As always, DefenseTech is interesting and informative.

Hmmmm... Interesting... and informative. I should try something like that here.

Nah. Seems like work. I'll just link DefenseTech.

BLIMPS FOR MARINES IN IRAQ. "The blimps, called the Marine Airborne Re-Transmission Systems (MARTS), will receive signals through a fiber-optic tether. Then, the airships will transmit messages up to 100 miles away, via UHF and VHF frequencies. Troops on the ground, as well as pilots in the air, will be able to communicate through the blimps. "

Uhhhmm... kinda cool, I guess. But can't you put guns and missiles on them, too?

BIONIC ARMS FOR MAIMED SOLDIERS?

I think that pic's from The Empire Strikes Back, but, you know, it's there for illustrative purposes.

Scientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of monkeys and men, and using them to move mechanical arms.

Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a "neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb."

... Darpa wants the robo-arm stat -- in four years or less.

The limb would have to be wired directly into the peripheral nervous system, instead of the brain-controlled arms being demonstrated today, Darpa tells researchers interested in working on this "Revolutionizing Prosthetics" project. Under agency guidelines, the arm will need enough finesse to pick up a raisin or to write in longhand. It needs to be sensitive enough for the wearer to handle day-to-day tasks in the dark. And the limb will have to be strong enough to lift 60 pounds at a time.

DARPA knows this is perhaps overly ambitious, so they're also working on a less difficult, more-easily-achieved prosthetics program as well.

THIS JUST IN: the V22 Osprey continues to suck. And worse yet, it will probably continue killing its pilots.

If only Terri Schiavo had had the Osprey's lawyers.

BLACK BAG. The Pentagon is now spending more in its "black" or secret programs than it has since back in the Cold War year of 1988. This doesn't bother me, but it is a sign o' the times.

And a goofy one to finish things off:

RICK ROM, PRIVATE EYE. If your spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend was having an "affair" with someone in an on-line roleplaying game, what would you do? Laugh it off as harmless fantasy and flirtation, or... would you pay REAL money to FAKE detectives working the "mean streets" of the game world to spy on your beloved and see if there any virtual shenanigans going on?

Some people apparently are doing just that.

More On the Osprey: Dave from Garfield Ridge puts me some f'n' knowlege about the goony-bird which I thought might interest you. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (24)
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Nah, that's not Michael Moore talking about his jihadist buddies in Iraq. That's me talking about the volunteers (or vigilantes, if you're an ACLU sort of dope) now patrolling the southwestern border for illegal immigrants and their jackals and, more importantly, drug smugglers.

The key quote, picked up on radio, regarding jackals' and drug-smugglers' newfound difficulties in making illegal border-crossings: "We Can't Man, Those F***ers are Everywhere!"

Nice. Not only are they preying on human desperation and bringing drugs (and narcoterrorist gangsters) into our country, but it turns out they're a bunch of damned potty-mouths to boot. And I can't abide that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:33 AM | Comments (21)
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Napoleon Dynamite is a funny and charming film, if a tad overrated by its most-enthusiastic supporters. It's the comedic Donnie Darko of last year.

Idaho is proud of the film because it was made by Idahoans and, they think, showcases their magical state to good effect ("Idaho-- land of llamas and maladjusted hyperdorks"). So there's a bill in the Idaho state congress to honor the film:

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 29


BY WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE


CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

STATING LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND COMMENDING JARED AND JERUSHA HESS AND THE

CITY OF PRESTON FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THE MOVIE "NAPOLEON DYNAMITE."



Be It Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Idaho:


WHEREAS, the State of Idaho recognizes the vision, talent and creativity
of Jared and Jerusha Hess in the writing and production of "Napoleon Dynamite"; and

WHEREAS, the scenic and beautiful City of Preston, County of Franklin and
the State of Idaho are experiencing increased tourism and economic growth; and

WHEREAS, filmmaker Jared Hess is a native Idahoan who was educated in the
Idaho public school system; and

WHEREAS, the Preston High School administration and staff, particularly
the cafeteria staff, have enjoyed notoriety and worldwide attention; and

WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's
most famous export; and

WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered
multiethnic relationships; and

WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation; and...

Okay, you get the basic idea of the silliness going on here. This continues for, like, a bazillion whereases. Let's skip ahead to the good part.

WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the members of the First Regular Session of the Fifty-eighth Idaho Legislature [that this is a good movie and we're very proud of it. Maybe a little too proud].

Will this bill pass? The Idaho Majority Whip has confidence. Although he did think there would be a few legislators abstaining or voting no, he expected the majority of the House to vote an enthusiastic Shyeahhh!!

