Atomic Nerds

Yeah, I don’t really have much, just the germ of an idea that I need to poke at more to see if it’ll turn into anything. In the meantime, have a brief yet heart-warming video.

Robber Surprised by Guard Dog - Watch more Funny Videos

It’s not just the dog- though the bit at the end elevates the dog from a simple Nelson Muntz “HA ha” at the would-be thief into full blown laughter- make sure you’re taking a look at the merchandise on the wall.

Methinks this plan was ill-thought-out from the beginning.

1. Any program designed to help people in genuinely dire straits through no fault of their own must be accessible enough to be exploitable, otherwise the genuinely needy will not be able to access it reliably. Corollary: once a program exists to address a problem, previous support structures will be more likely to assume the problem is taken care of and be less readily willing to provide support.

2. The number of people exploiting and abusing a given program will always be far greater than its proponents assume. The number of people truly helped by the program will always be far greater than its opponents assume. Corollary: there are enough people abusing the system that any given opponent of the system will probably be familiar with one or more particularly egregious examples that telling them their opposition is rooted in ideology and some form of ism will come off as grossly high-handed and insensitive. There are enough people genuinely being aided by the system that telling any given proponent their support is rooted in utopian delusions will come off as grossly parochial and insensitive.

3. People, as a general rule, are lazy and will try to get the most comfort for the least effort. People, as a general rule, are hard-working and will exert a tremendous amount of effort just to feel right about themselves. Not only can these two statements both be true of humanity at the same time, they can even be true of the same individual at the same time. This fundamental paradox underwrites a great deal of political acrimony. Corollary: Any given group will, through a combination of experience and observation, polarize this tendency into any form of “us” and “them”, most of which will appear completely ludicrous to an outside observer with either no experience whatsoever or extensive experience with both the “us” and the “them”.

4. We are living outside the monkeysphere. Institutional efforts to address wide-scale social problems with compassion and judgment will often not work, or will work poorly. We are living outside the monkeysphere. Local efforts to address local expressions of societal problems with compassion and judgment will often not work, or work poorly, as individuals are still usually surrounded by effective strangers.

5. Any attempt to ignore either a social problem or the problems of the programs created to address the problem will result in either category of problem coming around to bite the society involved in the ass. We are most fortunate when the largest consequences are merely the fortunes of a political party.

6. Human problems approach infinity. Human resources are very finite.

So, there was this movement, a sort of more or less right-wing counterpart to the anti-war and anti-large basket of loosely defined leftist grievances that existed during the Bush administration, and they call themselves Tea Partiers. And for obvious reasons, the left really dislikes them. They’re broadly used to cornering the market on sign-waving and traffic-impeding, and are reacting poorly to the shift change while Team Blue is in charge. Democratic politicians dislike them even more, because they’re coming up for something of a job performance review in the fall and the polls don’t have any good news for them. They hoped to have at least six years to screw things up, to mirror Team Red’s run screwing things up under Satan Obama’s predecessor.

Being politicians, their job is to frame their opposition and explain why the sign-wavers are wrong and they’re right and the fickle entity that is the American public should renew their contracts. The way they have chosen to do this is by framing tea partiers as motivated by the only obvious source of opposition to big government: racism. That particular source is really only the most overt it’s gotten; from Keith Olbermann pondering the racial symbolism of pickup trucks to Chris Matthews’ assertions that the movement is entirely white people, it’s been far from subtle. Those actually organizing the tea parties are quite aware of this, not making their normal residencies in a cave on Mars, and are on top of the problem as well as they can be- which leftist anti-war protestors really would have helped themselves a great deal by doing but rarely did. The media was far less interested in them, but I don’t doubt it hurt them with the people they were actually trying to influence.

