The Big 12: Urgent Federal Action Needed

Iowa State is a land-grant university with three over-riding goals, to wit: 

--(a) Teach lads to efficiently grow more row crops than they can profitably sell on the open market. 

--(b) Instruct the same lads in means of extorting sufficient taxpayer money  to guarantee  themselves handsome profits  for  the  unsellable goods mentioned in (a). 

--(c)  Provide low-level entertainment to the rural  masses via wholly-owned subsidiaries playing football and basketball.

Therein comes  comes the  crisis.  Iowa State is a member of the Big 12 athletic conference which seems to be on the verge of going toes up.  The sky is falling. What to do? 

Why, son, go talk to the federal government in the persons of your senators Grassley (R) and Harkin (D) who have each taken this thing seriously and issued profound statements on the matter.

I'm especially anxious to see reports of President  Obama's reaction to this Heartland  drama. Certainly his good friend Sen. Harkin will alert him to the national danger of the Cyclones not having a conference to play in.

---

Is nothing beneath demands for federal  action?

Here's a plug for two businesses, three if you count Amazon.

Amazon's seller is Shooters World of Dacula, Georgia. The company promised to have my order here by June 22. It appeared in my mailbox June 8.

The product is  a .45 ACP dedicated crimp die from Lee Precision, the good guys in Hartford, Wisconsin. I've been using their stuff for ever,  including the "Lee Loader" on which I loaded my first cartridge sometime during the Harding Administration. Yes, .45 ACP.

The die works as billed, no fuss. I'd never been quite happy with the way my Herter's die crimps the .45s. I was getting too many slightly loose bullets or, in curing that, crimps that I didn't trust to positively headspace the round.  The crimp die solves the problem nicely, and, to boot,  sizes the entire loaded round. If nothing else it adds deep layer of confidence that my loads will chamber perfectly, every time.

It's the second recent reminder how much I like Lee stuff. The first was the .45 Colt die set. I bought it at a Cabela's and asked the clerk to grab me a shell holder. No need, he said. Lee packages a holder with the dies. Good  idea.  Good company.

Invasion

This is about a third of them, all I was able to get in a grab shot in the rain. A pair with their offspring wandering  the front yard isn't unusual, but a  whole goose neighborhood decided to picnic here this morning.

(Speaking of Which)

Tomoko in her home on the hlll above Yokosuka Harbor, early 1960s.

T

Retro beauty

I know. Going to garage sales is declasse.


But I'll accept the lifted eyebrows for the chance to own an as-new   f4.5 Nikon 300.  At  $10.  In 1967 It was something I wanted, sort of needed, and couldn't afford.

The Macro at left  was little cheaper.

I swear, people, I am >this close< to hauling out the FTn bodies and taking real pictures again, even if I have to depend on an outside lab.

Top Shot

I just deleted a long and not very complimentary review. The shooting segments are fine, and, for the rest, it is simply television doing what television does most devotedly -- scrambling for audience.

Closely paraphrasing our buddy Travis McGee: "Anything several million people like, aside from their more private functions,  can not be very good."

The forced emotionalism and strained introspective ramblings of the vote-off segments can probably be attributed to a film school lecture on the need to give your characters depth and texture.

June 6, 1944

If you haven't already, now is a good time to turn your face toward Utah, Omaha,  Juno, Gold, and Sword. A nod of appreciation to some very determined men is in order.
.

The gulf oil blowout is a horrible thing,  but if it will help your local shriekers keep some perspective on things, tell them there are about 1.1 trillion gallons in a cubic mile.  The high estimate for the total oil leaked so far  is about 48 million gallons.

If they wont listen I suppose you could put your boot on their necks.

...perchance to dream

Much accomplished today, although I doubt reader interest in hearing about the toilet tank overhaul and accompanying carpentry, painting, and varnishing  in the literary alcove.

The .45 ACP project went well, and 190 fresh rounds nest in the SHTF locker.  I did decide on Unique -- a half-grain under the Lyman book maximum. It should give the 230s just under 900 fps and more than enough ooomph to cycle the Colt action.

Feeling green, of course, because reloading is recycling.

.

