Sic semper pusillus

One would have to have a heart of stone to fail to be amused by the death of this little punk:

A 65-year-old man who was knocked off his bicycle by three teenagers on a Pennsylvania trail shot two of them, killing one, police said according to reports. The Reading Eagle newspaper said the wounded teen, 16, was taken to hospital and the third, aged 15, was taken in for questioning and was later committed to a youth center…. According to police, the 65-year-old was riding his bicycle when the teens knocked him to the ground, the station said. Police said two teens then assaulted the man, who drew his gun and shot them.

What a pity that’s not on YouTube. Can you imagine the expression on the face of the dying little prick? One moment, he thinks he’s a happy-slapping bad ass impressing his friends with a little casual assault-and-battery and the very next moment, it’s game over. For good. Way to go, tough guy.

Concealed carry is certainly one of the more effective means of teaching the little bastards to show the elderly at least a modicum of respect.

BF3: the Alleyway

I like to start out as an Engineer in the Grand Bazaar mission map, equipped with mines and an RPG and the Explosive aspect. Since the armor on both sides usually makes a beeline for each other, I run alongside it and throw out all six of my mines, two near the flag and the other four on the road, then see if I can fire an RPG round or two to help the friendly armor blow up the opposition. I sometimes get blown up along with the AFV or shot down by accompanying assault troops, but usually I can get away with an easy initial kill or two, plus a vehicle disabled or destroyed.

If we’re doing okay, which means we have at least one of the two flags, I come back with Recon if we don’t have the Alleyway or Assault if we do. Assault lets me revive my fellow alleyway defenders while Recon lets me pick off the defenders as the young twitch guys go charging into the teeth of the enemy fire. The important lesson as a sniper is to not use a suppressor, as it reduces the damage you deal out while doing little to conceal your position. I increased my average mission kills by a full kill simply by ditching the suppressor.

Once the enemy gives up on the Alleyway, it’s time to switch back to Recon since the young guys are too impatient to sit around defending. This lets me pick off the solo guys who are trying to steal a seemingly undefended flag. If my side doesn’t get overwhelmed at the start, I can usually count on getting 5-7 sniper kills in the Alleyway alone. And it’s amusing when late in the mission, one of the mines set earlier takes out an AFV. The problem is that unless one Assault or Engineer sticks around to guard your sniping, eventually you’re going to miss someone sneaking into close combat range and getting you with an SMG.

Now that I’ve got access to some better equipment, like the optical sights in the tanks, I’ve steadily increased my expected k/d ratio, from around .25 at the start to 1.3+ now. Last night I even had a stellar 4.0 ratio, complete with a top score and Ace Squad ribbon. Now that I’ve got the Javelin, that should help with the helicopter hunting, and I’ve learned to stalk tanks with mines rather than RPGs.

I think my favorite kill thus far was this afternoon, in a close-fought mission that we ended up losing by just two tickets. After taking out a helicopter with my brand-new Javelin, I came back as an Engineer in the Russian deployment, but since there were no tanks I hopped in a jeep and tooled off down the road. I saw an enemy jeep was flying down the highway towards me and we hit each other with glancing blow. We both spun around facing each other about 50 meters away, almost as if we were jousting.

I hopped out of my jeep while he sped towards me, intending to run me over. I’m sure he thought I was going to try to pick him off before he could flatten me, but actually I had pulled out an AT mine. I threw it down and jumped off to the side as he hit it squarely for an instant kill and vehicle destruction. Highly satisfying.

Dawkins doubles down

I know a lot of people found it difficult to believe that Richard Dawkins’s arguments are as haplessly bad as they are. But every time he speaks out, he reveals that he is both dishonest and as reliably inept as I described in TIA:

“If children are taught, however moderately, that faith is a virtue, they are taught that they don’t need evidence to believe something; that they can believe something just because it’s their faith, then that paves the way for the minority to become extremists. If children are taught that they don’t need to defend their beliefs with evidence, then that does pave the way for extremism.”

He believes that atheism will soon become a more popular framework for people. “There seems to be a correlation with education. It’s certainly true within the US — the more educated people are more likely to give up religion. I’m sure that’s true in India as well,” he says, adding that even US presidents may have been atheists but they’re not allowed to say so or they won’t get re-elected. “I think Lincoln, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama may well be an atheist. Obama’s a very intelligent man. He probably is an atheist,” he says. “There are 535 members in the US congress. Presumably some of them are reasonably educated. It’s inconceivable that only one of them is an atheist. There’s got to be at least 50% of them.”

