… cops in Cobb County, Ga. — one of the wealthiest and most educated counties in the U.S. — now have an amphibious tank.

The picture shows an LVTP-7, with Marines and gear hanging out all over it.  It’s not a tank.  But is amphibious.

I could not see what the cops would do with a 30-ton amphibious vehicle that seats 25 combat loaded troops.

Even for cops who are buying all kinds of military hardware that seemed excessive.

I googled.  The reality is the cops in Cobb County, Georgia have acquired themselves an LAV-25.

Which is a 12-ton amphibious vehicle, crew of three, sports a 25mm chain gun, two 7.62 machine guns. 

The coax gun, of course, is for those times on the mean streets when a 25 mm bullet is just a leetle bit overkill.

See?  That’s all kinds of better.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.

It’s not The Onion.  It’s at whitehouse.gov.

You should sign this. 

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

A sign telling all Bad People where victims may be found, helpfully provided by the City of Madison [1]

http://www.cityofmadison.com/police/documents/NoFirearmsPrint.pdf

I have no problem if you want to hang this up.  Your property, your business.  You gotta do what you gotta do.  Live and let live, maaaan.

If I had a shop in Madison I would put one up [2]: it’s expected.  Not having one would be like slapping up a ‘I love Ronald Reagan’ sign on your window.  You’d be a fool to do that and expect people to patronize you in that town.

But the expectation of some on the left is that everyone who hates-hates-hates concealed carry should put these up at their house.  No, really, I seen it with my own eyes.

Why would one go out of their way to advertise one’s helplessness?  If someone gets killed with that sign on their door, can we call it suicide?

[1] Insert the obvious ‘X square miles of crazy surrounded by Y’ joke, here.
[2] Not that I’d heed my own sign.  When in Rome do as the Romans do but keep your sidearm handy.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”

- Steve Martin

Saw lefty guys I know posted this on Facebook.  I call shenanigans.

As long as we’ve got a state, and it does stuff that needs to be done, it has be paid for.  Taxes are a way.  Not the only way, perhaps not the best way, but it’s what we’ve got.

One objection I’ve got to paying taxes is all the dumb stuff the government spends that money on. 

Paying teachers for two days of time off to attend a state-wide teaching convention that (drum-roll) was cancelled months ago.  Paying for a crack-team of SWAT cops to handcuff someone’s grand-ma in the Denny’s because she had a moon rock.

And for the Eff-Bee-Eye to spend God-knows how much money to write a report that declares that Juggalos are a threat to law, order, and the American Way.

Them fellers is weird and dresses funny and listen to god-awful music and fetish off-brand soda.  Danger-Will-Robinson-Danger.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

I slept for maybe five minutes last night.  Then work’s help desk called, and I spent the next eleven hours fighting a mother-lovin’ fire at work.  I got a great deal done today but not much of what I planned on doing.  Not complaining – I’m well compensated for what I do and I like it.  Just .. man it’s been a day.

So .. links.

The Roots of Lisp – Paul Graham.    In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable paper in which he did for programming something like what Euclid did for geometry. He showed how, given a handful of simple operators and a notation for functions, you can build a whole programming language. He called this language Lisp, for “List Processing,” because one of his key ideas was to use a simple data structure called a list for both code and data.

Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I   I don’t know if I’ll understand this, but I’m going to give it a go.

Progress and its Sustainability – John McCarthy.  With the development of nuclear energy, it became possible to show that there are no apparent obstacles even to billion year sustainability.

The Sayings of John McCarthy.  When there’s a will to fail, obstacles can be found.

US Air Force grounds the F-22 fleet (again).  I sure hope the Air Force kept the receipt for the F22. I want cash back, not store credit.

disable/enable dtlogin.  Work.  You don’t think I’d run CDE at home do you?

AIRcable – Serial5x.   Saw one of these at work.  Sitting next to a rack, which is next to a machine blowing a hurricane of cold air across one’s head, is an awful way to work.  This lets you get out of the room and into the hallway, while talking serial to the equipment.  I need this.

Dreamsongs – Blending Art & Science.  I don’t know why I opened this up.

Professional Educators (I am the only one professional enough to teach children (BOOM)) [1]  told kids there was an intruder, go, run, hide.  They lied.  They lied so they could search the school for drugs.  They didn’t find any drugs.  Anyone with a passing acquaintance with high school knows how friggin’ improbable this is, can draw conclusions about the effectiveness of treating children like inmates.  And that of the Great Drug War.

Confessions of an Actual Man.  Men are like little boys, always wanting to go higher and faster, to explore jungles and invent exotic aircraft. Always childlike, we love to race alone across the late-afternoon deserts of Arizona on a Harley, with the air furnace-hot and sunset burning out from incandescent reds to rolling waves of oranges on celestial beaches, the night rising from behind distant mountains. Women want granite counter-tops. These last, and are easy to clean.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] That never gets old.

