Capitalist Warmonger

Dear Apple

2009-08-30T13:07:00.002-04:00

Dear Apple,

How many screws should have to be removed in order to replace a hard drive in my MacBook Pro?

Love,

Dear Me,

All of them!

Love,

Apple

Twitter

2009-08-17T19:31:00.001-04:00

According to some study, 40% of Twitter messages are pointless babble:

Forty percent of the messages on Twitter are "pointless babble" along the lines of "I am eating a sandwich now," according to a study conducted by a US market research firm.

Just 40%? Amazing.

Healthcare "Reform"

2009-07-20T10:31:00.004-04:00

The problem, our fearless leaders tell us, is that tens of millions of Americans don't have access to healthcare. What the real problem is is that a much smaller number (maybe 12 million) cannot get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions or lack of funds.

The solution, our fearless leaders tell us, is to place a tax on people who are very likely carrying their own health insurance to pay for health insurance for those who don't want to pay for their own health insurance.

In other words, punish the responsible and reward the irresponsible.

Thank you, fearless leaders.

Drinking Vodka to Cure a Hangover

2009-07-17T08:04:00.003-04:00

Says VP Joe Biden:

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.

That's like an alcoholic drinking vodka in the morning to cure a hangover. Sure, it works, for a little while, until the alcoholic's liver gives out...

Judgement

2009-07-13T15:36:00.004-04:00

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is being questioned today by the Senate. There are a few questions I think should be asked in regards to statements she's made in the past. Said Sotomayor:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Hopefully one of the senators will ask some of the following:

Are people of Latin descent genetically superior to caucasians, or is it simple cultural superiority?

Are females inherently better than males at assessing fact and law to render legal decisions?

Would you consider it racist or bigoted if someone said that caucasian males would render better decisions than Latina women for any reason at all?

Do you think that Latina women (or any non-caucasian) make better firefighters than caucasian males?

You may answer my questions via email or the comments. Thank you.

The Census

2009-06-20T07:28:00.003-04:00

"Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household."

Kind of like what the Constitution calls for?

Amazing - a member of Congress who gets it. Unpossible!

Safari 4

2009-06-20T07:18:00.001-04:00

I likes it.

Warmonger Sr., time to get Mom a Mac.

I (heart) Capitalism

2009-06-05T12:46:00.003-04:00

For the first time in my Internet life I used Woot. Yeah yeah, 5 years behind the times, so sue me.

After signing up, I get an email explaining Woot's terms, and brilliant terms they are. One of the many reasons I (heart) Capitalism:

If you receive your item and it doesn't work, contact the manufacturer first. They made the junk. Let them deal with it. If they turn out to be total tools, contact service@woot.com and we'll grudgingly provide some further assistance.
If you receive your item and decide you don't like it, take it to eBay or pawn it off on one of your so-called friends. We don't want it, either.

And a special warning for Shirt.woot orders:

Check the size chart, check the size chart, check the size chart. It's at the bottom of the product description for each sale. If you order the wrong size, we won't take it back - your only option is to gain or lose weight so it fits, possibly including painful, costly cosmetic surgery.

In other words: caveat emptor - the way it is supposed to be.

Memorial Day

2009-05-24T23:09:00.005-04:00

I didn't know him, and I only know of him because he's the brother of a friend of a friend. But he died for me and my freedom, and you and your freedom. There aren't many men left that would make that sacrifice, and we're lucky that he lived and died for us.

To Staff Sargent Michel R. Hullender and all the men like him that made the greatest sacrifice on this Memorial Day: thank you.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. - General George Patton

Success and Failure

2009-05-22T15:23:00.002-04:00

The Daughter graduated 8th grade today. It's amazing how she's grown. And terrifying. Her progress is a great success.

She goes to a government school, and as far as government schools go I think it's pretty good. There was one obvious failure that even the people in charge don't seem to think is a problem - of all the awards for academic achievement, the winners were at least 2/3 girls. Of all the kids that got honors (90% or better average throughout the whole year, I think) out of the 25 or 30 winners I only counted 5 boys.