Fresh .45 fodder

The rain is putting my home improvement drive  on hold, so it's back to the loading shack. There's enough componentry on hand to build close to 200  .45 ACP rounds. About half of them will be 230-grain fmjs, the rest 200 grain cast semi-wadcutters.

A  conservative  (n)  grains of Unique has been  standard here for the 1911s, but  I've recently acquired a post-lawyered Colt Series 70 with that "accuracy" barrel bushing/collet.  The collet and heavy recoil spring create a stiff action, so I want  to  concoct a more authoritative load.

(There are four or five suitable pistol powders on hand, but somehow  I always seem to just tinker with the amount of Unique, and I suppose that will happen this time, too.  What the heck would we do without that powder?)

Please shut up about it, Mr. President

This news cycle His Obamaness is "furious." That might be worse than a couple-three days ago when he  was "outraged."

Or might not; I am not in the White House Press Office loop on choosing modifiers to specify the exact status of  the Presidential Nervous System.

We are  within our rights  to ask the President to close his gaping gulf of a mouth  unless he has something reasonable to say about either capping the well or mitigating the effects of the spill.  We do not need, Sir, blow by blow accounts of the  state of your emotional innards.

.

Charles Mackay

"Men think in herds, go mad in herds, but recover their senses one by one ..."

Bye, Tipper; See ya around, Al

She heard him singing "Roll Me Over" in the shower?

Or maybe she's just looking for a winner. 

Whe gets the carbon credits?

You say they've super-sized the zombies?

Why, I have just the thing,  Watson. 


---


There was too much clutter in the loading shack -- such as hundreds of .30-06 cases and oddball .308 bullets -- old  220 -grain round nose fmj's that may well be .30-03 pulls. Cleaned up and loaded ahead of (n) grains of 4350 they will fly at  just under 2500 fps and strike terror into the hearts of the not-quite deceased who, the movies tell me,  threaten the world as you know and love it.

If the zombie scare turns out to be just another passing Madness-of-Crowds phenomena, they will still be useful. This load should work well enough to control  elephants migrating  to my latitude as the globe warms.

From the reloading shack

I've been fat on.38 Special brass and 158-grain RNs for quite a while and finally motivated myself to check that chore off the list yesterday afternoon.  The result is 150 rounds of the stuff.


I resolved one quandary on the conservative side. My only primers  were magnum, and In a large library here I simply couldn't find  data for .38 Special with mags.   Since I am something of an old woman about unknown  pressure factors,  I backed off a tenth of a grain from the  a Speer starting load of Unique. They'll be fired for practice and entertainment  only from a ported Taurus .357 snubby. Unless, of course,  someone makes me an offer I can't refuse for a nice used (Bill) Ruger single action in .357.

Righteous shot

Simon  says it as well as it can be said. 

A good self-defense shooting "..is one that Mayor Daily can’t prosecute because it will make him look like a bigger dick than we already know he is. "


An armed turd fired twice into the home of an 80-year-old man, his 83-year-old wife, and their 12-year-old great-grandson. The homeowner fired one round and the late Mr. Anthony Nelson, burglar,  collapsed, leaving behind a voluminous rap sheet. 


Mayor Daley told reporters he didn't know if he'll order  the states attorney to charge the army veteran with violating Windy laws  requiring  you Chicagoans to submit to any armed thug who has a yen for what's yours and -- most particularly -- making fighting back a  a serious crime.


If northern Illinois libertarians are looking for a  little community service project, how about a bake sale? The proceeds to replace the homeowner's pistol, which the cops assuredly confiscated. Oh, and  also to replace the well-expended cartridge.  

The Drug Massacres Continue

A friend is commiserating with me as I bitch about conditions in Mexico, a place I once loved. I doubt I'll ever again  feel comfortable in the camper pulled into a pretty beach cove on Carmen Island or a wide spot in the road a hundred miles south of Ensenada.

The dopers and suppliers of dopers have turned us all into collateral damagees. Perhaps it's time to listen again to our other  friend, Travis McGee

"The only possible solution to this deadly trade is to ignore it. Legalize it along with marijuana. Then the infrastructure will sag and collapse. It will no longer be fashionable. Street dealers will no longer hustle new customers on high school sidewalks. And men won't die in the squalid massacres...

