Lincoln

Noel Gallagher's First Single - "The Death Of Me And You"

Second Thoughts

Obama today gave his opinions as to why S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating. President Lincoln, while listening, has second thoughts about the Emancipation Declaration.

Perfect Justice?

There are a lot of articles floating around the net right now, mostly coming from Europe, but a few from here in the US, questioning the morality of killing Osama bin Laden, armed or unarmed. The argument seems to be that he should have been captured to face trial for his actions, perhaps in some civilian court.

No, no, no, a thousand times NO! He should not have been captured. He needed to be taken dead, not alive. He needed to be shot in the head, even if he was on his knees begging for mercy. This is not abut justice for bin Laden. This is about justice for his victims.

The last thing he deserved was a trial, a trial that would last at least a decade, with delays and continuances, lawyers making endless motions, with Osama getting endless media coverage and a decade long stand on the soapbox to spew out his wahhabist BS to an ever compliant media, while the families of the victims are forced to watch their loved ones killed over and over again, every day, for the length of the trial. Not to mention the possibility of him getting off on a technicality.

We've seen the European idea of justice, where a terrorist mass murderer, who supposedly has only a couple more months to live, gets sent back to live out his final days in freedom in his home country, where, surprise surprise, he ends up being not so sick after all. No thank you.

Bin Laden received justice. It wasn't perfect justice, I'll grant you. The Euro-trash are right about that. It never is. Imperfect justice is the best we can achieve in this limited world. Perfect justice for bin Laden would have been for him to have been trapped on the 109^th floor of a burning building, with the fire raging so hot, and the air so choked with burning, stifling smoke, that jumping to his certain death a thousand feet below would have seemed the better option. The same, horrific choice that many of his innocent victims were forced to make on an otherwise normal, sunny, Tuesday morning.

It's always so hilarious to watch a completely immoral people suddenly discover morality in the wake of the death of a perfectly evil man, to watch them fumble with it, as they try to grasp something they have no knowledge of or experience with.

There's a proven technique for dealing with terrorists that want nothing more than to see you dead. It goes like this: Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. Reload. Headshot.

That's right, eight to a magazine, on a .45. Cobra Mags hold eight without jamming on the last round.

RELEASE THE PHOTOS!

My New Project: Broadcaster Replica

So I've decided that I want a Fender Broadcaster, which is the ancestor to the Fender Telecaster. The problem is that a real Broadcaster costs about $100,000.00, and a reissue costs about $6,000.00. Seeing as how the Israelis haven't been sending me my Zionist Conspirator checks lately, I can't really afford either.

So I'm going to roll my own.

This is the first time I've ever attempted to build a guitar myself. I've made extensive modifications to almost every guitar I've owned, but never actually built one from parts. I'm going to be documenting the build on the blog, because I can't think of anything else to do with it. The blog, that is. Politics are just too frustrating right now, and the lefties have gone so far over the edge that they are really impossible to parody. What's the point of crafting a clever satirical essay eviscerating their policies, when they turn around and release it virtually word for word as talking points the next day?

So anyway, I'm going to blog about this instead.

First up is the body. I was originally going to buy an unfinished Mighty Mite Ash Tele body that had already been sanded and sealed, and then pick up some nitrocellulose lacquer in tinted clear coat and butterscotch blonde. The body was $120 on ebay, and the lacquer would have been about $50 including shipping from Guitar Reranch.

Instead I found an ash Tele body already finished in butterscotch blonde nitro for $129 on ebay, and I couldn't pass that up. It saves me money, and the fact that it's already finished exactly how I want it saves me time and effort.

The body won't be here until Friday, but I have some pics of it from the sellers page:





I've also purchased the Broadcaster decal, which arrived today and looks great. The only other part I have for it so far is the round string tree, which I had left over from another guitar.

I still have a lot of parts to buy. For the neck, I'm looking at an All-Parts Tele neck pre-finished in vintage tint nitro, with a V profile (unlike Nocasters, which had a deep U profile, Broadcasters tended to have more of a V profile), a 7.25 radius, and vintage frets. I'll probably be ordering that in a couple of weeks, along with the rest of the parts.

I'm thinking I'll go with Fender Custom Shop Nocaster pickups, they seem to be the closest to Broadcaster specs that I can get in my budget range. I'm also thinking I'll pick up a reissue thermometer style case, either in brown or tweed. Those are pretty expensive, though.

Anyway, expect more posts over the next couple of weeks. It should be really interesting.

Well, fairly interesting, anyway.

A Tour Of The Fender Factory, Circa Now

A Tour Of The Fender Factory, Circa 1959

Global Warming

Lego Black Ops - Amazing!

Boob Apron: The Worst Invention Ever.

Jane Austen's Fight Club

James Cameron Gets His Ass Kicked By A Girl

I like “The Hurt Locker.” Never saw it, never plan to (I suspect it’s another lib fest disguised as a war movie), could care less about it ultimately, except that it stopped Avatar dead in its tracks. I would have preferred "UP" or "Inglorious Basterds" or "District 9" to win, but with Hollywood, you take your victories where you can get them. Plus, Kathryn Bigelow, the winner of the Best Director award over Cameron, just also happens to be his ex-wife. That's gotta sting. So frak you, James Cameron, you unpatriotic son of a bitch, I hope you go home and drown your sorrows with hull cleaner, ala "Heathers".

