brainjuice.

The Wife

Yet another reason why I married her.

The Amber is only 5.8%. I can’t wait until I try out their Brother David’s Double and Triple Abbey’s to see what kind of ideas I get. Though, if I remember correctly, Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity Ale and Santa’s Little Helper Imperial Stout only made me feel smarter.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Shut up and pay your fine

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Phil Kadath

The UK is rife with traffic cameras, and because they’re used as a revenue generation devices, they are not checked for errors.

All of these errors cost the government a great deal of this incoming revenue. Both in wasted time of the machine, but also in the courts.

But worry not resident subjects of The Crown, the government is attempting to put a stop to that outward flow of cash.

At your expense, naturally.

UK courts are considering changes designed to make it too expensive for speed camera ticket recipients to challenge citations, regardless of whether they are actually guilty of any crime. The Ministry of Justice announced last Thursday that it had begun the process of overturning the traditional cost assessment procedures in criminal court cases to ease the burden on prosecutors and the courts.

“The proposed scheme will be as straightforward as possible and will cause the minimum of disruption to the judicial process,” Carolyn Regan, Chief Executive of the Legal Services Commission, said in a statement.

Ahh, yes! Because making life easier for prosecutors and the courts should always be government’s primary concern.

Ooops. Sorry. That should be “never” instead of always.

Once again, we see what happens when you have a “Justice” system in place, as opposed to having a “Legal” system.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 3 Comments

The Plan

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Phil Kadath

A number of folks out there are asking what should be done with GM in regards to the bailout they and Ford & Chrsler are begging for.

These questions are only being seriously asked because these companies got “Too Big to Fail” and have so many employees that entire voting blocks will be effected for generations depending on which party does the “Saving”.

Like GM employees, I also work for a multinational corporation, though with only 1/5 the number of employees, and with only about 2/3 of those 50,000 employees being unionized. However, because we are of lesser size, the only worry the average citizen would have if my employer was about to go under would be how quickly would a replacement be able to get the trash off the ground so that that your local burg doesn’t start to reek.

And it is with that sentiment that I say, let GM fail. Let Ford fail. And let Chrysler fail. If your business plan cannot get you through “tough times” then it suck and you deserve to fail.

However, that will not happen. Not in a hundred years will that happen. Anyone who says it will is not living in reality. Especially not when there are UAW jobs “at stake” and the Democrats are in power. But the companies should not get anything more than a “bailout loan”.
So here is my “realistic” plan: They’ll get money from the fed, but they need to do what the fed says. Hopefully the fed will say “You need to trim the fat” (because all three automakers need to do exactly that). But even this won’t be painless.

Continue reading →

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 5 Comments

Keep Hope Alive

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Alaska

Found at Cowboy Blob’s. Who says we don’t have a strong bench?

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | 3 Comments

By Tor

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Phil Kadath

Snowdog’s on vacay this weekend

Tor’s Worlds Without Death or Taxes

When is a mainstream publisher also an anti-authoritarian propagandist? When it publishes science fiction.

High in Manhattanâ€™s famous Flatiron Building youâ€™ll find the headquarters of Tor Books, the most successful science fiction publisher in the world. The Flatiron is a monument to mad Belle Epoque futurism, with a wedge shape that makes right angles rare. Inside Torâ€™s cramped office, drifts of books cover every horizontal surface and most of the vertical ones. The mind boggles at the destruction that could be wrought here by a dropped match, let alone a misfired laser gun.

Tor publishes between 110 and 120 new original titles each year, routinely topping the science fiction bestseller list compiled by the industry magazine Locus. For 20 years running, it also has won the highly respected Locus Award for the best science fiction publishing house. This year Tor earned yet another distinction when its authors claimed all five finalist spots for the Prometheus Award, the annual prize for best science fiction novel of the year handed out by the Libertarian Futurist Society.

