Like Eugene Volokh and (I’m guessing) Ed Driscoll, I appreciate this scene (Yamamoto’s death*) from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
At least, it’d be hard, and possibly perverse.
Moe Lane
Continue reading #rsrh The death of Yamamoto, and other valuable life lessons for countries.
Got this bit of news in email this morning about Mass Effect 3
We have received new release date information related to your pre-ordered video game in the order you placed on March 04 2011 (Order#XXX). The release date for the video game listed below has been changed by the publisher, and we want to provide you with a new delivery estimate based on the new release date:
“Mass Effect 3”
Release date: March 31 2012
Estimated arrival date: April 03 2012
My reasonable, not at all overwrought reaction after the fold: Continue reading Mass Effect 3 delayed.
This rather whiny complaint by al-Qaeda that we aren’t playing fair with the fantasy ideologist scumbags reminds me of an exchange that I’ve seen in a number of books, movies, and whatnot:
Person 1: If you’re such a great fighter, why don’t you fight me?
Person 2: If you’re such a great fighter, why don’t you make me?
Or, put another way: I find it very easy to bear up under the disapproval of people who think that piloting a bomb into a civilian location is a valid military tactic. Particularly when the disapproval is specifically about how we’re killing them anyway.
Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Oh, dear. al-Qaeda is UPSET.
If I lived in Canada, that is.
Yeah. Big shocker, that. Anyway, that poll works until the end of the month; fair warning, though. Based on the questions, Canadian politics are apparently fairly monotonous to anybody to the Right of Joe Lieberman.
Via A Softer World.
Great summer morning driving music.
…is finally on YouTube?
Apparently. And Stephen Green was in rare form this week; check it out. And check out his other stuff, too.
…about Native Americans, apparently:
It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”
Not to mention the US Army, but we knew that already. I can only assume that it’s due to his being steeped in the deeply parochial and insular culture that is Western academia: if he had more extensive life experience then he’d know that the Army honors Native American nations by naming its military helicopter classes after them, and makes it a point to have representatives of said nations participate in solemn rituals involving those helicopters. The next example of same will take place in May of 2011, involving Lakota Light Utility Helicopters; as the link shows, representatives of the Oglala Sioux Nation…
– that’s a Native American nation associated with the Lakota, Chomsky; I only mention this elementary detail since you apparently don’t know anything about the original inhabitants of this continent –
…have been involved as respected participants in the acquisition of the helicopters from the beginning. And why should they not be respected? Their ancestors were brave men and women and renowned warriors, and their descendants have shown – REPEATEDLY – that they have not forgotten how to fight with valor and skill; it is no insult to honor their nations by naming our war machines after them.
(pause)
That made absolutely no sense to you at all, Chomsky? Well, it was your choice to so thoroughly isolate yourself from your country, not mine.
Moe Lane
PS: What? Oh, yes, the rest of the article was equally ignorant.
I’m blatantly stealing this clip from AoSHQ for two reasons. First off, just look at it:
I’ve played video games like that. No, literally, I have played video games where the characters moved liked that, only maybe a little more smoothly. Continue reading The Goggles Do Nothing!
The basic system in the United Kingdom is what’s known as ‘first past the post:’ essentially, whoever has a plurality of votes wins. Plurality wins are in fact somewhat typical results in parliamentary systems, given that parliamentary systems tend to spawn viable third and fourth parties like rotten meat was once believed to have spawned flies*; but it can be a problem when one side of the ideological spectrum is fragmented among several different parties, and the other is not. This is the situation in England right now, in fact; which is why the Liberal Democrats (who are the junior partners in a coalition government with the Conservatives**) were pushing an alternative voting scheme where you could indicate second and third choices, until somebody hit the 50%+1 vote mark.
As the PJ Tatler noted, the goal here for the British Left was to keep their fragmentation while eliminating the bad effects from it: presumably, the ability to reassign votes in divided elections would give Leftist candidates a better chance of actually winning seats. Alas, the vote went against the Liberal Democrats 2-1; partially because the Conservatives were naturally opposed to the notion… and partially because apparently the Labour party was not entirely in favor of it, either. Continue reading Alternative voting goes down in flames in UK.
…but it looks like only the former knows it. Compare Bush’s use of the first-person singular in his speech about the capture of Saddam Hussein with Obama’s in his speech about the death of Osama bin Laden; the latter comes across as a bit… defensive, doesn’t he? It’s almost as if the President’s subconsciously aware of the fact that his supposedly ‘gutsy call‘ was neither gutsy, nor even possible without the patient and largely unheralded work of his despised predecessor… who was, by the way, not a complete narcissist who visibly wilts in the absence of constant praise*.
But surely that can’t be the case.
Moe Lane
*Note that I have not accused anyone of being such a person; merely noting that the 43rd President of the United States was someone who is demonstrably not.
