Repent, for the End is Nigh. Er. Nigher. Er.

Update:

The alternate title on Drudge was “Who is to blame?”   The link takes you to NPR’s article titled “Answers Sought On Fort Hood Suspect’s Link To Imam”.

At what point in our nation’s history did we start asking stupid questions like this?  Who is to blame???  The ass who pulled the trigger and killed a bunch of good people, that’s who.

Let’s stop thinking “blame” beyond this guy and his actions.  Let’s then ask “Hmmm.  What might we do in the future to avoid this?”

I know the NPR article did not ask that question but I also know damn well there are politicians, reporters, the president, and generals all asking these questions as they try to assign blame and responsibility.  It starts and ends with the guy who pulled the trigger.

Now how do you make sure it doesn’t happen again?  This is a very bad mindset that we’ve slipped into – where we don’t recognize that people are responsible for their own actions and that not everything can be made safe.

Update 2:

Obama says Hassan may have cracked under the stress.

You know, I’ve been under obscene amounts of stress in my life, and I have yet to think that getting a gun and killing my buddies and co-workers was anything other than vile.  Stress does not make you contact Al-Qaeda.  Stress does not make you converse with violence-minded imams.

No, you have to be a special kind of asshole to do this.  Stop playing race issues, Obama.  White cops “acted stupidly” and now minority murderers are simply “stressed”.

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Was looking for some vector graphics tonight because making flourishes isn’t exactly worse than scrubbing toilets but it isn’t much better, either.

I came across some that were for nearly $100.  “Yoiks!” I said.  But then I saw that they were animated flourishes that not only got drawn over time but also changed shape and orientation.  Oh how very nice they were.

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Looks like Global Warming just keeps marching on.  Get thee behind me, you inconvenient truth, you.

According to NOAA…

National Overview:

Temperature Highlights – October

• The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.
• For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation’s nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.
• Statewide temperatures coincided with the regional values as all but six states had below normal temperatures. Oklahoma had its coolest October on record and ten other states had their top five coolest such months.
• Florida was the only state to have an above normal temperature average in October. It was the sixth consecutive month that the Florida’s temperature was above normal, resulting in the third warmest such period (May-October).
• The three-month period (August-October) was the coolest on record for three states: Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Five other states had top five cool periods: Missouri (2nd), Iowa (3rd) , Arkansas (5th) , Illinois (5th) and South Dakota (5th) . Every climate division in Kansas (nine) and Nebraska (eight) recorded a record cool such period.
• For the year-to-date (January – October) period, the contiguous U.S. temperature ranked 43rd warmest. No state had a top or bottom ten temperature value for this period.

Did you catch the importantest part?

It was the sixth consecutive month that the Florida’s temperature was above normal

Refute THAT, you naysayers.

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A Sharp Stabbing Pain

That sharp stabbing pain could be the poignancy of the whole affair.

"A teenage girl is suing a tattoo artist for £8,500 after she allegedly asked him for three stars on her face..."

Sadly, she got a three of stars on her face.

She claims she fell asleep while he was doing his work… and awoke to ‘this nightmare’.

I have three tattoos.  I don’t know anyone who falls asleep during tats, sorry – at least not right below the eye like that and certainly not on the nose.

As co-worker Capricious Half-Breed remarked:   “And this year’s winner of the coveted ‘Dr. House Bedside Manner Award’ goes to…”

Jules Clocher, a Belgian psychologist, said: ‘The trauma this girl must be feeling is indescribable.  She feels like a circus freak – and no wonder, because she looks like one.’

****

More stabbing pain stuff.  Britain’s new stab-proof knife.

It can never be a totally safe knife, but the idea is you can’t inflict a fatal wound,” [John Cornock] said. “Nobody could just grab one out of the kitchen drawer and kill someone.”

You.   Must.   Be.   Joking.   If it has a sharp edge on it, it is deadly.

What next?  Writing utensils for Britons like the one below?

****

Never before have I seen such transparency.  Obama’s ability to stand by what he promises is breathtaking.