Oh, Yeah.

Movie made by chimpanzees to be broadcast on television

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

The world's first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.

The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists.

The film-making exercise is part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other.

It will be screened within the Natural World programme "Chimpcam" shown on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 27 January.

Making the movie was the brainchild of primatologist Ms Betsy Herrelko, who is studying for a PhD in primate behaviour at the University of Stirling, UK.

Over 18 months, she introduced video technology to a group of 11 chimpanzees living in a newly built enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo, UK.

The enclosure, which contains three large interlinked outdoor arenas, as well as a series of smaller rooms in which the apes can be studied by researchers, is the largest of its kind in the world.

Despite the fact that the chimps had never taken part in a research project before, they soon displayed an interest in film-making.

Ms Herrelko set the chimps two challenges.

The first was to teach the chimps how to use a touchscreen to select different videos.

By doing so, Ms Herrelko could investigate which types of images chimps prefer to watch.

The second challenge was to give the apes a "Chimpcam", a recording camera housed in a chimp-proof box.

On top of the box was a video screen that showed live images of whatever the camera was pointing at.

Initially, the chimps were more interested in each other than the video technology, as two male chimps within the study group vied to become the alpha male, disrupting the experiment.

But over time, some of the chimps learned how to select different videos to watch.

For example, the chimps could use a touchscreen to decide whether to watch footage of their outside enclosure, or the food preparation room, where zoo staff prepare the chimps' meals.

The results still have to be analysed in detail, but it seems the chimps did not prefer to watch any of these images over the others.

Ms Herrelko is not sure why, but it could be that the images shown were too familiar to the chimps or because they have no way of asking to see something different.

Then in the final the final stage of her work, she investigated what happened when she gave the Chimpcam to the whole group.

Gradually, the chimps started playing with the Chimpcam, carrying it around the enclosure.

The chimps soon became interested in the camera view screen on the Chimpcam box, watching what happened as they moved the Chimpcam around filming new images.

Overall, they were more interested in the Chipcam viewfinder than they were the touchscreen in the research room.

The apes are unlikely to have actively tried to film any particular subject, or understand that by carrying Chimpcam around, they were making a film.

However, the result, as well as providing new information on how chimps like to see the world, may yet go down in television history.

Ha-Ha!

Did you hear there’s a weird gravitational anomaly near Arlington Cemetery? Ted Kennedy is SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE!
The Donks just got creamed on their own turf. By a genuine conservative, no less! They are gonna get SO clobbered in November! And now Harry Reid is hinting he may not seat the winner, Scott Brown (R) for procedural reasons. Man, there’s gonna be rioting in the streets if he does that.
This is amazing to watch. I’ve never seen an entire political party commit political suicide before.

A Forgotten Classic

Steven Crowder On Detroit

Dark Matter

"The Dark Matter Dragon In My Garage" with apologies to Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me", you say, and I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle - but no dragon

"Where's the dragon", you ask.

"Oh, she's right here", I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon".

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea", I say, "but this dragon floats in the air". Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless", I say. You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, except she's an incorporeal (bodyless) dragon and the paint won't stick!"

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now what is the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? You're inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

But then I say, "Well, that's because the dragon is made of Dark Matter." And then you walk away satisfied that there really is a dragon in my garage, because apparently, scientists nowadays will believe anything, as long as it's told to them by other scientists. Witness Climategate."

The Fallacy of the Open Mind

Today I ran across an SUV with a bunch of lefty bumper-stickers, which in itself is pretty funny, but, in addition to the usual Obama campaign stickers and the “I’m already against the next war” BS, there was this gem: “Minds are like parachutes, they only function when open.”
It’s always so hilarious when I see some lefty talking about the importance of having an open mind, because they’re usually some of the most closed minded people you’ll ever meet. Every time I hear a lefty use the phrase “Keep an open mind”, it’s always in the advancement of their own beliefs. I’ve yet to see a hard core lib keep an open mind when confronted by ideas that conflict with their own beliefs. In their world, open-minded means liberal, and closed-minded means conservative.
Adding to this, they don’t seem to understand that there are times when it’s appropriate to have an open mind, and times when it’s not. Being open minded is fine when you’re approaching a question for the first time. It allows you to gather as much information as possible before you make a decision. At some point, though, you do have to make a decision, and at that point, your mind is no longer open on the issue. You’ve decided. You’ve weighed all the evidence, and come to a conclusion that fits with what you know about the universe around you. That’s not a bad thing.
Unfortunately, if the decision you’ve come to doesn’t match the lefty world view, you’re viewed as closed-minded, in a negative sense, as if you’ve just made a knee-jerk reaction without thinking things through. Their underlying assumption seems to be that anyone who gives their ideas a fair hearing will automatically see the superiority of their beliefs and convert to them, post haste. They simply can’t seem to understand that people of good conscience can come to different conclusions about the same problem in good faith. It’s like they know that THEY’RE trying to do the right thing, therefore, anyone who disagrees with them must have more sinister motivations. They seem to have developed a very simplistic us=good, everyone else=bad belief system.
Didn’t they criticize President Bush as having a Manichean view of good and evil? Is that an example of irony, or just projection?