Moe Lane

Long since past time that I did some things here. Going a month without blogging gaming or bardic material is just a bit too long. Well, easily fixed.

Because, really, at this stage of his life, why not?

Batman

Via Blog of Much Holding, which is getting blogrolled for the name alone. Not to mention his priorities.

Moe Lane

(via HolyCoast) A premeditated act, but judging from the reports (and a couple of distressing on-scene photos, including one of the attacker), probably not an Islamist*-inspired one.

5 Dead After Car Strikes Crowd at Dutch Royal Parade

Five people were killed and several others hurt in the Netherlands after a car rammed into a crowd of spectators in what police are calling a premeditated attack on the royal family.

The car appeared to be deliberately driving at high speed toward an open bus carrying the popular Queen Beatrix and her family in the western Dutch city of Apeldoorn.

[snip]

Prosecutors said the driver, badly injured and still in his crumpled car, acknowledged targeting the queen and her family.

My prayers for the victims and their families.

Moe Lane

*Note: “ist,” not “ic.”

Crossposted to RedState.

Good news: this strain of the flu apparently isn’t as bad as people were thinking.

Bad news: we’re probably going to have some hysteria over this anyway, given the recent White House advisory (and the fact that masks are the top three sellers on Amazon) (both via Drudge).

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE] Heh.  See here for more good news/bad news.

Hawk’s Plateau.  To be geekstuff.

Go over there so that he may feel rushed and obligated to give out much free ice cream, as is the way of the blogosphere.

This is a Sharp Baton Model #10 Twirling Baton:

Size ranges from 17 to 19 inches. It is constructed out of tempered steel, of a thickness of 3/8 of an inch – which means that it is light enough to be moved quickly, yet strong enough not to bend on impact against flesh. Note the white bulbs at the end, which will increase accuracy of blows without sacrificing too much in the way of impact trauma (less of a consideration on a purely crushing weapon than on one with a cutting edge). And, of course, it is center-balanced, which means that the momentum of the backswing after a strike will not be too ungainly. In short, while I’d rather have a Louisville Slugger M9 Series Maple Wood Baseball Bats – C271 – Natural in a sticky situation, this is not actually a bad club to have.

Which is my intro to saying, Don’t mug girls in marching band. (more…)

(Via Glenn Reynolds) Matt Kibbe at Reason is too full of the milk of human kindness when it comes to the Online Left’s reaction to the Tea Party phenomenon.

The remarkable ends to which lefty bloggers, Nobel Laureates, bit-part actresses, and even a senior White House official all went to discredit the massive grassroots revolt perfectly matches Elizabeth Kübler-Ross‘ famous work on how to deal with grief, death, and loss.

Take Janeane Garofalo. Many tea party attendees were understandably offended when she compared them to members of the Ku Klux Klan. “It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all,” she told Keith Olbermann. “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.”

I know what you’re probably thinking about Ms. Garofalo, and it’s not kind. I thought it too. But look beneath the surface, and at least try to imagine her pain. As Kübler-Ross explains, first comes denial, then comes anger. Hope and Change, for Janeane, was dying. And she couldn’t believe it.

So we must pity them for their hysterical and panicked reaction to an actual, real populist movement? Pity them for their reflexive, unthinking retreat to emotional immaturity and crude sexual attacks? Pity them for their looming fear that their Great Lie – that they speak for the People – is well on its way to being exploded once and for all?

To quote Eric Flint (on an unrelated matter): Better still, let us not pity them at all.

Moe Lane

PS: I say this not to criticize Matt Kibbe, whose Freedomworks has been at the forefront of this issue. But it is a sad truth that the Online Left hates and fears us, and everything that we do; and until they abandon those ways themselves, there will be no peace.

PPS:

Hope to see you there.

Crossposted to RedState.

First off, we have Zombie Jamboree:

Rockapella

…via Tommy Christopher. Odd fact #1: I banned him from RedState once. Odd fact #2: I follow him on Twitter, and vice versa. Odd fact #3: this is, yes, kind of contradictory; but as they say, business is business. Besides, this isn’t a political post.

Anyway, in answer to that I have this.

Jonathan Coulton

Because, well, any excuse to play that one is a good one.

Moe Lane

PS: Watching people conga to Zombie Jamboree may not be the most surreal experience out there, but it’s definitely weird.

Someone suggested that I start doing these, along with Book of the Week. I’ll probably update this one on Wednesdays.

Anyway, we’ll start off with Taken, which is coming out on DVD in a few weeks: as I noted at the time, it’s a pretty good samurai flick. With guns.

[UPDATE x2] And welcome, AoSHQ readers.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. Oh, why not? – vampirism post here, for no particular reason except that it beat watching the press conference.

Brother Pejman expands on this report that Vice President Biden is telling people to avoid public transportation and yank their kids out of schools.

If President Obama wishes to handle this crisis by sending Vice President Biden to an undisclosed location until it’s over, well, sacrifices must be made.

Moe Lane

PS: Watch the video that Pej found above: it’s not every day where you see what is effectively a pet media organ of the Democratic party call for closing the border. And watch for the gaffe at about 5:15. Freudian slip there, Joe?

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s like the antiwar movement: 90% of the people who reflexively oppose her overlap with the category of People That You Never Want To Get Stuck In An Elevator With (if for no other reason than the smell), and the people who apparently spend their lives waiting for a chance to tell the world how eager they are to have their candidate run against such a non-entity are almost as funny*. But I digress:

Sarah Palin to Appear on American Chopper

Turns out the hockey mom is also a motorcycle maven.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin recently welcomed the crew from Orange County Choppers – whose custom motorcycle business is featured on TLC’s American Chopper – to Anchorage where show star Paul Teutul Sr. researched building a bike to honor Alaska’s 50-year anniversary of being a state.

“It means so much to the state of Alaska that these guys are building this bike that will honor statehood here,” Palin says in the episode, airing April 30 at 9 p.m.

Via Hot Air Headlines. I don’t watch the show myself – no cable** – but I understand that American Chopper is pretty popular. I figure that this is just one of those things, though: the Palins have always been outdoors types, the show producers know that she’d be an interesting person to do a episode with, and certainly there’s no ratings harm in having a show featuring a former VP nominee and sitting governor.

Keep that in mind when the unhinged screaming / reflexively smug sneering starts. Which it will. If Pavlov was alive today, he would have dropped using dogs in a heartbeat and used the Left-sphere exclusively for his experiments…

Moe Lane

(more…)

Very cool.

Rocket Record: The Largest, Heaviest Amateur Rocket Ever Launched

Steve Eves broke two world records Saturday, when his 1/10th scale model of the historic rocket—built in his garage near Akron, Ohio—lifted off from a field on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The 36-ft.-tall rocket was the largest amateur rocket ever launched and recovered successfully—and at 1648 pounds, also the heaviest. Eves’ single-stage behemoth was powered by nine motors—eight 13,000 Newton-second N-Class motors and a 77,000 Newton-second P-Class motor. (Five Newton-seconds is equivalent to about a pound of thrust.) All told, the array generated enough force to chuck a Volkswagen more than a half-mile—and sent the Saturn V more than 4440 feet straight up. It was arguably the most audacious display of raw power ever generated by an amateur rocket.

Via Wombat Rampant.

Crossposted to RedState.