What I wonder is what on earth makes either leftist grass roots or the Democratic leadership- or that portion of the media that sympathizes liberal- think that this will have an effect they want. People who are readily predisposed to believe that anyone overtly opposing “big government” must actually be in a panic over the current head of state’s skin tone are already voting Democrat. It’s like running a campaign by actually making your central issue platform “We are totally super awesome and our opponents are stupid and evil”; it feels satisfying to you and your supporters but is not exactly persuasive. Racism is an ugly charge, but it’s been used so heavily lately that it’s also one Americans are as ready to brush off as being obvious hyperbole as “Marxist”. Unless you can produce evidence that your opponents have sheets with eyehole cutouts and no children of the age for trick-or-treating as ghosts, people just fill in “DOODYHEAD” or a similar contentless epithet and assume you need to go have a lie-down with a cold cloth until you’ve found an argument.

With the Tea Partiers themselves making up around 28% of the population and actually matching the general population at large pretty closely in demographics, this creates a new problem that the “frame them as racist nutjobs” strategy doesn’t seem to take into account: most Americans not living in dark-blue urban enclaves probably know somebody either involved in the movement or merely sympathetic to them, and there is every chance that the relationship is at least a cordial one. The media has a big influence in framing, but it does not have the power to tell people something they know is blatantly false and have them change their minds. Looking between Aunt Joan who thinks the government is growing too big and too expensively and Chris Matthews, Matthews doesn’t come out the more credible on the subject of Aunt Joan’s hidden Kluxer agenda.

What’s more, the attempt to frame a group that more than a quarter of the public identifies with with a redneck bigot stereotype feeds extremely well into another frame that the Republicans have been using to great success for decades: that of “the liberals” being rich urban elitists who fear and loathe the common heartland American. The pickup truck-as-coded-racism thing was so facepalmingly stupid precisely because nobody who does NOT live in an elite urban environment where there’s no need for pickup trucks because you’re paying somebody with an ethnic last name to do all your manual labor would ever make a connection between pickups and race. If you live in the suburbs, an outer section of the city, or a rural environment, pickups are ubiquitous among all racial groups- because they’re equally useful. The more they bang the “they’re actually all RACISTS so you should hate and shun them!” drum, the more it comes off sounding like “We suspect everybody not of our social and economic class of being racists- including you. And we hate you, too. Vote for us!”

This does not necessarily spell victory for either the Tea Partiers or the politicians they would presumably support. (Though arguably the Republicans haven’t remotely figured out how to deal with them, probably because they rightly suspect the Partiers aren’t much bigger fans of theirs.) In any political or cultural struggle, the usual determinator of who wins is not who plays intelligently but who makes the fewest gobsmackingly stupid errors, combined with whether the American public in aggregate really gives a shit about whatever it is each side thinks it should at the moment.

But damn, as galling as it is to hear I really wouldn’t mind a bit if they kept on hammering the corpse of George Wallace like this. And if they want to run against George W. Bush again and beg the question of just what the fuck they’ve been doing for the two years they’ve been in charge… that would be just splendiferous.

Cross-posted between here and Paladin Pants since it was a kerfuffle in the WoW blogosphere that inspired it but it’s a general subject. Original kerffufle found here and commented further upon here.

It is not uncommonly observed that people shrieking “I’m OFFENDED by that!” are a general boil upon the ass of society, as they use the tactic to shut down any speech, expression, institution, or even person that they dislike. Any and all conflict with their worldview is treated as personal assault and satisfaction is demanded, always in the form of the removal of the “offensive” sentiment or person- preferably after a meek apology has been extracted. It’s a bully’s tactic for muzzling people and opinions the bully doesn’t like, and it is indeed quite commonly abused.

As a consequence, there are a great number of people out there, trying NOT to be bullies, that question themselves extensively when they ARE offended by something someone does or says. Most people do not want to be the jerk in any given social situation, and even if someone said or did something flagrantly assholish, people are frequently reluctant to make waves by saying they were offended at all, let alone calling the other person out on their behavior.

Further along the line are people who are sick of the scolds and make no bones about their willingness to say exactly as they think no matter whom it might offend. Some even go so far as to make being offensive a point of pride in and of itself- and to react to anyone who complains that they were offended by telling them to grow a thicker skin, not be a wuss, not be a bleeding heart, and generally not react.

