Check your toolbox

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:56:54 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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People, not Things

Lorne Gunter, Edmonton Journal:

No matter what we screen for, no matter how much we irritate and inconvenience passengers at airports, the bad guys will figure out new ways to bring potential death aboard our planes.

The real trick is screening out bad guys.  But to do that would require a cultural will the West has not yet shown itself capable of.  It would require us to admit that young Muslims -- mostly young Muslim males [with radical connections] -- see themselves at war with the West, so they require a special level of scrutiny from security and intelligence forces.

It’s not “the West” that lacks the cultural will, it’s “the West’s Progressive political establishment.”  Otherwise, I’d agree.  (And Gunter isn’t saying “profile all the Muslims,” either... RTWT.)

The Israelis, who know something about airline screening, use the concept of keeping  people, not things, off of planes.  We waste our time on “stuff,” to avoid offending the folks who might put it to evil uses.

Sort of like gun control, innit?


Via: Kathy Shaidle, via American Power

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 00:16:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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A way home...

St.Petersburg Times:

The posters were hung, search parties formed, Craigslist notified. All the neighbors were on the lookout for the little gray kitty that went on daily walks with its owner, seven other cats and two dogs.

But the hours and days passed...

The old familiar story, except this time there’s a happy - if painful - ending.

Via:  Meryl

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:24:22 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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They’re not going to use it on the Islamists, and they’re SURE not going to use it on the Mexicans, so...

...wotthehell does the Department of Homeland Security want 200 million rounds of ammunition for?

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 15:52:52 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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“To capture the public imagination … we have to offer up some scary scenarios...”

Via: KingShamus

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 18:01:23 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Of holidays, loss, and remembrance

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:33:19 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Adolescent daydreaming

"Doctor Zero,” on Avatar:

This is a suicide fantasy, exactly like those many of us indulge as teenagers: we’re so much wiser, smarter, and empathic than the bummer adults running the world around us.  They don’t understand the mystic truth burning in our young hearts.  They’ll be sad when we’re gone, and they’ll finally realize how righteous we were.  They’ll finally understand their grim obsession with money and material goods is soul-crushing, because they’ll be standing over the pulverized dust of our radiant souls.  Death and tragedy will tear the scales from their eyes.

The can of holistic whup-ass opened by the magical world of Pandora at the end of Avatar comes from the same grocery of doom that supplies George Monbiot and Polly Toynbee with their nightmares.  ...Understand they don’t really believe those things will happen – no one is stupid enough to believe the twaddle about submerged cities dispensed by the global-warming cult.  They want those things to happen.  They daydream about glaciers melting and creating tidal waves that deposit soggy clumps of coral reef and rainforest in the middle of London.  They shudder with orgasmic delight as they imagine drowning capitalists and politicians coughing out a spray of ice water, dodging the enraged polar bears swept into Fleet Street by the morning tide, and crying "George!  Polly!  You were right!  You were right all along, and we were so blind…  Save us!”  But it will be too late, and George and Polly will only be able to fold their arms and blaze with smug satisfaction, glowing bright enough to remain clearly visible as they sink into the frigid depths.

but in the comments, "Crawford” notes

Not suicide fantasy — genocide fantasy.

The Monbiots, Toynbees, and Camerons don’t want to die.  They want those people to die — the ones who get in the way of their perfect society.  They want us to die.

The distance between Devon and Columbine is less than most people might think.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 15:15:09 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Joy of cardboard

It’s Myst’s first Christmas, so she’s enjoying all the boxes...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:11:19 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Not advised for the morning after...

Calculus problem:  What is the ratio of the surface area of this linked cut to the surface area of the usual planar bagel slice?

Hmmm... does the solution require calculus?  (Think about that over your first cup of coffee.)

Credits: 
Discovered by Finestkind Clinic and fish market, and linked by C.G. Hill

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:51:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Buying three consecutive full pages of the Wall Street Journal...

...can be cheaper than fixing your network.




Elsewhere:

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:50:21 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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