That's dope, man...

Say Uncle has been documenting Google's anti-gun discriminatory practices (more here), which don't make sense anyway because they sell gun-related ad space.

If you can get past the irony of the top-most ad without spewing your favorite beverage on your screen, look down at the bottom-most item. You can see that they have no problem selling ad space for drug paraphernalia. Look at this animated gif of the device in action. That's a dope pipe.

I personally would not hold their running such an ad against them. If someone wants to toke the sacred herb that's their business. But running such ads, and running perfectly legal gun-related ads, and then blocking gun-related websites from displaying such ads, is not only "Evil," it's stupid. It makes no sense. It also smacks of misrepresentation. They sell gun-related ad space, but they don't allow websites to use adsense if that website's text would cause such ads to actually be displayed. That's dishonest. More than that, it's crooked.

I'll be honest, my adsense balance is up to about $50, and when it gets to $100 I'll get my first payout. I've been running them for several months (starting on the other blog) and I don't want to waste what I've accumulated thus far. Once the payout happens, I'm out of it unless they change their policies by that time.

If anyone has any non-discriminatory alternative to adsense, let me know. I would still like something on here that would generate a few pennies so I could occasionally buy an extra box of ammo or a pro-RKBA t-shirt or something.

Cool

I'm going to have something at LOLTHULHU. The webmaster over there said it might be a while, because he has a big backlog of submissions and he's been "spacing them out." I'll have to see if I can think of another one before then.

Her real favorite Bible verse...

This one's for David Drake.

A sobering morning

UPDATE: Here's the news report. Which, knowing the Express-News, may or may not be entirely accurate.

UPDATE 2: And here is the report from our local county newspaper. See if you can spot spot the bias between the two. Hint: our county newspaper is more accurate.

---

Arrived at church services this morning and the first thing I learned was that an elderly member of our congregation went to the aid of his neighbors, who were victims of a home invasion. This gentle, quiet elderly man was forced to use lethal force with a firearm to protect himself and his neighbors from the invaders.

One of the home invaders died. The other escaped, but was caught later and is now in custody.

I realize that in some parts of the country, such actions would have been frowned upon, but not here. It was obvious that this man was heavily preoccupied and more quiet even than usual, but he was there. It was up to his wife to let everyone know what had happened, because he wouldn't speak of it.

A prayer was led. Some parts of it: "We thank you, Lord, that [name redacted] had the courage to help his neighbors, and that You kept him safe and unharmed. We pray for the grieving families of the one who died, and we pray that somehow, somewhere, this will be a lesson that there are consequences for choosing a life of violence and thievery."

It was the first time I had ever heard such a prayer. I only pray that if I am ever forced into such a situation, my heart is not so hardened that I don't feel grief for the one who died, or for his family. And I hope I have the courage to pray for them, not to curse them.

I think I can help on this one

I got a search hit for "shocked and stunned script monty python." The phrase "shocked and stunned" was used by a Python, but it was not on Monty Python. It was Eric Idle on The Rutles.

Sunday Vintage Pipe Ad, 1906: The Everklean

Another example of the gimmicks people go to to sell pipes. This one had an aluminum tube inside the shank/stem to prevent the smoke and moisture from contacting the actual inside of the pipe. Disassemble, clean the tube, and reassemble. Many years later Falcon, Kirsten and others would drop the pretense and simply create an aluminum-stemmed pipe.

The Gate and the Key

In keeping with my unannounced custom of posting some Cthulhuian graphic every weekend, here is an artist's rendition of Yog-Sothoth. I don't know who the artist was, since the site I found it on didn't credit him/her either.

Yoggy is one of the more interesting Outer Gods, to me. It is the only one besides Nyarlathotep to have more than one form. It's other form is known as 'Umr at-Tawil, or Tawil at-'Umr. In this latter form it appears to be humanoid and is capable of interacting with humans in a not totally malevolent way. It is also said to be "coterminous with all time and space." It seems ripe for use in Lovecraftian sci-fi, yet seems to me to not be exploited for such use as often as it could have been.

The above graphic is not entirely accurate to Lovecraft's original description of it as being "a congeries of iridescent globes." Still, it's a pretty good picture, I think.

This is nitpicky...

But we gunbloggers are always picking out errors made by the MSM regarding guns.

Everyone has (I'm sure) already read about the guy who was walking around a college campus with a Wolf .50 caliber in-line muzzle loader.

I have read a couple of other gunblogs already in which this rifle is referred to as a "musket." I feel compelled to point out that this gun is not a musket. It is a rifle. A musket is a smooth bore--the barrel has no rifling. The Wolf muzzle loader is a modern in-line rifle--with a rifled barrel.

If we are going to be nitpicky about gun errors in the mainstream press, we should be wary of making the same kinds of mistakes ourselves.

The longest ride

From APEM - World Student Press Agency:

It was the last ferry back from the island to Mackinac city. Nearly 100 Ron Paul supporters were waiting on the dock when they were surprised to see Mayor Giuliani appear with his bodyguards walking toward the ferryboat. The crowd started cheering Ron Paul’s name and Mayor Giuliani’s smiling face suddenly turned thunderstruck. Informed that it was the last ferry, Giuliani ended up boarding with those Ron Paul supporters and took the “longest” ferry ride in his life.