Where it gets interesting is that it’s also not uncommon for this opposite-end-of-the-spectrum attitude to be used to bully in the exact same fashion as the sensitivity screecher: as a tool to define the conversation exclusively on their own terms. Most people don’t particularly want to put on a suit of metaphorical armor as a precondition of social interaction- and would prefer to be treated well with people they interact with- and will choose not interacting over attempting to become more competitively combative. The person willing to be most boorish controls all terms of interaction, every bit as effectively and selfishly.

This has its place; when a space is yours, you get to set the rules. I can and do say whatever the hell I like on this blog, and I’m not terribly concerned about who might find the language or my opinions offensive. I don’t generally go out of my way to stomp on toes because I get no particular joy out of toe-stomping, but I’m also not afraid to fight with my commentariat over one of those opinions- or tell them to get the hell off my porch, as this is indeed my space, owned and paid for. You don’t get to come and dictate to me how to act with that space. If I want to convert this space to a gallery of baboon asses it’s no one’s business but mine.

If I adopted the attitude that I should be able to set the terms of interaction so completely in someone else’s space that they owned, I would be the asshole, not anyone who was offended. I will not go to my grandmother’s house and use the same language I do here, or discuss some of the same topics, because that would be fucking rude and she would be completely justified in telling me to get my little ass sorted out or to get out of her home. Grandma’s house, grandma’s rules. If grandma and I were to, say, join the same book club, that’s not anyone’s owned space in particular- but the rules of interaction are tacitly sorted out by the people who make up the social system of the club. This is a pretty normal social-species thing; the rules aren’t written down and constitutions aren’t established because making cultures and setting social norms is something we’ve been doing since before fire.

In the book club, things might trend more toward grandma’s tastes and we might be skipping Titus Andronicus and doing Jane Austen instead, or it might trend more my way and grandma will just have to live with the rape and cannibalism being included in the discussion, but neither grandma nor I has any more right than the other- or the other members- in deciding what’s appropriate. Attempting to exert control anyway, either by my turning up in a “FUCK PIG” t-shirt and telling anyone who’s bothered to grow a thicker skin or grandma telling the rest of us we’re going to hell for torturing little old ladies and making baby Jesus cry, would be bullying.

Anyone who wants to start a FUCK PIG, or G-rated book club is of course free to do so- and also free to set their own terms with the like-minded. But trying to bend the terms of acceptable interaction in order to get out of having to see anything you don’t like OR having to exert any self-control is being an asshole, not upholding any kind of principle- and hiding behind that principle is just plain cowardly. If you take satisfaction from being an asshole and just don’t want to censor yourself for anyone for any reason, just own up to it. If you really don’t care what other people think, you shouldn’t have any need at all to waste your time telling them to think differently- unless, of course, you care enough to want to be validated for your behavior anyway.

So, in happy contrast to the two previous years, this year we’re getting enough of a tax refund to do something fun with part of it without guilt. This leads, obviously, to Buy A Gun Day, which is really not so much a protest of any kind as it is an excuse.

Stingray wants a suppressor for the AR and/or a Super Black Eagle. (Actually, he wants a Barrett, but I said no on that one- not only would it be massively more fun for him than it would be for me, but the damn thing would eat its own original price tag in ammo every time we actually DID have any fun with it.) I’m skeptical on the suppressor, it seems like a pretty big tax stamp for what amounts to coolness value only. The shotgun would be a nice counterpart for him to match my Citori; I’m all for it if it gets us out shooting trap more often, though I’m not sure it would anymore than my model 70 has us shooting rifle more often.

I could justify my “meh” reactions to the prospects suggested better if, in fact, I had any better ideas. The problem is I kind of don’t; I don’t particularly want any other shotguns beyond said Citori, my pistol needs are well covered, and not only ditto rifle, I don’t even like shooting rifle very much at all. That might change once I get my eyes fixed (Lasik is planned but not scheduled) and fighting with scopes isn’t such a huge snarling ordeal for me anymore, but I don’t plan around the possibility.