The two boys that stood out most each got a special honor: the first won an award for the "most improved" in the school's remedial education track; the second won an award for being the most withdrawn and distant student who also improved.

There were a few notable exceptions, two kids won an award for having an A average from first grade all the way through the end of eighth - one a boy and one a girl. And when it came to the best attendance record, boys and girls were split roughly equally.

There is likely a relationship between academic success at the middle school level and college admissions being heavily skewed towards females. Things are so bad in some colleges that some schools are now discriminating against women to favor men in admissions.

Perhaps this one-size-fits-all government educational system we've built doesn't really fit enough sizes. And perhaps one of the sizes the government is not worried about fitting is anything male.

Relationship Advice

2009-05-20T12:13:00.005-04:00

Monger of War: Had breakfast with Betty. Why do I like her so much?

Meanie: ::shrug:: Pheremones, maybe.

Monger of War: Could be. I just *like* her. I can't stop it. I'm not complaining here. I'm observing.

Meanie: Yeah. My advice is to make her a mixed tape. And make sure everyone in 8th grade knows that you like her. Trust me - I've got a lot of experience with this.

(Please note that Betty's name isn't really Betty. But mine really is Monger of War. My parents had high hopes for me!)

Modern Medicine

2007-01-31T12:40:00.001-05:00

dewde: I'm still sick. Modern medicine can kiss my backside for all I care.

Monger of War: That sucks man. Pat Robertson said that anyone who gets sick is being punished for their acceptance of homosexuality.

dewde: Well add him to the list that can kiss my backside.

Monger of War: He'd love to, but then he'd get sick.

dewde: ewww.

You Complete Me

2007-03-03T11:57:00.001-05:00

Meanie: Hey Monger?

Monger of War: What up?

Meanie: You complete me.
:: wipes away a tear ::

Monger of War: Yes dear.
It's okay.
You make my life worth living.

Monger of War: Hey Lefty?

Meanie: yes?
:: gulp ::

Monger of War: I love you.

Meanie: Oh!

Monger of War: Schnookums!

Meanie: I love you too.
With every beat of my heart!

Monger of War: and thus ended any political hopes for either Monger of War or Meanie.

Meanie: For now. but you never know who'll be in power in 10 years.

Lyrics of the Jaded

2007-11-01T17:28:00.001-04:00

Meanie: You can dance if you want to - you can leave your friends behind. 'Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance then I'll pop a cap in their asses.

Monger of War: Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all hide in a buker and hoard what few supplies we have until the plague is over.

Meanie: Itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. And the itsy bitsy spider milked the government for benefits and never had to work again in its life.

Meanie: Pretty woman, walking down the street. Pretty woman, the kind I'd like to meet. Pretty woman, how much do you charge?

Monger of War: Row Row Row your boat, gently up the stream! Until government regulations mandate that your stream can't be used recreationally because it endangers trout and mussels 600 miles downstream.

Meanie: Wasting away to get in Margarittaville. Searching for my lost shaker of salt. Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but my lawyer says she still gets half, even if she was fucking the pool boy.

Meanie: The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal. He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind, and willing to make a deal. So he invented Napster.

Chrismas Music!

2007-12-10T18:16:00.001-05:00

Meanie: You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might fight that you open yourself up to ridicule and humiliation.

Monger of War: Five golden rings; four French hens; three Turtle Doves; two calling birds; and then the debt collector shows up and takes your Lexus on Christmas Eve with your child's new doll house still in the trunk.

Monger of War: Frosty the Snowman, had to hurry on his way. But he waved "Good-bye" saying don't you cry, if I don't get some money for my fix I'm going to sell you all into the sex trade.

Monger of War I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. Where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear the Five-0 so daddy doesn't get caught selling crack while on probation. Again.

Meanie: Heh. You're good at these!

Monger of War: I've got the Christmas Spirit!

Meanie: I guess we've found a genre where you know the lyrics!

Monger of War: Plus I'm listening to Christmas music.

Meanie: Rudoplh the Red Nosed Rheindeer had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw it, you would hire him on the spot, because he's worth TONS of Affirmative Action quota points!

