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Yup, Crazy as His Daddy Was

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North Korean army minister ‘executed with mortar round’
A North Korean army minister was executed with a mortar round for reportedly drinking and carousing during the official mourning period after Kim Jong-il’s death.

Kim Chol, vice minister of the army, was taken into custody earlier this year on the orders of Kim Jong-un, who assumed the leadership after the death of his father in December.

On the orders of Kim Jong-un to leave “no trace of him behind, down to his hair,” according to South Korean media, Kim Chol was forced to stand on a spot that had been zeroed in for a mortar round and “obliterated.”

The execution of Kim Chol is just one example of a purge of members of the North Korean military or party who threatened the fledgling regime of Kim Jong-un.

So far this year, 14 senior officials have fallen victim to the purges, according to intelligence data provided to Yoon Sang-hyun, a member of the South Korean Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee.

Rule by terror. Works like a charm, until it doesn’t.

Quote of the Day – What Agenda? Edition

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From Michael Crichton’s 1/28/2005 American Enterprise Institute speech, starting at 1:07:

Michael Crichton: I gave a talk to the Press Club in ’93 in which I told them that they were out of the quality revolution, that they were in desperate trouble. But they didn’t care then and they probably don’t care now. I operate on the assumption that the mass media will never be accurate. I don’t think they ever have been. When did yellow journalism start? Almost at the beginning of American newspapers. And I don’t see any reason for them to change. The great dictum of journalism is “simplify and exaggerate,” which is exactly what Walt Disney told his cartoonists.

I do believe there will come a time, and it may come quite soon, when because of the internet people will be willing to spend a lot of money for verified information.

(Audience member): The New York Times this week in the Science section reported that ice shelves are melting, and I guess that I’m willing to believe that’s not true, but I find it hard to believe that the reporter, the editors, the scientists quoted are either independently or in collusion advancing an anti-, er, pro-, sorry about that, global-warming agenda.

Crichton: Work on that.

The whole thing runs about 85 minutes. Good speech.

Quote of the Day – Tam, Again

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Oh, Republicans, you never fail to disappoint me.

Sure, you talk a good small government game, and then the minute you get into office it’s all about the gays and the ‘bortion and the flag-burnin’ and drug warrin’ and Family-Values-with-a-capital-KJV and next thing you know you’re No Child Left Behindin’ and Department of Homeland Securityin’ and if I wanted all that snoopy government busibodiness I’d have voted for the Democrat in the first place.

I Can’t Help Myself (Update, bumped)

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Somebody wrote another gun-control op-ed.

I left a comment.

Okay, two three four. Hell, I’ve lost count.

UPDATE – 10/24:  OK. I’ve left nine.  Here’s the last one:

This thread appears to have petered out, so I’d like to make one final point before leaving. At the time of this writing, there are 38 comments (and one deleted) by eighteen commenters. Of the eighteen, two support more gun control. Of the two supporters, one left one comment, one left six. Each of the comments left by a gun control supporter was countered by generally two respondents, generally with statements of verifiable fact.

The opening statement of the essay we’re responding to asserts that “… the National Rifle Association and gun industry merchants … through misinformation and clever public relations” have hoodwinked the American public into buying more (and more lethal) firearms.

I submit that this comment thread debunks the idea. Defenders of the right to arms are not ignorant and deluded, we’re well-informed. We’ve reached our conclusions after examining facts, not hyperinflated scarey numbers and hyperbole.

AND WE’RE ACTIVE. The various gun control forces – the Brady Center, the Violence Policy Center, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the author’s Stop Handgun Violence, and all the rest – cannot generate grassroots support. They’re attacking the problem from the wrong end, and most of us understand that.

I will close this comment with a quote from writer Teresa Nielsen Hayden that explains their problem as succinctly as I’ve ever seen it put:

“Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.”

Who’d like to go shooting?

It’s already got one “Like.”

OK, I’ve Reached a Conclusion

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I was aware the recently deceased author Michael Crichton had investigated the available data in the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming controversy, and had concluded that it was a farce – so much so that he changed the subject of his 2004 book State of Fear from being an eco-disaster novel to being an eco-terrorism novel. It’s the first novel I’ve ever read that had footnotes and a bibliography.

