Atomic Nerds

Accomplished this weekend:

IPA: transferred to secondary fermenter and dry-hopped.
Lawn: de-fenced* and mowed.
Cottonwood: some of it chainsawed into more manageable chunks.
Dog: bathed and brushed.
Raspberries: surrounded by recycled fence.
Garden: slightly reconstructed for better watering efficiency.
Blog: Knew we forgot something.

*The lawn was surrounded by rabbit fencing to keep the dogs from tearing it up until Kang proved that she can easily clear it from a standing start if she feels like it. We’ll see if it survives the both of them.

Normally, LabRat and I are fans of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!. They’re funny, frequently include nekkid attractive people, and for the most part we agree with quite a bit of what they present. If you’re not familiar with the show, magicians Penn Gillette and his partner Teller take a topic of some controversy and pick it apart. Topics have ranged from low-hanging fruit like astrology, crystals, and other new-age mumbo jumbo, to gun control, to the funeral industry, to the topic we watched last night, violent video games.

Normally we get along fairly well with the show’s view. Yes, those crystal waving loons are idiots. Guns are great. That sort of thing. We don’t always get on in perfect lockstep (I’ve got some objections to their show on Boy Scouts, for instance), and last night was one of those instances. The difference this time however, is that instead of “I have a different point of view” the matter is “You guys are fucking idiots that need to be kicked in the balls.”

First off, I agree with P&T. If video games actually did cause youth violence, I alone would probably be responsible for a solid 4% decline in global population. From Duck Hunt to Contra to Mortal Kombat, to Doom, to Halo to even World of Warcraft (it’s not like you’re negotiating with the dragon…) violent video games were (and are, for that matter) a staple of my entertainment. To anyone with a cranium full of brain cells instead of just ganglia, reloading a Garand in “Call of Duty” very obviously does not train you for how to properly get your thumb out of the way in time. Lining up a head shot in Unreal Tournament does very little to teach breath control, trigger squeeze, etc. Sensible people already know these things. Stupid idiots more interested in social control than whether or not their agenda has any basis in reality do not know these things. I have plenty of scorn for the type of simpering jackass who thinks killing a hooker in Grand Theft Auto Dubuque is morally the same, or legitimately instructive on how to take a pipe wrench to one in real life, but again, those people are dumb as hell to begin with, and there are bigger fish to fry at the moment.

As part of the video games episode, Penn & Teller (or, as Penn chanted repeatedly during the lead-up, their producers) felt it appropriate to demonstrate this fact for the idiots. This demonstration involved taking a nine year old boy with many hours of Tom Clancy’s Marketing Department and various other first person shooter games to a real range to fire a real AR-15. Former Marine and video game enthusiast Jeff Barnett* was enlisted to assist in this, um, “test.” The part of the show in question is, for now, available here. It’s season 7 episode 3 if youtube yanks it. The part that pisses me off shows up around the four minute mark. Here’s how the budding killing machine goes to his business.

Yup. That’s how he fired, and it had exactly the results anyone with the least familiarity with rifles would expect. Basically the kid got punched in the face to prove a bullshit point that didn’t need proving. Shortly after he fires his one and only shot, you can see where his safety glasses gave him a good cut on the nose, and it takes him a minute to sort his jaw out after he fires too.

What the fuck did that accomplish, Penn & Teller? Showing a kid with a rifle, regardless of how well supervised is just going to scare the piss out of the grass-eaters of the world no matter what the context or purpose, and anyone with a shred of common sense will already have a sneaking suspicion that guns might be a tad more complicated than movies and games make them out to be, and to the remaining group who actually know their asses from their elbows, the only thing your “test” accomplished was to punch a kid in the face and make him cry. (They did show him crying during the credits while being comforted by his mother.)

Five fucking minutes of basic safety instruction would have made just as compelling an argument without pointlessly hurting a kid and probably turning him off guns for life. Maybe if you think people won’t get it, insert some of that wonderfully subtle narration “Gosh, he seems to be having a lot of trouble realizing his natural murder potential” or similar. Nope, better just let that kid take a buttstock to the face! That’s way more Bullshit Scientific!

What a load of bullshit.

*To his credit, Jeff (or a reasonable fake- this is the internet after all) confirms elsewhere that the setup was exactly what it looked like and why it pissed me off.

…I’ll point it out when others do.

Doqz, on arguing about the scientific revolution:

I am running out of ways to explain the seemingly obvious proposition that you can’t just read the religion out of the picture. No matter how post-Christian our era might be, you can’t just figure out Copernicus by imagining that he sprung fully formed in the majesty of his magnificently atheistic body from the brow of Darwin, traveling back in time ready to do battle with the intellectual foundation of his fucking world.

Preach it, brother.