Being a conventionally clueless academic, Dawkins clearly doesn’t realize that the educational systems across the West are barely capable of teaching children how to read or do math. The idea that it is going to teach them to believe in things only based on evidence is absurd. And the stupidity of the idea is underliend by the fact that it is readily apparent that Richard Dawkins doesn’t even know what “evidence” is! This is a massive blunder and proves that he genuinely is as stupid as his inept arguments dissected in TIA make him appear!

One can only wonder about the logic behind Dawkins’s absurd claim that half the U.S. Congress is atheist. Or what is the evidence upon which he bases this belief, since he presents nothing but a naked assertion. As for Obama being an atheist, everyone knows that’s not true. One can quite credibly make the case for him being a Muslim since he is known to have been one as a child; there is no shortage of documentary evidence attesting to his Islamic heritage. Or one could also make the case that he is a Muslim apostate who converted to Christianity, as he himself declared last year. But where is the evidence that Obama is an atheist? Dawkins offers nothing beyond the fact of Obama’s education.

In trying to claim that all of these men who openly and publicly confessed their belief, not only in God, but often in specific religious theologies, are actually atheists, Dawkins is being blatantly dishonest. This is deeply ironic, given his angry response to those historically misinformed Christians who believe that Charles Darwin converted to Christianity on his deathbed.

A man of the people

Or not, as it happens:

On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 0 and 4. In other words, your bubble is so thick you may not even know you’re in one.

In fairness, I haven’t even lived in the United States for more than a decade. But this result illustrates why I always find it tremendously amusing when insufficiently informed critics attempt to lump this blog in with the conventional conservative Red State crowd.

Anyhow, what do you say about lunch in Davos on Friday, Bertrand?

Curie-Hultgreen Syndrome

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but have you ever noticed that female pioneers appear to have an extraordinary facility for offing themselves whilst engaged in their pioneering?

A woman who defied a driving ban on female motorists in Saudi Arabia has died in a car crash. Another was hurt in the crash in the only country in the world where females are banned from getting behind the wheel.

I have absolutely no doubt that the first woman to walk on the Moon would somehow manage to trip and break her neck. Even if her “Moon walk” was staged on the same film stage that was used for the Apollo “landings”. And the first female NFL referee will probably wind up getting crushed to death the first time she tries to sort out a fumble scrum.

I find it fascinating that female pioneers have a higher “suicide” rate than women who are actually trying to commit suicide.

Sweeping it under the table

Obama is still trying to let the big banks get away with the massive quantities of criminal activity in which they engaged during the housing boom and bust:

The Associated Press reports that a proposed deal could be announced within weeks. Five banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC)—would pay the federal government $25 billion. About $17 billion would be used to reduce the principal that some struggling homeowners owe, $5 billion more would be used for future federal and state programs and $3 billion would be used to help homeowners refinance at 5.25 percent. Civil immunity would be granted to the banks for any role in foreclosure fraud, and there would be no investigations.

Once more, we see that there is absolutely no law whatsoever in the USA. There is barely even the pretense of it here. And looking at it from a political perspective, one would think the Republicans could easily ride this issue of tremendous bank-related corruption and abuse of the home-owning public to victory in November except for one small problem: both Romney and Gingrich are as wholly-owned by the banks as is Obama.

If only there was a candidate who wasn’t a banker’s puppet. Surely he would be the ideal presidential nominee under these circumstances!

Excursions in Alpha

I suppose I am definitionally obliged to assume that you’re all going to be fascinated by the news that I am reportedly a narcissist.

A more disputable question is whether the quantity inelasticity of female demand is a better way of explaining the inapplicability of the conventional demand curve to the supply of available men or if ALPHA and BETA men should simply be regarded as two fundamentally different markets. Color me extremely dubious about the latter; a Ferrari may be vastly more desirable than a Hyundai, but at the end of the day, they’re still both cars being sold in the automotive market.

And finally, there is a cursory examination of what some have observed to be the phenomenon of divorced mothers with limited custody losing interest in their children, and how fathers facing divorce might be able to feed and take advantage of it in order to raise their children.

That settles that

I received the following email a few minutes ago:

After around 5 years of the CoComment service we had to decide to terminate the service per 31.3.2012 due to a poor economical perspective of the service and the lack of options and opportunities.