Drive smart, pack a piece

The smartest drivers in America live in Kansas, Oregon, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa.

CCW shall issue states include: Kansas, Oregon, South Dakota, Minnesota, and  Iowa. 


The dumbest  drivers in American live in New York, followed by New Jersey, Washington, D.C, California , and Rhode Island.


May issue/no issue  states include: 


New York,  New Jersey, Washington, D.C, California , and Rhode Island.
.

Dynamic cultural illiteracy

Because I watch little electrical teevee I'm in debt  to my friend Alan of  one of the New England commissariats for word that Lt. John W. Finn, USN, (ret.)  died yesterday. On Dec. 7, 1941, he left his wife's bed in Kanoehe to rush to the sound of guns at  the  Naval Air station.

Then-CPO Finn picked up a machine gun (presumably a Browning .30), carried it to an exposed spot on the air strip, and blazed away at Jap raiders. He was wounded several times over the course of a long battle, He survived hospitalization, and, on Sept. 15, 1942, Admiral Chester Nimitz pinned the Medal of Honor on him.

Last night, on ABC teevee, John tells me,   George Stephanopolis (I'm too intellectual to be in politics.) reported that he was cited   for "fighting back at the Kamikazes attacking Pearl Harbor."

EDIT:  Adding that Lt. Finn was the last surviving MOH winner from Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

See beautiful Indonesia

I bet the that jobs confiscating the pants require high seniority and a good deal of pull with Islamic politicians.

Doesn't that sort of thing make you wonder how the Hell there ever got to be so many Muslims in the first place?

Hey kids, let's play "Chopstocks."

American stock futures soared for a little while this morning, then fell back when the government reported unemployment still exists and that its first figures on economic growth (Jan-Mar) were screwy.

But now:

... futures are sharply higher after China reaffirmed its confidence in European debt.

Meaning Peking is still loaning money to Athens on security, I suppose,  of the Parthenon which, though in disrepair,  probably still has potential as chop suey takeout joint.

Offa my lawn you tall, noisy jerk

Mr. Turtle needs to thank the turtle gods for my still adequate eyesight and reflexes. He came within inches of being the late Mr. Turtle by way of a whirling mower blade.

He is instead internet famous now, and I am taking bookings for his report on a  near-death experience. Discounts to the trade and all libertarian oriented groups.

I wish to honor the memory of Sylvia Edwards of Lee's Summit, Missouri, who died today.  She faced problems far beyond the norm  and handled them with grace and humor. Rest well Friend.

M1 Carbine-- just milsurp junk

As we all know, the M1  Carbine is  a sloppy WW2 make-do, a substitute for the pistol and designed to permit the untrained citizen soldier  to inconvenience the enemy to a slightly greater degree than permitted by his  1911A1 skills.

Ergo this group could not possibly  have been fired by my friend Ken from a run-of-the-mill  GI carbine a couple of months ago,  five  shots at some 35 yards, standing, leaning on a tractor tire,  on a cold day.

The aiming mark  is 1 3/4 inches. The group measures 5/8.  I don't know the ammo, but we usually grab a handful from which ever can is closest. 

I would claim this target as my own, but sometimes Ken reads this crap.

fff 

!

Overheard in an Iowa Gander Mountain on the Mississippi

Me: (Places a box of box of  9mm Luger blasting ammo -- $14.99 --  and a $20 bill on the counter.)

She: Your zip code?

Me: You don't need to know that.

She: Yes I do. (Pause) Oh, I need to know if you live in Iowa or Illinois.

Me. Why?

She: Because if you live in Illinois I can't sell you bullets. You live in Iowa or Illinois?

Me: I do not live in Illinois. (This was wretched expedience over principles. I wanted the rounds  and I wanted to get on the road pronto. Mea clupa.)

She: (Gives her customer a glare of pure hatred,  picks up the twenty and rings the sale. Bags the "bullets" and forces a thin kyu through her painted lips. )

-----

Supposing I had told this twit that I was on my way home to Staten Island?

The marketing firm called Ruger

The latest news from Ruger is that the same top-notch engineering and quality control that went into the LCPs and SR9s now may infect the LCR . Like  its black plastic sibs it  is proving itself capable of surprise, namely strewing gun parts and shards of cartridges, over a wide area.