The ferryboat was going like the wind, cleaving the waves on the Great Lakes in the inky darkness, as if the Black Pearl in the movie Pirates of Caribbean. Giuliani was “hiding” beneath the window in the captain’s cabinet, with bodyguards standing around him to block the sight. The crowd kept cheering Ron Paul’s name again and again all the way, for almost 20 minutes, many of them were calling their friends and family to give them the play-by-play.

When the ferry reached Mackinac City, Giuliani went out of the captain’s cabinet with a cheering face and offered to shake hands with passengers sitting in the first row but they were reluctant to do so. Afraid of Ron Paul supporters’ enthusiasm, Giuliani got off the fore of the boat, instead of taking the normal path at the stern.

Also on board were FOX News reporters who covered the whole ride with their vidicon, but it wasn’t put on air.

Pretty funny. He has to hide behind his bodyguards because the other passengers were chanting a different candidate's name. What a wimp. And he thinks he can be President?

Via New Liberty Creation.

People of the Gun

A photo I've posted before on the other blog, but I thought with the current meme running around the gunblogosphere it would be a nice time to repost it. The gun is a Hi-Standard 9-shooter in .22.

One of us is an...

Turned up at a reptile center in Pennsylvania. Two heads, six legs, and a combined tail. I suppose it must be excreting its wastes from somewhere, or it would be dead by now.

The people there are trying to think of a name to give it, but they are all really lame. The obvious name would be Pushmi-pullyu, but then I doubt that any of them have actually read Doctor Dolittle.

Via Metro U.K.

Dream blogging

Occasionally I have very realistic, detailed and sometimes what I would even call "epic" dreams. I've never talked about them in public before, but since I don't have anything else to write about, this is one I had last night.

Most of the dream was very confusing and disjointed, as if something had happened to cause me to have amnesia. I understood that I was no longer where I was supposed to be. Something had happened. I was found by a friendly good Samaritan wandering the streets with a small box tucked under my arm. He took me in and took care of me. Through the haze I had the idea that I was in a foreign country, but fortunately this man could speak English.

My condition slowly improved and I started putting some pieces together. I understood that I had somehow been shifted through space and time because of something called the "Deely Incident." I don't know exactly what this was, except that this "incident" is what had put me out of time.

One day the fuzz in my mind finally seemed to clear up, and I picked up a newspaper that my benefactor had brought home. I couldn't read it, but I could tell that it was written in German, and the date on the front page was 1938. I was in Germany.

I was immediately overwhelmed with fear and sadness, not for myself, but for the man who had looked after me. He was young, and looked like a very young Dennis Hopper but clean-shaven and with short hair. I apparently knew who he was, or more accurately, who he would become. I checked my little box that had been found with me to make sure everything was still in it. It contained a Bible printed in 1981 and a checkbook with modern dates written in it, along with a few other items that would have been anachronistic in 1938. Since I knew what was going to happen for the next 70 years, I was pretty sure I could fend for myself, but I was leaving for the States.

I told my care-taker I was leaving. I didn't tell him any details about what I knew would be happening in the next several years, but the last thing I said to him was, "Look, you have to get out of here--out of Europe--and go to America. If you don't, you will die." I walked out of the house, and that's when I woke up.

I wonder if anyone else ever has dreams like this. Maybe I'll try recounting one or two others, if I can remember them well enough and if anyone is interested.

If you write it, they will come...

The Blogonomicon second rule of blogging: No matter how absurd, nonsensical, or obscure you might think something is that you have written, eventually it will be a search hit.

I just got a search hit for "zombie pumpkins."

"What is it to die, but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun."

This is just utterly mind-boggling. It seems some people aren't satisfied with standing atop the world's tallest mountain. Some of them must do it buck nekkid:

Nepalese mountaineering authorities are reportedly outraged that people were ditching their clothes on Mount Everest, which is worshipped by some villagers.

President of Nepal Mountaineering Association Ang Tshering told AP that following last year’s record by a Nepali climber, who claimed the world's highest display of nudity while standing on the 8,850m summit in temperatures about minus 10 degrees Celsius [emphasis added--ed.], restrictions should be implemented.

“There should be strict regulations to discourage such attempts by climbers,” Tshering said.

Tshering also said that villages had also complained to the government about the “obscene” behaviour.

Thousands of climbers had reached the mountain’s summit since it was first conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

I say let 'em do it. And then usher them directly toward Darwin's Queue.

Restrictions? Man, that's funny. If negative 10 degrees C doesn't discourage people from disrobing, will a new law? BWAH HA HA ha ha ha...(choke, sputter). And who's going to enforce it? They're going to have to find a whole new breed of bureaucrat who is tough and/or stupid enough to stand at the top of Everest and hand out nudity citations.

The law of the slippery slope demands that eventually mere nakedidity will not be enough. I can hear it already: "Hey baby, want to summit with me?"