So is this the most successful libertarian propaganda venture in modern history? Publisher and founder Tom Doherty denies any ideological agenda. â€œFirst comes the story,â€ he says. His only stated goal is to â€œdo a story in a way thatâ€™s honest.â€

Science fiction has long served as a kind of mad scientistâ€™s basement lab for testing out different political,economic, and social arrangements. Torâ€™s success suggests that science fictionâ€™s commitment to meditations on the importance of human freedom remains strong, as mainstream writers borrow more freely from the once-ghettoized genre, indulging in science fictionâ€“style hypotheticals that probe both the outer limits of and existential threats to liberty.

â€œLibertarianism is very much part of the intellectual argument of science fiction,â€ says longtime Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. â€œItâ€™s impossible to be a part of the argument of science fiction without engaging both broad libertarian ideas and also specifically the whole American free market intellectual tradition.â€

Hit the link and read on. You know you want to.

Posted in Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | 5 Comments

Who’d a thunk it?

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Phil Kadath

The French are more fair minded when it comes to tax code than Americans.

(click to enlarge)

And so are the Chinese, Italians and Brits. At least according to the Financial Times.
Too many years with this horrid progressive tax code have given Americans some very bad ideas about “fairness”.

I do find it a bit odd that they didn’t poll the Ruskies, with their flat tax code.

Posted in Color me confused | Leave a comment

A Correction

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Phil Kadath

This morning made being the Work Gunnie not such a bad thing.

Yesterday one of our residential drivers was dumping a trash toter into the back of his truck, and when he pulled the can back he saw eight boxes off ammo. Four boxes of 12ga (two boxes of #6 and two boxes of #4), one box of Remington .357Mag, one box of Remington and two boxes of Winchester White .40cal.

This cannot go into the back of his truck because of the danger of the compression setting the ammo off and possibly starting a fire back there. So he pulled them out of the hopper and put them in the cab of his truck. When he got in at the end of the day he gave it to his manager who held it for me.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, it swiftly got locked in the back of my truck.

Minor issue: Iâ€™ve got multiple 12ga firearms and a couple that fire .357, but Iâ€™ve got no .40cal pistols. Anyone local out there who’d want to do a trade? Itâ€™s all factory, not reloads, with the sealed primers.

Iâ€™ve got 37 rounds in the Remington box(180gr FMJ), one full 100rnd box of Winchester White and one Winchester White box with 76 rounds in it (165gr FMJ). I’ll give you a better than two to one deal. 213rnds of .40 S&W for 100rnds of .45ACP, 9mm, .380ACP, .38Spl or .357Mag. Anything but Wolf.

With ammo costing what it does, I think thatâ€™s a fair swap.

UPDATE: Sold. To the e-mail bidder.

Posted in Kewel! | 5 Comments

Music for the Masses

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Phil Kadath

While not technically tunage, it’ll be music to the ears of Obamessiah’s followers

Today, President-elect Obama will record the weekly Democratic address not just on radio but also on video — a first. The address, typically four minutes long, will be turned into a YouTube video and posted on Obama’s transition site, Change.gov, once the radio address is made public on Saturday morning.

The address will be taped at the transition office in Chicago today.

“This is just one of many ways that he will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told us last night.

In addition to regularly videotaping the radio address, officials at the transition office say the Obama White House will also conduct online Q&As and video interviews. The goal, officials say, is to put a face on government.

I don’t want government to have a face.

Government doesn’t have a face.

It is, and always should be, a faceless machine that makes sure the nation stays defended, legal disputes get arbitrated, laws get enforced and criminals punished.

That is all government is supposed to do.

How long do you think before these “addresses” are broadcast on large screens for public viewing? They’ll justify it as “Some folks don’t have computers” or some such drivel.

A giant talking head telling how much they’re going to do for me if I just do a few simple things for them.

A gas/soap Molotov will make contact with the first one I see.

Posted in Useful Idiots | 4 Comments