Monger of War: Baby Jesus (pa-rump-a-bum-bum), I am a poor boy too, (pa-rump-a-bum-bum), I have no gift to bring (pa-rump-a-bum-bum), because I pawned all my stuff for my new 24-inch spinners. Like them?

Monger of War: We three kind of Orient are bearing gifts, we travelled so far. Field and fountain, moor and mountain, Greyhound can get you pretty much anywhere for $49....

Meanie: We should write an original carol. Something along the lines of, "God knocked-up Mary for all our sins"

Monger of War: LOL! We're so going to hell.

Beating Up Nuns

2008-06-18T14:50:00.001-04:00

Monger of War: A 69 year old nun would be amazingly easy to take out.

Meanie: Most, yes. I'm sure there are some pretty badass 69 year olds out there, somewhere.

Monger of War: Oh, sure. There are a few that I wouldn't want to deal with. So long as God doesn't show up. That'd really screw up my odds.

Meanie: True. But that's what you get for ganking all those nuns.

Monger of War: If I were God I'd step in. Then again, if I were God I would have stepped in by not making that fucking Tree of Knowledge. You don't give users the root password. God needs a better QA department.

Meanie: Maybe he was just sick of their customer service calls, so he tricked them into voiding their warranties.

Monger of War: What, after just 3 days? C'mon!

Meanie: Eh. With the right users, 3 days is a long time.

Monger of War: Except he made the freaking users.

Meanie: And anyway, they were early-adopters.

Monger of War: LOL! More like, early adpotees, to be fair.

Meanie: God should have had a longer Beta program. I mean, after that Lilith exploit.

Monger of War: That's what he gets for trying to QA it himself though. We know you can't really do that.

Meanie: But you know. He had a deadline. He had vacation scheduled for the 7th day.

Jesus and the Theory Class

2008-07-24T17:14:00.001-04:00

An SMS conversation between me and my little brother:

Little Bro: Just had this thought: Jesus may be in the theory class.

Monger of War: Nope. That whole "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" thing would indicate otherwise.

Little Bro: I knew I shouldn't have initiated a religious-political debate via text.

Animal Farm

2009-02-02T16:59:00.001-05:00

Meanie: So if I get a cabinet appointment on Obama's staff, I don't have to pay taxes either, right?

Monger of War: I think that's the way it works. I get the feeling that Obama's presidency is going to set a new standard for the "good enough for thee, but not for me" mentality. There's an elite ruling class to whom the rules don't really apply, and then there's everyone else.

Meanie: How long before they ban Animal Farm from libraries?

Monger of War: They did yesterday during the Super Bowl. Nobody noticed.

Meanie: Heh.

Proof of God's Existence

2009-05-17T18:30:00.003-04:00

Including proof that God is an artist:

Torture?

2009-05-16T09:38:00.007-04:00

There is much debate about the U.S. government torturing detainees, particularly as President Obama fights the release of photographs taken while detainees were questioned - sometimes quite aggressively. But really, is this torture?

Shocking images of inmates in Iraq are the kind of images whose release the president has now vowed to fight in court....
Others yet to be released reportedly show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick and hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps.

Seems pretty clear that water boarding is torture. It is not at all nice. But prisoners being forced to wear a hood for transportation with "Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps"? They can't even see the magazines? Where's the torture?

And how does a photograph "show military guards threatening to sexually assault a detainee with a broomstick"? Maybe the guards are saying "if you don't sweep the floor of your room you're not getting any punch and pie!" It's not possible to tell what a photograph shows except for a moment frozen in time.

To be fair, the article does mention some pictures which show what might be, at their most extreme, torture:

One picture showed a prisoner hung up upside down while another showed a naked man smeared in excrement standing in a corridor with a guard standing menacingly in front of him. Another prisoner is handcuffed to the window frame of his cell with underpants pulled over his head.

