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How do you screw this up? UPDATED

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., Meh., news, wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Jun 242016
 

More than 30 people burned in Tony Robbins’ hot-coals walk

Fire-walking is the easiest stunt out there. Simply rake out some glowing coals, put a damp pad at the front, a damp pad at the back, take off your shoes and socks and walk across. Don’t stop, keep up a brisk pace, make sure to wipe your feet at the end to make sure you don’t have any coals between your toes. That’s it. It impresses the rubes because ignert people think you’re actually doing something more impressive than demonstrating that charcoal has a really low rate of thermal conductivity. A good scammer can trick people into thinking it’s “mind over matter” or some such rubbish.

So how do you screw it up? The article doesn’t say, but I can only assume:

  1. Stupidity
  2. Malice

So, how do you make a fire walk actually dangerous? Any of these will do it; any could arise from dumbassery, but some might be more likely attributable to intentional nastiness:

  1. Walk across an actual fire (rather than just glowing coals)
  2. Mix the coals with something like rocks/pebbles/metal bits. You never see someone walking across hot *rocks,* do you.
  3. Mix in something like sugar or plastic. That’s be like walking across *napalm.*
  4. Mix in something like broken glass. All the burningness of rocks, now with sharp jaggedness.
  5. Stop.

CSB: Back in my college days, one semester I found myself coming up short in credit hours (calculus as a pre-req, and my inability to wrap my head around calculus, played havoc from time to time). So I had to take a “filler” course to stay a full-time student and to help jack up my GPA. The course I took was some sort of sociology course on magic or witchcraft or some such. I had hoped it would turn out to be a rational course on the history of bullshit, how it has affected history, blah, blah, blah. What did I get? The “professor” was a white guy. Normally not something I have a problem with. But the white guy was a shaman in some African tribe, complete with slideshows of him Over There in his village doing the Great White Savior Among The Noble Savages Thing. Worse: rather than him just scamming the natives and going along with their superstitious rubbish, he actually bought it and believed it (could well be they were running a line of BS on *him,* and the moment he was gone they laughed their asses off at the dumbass hippy).

I generally just kept my head down and snickered to myself. But one day he brought in one of his buddies, an elderly reject from the 60’s who bought into magical thinking. To this guy, fire walking was truly a magical thing; you had to be damn near a Jedi to be able to pull it off. To him, the supernatural was the only possible explanation. And since he did it on a virtually daily basis without injury, that proved that he was Something Special. And then he dared us to do it with him, that he could teach us his Magical Ways. This was approximately the only time I spoke up in class. I had no interest in firewalking; not out of fear, but because it’s a waste of time. I challenged the firewalker to a special challenge: I would believe that maybe, just maybe, he might have something to his belief in his magical specialness if he walked halfway across the field of coals, *stopped,* stood their motionless as I walked across, and only continued after I got to the end.

Oddly, that challenge was not accepted.

UPDATE: this news item has more info, including a pretty good clue as to what the problem was…

“From my observation, there was someone in front of us and someone behind us on their cell phone, taking selfies and taking pictures,” said Jacqueline Luxemberg, who completed the fire walk. “[She asked others] to video record for her, so I think that that has a lot to do with it.”

So… MORONS. Didn’t just burn themselves by stopping, but quite possibly also caused a traffic jam.

 Posted by at 9:47 am

The time has come for a debate on a USAexit

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Jun 242016
 

Who would the USA exit from? I suggest from the federal government. Behold:

There Are Now More Bureaucrats With Guns Than U.S. Marines

The “Militarization of America” report found civilian agencies spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between 2006 and 2014. Examples include IRS agents with AR-15s, and EPA bureaucrats wearing camouflage. … Open the Books found there are now over 200,000 non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority, surpassing the 182,100 personnel who are actively serving in the U.S. Marines Corps.

I’m sorry (no I’m not), but the government doesn’t get to have temper tantrums and demand that the people should be disarmed while at the same time loading up on the very same arms they say we can’t have.

