- Firehand links to a great story about people standing up and defending themselves. The image I have of the Jewish guy taking on 20 Nazis is more Bruce Lee than Indiana Jones.
- Borepatch tries to explain to the Republicans that we’re tired of voting for people just because it’s their turn.
- Jeff Knox makes a good point. The groups that are called the “Gun Lobby” are nothing more than an aggregate of the millions of us who own, shoot, and enjoy guns and shooting.
- BRM points us to an article that pretty much convinces me that Newt just isn’t the one for me.
- George Smiley sums up the situation on the Korean peninsula quite nicely, and points to some of the things that the new Dear Leader is going to have to do in order to keep power.
- Shepherd seems to be fitting right into the dad department. Yeah, we all get mushy about our kids, no matter how macho we are.
Blog Roundup
Posted by daddybear71 on December 19, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/19/blog-roundup-2/
Pardon My Skepticism
North Korea is pledging to stop enriching uranium, and the United States is pledging to supply the communist paradise with 240,000 tons of food over the next year. One smart thing the U.S. is doing is not giving the North Koreans rice, which could be easily diverted to feed the military.
I see a few reasons why North Korea is making this deal
- They have no plans whatsoever to follow through on this pledge. Maybe they’ll shut down their enrichment program for a few months so they can get some food out of the Americans. Maybe they’ve opened up new facilities we don’t know about and won’t even shut down at all.
- They have enough enriched uranium to fulfill their weapons needs for a while, and are taking advantage of that by suckering the U.S. out of a quarter of a million tons of food.
- They have another source of enriched uranium, such as Pakistan. No, that couldn’t happen. There’s no way that Pakistan would provide help to North Korea when it comes to nuclear weapons. It’s not like there’s a large country between them that’s friendly to both of them and could allow a railcar full of uranium to travel to Pyongyang without being on a plane or boat that could be intercepted or something.
- I don’t know. Maybe Kim Jong Il gets religion and starts being a smart statesman instead of a bugnuts crazy dictator. Maybe in this season of peace he’s truly starting down the road to nuclear disarmament and international cooperation.
Guess which one I don’t think is likely.
The other three I’d say are a toss-up. I’m not sure how easy it would be for them to create a new enrichment program without us finding out about it, but it could be done. I think it’s a good bet that the North Koreans have a big pile of weapons grade uranium buried deep and quiet, or that the Pakistanis are continuing their stellar non-proliferation work by keeping them supplied in U-235.
I see exactly one reason the U.S. is making this deal:
- We’re a bunch of suckers and President Obama and his crew need something to point at during the campaign to say they have an achievement in getting North Korea to stop making nuclear weapons. I shouldn’t give the president too much crap for this, though. The last three presidents have been just as moronic when dealing with North Korea.
Remember, they’re halting enrichment, not dismantling anything. Either when we piss them off or they have a need for more home-grown uranium goodness, they’ll crank it up. I’ll give them style points if they use a little waste heat from the centrifuges to heat up some food with “A gift from the American people” printed on the box.
Update – Fox News is reporting that Kim Jong Il has died. No details yet, but my guess is that right about now every swinging Richard in I Corps is putting on his battle rattle and doing a quick PMCS of his vehicle and weapons. As for what this means, if true, for this deal is anyone’s call.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 19, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/19/pardon-my-skepticism/
Literary Anniversary
Today is the anniversary of the first publishing of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in 1843. I’m not a Christmasy guy, but I do like the story and message of this classic. I’ve read the book and seen several movie adaptations of it, and I have to say it gets the Christmas theme across without being too saccharine.
Coincidentally, Girlie Bear, Boo, and I watched the 2009 adaptation starring Jim Carrey on Sunday afternoon. I’m not a big fan of Jim Carrey, but he definitely hit the mark with this one. The animation and voice work by Carrey reminded me a lot of The Polar Express, but without all of the annoying singing and dancing. I’d definitely recommend this one, and it’s available on Netflix streaming.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 19, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/19/literary-anniversary/
30 Days of Heinlein – Day 16
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards. – The Pragmatics of Patriotism
Posted by daddybear71 on December 19, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/19/30-days-of-heinlein-day-16/
Thought for the Day
Teacher always says that whenever someone rings the 300 yard gong, an angel gets her wings!
Capra changed it in the editing room.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 19, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/19/thought-for-the-day-30/
Today’s Earworm
Frosty the Snow Ghoul
Frosty the snow ghoul
Was a slushy, slimy guy
With a mouthful of teeth and a carrot nose
And murder in his eye
Oh Frosty the snow ghoul
Was undead as he could be
And the legends say
He could laugh and slay
Little kids like you and me
Down through the village
With a war axe in his claw
Swinging here and there
All around the square
Feeding children into his maw
Choppety chop chop
Choppety chop chop
Look at Frosty swing
Choppety chop chop
Choppety chop chop
That evil undead thing
There must have been some magic
In that Mosin Nagant I found
For when I tried to cycle the bolt
I was able to load a round
Oh Frosty the snow ghoul
Melted in the fireball
So we collected his axe
And we nailed his hat
Up on the city wall.
Frosty the snow ghoul
Is a curse upon the land
So say your prayers
And always walk in pairs
For his return may be at hand!
Posted by daddybear71 on December 19, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/19/todays-earworm-77/
Thought for the Day
Christmas Tree – American colloquial roughly equating to “cat emetic”
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/18/thought-for-the-day-31/
Quote of the Day
When are the nanny staters going to learn that there’s a wide swath of the American public who are going to do exactly the opposite of what you tell them, because Americans don’t like to be bossed around? The fastest way to encourage Americans to do something is to ban it. The fastest way to get them to stop doing something is to mandate it. We just don’t like being told what to do.
Tam, “Eat Your Spinach“
Both the nanny-staters and daddy-staters think it’s their electoral mandate to keep us from making bad decisions. If it’s not “drive a car that doesn’t use much fuel” it’s “you shouldn’t be drinking or smoking that”. We do best when we are left to make our own decisions and are left to deal with our own consequences.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/18/quote-of-the-day-32/
30 Days of Heinlein – Day 15
You live and learn. Or you don’t live long. — Time Enough For Love
My Take –
We all make mistakes, and the ones we make collectively are going to be legendary as history and myth. The survivors are the ones that are honest about those mistakes, figure out what they did, and learn to not commit them again. Everyone else? Well, they tend to be grease spots on the walls of the cave.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/18/30-days-of-heinlein-day-15/
Today in Geek History
On this date in 1987, Larry Wall released Perl to a newsgroup. For you non-geeks, this is the equivelant of celebrating the day that someone first demonstrated super glue to the masses.
Perl is one of my favorites. Honestly, I learned to script in Perl before I learned shell scripting in sh or ksh. My first tech job in the Army was big on Perl, so I learned Perl as I was learning to be a SysAd.
Perl is a bit of a jack of all trades scripting language, being good at a lot of things, but not as good at most of them as languages that are specialized. For example, a lot of Internet code used to be written in Perl, but most now is written in PHP or some other language that is specific to the web.
I get the feeling that I’ll still be using Perl in one form or another for a long time.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/18/today-in-geek-history/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 