Government can’t take out the trash efficiently. Solution: get rid of the trash cans.

The idea is to reduce the load on the authority’s overtaxed garbage crew, which is struggling to complete its daily rounds of clearing out 40 tons of trash from the system.

An idea only a bureaucrat or committee would embrace.

Look.  One person is going to be a good guy and carry his trash out of the subway.  A dozen people might.  Tens of thousands of people are a mob.  A mob will leave all kinds of crap behind.

Asked what waiting passengers would do without a garbage bin, Bianca Thomas, 22, waiting for a Brooklyn-bound train at Eighth Street, pointed straight at the track. “Right there,” she said, noting several plastic water bottles strewn by the third rail. “They’ll more than likely toss it. Nobody wants to walk around with trash in their hand.”

Duh.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

I arrived here in 1995, a broken down vaudevillian from the old country. When I arrived in America, here is what America asked of me:

Nothing.  I was free.

Free of my own past, free to succeed, free to fail.  America did not even ask me to be a citizen. I choose to be a citizen.

Whatever mistakes we make along the way we, the People, always correct them. We the People, the citizens of the United State of America, are it’s voice , we are it’s soul, we are it’s expression. Our leaders are but servants to our voice.

That is our Glorious Revolution.

Craig Ferguson – Prologue from ‘A Wee Bit O’ Revolution‘

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Wisconsin Department of Justice sez in regards to the 2011 Wisconsin Act 35 (aka we get to tote guns around, now)

Act 35 requires applicants to provide proof of firearms safety training. Any one of the below listed documents will be accepted as proof of meeting the law’s training requirement:
 
(snip)

3. Proof of military, law enforcement, or security firearms training.

• Former military: DD214 or DD256 form showing either “honorable” or “general under honorable conditions” discharge
  or release from the US military.

Hey – I got me one o’ them.

And?  Does the lege think that being in the service confers small arms proficiency?

In theory everyone who gets out of the service is a certified friggin’ Rambo.  Death from above.  Etc.  In practice … not so much.

Your average guy or gal learns the basics of firearms safety, knows how to carry and utilize a rifle.  They may fam-fire a pistol. [1]

There is nothing that says a former service member knows how to safely carry and use a concealed firearm, nor that they understand the legal and ethical ramification of using deadly force.

It’s a stupid requirement. [2]  Either the regs should say ‘pass a proficiency test meeting metrics X, Y, Z’ or it should stay silent and let everyone carry.  

A kind of wink-wink-nudge you’re in the club deal is flat-out retarded.

[1] Grunts will know all about shooting a variety of weapons.  Squids think that anything that doesn’t take a team to prep and fire and a ship to carry it around and isn’t really a weapon a’tall.

[2] I confess to an internal conflict.  I can carry concealed without having to pay: cool.  But I know deep in my heart that I’m never done that, have no idea what I’m doing.  Training is called for.  I guess that’s what ‘be a responsible citizen’ is all about.  Thrift vs Responsibility is a terrible conflict to throw at an anglo-celt.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Everlasting Phelps

It’s been nagging at me how useless and nihilistic this whole Occupy Whatever “movement” (more like a fit) has been about,

Hold that thought.  Nihilists.  Demands.  Hey …

Donny: Are these the Nazis, Walter?
Walter Sobchak: No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Nihilist: Ve don’t care. Ve still vant ze money, Lebowski, or ve fuck you up.
Walter Sobchak: Fuck you. Fuck the three of you.
The Dude: Hey, cool it Walter.
Walter Sobchak: No, without a hostage, there is no ransom. That’s what ransom is. Those are the fucking rules.
Nihilist #2: His girlfriend gave up her toe!
Nihilist #3: She thought we’d be getting million dollars!
Nihilist #2: Iss not fair!
Walter Sobchak: Fair! WHO’S THE FUCKING NIHILIST HERE! WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRYBABIES?
The Dude: Hey, cool it Walter. Look, pal, there never was any money. The big Lebowski gave me an empty briefcase, so take it up with him, man.
Walter Sobchak: And, I would like my undies back.
Donny: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter?
Walter Sobchak: No, Donny. These men are cowards.
Nihilist: Okay. So we take ze money you haf on you, und ve calls it eefen.
Walter Sobchak: Fuck you.

Oh, Big Lebowski – you are always there for me.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Node.js is Cancer. Node.js is a tumor on the programming community, in that not only is it completely braindead, but the people who use it go on to infect other people who can’t think for themselves, until eventually, every asshole I run into wants to tell me the gospel of event loops. Have you accepted epoll into your heart?