Whenever there’s a gun control debate, you almost always see the one guy pop up with “Yeah, ok, so what about nukes? Should regular folks be allowed to own nukes? Huh? Should they? Gotcha!” I’ve suggested before that a simple rule of thumb on what arms the civilian populace should not be barred from having is this: I get to buy whatever the internal policing system in the US gets to buy. If the EPA gets to have assault weapons, so do I. If the IRS wants main battle tanks, I should be allowed to buy ’em too. If the Food and Drug Administration gets theater ballistic missiles, so do I. If the Small Business Administration gets weaponized smallpox, then I get the selection of plagues and poxes of my choice.

Don’t want me to have a particular class of weapon, Representative Trigglypants? Then why do *you* get them?

 Posted by at 8:35 am

Brexit

 history, Hmm..., news, politics  24 Responses »
Jun 232016
 

It’s hours from being final, but at the moment the experts are saying that the “Leave” vote is several points ahead and it is 75% probable that the UK will be leaving the EU.

Watching the ITV coverage of the British vote on leaving the EU is somewhat enlightening… many of the commentators, politicians, “journalists” and talking heads are reacting with the sort of shock you generally only see when the Democrats lose an important vote (like when W got his second term).

If the UK does leave, there’ll be some interesting times. For starters, the Scots will probably vote again on whether *they* want to leave the UK, since apparently the EU is popular in Scotland. It also seems like in the rest of Britain the biggest “Stay” contingent is urban London; mirroring the United States, it looks like the urban areas of Britain are out of step with the rest of the country.

Chances are good that in the near term Britain will be in for some hard times. The EU will undoubtedly punish Britain economically, if for no other reason than to show any other countries thinking about leaving that they’d better think twice. No doubt Putin will be thrilled by Brexit, as it’ll weaken European military ties; but in the long run I suspect Britain will be stronger. No longer hamstrung by EU bureaucrats, the Brits might be able to do the stuff they want to do, the way they want to do it.

And beyond all that: 2016 is just getting weirder and weirder politically. I shudder to imagine what’s coming in August.

 Posted by at 9:15 pm

High-Power Rifle

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, weapons, youtube  2 Responses »
Jun 232016
 

Since the AR-15 is in the news again, people – and reporters and politicians – have been referring to it as, among other things, a “high power rifle.” Yeah, about that…

That’s not how they teach you to fire that thing. Accuracy has got to suffer.  But that’s about the *only* thing that suffers.

 Posted by at 7:17 pm

Looks like an exciting day for CNN…

 news  5 Responses »
Jun 232016
 

First up, another mass shooting in a movie theater. This time in Germany; no real details yet apart from “25 injured.” If 25 were injured and nobody’s dead, that’d be kinda hard to explain unless the shooter was armed with a BB gun. CNN is unsure if any of the injured were actually shot, though… it *might* be that the shooter just sprayed into the ceiling, the crowd panicked and 25 people were trampled.

Second: the Freddie Gray van driver found not guilty on all counts. oh, boy! Mayhem incoming!

Third: the Supreme Court has ruled that racist admissions policies are just awesome, so long as they are the politically correct racist policies.

And coming up later: British voters are deciding whether or not to remain a client state of Brussels.

Now all they need is for a jetliner to vanish and CNN’s collective head will explode

 Posted by at 9:46 am

I wander off for a few hours…

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  34 Responses »
Jun 232016
 

So pretty much all day today I’ve been dealing with getting a book assembled. It’s of unusual format (11 inch-high pages about 40 inches long) and of only 27 pages length, but it cost enough to have printed that I only got ten. And so today I ran my butt 40 miles down the road to the print shop to get it (and a few other things that were printed), and once I got home I’ve spent the rest of the day dealing with these project. After many hours futzing around, I have a grand total of one copy of the book all assembled.

WP_20160622_002

Anyway, I was busy all day today. While driving home I heard something on the radio that made me think someone was playing a little joke, and then forgot all about it. So when I finally finished that first book, I turned on CNN to find that the House Democrats have lost their tiny little minds and have been having a childish temper tantrum all day. If you’ve somehow failed to hear, they’ve been having a “sit in” in the House preventing work from going forward because they lost votes on their initial ideas about restricting the civil liberties of American citizens without due process. Take, for example, Senator Diane Feinstein explaining that it is up to Americans to prove their innocence, a complete reversal of more than 200 years of American jurisprudence. She then goes on to say that that’s just the first step; next comes banning the average civilian firearm.