The report, via Tam, is here. 

Full disclosure: I have personal beef with this company. After months of trying to get some one's attention to a badly botched safety conversion of a three-screw, I finally tore the thing down and fixed it myself. It is still tough to get over the fact that the returned Single Six was accompanied by a signed statement that a certified technician had test fired the weapon and found it flawless.  Could the lack have been in me for being unable to cock the hammer without multiple tries and jiggling the cylinder and trigger? That it wouldn't lock up  when cocked? That the trigger would only randomly release the hammer? Mind you, this was out of the box, and many weeks worth of emails to Ruger were rewarded with silence.

My Ruger disgust goes deeper -- to the LCP fiasco, the SR9 recalls, and now the case of the exploding plastic wheel gun.  As an RGR stockholder I watched the company being delivered into the hands of the MBA marketing shamans who may never have fired anything more lethal than an Andre cork. They looked around, saw that other gun companies had proved black was beautiful, or at least profitable,  and started ordering vats of the plastic crap while their interns researched abbreviated time-to-market possibilities. 

The result is exploding guns, and, quite probably, a corporate decision that it is cheaper to get sued a few times and to spend more on public relations  than it is to build proud firearms. 

For decades I was a Ruger addict. Getting over it requires a 12-step program, including dumping the last of the RGR stock. Who the Hell wants to own stock in --  or a gun built by -- the new Lorcin of the firearms industry?

The process  is much like watching a once beautiful and faithful  wife go emotionally awry and wind up down  at a Scully Square corner,  desperately motioning "c'mon" at slowly passing cars. 

Criminal intent

Josh is five, and the day before his kindergarten graduation he and some buddies found a pocket knife under a bush on their way to school. He stuck it in his backpack, thought better of it, and left the knife in a park.

His principal got wind of the "incident" and suspended him for having intended to bring the knife to school.

Principal Chris Lineberry of Queen Creek, Arizona  then spent the rest of the day wiggling around, trying to evade blame for a stupid act of biblical scale. He  finally relented, apologized, and allowed as how Josh could go ahead and graduate with this class.

We send our kids to school so  that they may sit at the feet of wise educators, don't we?

(Another H/T to GMA John.)

A friend reminds me that "life is what happens while you're making plans."

It will be an unusual weekend, a passing to mourn, a confirmation to celebrate. Who knows what else?

TEOTWAWKI

Experts like Soros and Volcker have proven themselves full of gobshittery before, not to mention being part of the establishment which got us into the current economic mess. So it is just  for what it may be worth that I cite their most recent rendition of, "Holy Libido, Romulus. This  really is the Decline and Fall."

Their gloom probably accounts for some part of today's panicky pre-market business reporting which includes:

"S&P futures fell below 1,060, the level hit at the bottom of the still-unexplained market "flash crash" on May 6."


What? Me worry? I bought an extra five tins of chicken breasts at the Fareway yesterday, and there's still 20 pounds of  rice stashed away in a cool, dry place.

Montana needs an English-only law.

A newspaper there reports:

"Members of the Missoula County Search and Rescue Team had their hands full Sunday as a half-dozen hikers reported route-finding issues in the Mormon Peak area."

Having route-finding issues is more respectable than being lost?

(H/T to Friend John in the GMA)

Rand Paul

1. Cut your hair, brush it down, and go easier on the Brylcreem.

2. Find and fire the certified idiots in your circle of advisers. I speak particularly of the guy who told you it would be okay to have your victory bash in a members-only country club.

3. Shut up until...

4. ... you have a better grasp of the power of the symbolic. You don't look into the red light lens and start staggering around on a simple -- if "gotcha" -- question about how you might have voted on a the public accommodations section of the 60s civil rights laws.

I and some fellow libertarian types understood your agonizingly strained guns-in-bars analogy, but a million Kentucky voters wondered what the holy Hell you were talking about.

Here is a principled answer to questions about how you might have voted on racial rights during the LBJ/MLK reign:

"I don't think anyone can honestly say how he might have voted on anything 45 years ago. He would have been a different person then, affected by a different upbringing, a different culture, a different understanding of how a society should organize itself,

"But I will say that ending racial discrimination in voting rights was a decision we should still cherish and which was something like a century overdue when it was signed.