Here he is discussing the topic with Charlie Rose (about 9 minutes):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJJsDtSHjdE?rel=0]
And he gave a lecture at CalTech in 2003, entitled Aliens Cause Global Warming that is also worth your time.

As a result of his anti-CAGW activism, he was, of course, labeled a “denier,” and vilified.

In addition to Mr. Crichton’s opinion, I’d read a lot but still I hadn’t reached a definitive conclusion on the question of whether the burning of fossil fuels was having a measurable, detrimental effect on global climate. Is the world getting warmer? Quite possibly. Is it due, in whole or in part, on increased CO2 due to human consumption of fossil fuels? I didn’t know. Is a warmer Earth a bad thing? I didn’t know. I suspected that it wasn’t, and I was very skeptical of the positive-feedback argument the doomsayers were predicting.

Day before yesterday I was made aware of another skeptic – Burt Rutan. Burt is the designer of Voyager, the first airplane to circumnavigate the globe without refueling, and of SpaceShipOne, winner of the Ansari X Prize. Burt Rutan’s argument is that, as an aeronautical engineer, he has analyzed test flight data for decades. All of the climate data had been analyzed by scientists. What would an engineer make of it?

The result was a 98-page PowerPoint presentation (also available as a PDF) that covers five specific issues propounded by Climate Scientists:

  1. Recent burning of fossil fuels suddenly and dangerously increased CO2 beyond previous levels.
  2. Human CO2 emissions causes greenhouse warming.
  3. Dangerous, sudden global warming occurred the last 50 years.
  4. The current temperature is too hot, and further warming is BAD.
  5. It is more difficult to adapt to climate changes than to attempt to control them.

He tackles each issue in turn, in detail, and using the data the Climate Scientists use.

He made a presentation of his conclusions at the 2009 Oshkosh fly-in, entitled Non-Aerospace Research Quests of a Designer/Flight Test Engineer, stating:

I put myself in the (Those who fear expansion of Government control) group, and do not hide the fact that I have a clear bias on [ Anthropogenic global warming (AGW)]. My bias is based on fear of Government expansion and the observation of AGW data presentation fraud – not based on financial or any other personal benefit. I merely have found that the closer you look at the data and alarmists’ presentations, the more fraud you find and the less you think there is an AGW problem… For decades, as a professional experimental test engineer, I have analyzed experimental data and watched others massage and present data. I became a cynic; My conclusion – “if someone is aggressively selling a technical product whose merits are dependent on complex experimental data, he is likely lying”. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit.

I’m convinced. CAGW is complete bullshit.

Quote of the Day – Economic Disincentive Edition

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From Silicon Greybeard:

Tyler Durden at Zerohedge pointed out In Entitlement America “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.
(Chart)
Note that more than doubling pretax income from $14,500 to $30,000 results in a loss of 28% of their net income. It would take an exceptionally rare person to go through a drastic drop in quality of life for the possibility of getting really high income and better standard of life some day way in the future.

He has a chart and everything. Go read. Then read this.

I started off my “professional” (post-college) career in February of 1986 with a $5/hr. job at age 24. That’s $10,400/yr. I moved into my first (and only) apartment on Jan. 1 1987. It cost $225/mo. A year after starting employment, my pay was $15,600/yr. By the time I was 30, I was making $30k/yr. I bought the house I’m currently living in when I turned 29. I’m 50 now, and I’m doing pretty good, but nowhere near $250k. I’ve never taken food stamps, never received an Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, a rent subsidy, or Utility Bill Assistance. I did my own taxes for years – 1040EZ for Federal before I bought the house. I guess all that stuff was available, but I was young, single, healthy and working.

If I’d been a young high-school dropout with a live-in girlfriend and a kid or four, perhaps I’d have been all over that “free money.”

And I’d still be making $15k/yr, afraid to make more because of the loss of those “benefits.”

And my kids would probably be in the same boat, and complaining that “The MAN” was keepin’ ’em down.

Happy 10/22!

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Here’s mine:


Same as last year. This is the rifle my wife gave me on Father’s Day the first year we were married. That makes it 17 years old, now.  Of course, when she gave it to me, it looked more like this:
Now the only things on it that are original are the receiver and bolt group.

M4? No. The 10/22 is Barbie™ for men!