Quote of the Day

"UK officials don't want to ban encryption.  They want to ban encryption that *works*."

- Edward Snowden

The failure of the American education system

Yale professor cannot believe how ignorant his students are:

My students today are much less obnoxious [then I was at their age]. Much more likable than I and my friends used to be, but they are so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are. You tell yourself stories; it’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, advisable, interested, and doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Had no view looking back at the history of the 20th century — just sees a fog. A blank. Has the vaguest idea of who Winston Churchill was or why he mattered. And maybe has no image of Teddy Roosevelt, let’s say, at all. I mean, these are people who — We have failed.

And this is at Yale.  So you wonder, if they never learned about Beethoven, Churchill, or Teddy, what did they learn?

I would venture to say that this is the best reason to de-fund the Department of Education.

True

There are 10 types of people

Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Happy 200th birthday, George Boole.

Bennett & Haviland Many Chambered Revolving Rifle

The problem of having a follow-up shot has been around for a long time. It's the reason for squad and platoon marching and close order drill, allowing for groups to fire in rotation. It drove development of the brass cartridge. The revolving cylinder, still in use, was one answer.

And sometimes, the search took a turn down the development rabbit hole.

Here is the Bennett & Haviland Many Chambered Revolving Rifle.

The same idea that lead to the revolver. Preload several chambers, then move them into position for firing. The problem to be solved, as with a revolver, is to ensure that the next chamber is correctly aligned with the bore before firing.

Here's the example in the NRA museum. It is one of ten that were produced.

The Science™ is settled!

But if you say anything against it, you're fired:

A popular weatherman announced Saturday evening he has been sacked by leading French news channel France Télévisions for publishing a book which accused top climate change experts of misleading the world about the threat of global warming.

So what was his motivation to write the book?

He said he was inspired to write the book after France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met with TV meteorologists and asked them to highlight climate change issues in their broadcasts.

“I was horrified by this speech,” Verdier told French magazine Les Inrockuptibles last month. In his book, Verdier accuses state-funded climate change scientists of having been “manipulated” and “politicised”, even accusing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of publishing deliberately misleading data.

Ya know, nobody gets fired for publishing a book disputing the speed of light.  You'd think the Scientific Establishment would be more confident about settled science.

Hat tip Rick via email, who dryly points out that the migrant crisis has Germans longing for a Second Amendment and the French longing for a First Amendment.

Soylent is people bacon!

This is so, so wrong:

Months before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared bacon a carcinogen, American boffins may have found a solution: algae that tastes just like bacon, but without the bad bits the Doctors at WHO say could cause your untimely demise. 

The eukaryote in question is called Dulse (Palmaria sp.) and, as explained Oregon State University, is already in demand as a tasty addition to various recipes.  

The, err, plot thickens:

Thus did Dulse attain the status of a “specialty crop” at Oregon's Food Innovation Center. From that collaboration some of the algae, which apparently resembles “translucent red lettuce', found its way into a frying pan wielded by Chris Langdon, a professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at OSU. 

“When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor,” Langdon says.

I must confess to being torn.  On one hand, I love me some greasy breakfast.  On the other hand, this might be killer as a "bacon" sushi ...

Offered without comment

(via)

Semper Fi, Sciline

Several years ago I was looking for a tool set called a Chapman. It is a small ratcheting handle and a collection of bits like screwdrivers and hex keys. I had borrowed one from a friend at the range and broke one of the tips and I wanted to replace it. I found it on a website called Sciline.com(archive). They sold tools of all sorts and varieties.
It wasn't a well laid out site and there was no online ordering, just an address and a phone number. Mixed in were references to the Marine Corps and Iwo Jima(archive). One interesting comment was "Sciline remembers, because Sciline was there".

I called the number. It must have been a small operation because Mr. Sciline answered the phone. Clearly an elderly man, he took my order for two Chapman tool sets and the expanded bit assortments. I bought one for my friend and one for me. Then I asked him if he was the veteran that remembered Iwo Jima.

We talked for almost an hour. I told him I had a been a Marine and was interested in history. He spoke of going in on D+1, of the losses, the battle, his experiences on the island, of knowing Ira Hayes and John Basilone. It was real and immediate, not glorified, but honest. This was before I had a cell phone and I was paying long distance charges, but I let him tell his story all the way. It ended with them embarking off the island when the Army took over and the remnants of his outfit were shipped out to recover and rebuild for the next operation. When the conversation wound down, I thanked him for his time and hung up.

I was going to order a tool today and thought of him so I went to the bookmark I had saved and clicked it and got this. A placeholder site talking about medical devices. Sciline was gone.

The Internet Wayback Machine showed the page as I remembered it on May 12th, 2013.(archive) After that, it was still an active website advertising the tool business in June, 2013 but all the Marine Corps references were gone. Finally, it was completely shut down in December, 2014.

Semper Fi, Sciline. It was an honor and a privilege to have spoken with you.

