Whose behind this?

My wife, saw an offer to get a free copy of the constitution and declaration of independence and thought it would be a good idea to sign up for it (never mind that I’ve got several copies lying around in various formats).  As a citizen in training she wants to be prepared to know what she’ll be getting into if she takes the plunge into being a full fledged American.

Unfortunately, she didn’t read the fine print.  While we did, in fact, get the copy of the documents they were from the Heritage Foundation which promptly put her on all the conservative mailing lists.  Now she gets solicitations from the NRA and today just got a letter from Sean Hannity!

She’s quite shocked by all of this and I’m greatly amused.

Cookie, Tactical Fortune, 1 ea.

Just received in my fortune cookie:

“Keep on charging the enemy so long as there is life.”

I don’t recall ever getting battle advice from a fortune cookie before.  Perhaps this was from a batch intended for the PLA?

Meatless Mondays

Here’s an entry in the Atlantic Food Channel today (well, awhile ago, I forgot to post this) that discusses the Baltimore school system which has instituted a meatless day in their cafeterias and the resulting outrage by the meat industry.

The Meatless Mondays program was launched to reduce the cholesterol and saturated fats in the lunch offerings and introduce alternate proteins and vegetables. (It’s also helped the cash-strapped school district cut some costs.) Geraci and chef/dietician Mellissa Mahoney say they don’t want to promote vegetarianism, just healthy omnivorism. On Mondays, beans and cheese are the main source of protein (along with vegetables and grains) and kids don’t lose out on a single gram.

Janet Riley, of the American Meat Institute, went on Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN last week to chastise Baltimore for depriving its students of key nutrients: protein. Her boss, the group’s CEO, has also written a public letter to Baltimore’s City Schools CEO Andrés Alonso, noting he was “disturbed” by the initiative and that “meat and poultry may be the only significant source of protein” in Baltimore kids’ diets.

First of all, need I point out how disturbing a title ‘American Meat Institute’ is?

Secondly, meat is the only significant source of protein?  Really?  Who believes that anymore?

At the beginning of the term, she said, students were a bit apprehensive about the new items. So she started putting out small samples of entrees like eggplant parmesan and veggie lasagna so kids could try them first.

Thirdly, what does this say about the diets of these children when they’ve never been exposed to things like eggplant or cauliflower?  Obviously, this is a result of our obsession with processed and fast food and it can’t be good that we have children who have a limited exposure to fresh fruits and vegetables.

A Tuftian bounty

If you aren’t aware of Edward Tufte, he has some interesting things to say about the visualization of data.  When I saw this graphic from xkcd

I immediately thought of Minard’s graphic (which Tufte claims is one of the greatest graphical displays of information) of Napoleon’s march to (and from) Moscow or this similar one of Hannibal’s march.

Very interesting way to display several data sets all in one place (time, number of troops, and place) in a way which also helps to convey a narrative and explain their interaction quickly.

Kvick Tänkare – Military edition

Sven writes the definitive post on Multiple Rocket Launchers (MRLs).  As someone who was taught to fear the BM-21 like kids are taught to be afraid of the boogy man during my initial training back in 1987, I found it quite interesting.

The best weapon of our enemies?  Cheap double cheeseburgers apparently,

75 percent of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds are ineligible for service for a variety of reasons…In 1987, according to the CDC, a mere 6 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds, or about 1 out of 20, were obese. In 2008, 22 years later, 23 percent of that age group — almost 1 out of 4 — was considered to be obese.

The Armchair Generalist continues to whittle away at my support for the war in Afghanistan.

Tigers to the left of me, bears to the right…

About six years ago I heard rumors that the Afghans were convinced that the U.S. had released killer cats into the countryside to terrorize the population.  Now, just to prove that truth is stranger than fiction there’s this report from the BBC…

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say. The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear’s den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.  The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise – police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.

Perhaps Colbert will need to rethink his anti-bear approach.

Borderlands

I’ve just gotten the new game Borderlands and having a couple days before the start of one of my never ending classes I decided to give it a spin.  I’m still a newbie when it comes to PC gaming and so don’t have a huge amount of experience to draw on in order to compare this with other.  My experience with first person shooters is limited, in fact, to Left4Dead and Team Fortress2.

Borderlands has a larger universe than either of those taking place on a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max style world.  The gameplay is pretty straightforward.  You get missions (almost always involving killing a bunch of mutant psychos, bandits, or local wildlife that’s looking to make you into a meal) and, if you survive them, you get rewarded.  I don’t think they’re breaking any molds here, yet the game is very addicting for a few reasons:

1. Visuals:  The game is really quite stunning to look at.  It’s not overly realistic in its appearance and yet not too cartoonish either.  The landscapes are fantastic…so good in fact that after one mission in which I was surveying a sun scorched desert seeing nothing moving and only the corpses of a dozen or so skags I had just slaughtered littering the landscape I was overtaken by a sense of dispair.  I had, indeed, become death, destroyer of worlds.
2. B.F. Skinner:  They totally figured out how to tickle that reward seeking part of your brain.  They advertise having ‘87 bazillion guns’ that you can win/find/buy/loot and I think they’re right.  You always want to see what’s next and before you know it, it’s 2 a.m.  Intermittent reinforcement, my boy.  That’s the name of the game.
3. A kick-ass soundtrack.  The sounds are great in this game.  From the voice work to the mood music to the theme music.