In a move that puts a cloud over transparency, White House officials are blocking access to the lists of the names of visitors to the White House.

The practice, carried over from the Bush administration, argues the public does not need to know who comes calling at the Executive Mansion, even for policy purposes.

Added in with the takeover of US businesses, the dictates on pay, the attack on free speech on the airwaves… the use of ABC News to do a personal infomercial controlled by Obama and his Administration (read: The State).   Awful close to Nazi days – get them browncoats a-movin’ and make sure you take away people’s guns while you’re at it, Big-O.

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Concrete Made of Aerogel

UPDATE:   The HULC sounds like a hoot.  I have concerns about power lifetime and practicality.  Perhaps if you put generators on the hip joints you could generate power and it’d go infinitely long?

UPDATE 2:  Ah, a new lease on life for the Bedwetter Society.

But climate is known to be variable — a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.

That is called an end run, saying that you can’t prove we’re wrong because all facts you’d use to prove us wrong are invalidated by our proven premise.

Here’s my own end-run:

UNTIL CURRENT CLIMATE MODELS CAN PREDICT ACCURATELY THE OBSERVED HISTORICAL WEATHER EVENTS USING THE SAME PRECURSOR DATA, MODELS PREDICTING FUTURE GLOBAL WEATHER/CLIMATE ARE OF LOW RELIABILITY.

There is also a major flaw with even that because the models are always tweaked to account for the latest anomaly.  Just because they are so tweaked does not mean that the model can and will predict tomorrow’s events.

This is Hubris.  The idea that one can account for every variable and is well documented as a form of god complex.

Update #3:  So sayeth the rich asshole.

President Obama said Tuesday that now is a good time for investors to buy stocks if they focus on the big picture.

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Obama apparently isn’t giving anyone anything they can hold on to, just “we have plans”.  When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gets a letter from Obama with no hints or suggestions, I’m just not surprised.

The letter contained an assessment of the situation, but there were no concrete proposals about any mutually binding decisions

Update: Huh.  Well I can be wrong…

Senior U.S. officials say Obama suggested missile shield might be unnecessary if Moscow helped with Iran

But, we’ll probably never know given how untransparent the most transparent administration ever has been so far.  Prove me wrong again, Obama.

Elsewhere, we see the results of this concrete made of air.  For example, the stimulus package was supposed to stimulate (never mind that it was ill-conceived no matter what) but instead became entitlement money as the largesse morphed into another form.

Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

WSJ has a nice graphic.  Wanna see? Funny how the sharp loss events seem to correlate to pronouncements of the O-administration that relate to economic policies.  For the White House to whisper words monetary is akin to the kiss of death.

For those not in a state of active denial:

…after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

[later]

The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy. Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and price controls. Private lenders to students have been told they’re no longer wanted. Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect a huge tax increase from cap and trade. And every risk-taker and investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in 2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even earlier.

Ouchie.  Another complaint from those who were either deprogrammed or never sucked into the cult in the first place is the fact that capitalism is not being allowed to do it’s job.  One nice feature of capitalism is that it is self-cleaning.  Think of ants – they eventually pick clean stuff that is dead, usually after predators have taken care of the weakest in the ecosystem.

Obama is keeping the predators at bay, giving the one or two sickly lemurs horribly expensive life support that takes up an entire hospital’s resources, and all for terminally ill critters.  The rest of the system is being starved of resources and competed with.  Ok, bad analogy, a blend of analogies, and kind of a waste of both your time and mine.

His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans. The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible. Yet most of Team Obama’s ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.

What’s he going to do when even the deniers realize that he can’t pin this on Bush any more?

Update on the financial issue:  Bernanke Says U.S. May Need to Expand Bank Rescue

No, no, no, no, NO.  Let the bad banks FAIL and let the ones that are still viable grow stronger without the crippled resource-wasting competition.  Zombie companies are not adding anything valuable to the party, only serving as a fiscal black hole (think AIG).

** Note, if you have not read clear through this post and you ping me about the HULC and the impossibility of perpetual motion, rather than recognize sarcasm, please be aware that I’m going to skewer you verbally.

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