Of course they can

"Connected" cars are easy to track:

Connected cars that communicate with other vehicles or transport systems to improve safety and traffic flow can easily be tracked, a security researcher has shown.

In an experiment undertaken on the campus of the University of Twente in The Netherlands, two wireless sensing stations were able to pinpoint a target vehicle nearly half the time, according to Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at Security Innovation, a software security company.

“You can build a real-time tracking system using off-the-shelf devices with minimum sophistication,” says Petit. In a paper to be presented at the Black Hat Europe security conference in November, he describes being able to place a security vehicle within either the residential or the business zones of the campus with 78 percent accuracy, and even locate it on individual roads 40 percent of the time.

Security wasn't an after thought, it wasn't thought of at all.  And privacy?  User privacy is double-plus lunged to the designers.

My next thought is that you could combine the seemingly-easy-to-hack bit with the seemingly-easy-to-track bit for extra lulz.  Another reason to ride a Harley or a '69 GTO ...

How do you go out of business selling ammunition during an ammunition drought?

The last 7 years have been essentially a continuous panic buy season for ammunition.  While it's gotten a little better the last year, before that it was empty shelves for years as every cartridge box got grabbed as soon as it left the loading dock.

So how to explain this?

The text in the lower left hand says "Auction of Pierce Munitions".  So how did Pierce go Tango Uniform selling ammo during the biggest ammo shortage of all time?  They slept with the enemy:

You might be a little miffed if you found out a gun or ammo company was donating serious money to virulently anti-gun politicians’ re-election campaigns, right?

Of course, companies have every right to donate to whomever they want, so too we have the right to spend our money with whomever we want.  And the makers of “Ted Nugent Ammo” probably aren’t going to be on that list after you find out they donated $7,500 to N.Y. Governor Cuomo’s campaign fund.

Yep.

ALBANY (NY Daily News)— National pro-gun groups have largely holstered their checkbooks since the passage of Gov. Cuomo’s tough gun control law early last year.

…Surprisingly, the biggest donation, $7,500 from Buffalo-based bullet maker Pierce Munitions, went to Cuomo in June of last year — six months after the gun law passed.

A little further digging found that their check, (numbered 1594 for those keeping track) “ANDREW CUOMO 2014, INC.”

That was August last year.  Customers walked away, and they shut their doors.  You can bid of the last bits of their carcass if you have the dough.

Hat tip: Ralph via email.

Snerk

The Onion writes about China's biggest computer security problem:

BEIJING—Despite devoting countless resources toward rectifying the issue, Chinese government officials announced Monday that the country has struggled to recruit hackers fast enough to keep pace with vulnerabilities in U.S. security systems. “With new weaknesses in U.S. networks popping up every day, we simply don’t have the manpower to effectively exploit every single loophole in their security protocols,” said security minister Liu Xiang, who confirmed that the thousands of Chinese computer experts employed to expose flaws in American data systems are just no match for the United States’ increasingly ineffective digital safeguards

I'm only laughing on the outside.

Amilcare Ponchielli - Dance of the Hours

The clocks were set back this morning (you are done with that, right?) for Daylight Savings Time.  Classical Music anticipated this with a piece that you almost certainly know, from a composer you very likely don't.

Amilcare Ponchielli was an Italian composer from the 19th Century.  Never enormously successful, he made a living writing mostly operas.  His most successful was La Gioconda which contains this.  Walt Disney picked up Dance of the Hours from that opera and used it in the 1940s film Fantasia.



You've almost certainly heard this, and very likely the companion piece by Allan Sherman's take.

Happy Halloween!

I have no mouth but must eat candy ...

Willie Nelson - Gravedigger

Halloween is supposed to be fun.  Fun for the kids.  Fun for the kids playing with death.  OK, then.



Gravedigger (Songwriter: Dave Matthews):

Cyrus Jones 1810 to 1913
Made his great grandchildren believe
he could live to a 103
A hundred and three is forever when youre just a little kid
So, Cyrus Jones lived forever

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Muriel Stonewall 1903 to 1954
She lost both of her babies in the second great war
Now, you should never have to watch your only children lowered in the ground
that means you should never have to bury your own babies

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Ring around the rosey
Pocket full o'posey
Ashes to ashes
We all fall down

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Oh Gravedigger

Little Mikey Carson '67 to '75
He rode his bike like the devil until the day he died
When he grows up he wants to be Mr. Vertigo on the flying trapeze
Oh, 1940 to 1992--

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Grave digger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
I can feel the rain
I can feel the rain

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
Grave digger

Gun Shows

Tam has a link to a breathless CNN article about WHAT REALLY GOES ON AT A GUN SHOW!

Heh. I don't know about the gun shows in your area, but ours are pretty disappointing. Here's the inside story. I usually end up going, although I wonder why:

First, before you get to the door you have to disarm. Either leave your piece in the truck or unload it so it can be zip-tied at the door. So you and everyone else following the rules is unarmed, always a good start.