"The public accommodations laws of the same era raised different questions about how far government may intrude into strictly private affairs of business men and women. But for nearly a half-century they have been settled law of our Union, and if anyone thinks I am going to go to Washington and try to re-segregate the lunch counters, that person doesn't know Rand Paul."

The general idea, Dr. Paul, is to get elected. You don't need to shed your principles. You do need to brush the stray wookie hairs from your collar.

Franklin had a point

They come around in flocks fairly often, but a solo appearance is unusual.

He's a handsome fellow, so I offer the picture even though it shows the world I am still shamefully behind in yard care

FEMA Speaks

Ask a simple question: "What is a flood plain?"

And get an answer wondrous in scope, from FEMA

"Our experience leads us to advise the public that everyone lives in a floodplain," said Louis Botta, federal coordinating officer for FEMA.

About three sentences later, FEMA says:

FEMA statistics show that homes in a floodplain are 26 times more likely to incur damage from a flood than from a fire during a 30-year mortgage.

Okay Louis, if "everyone" lives in a flood plain, to what are you comparing "homes in a floodplain?"

---

This is the sort of thing you run into when your Podunk city council unanimously passes an ordinance to apply for federal flood insurance, a FEMA operation.

Our local gentlemen didn't seem to have a very good sense of what they were voting for, so I thought it would be a kindness to point them to a fact or two. The most disheartening one is that bedding down with the Feds adds one more complete layer of building, zoning, and land-use laws to what ever such gobshitery has been dreamed up and enacted by the local authoritarians.

I may or may not persevere in the research. Reading stuff written in Washington makes my head ache and embeds in my butt a deep sense of fatigue.

Big Heroic Me and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Yep, I put on my UDT gear, slipped the M3 grease gun into a plastic bag and hit that Vietnam beach like Errol Flynn jumping Joan Blondell. Man, you shudda seen me when I....

Oh. Wait a minute. I misspoke a little there. It was actually a beach north of San Diego and what I really had was scout knife and a fifth of Three Feathers in a brown paper bag. But, I mean, I wasn't lying at first. Honest. Just misspoke. By, like, accident, y'know.

----

Blumenthal, you damned liar. With any decency at all you would at least refrain from insulting our intelligence with this "I misspoke" crap. You lied your ass off to try to look like a USMC hero and you got caught. Would God I had the power to lock you in a room with a squad of Khe Sanh survivors.

A legacy terrorist

I was trained in a remote area of the the Great Plains of North America by a uniformed paramilitary organization emphasizing survivalism, preparedness, and extreme patriotic and religious values.

At the age of 11 the indoctrination began including weapons training. And damned if New Jovian Thunderbolt didn't just now catch me up by discovering the lethal weapons content in what appears to be a simple camping manual.

Rand Paul in Kentucky

This is a good day to stand, face Kentucky, and render a hopeful salute to Rand Paul. We can discuss his deviation from ideological perfection some other time.

Industry...

...being, Gentle Reader, a sort of post script to the previous post which detailed no more than a simple refurbishment of a canoe paddle.

One thing led to another, and I am finally, at this late hour, inside the house and preparing my supper. In the rear view mirror of the day is a second paddle refinished, a fresh set of shelves for the storage closet built, rewiring the new drum sander, and a small beginning on some overdue lawn care.

This sort of thing must be controlled. When a man sets out to loaf the day away, he ought to have the character to follow through.

Shop Tip

A non-gun auction yesterday left me with some new tool-toys and a slightly worn Feather canoe paddle long enough for my 6' 1".* I decided to add a metal tip to the paddle, the better to misuse it pushing off rocks and so forth.

It didn't take too long with thin aluminum, copper nails,** and a half-ounce of Gorilla Glue. That leads to today's tip: When you get the Gorilla Glue all over your fingers -- and you will -- you must instantly wash your hands with gasoline, followed by an SAE10-30 rinse. A few minutes later you can use soap and water. Failure to heed this advice will result in social embarrassment for several days. That stuff is more tenacious than epoxy.

----

* Harder than it sounds. You want a canoe paddle that reaches from your toes to your nose. Most of them you find in the racks are too short.