Brought to you by EAA*:

Here to advertise their Witness series, rather than one of the series of overweight white guys that usually fills this role as an actual shooter of some renown, is… this chick.

I actually kind of admire this commercial for the sheer determined effort at selling her rather than the gun. All of the cues I learned in body language books (and the occasional issue of Cosmo or its teen equivalents when I was younger) are there and really, really exaggerated- her eyes are as wide as if she just walked in on Michael Bane naked, she tilts her head enough to flip her hair a bit every time she wants to emphasize something, and she also keeps her elbows fully at parallel to make sure that at no point they cover her chest, which she also thrusts out with every emphasizing head-tilt and overall body spasm. If those teeth aren’t vaselined I’ll eat my rifle sling, too.

As a female shooter, I’m nonplussed and will stick with Les Baer, who tend to feature women that are slightly more convincing. As a bored and jaded consumer of sexualized pop culture, I’m impressed. Most people at least *try* to pretend. But these folks are most definitely all out.

*Yes, I know it’s stomping on the sidebar. We weren’t able to figure out how to make it.. not. It’ll scroll down soon.

So when having a discussion on the subject of pancake flipping technique with an Australian friend, I learned the following things based on the major confusion that ensued:

1. Americans like their pancakes ridiculously light and fluffy compared to Australians, apparently.

2. The use of buttermilk as a semi-standard practice is very much a U.S. thing. Aussies use whole milk. Whether there is even a buttermilk analogue over there at all was not determined. If it exists, it’s not called buttermilk. In related subject matter, Oz whole milk is referred to as “full cream”, and heavy cream is referred to as “thick cream”. This took awhile to clear up.

3. Smaller, thicker pancakes of the type known as “silver dollar” in America, is known as a “pikelet” in Australia and treated completely differently than a pancake (eaten cold with cream and jam), whereas Americans treat them essentially the same.

Culture: the assumptions you make automatically that you have no idea you have in the first place.

So, assuming a common definition of a “pancake” as a flour-based round object that is cooked quickly on a hot surface and flipped midway through, what else is it? And what’s normal to put on one?

A forum discussion ate my writing time, so have some best-of of the stuff I’ve been reading around the internet lately.

Understanding Our Bodies- This is shaping up to be a fantastic posting series at Nutrition Wonderland, with each post focusing on an individual hormone and then explaining what it does, why it does it, and how it’s affected by how you’re eating and moving. So far only leptin and serotonin have been covered, but in each case I learned important new things about hormones I had thought I understood well. If you’re at all interested in how your body really responds to food and movement and not just on rote “calories in/out”, read and wait for more of these.

ABC’s food propaganda shredded- ABC apparently does just as good a job covering the effects of a restaurant binge as 20/20 does on carrying guns. I’m not Dr. Eades’s biggest fan, but he does an excellent job here of slamming the hell out of some very misleading reporting- which treats normal physiology as evidence for why fat will STOP YOUR HEART RIGHT NOW OMG GET THE ANGIOPLASTY KIT.

Matt Mullenix posts In Defense of Pets. Stay long enough in the dog world and you’ll run into it- an appreciation for the abilities of working dogs that can eventually turn into contempt for “just” pets. Matt provides a very nice articulation of what’s wrong with this point of view.

Today, LabRat continued her journey to become the woman with the illustrated leg. Since there’s only so much to do while not being tattooed myself, I ducked out and wandered over to the gun store across the street, looking for primers for a friend. There were some nice looking deals on the shelves (even though primer and ammo was both on a rather tight ration), I picked up what I could, and went to watch the colorization of LabRat’s calf.

The day wrapped up, next time was arranged, and there was chit-chat and digging through a box of CDs her artist was giving away to make space. We came home with some brisket from a little place in Santa Fe that kicks ass, and prepared to settle in for the evening. Just as we were reaching for a relaxing beverage, I heard a soft scraping at the front door, and the saddest, loneliest clicking and ka-chunking ever. I opened the door and found this.

Aww, the poor little thing! I had picked this rifle up in the gun store and looked it over. The action was smooth and the bore in good shape, but the lil’ sweetie’s previous owner wasn’t too careful and she had some dings and scuffs in her stock. There’s always an asshole out there, I guess. She was sweet and affectionate, and looked like she’d fit in great with a more loving home. The damage had knocked her price down to a song, too. I went back to the tattoo shop to bounce the idea off LabRat.

The downside to that plan is that LabRat had been in the grip of endorphines and pain for a couple hours at this point. I broached the subject. “Bang-bang shooty pow *wince* funds on hand ouch fun,” she replied. I tried to decipher this statement for a while, gave up, and decided to play it safe. I guess the rifle had other ideas, since she followed me home.

Aww, she likes me. This is more or less how Kang latched on to me too, though with more slobber and stomping on my groin. I took her inside, and being a firearm and all… well… you see.