Once inside, there are a dozens of tables displaying firearms, new, old, long guns, handguns, shotguns, military, and so on. Most of these are either under glass or cabled together so that they can't really be handled. A few of the smaller tables have them out so you can talk to the vendor and at least shoulder or sight the merchandise.

Prices are tending toward the high end. Local gun shops usually end up looking competitive. Gone are the days of finding a deal on an old military rifle or a gently used handgun. I walk by some tables wondering if the guns are for sale or just displayed in an odd museum with price tags.

Some ammo sales, a little bit of reloading supplies. Powder has been scarce and very spendy. I did buy a bulk pack of factory 9mm last time. It was new manufactured mil-spec, and with things winding down overseas, the manufacturer was at the show looking to test the civilian market. It wasn't really a great deal, but it was fair, and it was good ammo at the range.

Then there's everything else.

Flashlights, tables and tables of flashlights, most of them designed to light up the field for night baseball.

Electric stun guns. These are easy to find. The continuous test firing makes a angry crackle from the far corner of the room. The same guy is selling pepper spray, batons, and cheap copies of Japanese katanas.

Knives. Some quality, lots of cheap. The nice ones cost more than the guns.

Survival food. Jerky. Nitrogen packed meals in buckets. Old MREs. Camo clothes, old military stuff, the kind of things I used to see in the Army-Navy store for $2.99 now priced to sell for $27.50!

T-shirts and patches. Military, patriotic, pro-2A, and vendor advertising. Sometimes all on the same shirt. The last several times there's been a booth manned by a couple of pretty young women selling stickers and t-shirts with a slogan that most us would support but wouldn't wear.

You walk around, see some friends, look at the stuff, and head out in a couple of hours. 

If anything about this seems exciting, I apologize for not being more descriptive. No one is breaking any laws. Crates of automatic weapons are not changing hands. There is no "gun show loophole", every vendor has to fill out the same forms as the guy at the gun shop, calls have to made, there is nothing shady happening.

Yes, if you have the money and you are willing to part with it and can pass a background check, you can buy a gun at a gun show. I'm unsure how this qualifies as news.

Now that is marketing

(via)

Congress finally investigating adjustments to climate data

About damn time:

Junk Science: Worried about climate fraud, Congress is investigating a federal agency for allegedly manipulating weather data to show recent global warming when there is none. So why is the agency refusing to cooperate?

First, a little background: Satellite temperature readings clearly show no warming trend for the last 18 years, 8 months and counting. None.

...

Earlier this year, for instance, it was revealed that nearly half of all supposed global warming in recent NASA data came from the agency's own highly suspicious statistical changes, not from actual temperature readings.

Enter Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House Science Committee. Curious, he subpoenaed NOAA for research documents related to the study. NOAA refused to hand them over. Smith's committee wants to know why.

Government is politics.  It politicizes everything it does.  Government schools are politicized schools.  Government healthcare is politicized healthcare. Government science is politicized science.

Last original NASA member of Voyager team retires

NASA now looking to hire programmers who know obsolete computer languages:

The last original member of the Voyager team has retired. Larry Zottarelli, aged 80, left NASA's employ this week after 55 years on the job. Zottarelli helped to develop Voyager's on-board computers and has worked on the mission since 1975. CNN reports that he was sent on his way with a handshake from actress Nichelle Nicholls, Star Trek's Lt. Uhura. NASA is reportedly seeking a replacement fluent in FORTRAN, Algol and assembly language for the Voyagers' 250 Khz General Electric 18-bit TTL CPUs, complete with single register accumulator and bit-serial access to 2096-word plated-wire RAM.

Wow.  Built to last - both the spacecraft and the programmers.  There were Giants in those days ...

That's one incompetent Human Resourcesdepartment

This post brought to you by Grammar Nazi.

If only we had nuanced people running US foreign policy

Europe would respect us, unlike in the bad old cowboy days.  Oh, wait:

The European Parliament has voted to grant Edward Snowden protection from prosecution – a move the NSA super-leaker hailed as a "game changer."

In an unexpected vote, MEPs narrowly approved a measure that calls on EU member states to "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection, and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender."

The 285-281 vote came amid a long response from Parliamentarians irritated with the European Commission for not having done enough to respond to the revelations of US mass surveillance first revealed by Snowden back in 2013.

Guess what, Progs - the Euros don't respect you, even with a (D) after your name.

Pictures from a Recent Hike

Finished editing my pictures from the hike earlier in the month. Here's a sample. These were taken in Vermont, first week in October, between Manchester Center and Wallingsford.

Click to biggify.

Department of Energy has too big a budget

Rick emails to point out this howler: Pumpkins cause climate change:

How scary are your jack-o’-lanterns? Scarier than you think, according to the Energy Department, which claims the holiday squash is responsible for unleashing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This is the sort of thing that best illustrates how "Climate Change" (i.e. ZOMG GLOBAL WARMENINZ!!!1!) has jumped the shark.  It is nothing but media whoring by governmental officials in search of bigger budgets.