Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) memorializes the teacher that influenced his life more than any other, Fred King. It’s a 30-minute podcast. Worth your time.
Month: March 2013
Your Moment of Zen
By request, a new Moment of Zen:
So, TSM has had a Recent Infestation…
…and as a result, I thought I’d post this bit of humor sent to me by my favorite Merchant-O’Death.
A US Navy cruiser anchored in Mississippi for a week’s shore leave. The first evening, the ship’s Captain received the following note from the wife of a very wealthy and influential plantation owner:
“Dear Captain, Thursday will be my daughter Melinda’s Debutante Ball. I would like you to send four well-mannered, handsome, unmarried officers in their formal dress uniforms to attend the dance.
They should arrive promptly at 8:00 PM prepared for an evening of polite Southern conversation. They should be excellent dancers, as they will be the escorts of lovely refined young ladies. One last point: No Jews please.”Sending a written message by his own yeoman, the captain replied:
Madam, thank you for your invitation. In order to present the widest possible knowledge base for polite conversation, I am sending four of my best and most prized officers.
One is a lieutenant commander and a graduate of Annapolis with an additional Masters degree from MIT in Fluid Dynamics and ship design.
The second is a Lieutenant, one of our helicopter pilots, and a graduate of Northwestern University in Chicago, with a BS in Aeronautical Engineering. His Masters Degree and PhD In Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering
are from Texas Tech University and he is also an astronaut candidate.
The third officer is also a lieutenant, with degrees in both computer systems and information technology from SMU and he is awaiting notification on his Doctoral Dissertation from Cal Tech.
Finally, the fourth officer, also a lieutenant commander, is our ship’s doctor, with an undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and his medical degree is from the University of North Carolina. We are very proud
of him, as he is also a senior fellow in Trauma Surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Upon receiving this letter, Melinda’s mother was quite excited and looked forward to Thursday with pleasure. Her daughter would be escorted by four handsome naval officers without peer (and the other women in her social
circle would be insanely jealous).
At precisely 8:00 PM on Thursday, Melinda’s mother heard a polite rap at the door which she opened to find, in full dress uniform, four very handsome, smiling Black officers.
Her mouth fell open, but pulling herself together, she stammered, “There must be some mistake!”
“No, Madam,” said the first officer. “Captain GOLDBERG doesn’t make mistakes.”
It’s an oldie, but a goodie!
Quote of the Day – Sarah Hoyt Edition
From her post Malice or Incompetence?, on American public education:
So – how do you take most of the youth of a country, a country, moreover, rich enough that most kids have no major developmental disabilities, and make them functionally illiterate?
You WORK at it.
Yes. Exactly. And my point all along.
RTWT.
I mean it.
“Civilized” Warfare
I got a comment tonight on another post from one “Patrick Henry.” I’ll excerpt the significant portion:
Well, if we weren’t involved in the middle east and had our troops killing everything in sight….
To which I responded:
If our troops were “killing everything in sight,” we’d have been out of there after eighteen months, tops.
This kind of “thinking” really pisses me off.
We’re still in Afghanistan after more than 11 years of war, Iraq for not quite 10. Why? Because we decided to go to war as gently as possible, and then pick up the smashed pieces and try to build modern nations where there were none before.
Contrast that to sixty-eight years ago this day when we dropped incendiary bombs on Tokyo, killing over 100,000 people – men, women and children – and burning sixteen square miles of the city to the ground. THAT’S “killing everything in sight.” THAT is total war.
No Time Tonight…
…but I’ll have to listen to this tomorrow. Alex Kozinski, my favorite 9th Circuit judge is interviewed for Reason TV (via Arms and the Law):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUYpBqLVe7U?rel=0]
OK, Where the Hell is all the .22 Rimfire?
CCI supposedly makes 4 million rounds of .22 rimfire a day. That’s (assuming 5 days a week, and most holidays off) just under one billion rounds per year.
From one manufacturer.
And how many manufacturers are there?
Yet there’s not a single round to be found on any retailer’s shelf – anywhere.
This is unbelievable.
“…Or We Will Send Another Harshly-Worded Letter!”
Mike Ramirez comments on the latest news:
Happy Birthday to Me!
So last year, I was given a Colt Pocket Hammerless Vest Pocket .25. It was the second-oldest gun in my safe. Now it’s third-oldest. This year, my father-in-law gave me his original 1917-vintage Colt 1911!
It’s pretty pitted, and appears to have been reblued some time in the past, but I believe the double-diamond walnut grip panels are original, and I know for a fact that it feeds and shoots hardball just fine. Not bad for a 96 year-old handgun.
Remember that Sultan Knish Piece…
…The Closing of the Liberal Mind that I took a QotD from on Tuesday? Here’s another:
As a scientist, you formulate a conclusion that will lead to a healthier society, and then you build a hypothesis around it, and then you declare it to be science. Your science, like your journalism, consists of the progressive narrative that proves whatever you want it to prove, whether it’s that capitalism will melt the icebergs, homosexuality is genetically fixed or oil is about to run out. Scientific objectivity has no more meaning to you than it did to the Caliph who torched the Library of Alexandria. If science is worth anything, then it’s progressive. And if it doesn’t, then it’s worthless.
And PowerLine has a recent example of exactly that.
Of course, the whole history of gun control is an example of exactly that, but….