And the floor of the House looks like it has been invaded by an army of Trigglypuffs, shouting their inane slogans: “Why do you want to let terrorists buy a gun?” “No bill, no breaks!” And other such nonsense, like a bunch of idiot campus causehead protestors. At the same time they’re yapping about wanting a Real Debate, they’re shouting down anyone with an opposing view, like Louis Gohmert pointing out that the Orlando terrorist attack was, in fact, a terrorist attack:

Bah.

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At left, Rep. John Lewis. He made his name in the 1960’s working for civil rights; now he’s working to curtail civil rights.

The reason I turned on CNN in the first place was to see the Libertarian town hall in hopes that maybe, just maybe, the Libertarians might give me hope this time around. But it was pre-empted by coverage of the Democrats House whine-in. It’s very unlikely, but just barely possible enough that maybe there was some thought in advance to scheduling this childish display in order to wipe out one of the few opportunities the Libertarians have of reaching the public.

And apparently Nancy Pelosi is sending out fundraising emails. Even the talking heads on CNN generally agreed that this was “gauche;” the Dems claim they’re doing this to protect families and children and puppies and baby unicorns, but it’s really just a craven and monumentally cynical publicity and fundraising stunt.

Even Raedthinn can’t stand these idjits, and he doesn’t even watch CNN.

WP_20160621_005

 Posted by at 12:06 am

“Worst Room:” Universe 25, human-sized

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Jun 222016
 

Everyone who reads this blog with any regularity should be aware by now of “Universe 25,” an experiment carried out more than 40 years ago to create a “utopia” for lab mice that quickly turned into a pretty good approximation of hell. In short, the mice were provided every thign they needed… food, water, clean air, other mice for socializign with. A *lot* of mice. A *vast* number of mice. The mouse population exploded, since mice do what they do; but after a while the population crashed. Not because they all starved or caught some bacterial or viral infection; they simply turned into weeny hipster mice, lost all enthusiasm and stopped breeding. It’s a cautionary tale about not only overpopulation and overcrowding but also welfare states. But that sort of thing couldn’t happen to humans, right?

A day or two back a comment in another post linked to a website “The Worst Room.” This site collects Craigslist and other listings for apartments for rent, Air BNB, that sort of thing, in places like New York City and London. While it doesn’t seem to have been updated since December (maybe 2014), there are a number of listings shown that are worth looking at if for no other reason than to feel relieved that you don’t live in that sort of urban mouse-hole. Or if you *do,* it’s time to realize there’s a better way. There are “rooms” listed that are the size of a closet and cost more than my mortgage.

Next time you see some urban fanboy extolling the virtues of dense-pak living and urban efficiencies and whatnot, just remember: this is how they’re expecting you to live in *their* dreamworld.

 Posted by at 4:36 pm

Pluto: liquid water ocean today?

 awesomeness, news, science  1 Response »
Jun 222016
 

Seems Yuggoth might have a Deep One colony. Maybe under Cthulhu Regio?

Pluto’s Subsurface Ocean May Likely Exist Today

“Our model shows that recent geological activity on Pluto can be driven just from phase changes in the ice – no tides or exotic materials or unusual processes are required.  If Pluto’s most recent tectonic episode is extensional, that means that Pluto may have an ocean at present.  This lends support to the idea that oceans may be common among large Kuiper Belt objects, just as they are common among the satellites of the outer planets,” said Barr, who helped formulate the numerical model and interpret the results.

Pluto wouldn’t have the sort of tidal forces that a place like Europa has, nor solar energy bombardment on the level of a place like Earth. So you wouldn’t think there’d be the chance for liquid water. But the possibility of a warm Plutonian core exists, driven by radioactive decay and residual heat from formation (though not *much* of a chance, given how small the place is, not a whole lot bigger than Luna). This new study suggests that the visible surface features aren’t those that would be expected if the planetary water ocean was wholly frozen, but instead resembled the features to be expected of a thick layer of water ice atop a still-liquid ocean. The difference is Ice-II: if you take regular ice (“Ice-I”) and subject it to Pluto-level cryogenic cold *and* put it under the sort of pressure it would experience under miles of ice, it undergoes a crystalline structural change into a  25% denser form, something like how graphite turns to diamond under pressure. If the deeply buried ice were to transform like that, the surface features would reflect the fact that the deep subsurface was contracting.

 Posted by at 3:37 pm
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