I took her around and let the rest of the family meet. LabRat approved, and noted “Aww, poor girl needs some love on these scratches…” Kodos and Kang were curious, but largely indifferent. Zydeco broke out ballistics tables and started purring. I’m kinda worried about that one, but I think the length of pull will be a bit much for him to get any accuracy. We were a little nervous introducing her to the rest of the crew- sometimes the unfamiliar will spook ‘em, and they won’t shoot right for a week- but it looks like they all get along just fine. She fit right in in her new home.

Update: Aww, I knew they’d get along!

Also, pictures now correctly click-to-embiggen. And for those who don’t memorize every gun ever made, she’s a Marlin 336 in .30-30.

It might be a subtle hint to look for other employment when the situation on the job has progressed to the point where even your pharmacist wants to know what’s wrong because you look like shit.

By way of Southern Fried Science, we have a real doozy.

The article in the Telegraph has since been pulled since editors managed to feel the sting of a thousand cluebats, but the title of the article referencing a press release from the University of Leicester was: “Women Who Dress Provocatively More Likely To Be Raped, Claim Scientists”. The subsequent lede stated: “Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester.”

Now, that headline is a problem all on its own in that it will inevitably provoke howls of outrage even if that was exactly what was in the research. However, there are a couple of other problems.

1. The “scientists” is actually one grad student doing her dissertation.
2. The title of the press release, and the major bit of her data to have any significance, is actually “Promiscuous Men More Likely To Rape”.
3. The finding for the degree to which how a woman was dressed affected how far a man was likely to try and coerce her was so small as to be left out of the discussion of the final version of the research- insignificant.
4. Likewise how outgoing the woman was.
5. The effect of whether she was drinking was apparently inverse- the men surveyed were less willing to press a drunk woman than a sober one.

So in other words, a perfectly objective and hard-hitting piece of journalism except for the part where the author threw out everything in the press release and everything the researcher told him in order to write his own personal prejudices as the news instead. Even more journalistically brave that he went so far out of his way to take the onus of blame for rape off men and put it onto women instead.

The really awesome part, the one that puts the final finishing touches on it for me? The Current article that’s about the Telegraph having to pull the original repeats its claims verbatim, even after editing to clarify that the original study’s author confirms how distorted it was.

CLASSY. Then again, we know who Current TV’s major demographic is, don’t we?

Unfortunately, it’s not for the circus, but for the Senate, although Congress and a circus are rapidly becoming completely indistinguishable from one another.

So the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill has passed the House and is in the Senate. I don’t need to tell most of you it’s a mess; the White House and the Democrats alike both claim forcefully, hands over hearts, that it is NOT A TAX, but the small problem with that is that instead of calling what they’ll charge energy producers a “tax”, they’re calling “climate revenue” and counting as straight income to balance the predicted massive loss of jobs. The other problem with that is that it contains the assumption that energy producers will not pass these extra costs along to consumers, which would be entirely contrary to all of history, basic economics, and the laugh test. It’s a tax- a flat tax that will ultimately be experienced by all citizens, especially those at income levels to whom a spike in energy prices is the difference between being able to get to work and not, between making it through the winter or freezing.

But the climate! We’re frying ourselves! We have to make sacrifices!

The EPA thinks Waxman-Markey will have no impact whatsoever on the climate without massive sacrifices from China and India, which they have already said quite forcefully they have no intention whatsoever of making. Why should they? They’re both developing nations just experiencing for the first time what it’s like not to be dirt-poor or a fiefdom of various Western nations, and especially in China’s case, there’s also the small problem of being a nasty totalitarian regime with a lot of young people. If they were to take a massive economic hit and leave a billion plus people with the realization that they don’t even have what small measure of a life their government had allowed them before anymore, China’s regime is fucked, and they know that very well. India is in better shape, but still in no position to torpedo their own economy in order to satisfy Western sensibilities about carbon emissions. The Obama administration’s secretary of energy says he “disagrees” with the EPA’s analysis, but has apparently declined to elaborate beyond “because”.

So basically, the plan is to pass a carbon-credit scheme that is incredibly vulnerable to lobbying, special pleading, and other political wankery, that will slam every single citizen in a direct and personal way when the costs are passed along, and that models a system that has been strikingly unsuccessful elsewhere in the developed world. And it won’t even slightly do what its only possible justification is- have a measurable impact on climate.

Look, I believe conservation and the environment are a public good that must be handled at least in part in a public fashion. As silly, ineffectual, and ham-fisted as our government is, it’s actually achieved some notable successes in this arena. But fellow greenies- is this REALLY what we should spend political capital on? REALLY?

Of course, this might just not be about climate at all and might really be yet another in a series of power grabs for more political control over private industry… with all the lobbying, pork-churning, and back-scratching that implies… but that would just be crazy.