UPDATE: To respond to comments. Climbers start out in "groups," more or less. However, by the time they leave the last camp to try and make the summit, the men are getting separated from the boys, so to speak, and the groups tend to straggle out. It's just about an imperative that summiting occurs no later than about 2:00 PM (IIRC). Any later than that, and the climber won't be able to make it back to camp before dark. Get caught out on that mountain that high up after dark, and you are dead. At this point, climbers can't afford to do anything but get their butts up and back down. Anyone who needs help will likely only get it from their guide and their Sherpas. If the guide and/or the Sherpas can't get to them, it is very unlikely that any other climbers will have the experience and fortitude to help anyone else. By midday the line of climbers is so spread out that most of them hit the summit alone.

Also, "help" doesn't always mean help. There isn't a whole lot that can be done for someone who is running behind, except to catch them and turn them around before it's too late. If they stay out too late, like I said, they are dead.

I was being completely facetious about having sex at the summit of Everest. That high up, the body ceases to function correctly because of lack of oxygen. At that point, oxygen bottles keep you alive and conscious, but that's all. There's no extra oxygen for doing anything besides going up and coming back down. Your metabolism can't even work correctly, and for the last couple of days you probably haven't eaten anything other than a few pieces of candy because your body simply can't process food due to oxygen starvation.

Any slight bit of extra weight is discarded. That's why the path to the top is littered with empty oxygen bottles. The weight of an empty bottle or two or three could slow you down enough to get you killed. There has been a movement (of sorts) to discourage this to reduce litter. Some of the more experienced climbers will pick up an empty bottle or two to try and reduce litter, but a large-scale clean-up of the summit is just about impossible. It's the most extreme environment on earth, and any little thing can get you killed. A very few, very experienced climbers have summited without oxygen, but it is not possible to do so for the average climber.

No one is going to "steal" someone's clothes to prevent them from getting naked at the summit. It would mean more weight to whoever took the clothes, and it would be a certain death sentence to whoever was left exposed. No one is likely to want any "reward" because taking the clothing from someone would certainly cause one death (the naked person's), and possibly two (your own).

For plenty of details about what it's really like to climb Everest, I recommend Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

Huh

I just had to look up "defenestration." I've read the word before, but I was never clear on what it actually meant, except that it must be something bad.

It only means, "the act of throwing someone or something out a window."

That's one word that sounds a lot worse than its definition. I always thought it had something to do with disembowelment.

Something for cat haters

Cat math:

And for cat-haters who also hate bagpipes:


Both from The Second Official I Hate Cats Book by Skip Morrow (published 1981).

I am not a cat hater, in fact I like cats (I like bagpipe music too), but this book is funny. My wife picked it up at a used book store yesterday. It took me only a few minutes to flip through, but I was laughing the whole time. I'll probably post more of them sometime when I run out of anything else to say.

Wednesday Vintage "Gun" Ad, 1947: Beech Bonanza

Actually an ad for the Beech Bonanza airplane, it uses the comparison with the Colt revolver as an "equalizer." I snagged this one from the internet, and whoever uploaded it cropped it too close--that's not my crop.

Oh yeah, and Walter Beech was obviously a pipe smoker.

Where's my cash?

Why didn't the rest of y'all tell me we were supposed be getting paid for this? That's what Laura Washington says:

Through organizing, the Internet, and plunking down plenty of cold hard cash, the gun lobby has proven it is ready for primetime. Meanwhile, its opponents are languishing in the wee-hours of late-night local cable.

I know I'm small potatoes, but man, I figure my "lobbying" should worth at least a couple hundred bucks.

Saved by the cell phone

More about Giuliani and his cell phone escape technique at Red Pills:

Last April 9, NewsMax reported that Giuliani was attending a roundtable discussion with heavy-hitter Republicans at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. Two of the three co-hosts were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

One participant started to ask a question about Iraq.

“In the middle of the question, Mayor Giuliani’s personal cell phone rang, and he answered it,” a participant said. “At first, I think people thought he was kidding. But then he just started talking, and without looking up or saying anything to us, he just got up, left the room, and never came back!

Everyone waited about 20 minutes, and then the room started to break up. It was bizarre behavior.”

Genes no longer the center of the genome universe

At The Boston Globe (might have to use BugMeNot):

For half a century, the core concept in biology has been that every cell carries within its nucleus a full set of DNA, including genes. Each gene, in turn, holds coded instructions for assembling a particular protein, the stuff that keeps organisms chugging along.

As a result, genes were assigned an almost divine role in biological "dogma," thought to govern not only such physical characteristics as eye color or hair texture, but even much more complicated characteristics, such as behavior or psychology. Genes were assigned blame for illness. Genes were credited for robust health. Genes were said to be the source of the mutations that underlay evolution.

But the picture now emerging is more complicated, one in which illness, health, and evolutionary change appear to be the work of almost fantastical coordination between genes and swaths of DNA previously written off as junk.

...and...

"The picture that's emerging" of how living cells actually operate and evolve "is so immensely more complicated than anyone imagined, it's almost depressing," Rigoutsos said.

The more we know, the more we don't know. A pattern that will continue, I daresay, until we finally realize that what we don't know is indeed infinite.

As usual, read the whole thing.