Warren Buffet wants to pay more taxes.  Perhaps he should start by having Berkshire Hathaway paying the taxes that it already owes.  “The rough translation of the report is that Berkshire Hathaway did not pay all the federal taxes that it was required to for 2002 through 2004.  The IRS examination team caught Berkshire Hathaway on at least some issues.  Instead of paying up, Berkshire Hathaway is threatening the IRS with protracted litigation and is in the process of cutting a deal with the IRS Appeals office.”

Keith Ellison (DFL-MN) is an ignorant pus-weasel.  I have spent time working to comply with regulations.  Most recently this very weekend where a application that calculates regulatory compliance got a bit of bad data from ERP and threw up all over itself. In the end fixing it is going to involve four people @ several hours each.  Not counting the time Friday and Saturday that three of us spent holding up it’s hair while it threw up in the toilet and whimpered.

There was nothing productive about it.  It was wasted time, time during which I neither delivered value to my employer, nor made life better, nor built a product, nor had a lot of fun.  The only thing I did was ensure that somewhere an auditor is happy.

Op-Ed: Obama ‘Devastating’ for Civil Liberties. (NPR).   (The) purpose of this column, is to address the fact that President Obama is a perfect nightmare when it comes to civil liberties. He not only adopted most of President Bush’s policies in the civil liberties areas when it comes to terrorism, but he actually expanded on them. He outdid George Bush.

Obama has taken everything that Bush did and dialed it to ’11′.  We wanted change …

Evolve. A case for modernization as the road to salvation. Technology got us into this mess. Only technology can get us out.

The sound of capitalism. Hip hop music was blamed for the August riots. But behind the celebration of “bling” is a culture of entrepreneurship.

Markets Not Capitalism is a powerful and long-overdue compilation of Market Anarchist thought.  And although editors Charles Johnson and Gary Chartier seem to have made the farcical mistake of including a couple of my pieces they have done an amazing job on the whole.

Vive La Revolution!  The US is probably getting ready for a revolution. Back in the Cold War days, the CIA was asked to do a portrait of a country that might have a revolution. It decided that such a country would have three characteristics:

Occupy Wall Street: Fighting Capitalism, One Food Cart at a Time. And while the occupation has been compared to the Arab Spring and Tahrir Square, the mostly Egyptian kebab cookers and breakfast sellers who are losing their livelihoods aren’t too sure.

Co-lateral damage, maaaaaan.

Alert readers – having got this far – might wonder what this is. What it is … are items that were lurking in the open tabs on my browser. Too interesting to dismiss, not worth a separate post. From my short-term memory to yours.

Also – The ol’ Brief isn’t seeing much posting these days. No posting means no readers. No readers means there isn’t much point to having it around. I like it too much to see it limp into the darkness, unloved and unread.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Take Back Your Government!: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work
Robert Heinlein

From politics I have come to believe the following:

(1) Most people are basically honest, kind, and decent.

(2) The American people are wise enough to run their own affairs. They do not need Fuehrers, Strong Men, Technocrats, Commissars, Silver Shirts, Theocrats, or any other sort of dictator.

(3) Americans have a compatible community of ambitions. Most of them don’t want to be rich but do want enough economic security to permit them to raise families in decent comfort without fear of the future. They want the least government necessary to this purpose and don’t greatly mind what the other fellow does as long as it does not interfere with them living their own lives. As a people we are neither money mad nor prying; we are easy-going and anarchistic. We may want to keep up with the Joneses – but not with the Vanderbilts. We don’t like cops.

(4) Democracy is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living; dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself- or it ceases to be democracy, even if the shell and form remain.

(5) One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbours prefer it that way – prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.

(6) Democracy is the most efficient form of government ever invented by the human race. On the record, it has worked better in peace and in war than fascism, communism, or any other form of dictatorship. As for the mythical yardstick of “benevolent” monarchy or dictatorship – there ain’t no such animal!

(7) A single citizen, with no political connections and no money, can be extremely effective in politics.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Anwar al-Awlaki is dead.  Fine: he wasn’t a nice guy.

I have some serious issues with how he was killed.  And you should, too.

The Executive, all by it’s lonesome, just murdered a  U.S. citizen, without pesky krep like due process, a speedy and fair trial.

Whacking a citizen with a drone is no different than executing him in the street.

So – we set a precedent.  Act against the interests of the United States, or threaten to,  and the government can order you to be killed and fuck due process. [1] [2]

[1] Who defines what is a threat?  Why, the guy with the gun.  Don’t worry – if you done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear [3]
[2] Not my words – that’s what Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said on the radio this morning.
[3] If you believe that I have some ocean front property in Arizona for sale, cheap.

Cross Posted to Space For Commerce.