I kind of want a Springfield XD, but it would be Yet Another .45 Auto. I liked shooting FarmMom’s Taurus Judge more than any other revolver I’ve tried yet, but I can’t say I was so taken with it I deeply desire one now. My chief objection to spending a big chunk of the refund on Stingray’s ideas is that they’re either more fun for him than me or no fun for me at all, unless I appropriate that shotgun, which would be Unfair. But I’m having a hard time coming up with “yes, that’s fun for me, let’s agree to spend about X% of the refund on something fun for me and something fun for you” when there’s nothing I want all that much right now. Alternatively I could just give him my blessing to get whatever so long as the rest goes into mortgage principle paydowns and savings, but, well, that doesn’t feel like much fun.

Ideas?

Know Your Meme. Containing, collating, and explaining memes from across the internet.

I can’t leave. I may never be getting out of here. I have to watch another remix of a shock site together with an inane and weird video aimed at teaching Japanese children to poop, and run from Epic Beard Man to the next one. For the love of God send help.

It’s Vicious Circle 45.

I may yet elaborate on the main topic of the episode (based on Jay’s “Complimentary or Creepy” post), but it won’t be today, because it’s a gorgeous spring day, Stingray’s taking the afternoon off work, the snow is gone and the ground is finally dry, and we’re headed to the range for the first time this year.

WHEE.

So this afternoon I’m plugging along merrily doing computery things, I get up to get more iced tea, and as I return to my desk, I touch my mouse.

*KAZAP*

Static discharge. Not too uncommon, it’s very dry around here and between the dogs’ shaggy coats and my own long hair I do tend to collect static. This one was enough to make the computer beep in protest, which is also not too terribly uncommon.

What was less common was that the zap was, apparently, enough to kill my mouse dead. Disconnecting and reconnecting the USB connection didn’t revive it. Neither did rebooting. As it turns out, Stingray’s mouse (same model) works with my computer, and my mouse does not work connected to Stingray’s computer.

I killed the fucking thing with a touch.

I am not amused, given it’s my new Razer and for a frigging eighty dollar mouse it’s awfully goddamn fragile. It’s not as though mine is the only household in America with dry weather; computer mice have been around for just about long enough to be expected to stand up to this kind of thing.

This is not new for me; I have a talent for destroying things in ways that simply should not be possible. I don’t fuck with things I don’t know how to use and I don’t do stupid “didn’t change the oil for three years” crap, things just break around me for no reason that can be determined.

Doesn’t mean I’m not still pretty damn ticked about it. As unique abilities go, it’s not exactly the most productive one out there.

In the meantime, I demand to be addressed as Thor, Wielder of Lightning.

From Boing Boing, a rather hilarious graphic that I’m pretty sure I can rack up a full Bingo in within six comments of exchange with its target:

Click for big.

To be clear, in case anyone is confused, I have absolutely no problem with the basic concept of evolutionary psychology. I fully agree that the bit where we’re rational beings is a hell of a lot more recent than the bit where are social primates, and I absolutely think that that evolutionary background shaped how we think and feel, up to and including biologically based differences in sex, gender, and sexuality. What I have a massive problem with is how revoltingly often that the end “evolutionary psychology” is put to is in constructing ad-hoc just-so stories that justify their creators’ preconceptions and preferences, usually with extremely little true understanding of how the mechanics of evolution actually work, and even less attempt to address cultural forces and check their hypotheses against and across human history and different cultures. The distinct odor of bullshit wafting from such things usually comes with some common telltales:

- Definition of fitness as the degree to which something is sexually satisfying to males. Fitness is defined as number of matings, not number of children reaching reproductive age. The influence of the sexual preferences of females will be often be assumed to be insignificant, if they don’t actually suffer fitness loss from mating.