Per 31.3.2009 due to the economical situation at that time we already had to decide to wind-down CoComment to an absolute minimal level of operation. After further 18 months of minimal operations… we now had to finally decide to fully stop also the minimal operation of the service. Unfortunately it was not possible to find any option to continue the service.

We are sorry to have to hereby formally inform you that we will stop the CoComment service according the the Terms of Use per 31.3.2012.

The Service will be switched off at 31.3.2012 at midnight 12:00 am.

We thank you for your comprehension.

I’d be a bit more sanguine about the possibilities if the other options all didn’t seem to be obsessed with forcing Blogger users to convert to the exceedingly limited templates of the “new” Blogger. Any ideas or recommendations? I already know that I don’t like Disqus, having experimented with it a few months ago.

“Israel Firster” is a factual label

A label can’t reasonably be described as a slur when it is both demonstrably true and accurately descriptive. This should suffice to explode the recent dishonest attempts of various neocons to hide blatant Jewish disloyalty to the USA under the guise of anti-semitism:

In a Jan. 13 opinion piece, Andrew Adler offered three possible options to ensure Israel’s security in the Middle East: a strike against the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, an attack against Iran, and having Israel’s U.S.-based Mossad agents assassinate Obama. Adler said “a hit” against the president would “preserve Israel’s existence.” He said Vice President Joe Biden would then be able “to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

If you’re openly advocating the murder of a head of state in order to force that state to become the subordinate military arm of another state, it is totally obvious that you are placing the interests of the second state first. Assuming that Adler is an American, this is outright treason. Emotional appeals to the Holocaust no more justify Jewish treason against America than appeals to the Mongol slaughter in China would justify treason committed by Americans of Chinese descent.

Now, I have nothing against the Israel First position when it is expressed by Israelis. They should put Israel first; no one else is going to. But likewise, Americans are expected to put American interests first. This is only one of the many reasons why the USA should return to its longtime historical policy of outlawing dual-citizenship.

It is also worth nothing that the idea of assassinating the U.S. president in order to “preserve Israel’s existence” is a monstrously stupid one. If the Israeli leaders were ever so mindlessly arrogant as to to attack their country’s foremost supporter among the nations of the world in a manner that not even National Socialist Germany or the Soviet Union ever dared to attempt, most Americans would be more than willing to nuke Jerusalem.

To say nothing of the fact that Biden confuses things so often, he might accidentally order the invasion of Israel when he meant to attack Iran. Anyhow, here is exactly what Adler wrote:

“Well, here are your “Kobayahsi Maru” options. “Kobayahsi Maru” is a term used in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” to describe a no-win scenario or facing a solution that involves redefining the problem.

One, order a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah and Hamas, knowing that military and civilian casualties will be high, but not as high as they would be in 2017.

Two, go against Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s wish that Israel take a lethal bullet in the name of preserving a healthy, worldwide economic climate, and order the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities at all costs.

Three give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy include helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read” three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

Now, I actually found the second option to be even more shocking than the third. I mean, on what planet does this “healthy, worldwide economic climate” Adler describes exist? But speaking of Israeli involvement in U.S. politics, it may be worth noting that one such Israeli citizen is presently keeping the Gingrich campaign afloat.

“A wealthy backer of Newt Gingrich will inject $5 million into a “super PAC” supporting his presidential bid, two people with knowledge of the contribution said on Monday, providing a major boost to Mr. Gingrich as he seeks to fend off aggressive attacks from Mitt Romney, his main Republican rival. The supporter, Dr. Miriam Adelson, is the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a longtime Gingrich friend and a patron who this month contributed $5 million to the super PAC, Winning Our Future. Dr. Adelson’s check will bring the couple’s total contributions to Winning Our Future to $10 million….”

Adios Amendments 4 and 5

The judicial war on the U.S. Constitution continues apace:

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case. Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

It’s always interesting to see the logical contortions through which America’s corrupt judges go when they are determined to reach a conclusion that flies directly in the face of the Constitution. Given that Americans have “the right to remain silent” as well as the right to be “secure in their papers and effects”, there is no way that a judge can legitimately order any American to cough up a passphrase.

This is just one more piece of evidence demonstrating that the federal government is corrupt, lawless, and unconstitutional. It is an Augean Stables that is likely beyond the ability of any one man, even a principled man like Ron Paul, to clean up. But can anyone suggest with a straight face that Mitt Romney, the $45 million man, or that fat little Freddie Mac-owned troll, Newt Gingrich, have any interest whatsoever in doing so?