** Yes, I know about electrolysis. Three coats of varnish should take care of it.

Is this a trick question?

"What is the ticket price for an Atlanta to Las Vegas flight?"

Sounds simple enough for a top travel writer to answer, but never underestimate the complexity of the free market.

Lisa reports there were 2,472,916 potentially correct answers as of a few days ago. That's the number of times the price of an airplane ride from Atlanta to Vegas has changed so far this year.

This is too hard to keep track of. The government should do something.

Dawn Patrol

With dry skies and a visible sunrise at last, it became time to get back into the habit of personally supervising my portion of the county. (The patrol vehicle was the minivan, preferred to the F150 as less intimidating. This is in accord with modern and sensitive policing practices.)

No serious threat level exists in this watershed at this point in time, so I settled on the mere SW59, positioned on the passenger seat and hidden under a WalMart flyer. I'm CCWed, but why let the subject even arise if I happen to stop and chat with someone through the driver-side window?

I am pleased to report that at 0706 local, all is secure and no ammunition was expended. However I observed evidence of a recent ecofelony:

Our DNR has created a monumental ugliness just down the road.

A beautiful stand of sumac there has irritated official state envirocrats ever since we gave the land to the DNR for a park*.

The DNR first claimed sumac was not a native species. That was hooted down by a panel of experts -- farmers, grandfathers, Boy Scouts, and several ordinary citizens with access to Google.

The DNR shifted to a posture that sumac is an "aggressive" plant which stymies its plan to create an "oak savanna" on the plot. There were other verbal ploys to justify the primary point: me government; me want.

Sometime in the past few days the DNR brought in a bush hog, and what was once a fine stand of natural wildlife cover now looks like something the Ax Men would get fined for. I suspect the next chapter is planting -- at huge expense -- some burr oak seedlings.

Lacking the red sumac berries which they loved, the dear will promptly eat the oaks.

---

*And I mean "we." The former owner of this c. 20 acre plot was about to create a sub-division. Most of us didn't want ticky-tacky there. A local rich guy kicked in a hefty sum. The rest of us donated what we could. We got it bought, then passed it on to the state of Iowa to add to the existing adjacent park. There's every chance the state of Iowa will give our heirs cause to wonder why we bothered.

Welcome home Jessica Watson

This is Jessica's day, the end of the voyage, round-the-world, under sail, alone, and unaided.

We need to ignore the elected nonentities and media hand wringers who said her dream should be outlawed, that it doesn't amount to much anyway (now that it is successful), and that she's a headstrong kid with no respect for authority.

Her Aussie -- and international -- detractors should shut the Hell up and concentrate on organizing a giant communal diaper and step-in wash.

Tyranny by Zoning

Suppose someone proposed a national policy requiring payday loan shysters to elect, by secret ballot, one representative annually. Said representative would be publicly horse whipped as a gesture of disapproval of the slimy business.

Okay. I would oppose it, but it would be a damned close call. The market justifies all sorts of bottom-feeding by the clever who prowl schools of suckers. That doesn't mean we have to like it, only that we keep our controlling mitts to ourselves.

Such elementary reasoning is beyond the Des Moines city council creatures who decided it is their business to control that business. Through the zoning laws, and here I append one of the four exclamation points I permit myself annually. !

Any zoning regulation is Constitutionally questionable, but used for things like banning a nuclear reactor next door to your neighborhood cathedral it probably can be drafted to a point of general acceptability.

Zoning decrees to stifle perfectly legal operations which happen to offend official sensibilities are just Pelosi pleasers, carrying all of the good sense of the current Congressional stampede to control every aspect of the banking and credit card rackets.

And about those official sensibilities. We're referring here to that sensibility which permits the office holder to go before his voters and bleat that he has ended "predatory lending. "

What he has done, of course, is eliminate one kind of credit, sending the only citizens likely to use it into the alleys where Vito gives you the loan and sends a couple of baseball bats around to collect the vig.

Let's Help Find a Family Legacy Gun

The detailed information is from JPB, The Expert Witness, and he understands that we're haystacking for a needle here.

But why not? That's one of the things the net is for.

