Moe Lane

Fox News has the basic story, which goes as follows: an agent of the BATFE was ordered to go and buy six Draco semi-automatic pistols from gun shops. Those guns were then resold to “known illegal buyers:” i.e., people known to resell guns illegally. So far, this is not actually bad, because this would be how standard sting operations go… except that they didn’t arrest the buyers immediately. Which makes… sense, right, because Dracos are legal-to-own guns in the USA; so the BATFE would just have to keep a constant watch on the guns to make sure that they didn’t miss it when the bad guys tried to smuggle the guns out of the country – no, wait, it’s reported that ATF group supervisor David Voth ordered that there be no 24 hour surveillance. Well. Good thing that Agent John Dodson ignored that order and did a personal stakeout of the bad guys for six days, huh? Because he was there when they moved out with the guns! He was able to call in a request for an interdiction team!

…Which was refused.

This would be the point where I show you what a Draco semi-automatic pistol looks like. (more…)

I should note right from the start that I like Stu Rothenberg as a pundit and a political handicapper: he’s a pretty bright person and he has a lot of experience.  But Rothenberg is also very much plugged into the professional political establishment… and sometimes, it shows.  Case in point: Rothenberg’s otherwise spot-on analysis about the travails of Barack Obama these days has what I will charitably call a ‘howler.’

This president, like Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush before him, learned the lesson that every investment fund manager knows: Evidence of past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.

And now the president, who is expected to raise close to $1 billion for his re-election campaign, who faces a Republican field widely mocked as undistinguished and who can rely on the same team of brilliant political gurus who masterminded his 2008 victory, suddenly finds his re-election in doubt.

Two howlers, actually: the first is the frankly unsupported-by-historical-evidence assumption that Barack Obama ever learns a lesson on anything.  The second is that Barack Obama’s past performance should have justified any expectations in the first place. (more…)

His point that iconic superhero CEOs inherit wealth, while iconic supervillian CEOs generally earn it from scratch is interesting (it’s also interesting that Bruce Wayne is both the most competent CEO and the closest-to-evil superhero on Julian’s list); but I wonder if he’s reaching too far, or too deeply, in his explanation why.  Could it simply be that comic artists and writers generally don’t like it that they have to at least sometimes have fights with the business/management side of the comic book companies that they write for?  That could easily bleed over into their creative output…

Via AoSHQ.

Moe Lane

PS:

Michio Kaku over at the WSJ has an article up on the subject.  For those who missed it, the basic story is this: researchers at  CERN had a “Huh.  That’s odd*” moment when they discovered neutrinos apparently moving at speeds that were faster than light.  This, of course, flatly contradicts our current understanding of physics, which is why the researchers in question are being very, very careful to ask their fellow-physicists to descend upon their observed data and beat it with analytical and procedural sticks.  The safe way to bet – as xkcd literally notes here – is that there’s something wrong with the observational method; in fact, Dr. Kaku himself thinks that this is probably the case.  Honestly, I expect that myself.

But if it is right… well, here’s the reported results that jumped out at me.

…after analyzing 15,000 neutrinos, they found that they traveled faster than the speed of light—one 60-billionth of a second faster, to be precise. In a billionth of a second, a beam of light travels about one foot. So a difference of 60 feet was quite astonishing.

If I am reading that right – and I may not be – that certainly sounds like… well, that time-to-Alpha-Centauri just can’t be right.  I’ve sent out the math to be checked by an actual physicist. I’ll let you know what she tells me.

[UPDATE: turns out that I was reading it wrong (but that the explanation wasn't very good anyway): the aforementioned physicist tells me that the neutrinos are apparently moving at 100.002% the speed of light, instead of the 60x implied by the article.  So, three days off of the total.  On the bright side, if this data pans out then it's a start.]

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

*That is, by the way, the single most exciting thing that one can say or hear in the sciences.

Dare To Be Stupid, “Weird Al” Yankovic

The strangest thing about this video is that, in point of fact, this is pretty much how New Wave music videos operated back then. It’s not actually as over-the-top as it looks.  Don’t believe me?  Check this one out:

Not a parody.

Dammit, why couldn’t have David Morgan-Mar, et al, been the ones writing the Star Wars prequels*?  Their parody is deeper than the crap Lucas came up with.

Moe Lane

*The cover, done in an overall shade of puke green?

How utterly appropriate.

Jonathan Bryant is a teacher for the San Antonio Edgewood Independent School District; George Rodriguez is the president of the San Antonio Tea Party.  The video is below.

More details here… which do not include Jonathan Bryant’s name, although they were happy to include George’s.  The teacher, by the way, will not be be subject for discipline by his school district for calling Rodriguez a Nazi; there’s not even an indication that Jonathan Bryant was required, or will be required, to apologize for his language.  Well, you know how it is with liberal academics.  They’ve long discovered that they can say whatever they like to conservative minorities (or perceived conservative minorities), and nobody on their side will say boo.

Moe Lane (crosspost) (more…)

Which apparently is news to the New York Times.  What it is not news to is anybody who happens to be on Barry Obama’s OfA mailing list: the tone of the begging emails has gotten steadily less ‘hope and change’ and steadily more ‘hope you’ll spare some change.’  Hard to tell that from the usual ‘give us money or the universe will end’ that you get from these kinds of email solicitations, but these days the Obama campaign seems particularly eager to get as many individual donors as possible.   Which makes sense, given that said campaign is essentially trying to bluff the country into thinking that their man-god is just as popular in 2011 as he was in 2008…

I refuse to explain.  It’s just… there, man.

And let me tell you: playing it after playing KOTOR 2 is hurting my brain.  Was the sequel as gleeful as the original at trying to send your character spiraling inward to the Dark Side, and I just don’t remember? – because Knights of the Old Republic seems pretty damned determined to bring me down.  And I understand that it gets worse as you go on.

Fun game, though.

Completely in passing during his examination of Herman Cain casually and cheerfully telling Morgan Freeman to [expletive] off about all that racism nonsense, Ed Morrisey noted this:

After Thursday’s debate, a lot of people thought Rick Santorum had seized the momentum…

Really?  The only reason why I didn’t announce that Rick Santorum had finally torpedoed his chances Thursday night because doing so would have implied that I thought that he had a chance worth a torpedo in the first place.  Being caught in the blast radius of the gay solder booing thing (whether or not he deserved to be) was pretty much it for him; we’re just now waiting for Santorum to drop out and endorse Romney.  Which I figure that he and Michele Bachmann will, before too much longer.

Yeah, I know.  It makes sense in context of the primary cycle, though.

Moe Lane

Badlands, Bruce Springsteen

The odd paradox of Bruce Springsteen is that he got ahead in this world by singing legitimately powerful and heartfelt songs about… how people like Bruce Springsteen can’t get ahead in this world.

Oops.  On the other hand, what is he supposed to do?  Give back the money and awards?  I wouldn’t.