- The social structure of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers is assumed to have been functionally identical to the social structure of the author or authors’ own society immediately prior to the perceived advent of “political correctness”. Extra bonus: an assumption of a nuclear family with a single breadwinner, which is extremely modern by the standards of known history and still not the worldwide norm.

- Assumption of “mate quality” along a linear scale of best to worst, with minimal acknowledgment that wild gene pools are full of stable genetic diversity for the very reason that the definition of “best” is highly contextual, an effect only compounded by the scale of time.

- Assumptions about Paleolithic hunter-gatherers with minimal to nonexistent supporting examination of modern hunter-gatherers.

- Assumption that widespread cultural variations reflect ways in which human behavior has become “unnatural” rather than representing a warning sign to check the assumption that the behaviors in question are particularly hardwired.

It is true that science is not politically correct. It does not follow that science therefore supports “un-PC” conclusions instead. Science more often offers minimal real conclusions for our cultural wars and bugaboos, or a completely nonintuitive conclusion, as science exists in the first place to counter the heavy sway narrative logic and confirmation bias have on human thought.

As you are aware from the last post, this last weekend we hosted FarmMom and FarmDad while they helped us with the fence. As long as they were coming down anyway and bringing us the half a cow we had purchased from them, they also hauled down a load of the season’s product of the annual creation of steers from calves, of scrappy nibbles fame. Yes, we knew what they were when we ate them the first time at Blogorado. Yes, they brought the raw materials down for us because they know we like them, as food, rather than as novelty or prank value. Yes, they are pretty tasty if you’re not revolted by the idea of eating calf nuts. Honestly I don’t understand why that gets the reactions it does, beyond more “ordinary” offal like liver; it’s meat. Why eating testicles should be so very much more disgusting than eating something’s ass (aka beef round), or biceps, or bone marrow, is utterly and completely beyond my ken. At least with calf fries, you can lay even odds that the animal that owned the raw material is still alive and well.

It was, however, my idea to eat them on Easter, and to expand the menu to also include eggs in some form. Originally the pagan celebration that the Christian one co-opted aspects of (like the eggs and the rabbits as symbology) was an unabashed fertility celebration, so it seemed fitting. Thus, the final menu wound up as calf fries, deviled eggs (which I love), and fried okra since we needed some sort of concession to fiber and were going to be frying things anyway.

This is going to be a little different from the usual genre of these posts, since FarmMom is an old-school cook who uses the venerable measurements “some”, “a bit of”, “enough”, and “to taste” rather than teaspoons and cups. I took a few pictures, of which few turned out, and will attempt to haphazardly set down what I learned. Rather a fair amount of the process, I’m afraid, has been lost to the temptation to fall into chatting about unrelated subjects while FarmMom did her thing.

Caution: do not attempt cooking without your Kitchen Bitch unless your house lacks one entirely. The bad karma will cause years of failed cakes, over-done steaks, and collapsed souffles.

1. The night before, take your frozen calf nuts and place them on the uppermost shelf of your fridge, or whichever shelf of your fridge on which soda cannot be stored without turning into slush. You want things to be half-thawed, leaning more toward still frozen, rather than entirely thawed, as they make the first step of preparing the nuts for consumption much easier. Hard-boil a dozen eggs and stick them in the fridge, they’ll be easier to peel if they’ve had some time cold first.

2. Before you can do anything with the nuts, you need to take off the tough skin. This stuff will resist chewing and can’t even be put down the garbage disposal; if it has any use at all, it’s as canine chewing gum. We elected not to give any to ours and simply disposed of them in the outside trash. Slice down the convex side with a sharp paring knife and peel off the outer skin. This is where the half-frozen part comes in; the skin is much easier to remove if the edible tissue within has not yet had a chance to soften. You want to start with the smaller ones, as they will thaw faster. This is also an excellent way to slice your hand open if you are at all clumsy or careless, so proceed with caution and perhaps a Kevlar glove. Skin all balls. Optional: if any squeamish males are in the house, when you are finished, chase him through the house with your bloody hands shrieking “VAGINA DENTATA!” Bonus points if you can run him into a wall.