Certainly not nice. But is it torture? Depends on a lot of things the photographs do not show us, namely context. All photographs lack context. Take this most famous example:

This is a photograph that "changed the course of the war in Vietnam." But what does it not tell you? It doesn't tell you that the man being shot was a Viet Cong operative: "most reports give him the role of a Captain in a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon responsible for the killing of South Vietnamese policemen and their families."

So what are the soon to be released "torture" pictures also not going to tell us?

In the words of Eddie Adams: "I won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for a photograph of one man shooting another... The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation."

Signs of Things to Come

2009-05-04T22:09:00.005-04:00

If you want government in charge of health care, consider this:

In Lincoln Park, Michigan, a 17-year-old called 911 when her father (recovering at home from brain surgery) had a seizure. Her first call didn't go through, so the panicked girl hung up and tried again. While the phone was still ringing, the girl said "what the fuck." Apparently 911 calls are recorded even while the phone is ringing, so the police officer heard her say it. When the officer answered the call, he was only interested in the fact that the girl said "fuck" and wouldn't help the girl. Instead, he swears at her and hangs up...
Eventually, the girl gets arrested and jailed by the police for a crime that isn't on the books.

[Hat tip: Instapundit]

Pandemics

2009-05-04T18:33:00.005-04:00

One of these things is not like the other:

SARS: 775 deaths
West Nile Virus: 124 deaths (2007 U.S. figure)
Avian Flu: 257 deaths (since 2003)
Swine Flu: 25 deaths in Mexico, 1 death in the United States
Influenza (the "regular" flu): 250,000-500,000 deaths worldwide, 36,000 deaths in the United States annually

What do SARS, the West Nile Virus, the Avian Flu and the Swine Flu have in common? They get way more attention from the media; and they kill a vastly smaller number of people than Plain Jane Flu.

So why the breathless coverage by the 24x7 news media for diseases with scary names that don't do much harm compared to the regular, everyday flu that kills hundreds of thousands every year? And if every sniffle is a pandemic, how are we going to tell when we really have a serious and dangerous problem like the Spanish Flu which killed between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 people?

Budgetary Hockey Stick

2009-05-01T15:18:00.003-04:00

Global Warming Fanatics like to talk about the hockey stick - the alarming increase in temperatures in the last few years. An alarming increase, it should be noted, which isn't really there.

Well now we have a new hockey stick - the United States government budgetary hockey stick! Behold:

The Internet is Cool

2009-04-30T16:14:00.003-04:00

I know this isn't a unique observation, but really, it is. Let me 'splain:

This morning my dogs got into a fight. As usual, I strode in and broke it up myself. And as usual I got bit badly enough to require medial treatment. And, as usual, I got another tetanus shot and antibiotic prescription.

So I don't particularly trust anyone in the medical field. Those who talk about gun control have never considered how many people are killed by prescription drugs... So when I picked up my prescription for Clindamycin, in front of the (very nice) pharmacist's assistant I opened the bottle, held up the little pills and said "are these what my prescription is for? I don't want to die because this is the wrong drug." She (very politely) assured me that these pills were in fact what I was prescribed.

I still didn't believe her.

So I came home, typed in the name of the drug into Google, and what did I find? This! The very drug I was prescribed and given by the pharmacist. I could compare the pills in the little bottle on my desk to the ones on the Internet. Independent verification rocks.

Thus, I love the Internet - it allows reasonably smart people to fact-check the people who we have to trust, but would otherwise have no way of confirming what we've been told/given/sold.

On a side note, 30 300MG capsules of Clindamycin was about $120. 60 150MG tabs were $15. Who the hell thinks that makes any sense?

The Need to Socialize Health Care

2009-04-29T11:04:00.003-04:00

The United States just recorded its first Swine Flu death, a little boy who came from Mexico for treatment. This is sad and tragic, he was only 23 months old.

One vital point to those who wish government to take over our (i.e., socialize) health care - a Mexican family brought their sick child to to Brownsville, Texas from Mexico because they knew the child would receive treatment. And treatment he received. When the hospital in Brownsville realized that the boy was too sick to be treated there, they immediately sent him to the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.

And that Mexican family probably won't even be asked for money.

Why do people want to socialize a medical system that will treat people for free?