The object is a 4-inch bbl Smith and Wesson M and P .38 Special, inscribed:

--PA STATE POLICE 1933-1956 JOHN J BURKE--

Mr. Burke, a retired trooper, is deceased. His daughter would love to have the revolver as a keepsake. Its last known location is in the hands of a dealer near Norristown, Pennsylvania in about 2003.

Cute cat pictures

My first formal photojournalism course was taught by St. Donald Wooley, then of the University of Iowa, later a professor at West Virginia U.

He had two rules chipped in stone. (1) If you miss the first day of laboratory procedure instruction you are dropped from the course. (2) Anyone handing in a photograph of a cat or kitten automatically failed the course.

The latter policy was routinely appealed by undergraduates who argued passionately that it stifled their creativity. The deans routinely upheld Professor Wooley for the possibly mythical but still cherished reason that he told them the first time: "If I have to look at one more (effing) saccharine cat picture I'll regurgitate all over the front row of coeds, then I will resign."

Junk Guns: Junk Policy

Turk has an item on the latest Sodom-on-Lake Michigan area gun-buyback. The gist is that taxpayers spent their money on about 200 non-working junkers with about the same crime potential as black board eraser.

Most of what the pictures show are unidentifiable long guns, and I doubt many are worth the $75 public bounty as potential working weapons.

But there's another element here. Just suppose one of them is a clapped out Winchester 74. Firing pin price-- $30. Magazine tube assembly about the same. Sights about ten bucks each. Or suppose a Remington 514, stock value at least $40. Et cetera.

And do you suppose there was anyone at the church there glancing at the stuff as it came in to check for old Redfield receiver sights? Marble screw-ons? Tang sights?

It is a sort of cash-for-clunkers disaster, huge amounts of benign value heading straight for the Burns Harbor blast furnaces with no conceivable redeeming public service rendered.

If I had a Huffington Post account I could say this there for the giggles inherent in being told that Redfield peeps can transform any weapon into a sniper rifle capable of killing children at a half-mile.

Greek Style, again

We shouldn't be honked off at Reuters because this is a disjointed item, vaguely prophetic with only minor actual news content. That's the nature of most pre-market stories written to drum-tight deadlines while trying to cover the morning's major economic happenings.

But the writer and editor ought to be sentenced to a half-dozen paint balls to the bare butt for leaving the most important fact to the last paragraph:

"At the same time the U.S. Federal Reserve reopened currency swap lines with several central banks in hopes of assuring markets of dollar liquidity, and the European Central Bank said it would buy government debt to steady investor nerves. A number of European central banks said they had already started. "

Translation: U.S. taxpayers will foot some of the bill. If history is a guide, we will cover most of it, one way or another. Because we are flat broke and because HIs Obamaness is deathly afraid a tax hike would further motivate His peasants to wrap torches and sharpen pitch forks, the price you pay to mask the stupidity of EuroSoc will be indirect -- a fresh few tons of fiat dollars further eroding the value of the ones you have.

In return you'll get the warm fuzzy glow that comes from knowing you helped pay for Marshall Plan No. 666. This one follows the Aegean War of 2003-2010, fought by unionized Greek grape leaf packers against the evil forces of The Market.

Housekeeping note: Cranky Lit Prof is one of the funniest bloggers I've run across. She's disappeared from the TMR roll only because she seems to have taken her blog private.

EDIT: Might as well redo the whole list while I'm at it.

The March of Science

I tend to believe the research showing modern humans carry neanderthal DNA. If true it certainly explains a lot.

A small addendum to the raisin bran post: I see by the news that yesterday's market fiascoes have led EuroSoc central bankers to promise TWO scoops of money for Greece.

Next up: The same for Portugal, then Spain.

And I simply cannot believe how how silent, how stoic, my Irish brothers of the bog are being as Brussels prints Euros at warp speed for other economic basket cases. What the heck ever happened to the pike upon me shoulder spirit?

Come, let us reason together

Gunners and libertarians in this corner of Blogopolis spend a good deal of time in straightforward logical exposition. The object is usually to promote reasonable discussion. But what real chance does logical discourse have in a nation wherein the greatest cereal company, a $13 billion behemoth, found vast new riches in a melodic "Two scoops of raisins in a box of Kelloggs..."?

For 20 years.

Maybe it is better to run around open carrying on the outside of your wookie suit.