This is what they’ll look like when you’re done. As they thaw you’ll lose more of that edible tissue along with your skin, so try to work as quickly as you can without being careless. Set your bowl of balls aside until we’re ready for the frying phase. Now would also be a good time to take your sliced and frozen okra out of the freezer and set somewhere to thaw. (Or, if your local store actually carries fresh okra… slice it up however you do that with okra.)

3. Extract your bowl of hard-boiled eggs from the refrigerator. Start peeling. This is one of those interesting cooking chores in which freshness actually punishes you a bit; as eggs age the whites shrink and peel away from the shell some, making older eggs much easier to peel than fresh ones. Peel until you’re out of shelled eggs.

Interestingly, the peeled eggs feel far more like one would imagine a naked testicle to feel in one’s hands than the actual testicles do. Guess that’s why Spanish speakers call ‘em “huevos”.

4. Slice the eggs in half longitudinally. Deposit the yolks in one bowl and the whites on a large plate or platter. Once you have de-yolked all your eggs, it is now time to contemplate ingredients. You are definitely going to be using some mustard (we used dijon, though the deli kind with the horseradish might have been interesting), some apple cider vinegar, and some mayo; in this case, we also extracted an odd quarter of white onion from the fridge and the sole surviving slice of deli ham and diced them finely and added them to the mix. Throw in some salt and pepper, then mash everything together vigorously until you’ve produced a more or less smooth mixture that can be spooned into the halves of white. Spoon everything into the white halves and arrange on the platter before hitting them all with paprika.

Interesting side note: it is impossible to evenly distribute shaken paprika. Results will resemble a blood spatter pattern from a bludgeoning murder scene no matter what you do. Set platter aside somewhere out of your way and out of dog-muzzle reach.

5. Go grab some saltines. Suggested amount: “a bunch”. Crush them finely; a food processor works better for this than just putting them under wax paper and hitting them with a rolling pin. Mix the results in a small mixing bowl with an appropriate estimation of “some” flour, and somewhat smaller proportions of cayenne pepper, seasoning salt, and regular salt and pepper.

6. Haul out a large cast-iron skillet, or deep fryer if you have such a thing. Pour in an appropriately deep layer of neutral cooking oil with a high smoke point, such as canola or peanut oil. Heat until a pinch of the flour/cracker coating mix immediately starts to fry when dropped in. Get a plate and line it with a paper towel. Grab your okra and roll it around in batches in the coating mixture, then fry it, likewise in batches, turning if it needs it. Okra is ready when it’s more or less dark brown.

Once you’ve cycled all your okra from coating to frying to resting on the plate, stick it in the microwave to retain heat until you’re done with your nuts. Since the coating is light and not thick and greasy like many frying batters, they will reheat in the microwave just fine without getting soggy, should they need it.

7. Repeat the procedure with your calf nuts. Any particularly large ones should be sliced first, as otherwise they will overcook and get tough. Pieces should be within a very rough and ready estimation of evenly sized. The naked nuts are sticky enough that you won’t need an egg wash to get the coating to stick. Fry in batches as you did with the okra; they will need longer to cook than the veggies and will need turning more, especially for the slices.

As with the okra, cycle all the meat through until everything’s cooling on the plate with the paper towel.

Optional: We’re going to have ranch for dipping just because fried things are always better with ranch, but we had good results with a mixture composed mainly of dry mustard, sour cream, and more salt and pepper. If I had to do it over again I’d probably add a dose of the sweet Tabasco I didn’t remember at the time was in the fridge. The okra goes better with ranch, but the spicy/sour mustard sauce went wonderfully with the calf fries.

Eat until you are somewhere between happily full, and sick. Hoist a glass of milk or beer to Eostre and try not to get near anything you’d mind impregnating, at least without precautions.