Check out these vids (ideally at a high volume)…

 

Oh…and the best news?  They’re getting zombies…

Can’t a vegitarian veteran get a little love?

Applebee’s is doing something really nice for Veterans Day this year.  Any veteran or active duty member of the military will be entitled to one of six free entrees.  Pretty nice…

But allow me to take a good long look in that gift horses mouth…

All of the dishes involve beef or chicken.  While I will be the first to admit that us warrior vegetarians are an extremely rare breed, it is possible that someone might want some fish or no meat at all.

Still, my criticism is rather petty.  It’s a great gesture…

Indulge me…

I’m going to sound a bit like a curmudgeon here, but what I have to say must be said.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, in part because of my fond childhood memories of trick or treating.  The weeks before the big day planning and making my costume, the scary movies and specials on TV, and being allowed to roam the town with a group of friends at night while begging for candy.  In a way, it was all about taking some of those tentative forays into adulthood.  You and your friends are out at night alone.  Do you form a plan or wander around aimlessly panhandling for treats?  Do you go to that weird cat lady’s place or not?  In fact, Halloween was the one time of year (when I was very young) that my parents would let me go wandering around the neighborhood until late.  In some ways, it wasn’t even about the candy.  At least it was more about getting the candy rather than actually having the candy afterwords.

But now?  As I told my wife:  “They fucked up a perfectly good holiday.”

I live in a nice, residential area.  We’ve got schools nearby.  We’ve got kids nearby.  And there just weren’t a lot of trick or treaters.  Those we did get, without exception, were escorted by roving posses of parents, watching each kid like the homes were filled with the criminally insane, just waiting for the chance to strike.

And, of course, the paranoid are doing everything they can to suck all the fun out of every aspect of childhood, in the name of safety, despite the fact that there’s not one documented case of children being poisoned from Halloween.  I can’t say for sure, but I’d be willing to bet that other forms of stranger on child crime are equally rare on Halloween.

But still, I was subjected to seeing local advertisements for ‘Trunk or treats’ where people drive to a parking lot and dole out candy to kids there (perhaps so parents can remain sitting in their cars and attempt to be hyper-vigilant and slack asses at the same time) or trick or treating in a mall.  My 10 year old self would have rejected either of these out of hand as missing the whole point of the holiday.  Look, if I wanted candy I could have just bugged my mom.  That’s not the point and distorting Halloween in these ways sends twists the whole meaning of the holiday.  Now that few kids make their own costumes, what exactly to they invest in the holiday?  The parents buy the costume, they take the poor child to a freaking parking lot where she gets to march around in a big circle with a candy bag looking more like a monkey working for an organ-grinder.  Then, they hop back in the car where the parents can drive them home and the whole family can be back home in time for Wheel of Fortune.

The kids?  Well, perhaps they don’t know better.  A handful said ‘trick or treat’ (remember the thrill of waiting at the door for it to open?), a few more said ‘Thank you’.  I had several kids who didn’t even knock, they just tried to walk right into my house.  I mean, who does that?

Does the whole world need to be Disneyfied?  Hey, I get it.  When I was a kid the powers that be did a lot of stupid things (like put monkey bars right on top of a big concrete slab just to increase the risk of serious injury) but how are kids going to learn about the world around them if they’re surrounded in bubblewrap 24/7.

Yeesh…

The TSA shell game

Ah, another one sees the light.  Really, read the entire piece, it’s hard to identify the key parts because there are so many.  Long story short:  A person with a full career in law enforcement gets tired of being ‘randomly selected’ for search at the airport and asks if she can refuse.  After some attempts at cajoling her into going through the super-duper all seeing terrorist detector machine they decide to search her:

I had been told repeatedly I would be subjected to a “pat-down.”  I correctly suspected otherwise.  During the course of my police career, I have conducted many pat-downs on the street.  The Supreme Court has described pat downs as a cursory check of the outer clothing of a person by a police officer, upon articulable suspicion that the officer’s safety is at risk of being compromised.

What happened to me in Albany was not the promised “pat-down.”  It was a full search conducted in full public view.  It was also one of the most flawed searches I have ever witnessed.

From the outset, it was very clear that the screener would have preferred to be anywhere else…With rubber-gloved hands she checked my head, my arms, my legs, my buttocks (and discovered a pen that had fallen into one of my pockets) and even the bottom of my feet.  Perhaps in a nod to decorum, she did not check my crotch, my armpits or either breast area.

Here was a big problem:  an effective search cannot nod to decorum.

Had I actually intended to move contraband past the screening point, my best strategy would have been to refuse secondary screening.

I am also forced to conclude that the purpose of the “pat-down” was not to actually interdict contraband.    In my case, I believe I was subjected to a haphazard response in order to effectively punish me for refusing secondary screening and to encourage a different decision in the future.