Thanks for the tip to RobR, who got it off MSNBC's "Clicked" feature.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (19)
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Not a bounce in their own numbers, but something more important to them: a negative bounce in Bush's. Powerline ponders how so many things can be going right for America, and therefore, on paper at least, for Bush's poll position, and hits upon as good a theory as I've seen:

[Bush's] poll numbers are down. Pundits attribute this to gas prices, the Terri Schiavo dispute, the social security debate, etc. I think the answer lies in the fact that people aren't paying much attention to politics, and thus are defaulting to the tenor of MSM spin. This hypothesis is probably impossible to test, but I rely in part on the phenomenon of the convention "bounce."

Conventions represent one of those moments when America (a) pays some attention to politics and (b) gets a much less MSM-filtered view of the world. Thus, the extent to which a party or does or does not get a convention bounce can be instructive. Last summer, the Democrats got essentially no bounce from their convention. Like others, I suggested that this was due to the fact that their message already had been widely promoted by the MSM. A few weeks later, President Bush received, as I recall, more than a 5 percentage point bounce from the Republican convention. He did not obtain this bounce on any spectacularly good news the Republicans were able to tout. He obtained it, I think, because, with a bit of reflection, people realized that on most fronts (the economy and the overall war on terror) things were going reasonably well.

Bush has an odd relationship with the polls. When Iraq began to look like the quagmire the MSM so fervently desired it to be, Bush nevertheless won an election that was largely a referendum on his decision to invade (a decision, remember, that a majority of Americans considered a mistake around the time of the election).

And with freedom advancing and the economy continuing on the mend, his poll numbers still continue to sag.

I think that the poll numbers largely reflect a general disatisfaction with the situation America finds itself in -- forced to fight a war that not even the most warmongering neocons among us really wanted to fight, if we'd had our druthers (and, of course, had the towers not been felled) -- but the public still approves, by a small majority I think, of Bush's gut in handling this difficult situation.

Posted by: Ace at 07:22 AM | Comments (5)
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Frist to finally push for the "nuclear option."

Breaking on Drudge, but RiehlWorld has the story too, plus excerpts and commentary, and you know what?

The hell with Drudge. He never links me.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 PM | Comments (49)
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The original hypothetical question, with a surprisingly detailed and thought-out set of rules.

CONTENT WARNING on this. The Decadent West provides his own battle plan for taking out as many of the li'l bastards as possible in a fight. The WARNING is there for both language and, well, explaining precisely what horrid violence he will visit upon these marauding tykes.

Via The Great Allah, but tipped by JSU.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 PM | Comments (24)
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WARNING: TRAIN WRECK IN PROGRESS.

Posted by: Ace at 08:13 PM | Comments (64)
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It was just an coughInternetcough "radio" appearance.

No one died.

No documents were secreted into anyone's pants and then later cut up with scissors.

No one had to say "Better put some ice on that."

I'm still learning this radio dealio. If it wasn't what you'd hoped for, it's my fault-- well, my fault, and the fact that I'm not in control. Not my show. Not my sensibility.

On the plus side, the t-shirts are AWESOME!

By the Way:

I said "dick" and I think I called myself a "pussy," but I was told that they were allowed to say "cock," for crying out loud.

Someone thought I said "fisting." NOOO! I said, "FisKing," the snarky way of responding to an article, after Robert Fisk. I have said a dozen times on this blog I hate that word and consider it too cutesy.

Last: Did I, or did I not, say "fuck"? The engineer read me the riot act during the first break, saying he had multiple witnesses to it. I guess maybe I did; but I can't remember saying it, and someone else I talked to never heard me say it either.

Am I crazy? Or are they? I don't remember dropping an f-bomb. But maybe I did.

Update: I did drop the f-bomb, possibly twice, but everything, I think, should be copacetic.

It just wasn't a very good show. Ah, well.

Posted by: Ace at 02:50 PM | Comments (76)
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Gossip, but relevant:

WHEN U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (above) spoke Tuesday night at NYU's Vanderbilt Hall.... "One gay student asked whether government had any business enacting and enforcing laws against consensual sodomy. Following Scalia's answer, the student asked a follow-up: 'Do you sodomize your wife?' The audience was shocked, especially since Mrs. Scalia [Maureen] was in attendance. The justice replied that the question was unworthy of an answer."

I'll take that as a "yes."

Good on ya, Maureen.

I agree almost down the line with Scalia's approach to adjudication and constitutional theory, but I do have one double-secret probation caveat to this sort of thing.

It's this:

If a law is not being enforced, if everyone knows it's not being enforced, if the law in question purports to outlaw stuff that an awful lot of people do, and the only thing keeping the law on the books is a somewhat dysfunctional legislative process (look, no one is especially eager to co-sponsor the "Sodomy is Fun Bill"), I have to say I don't mind the courts stepping in and simply acknowledging reality and voiding the law.

This isn't precisely analagous, but there was a debate between the "formalists" and "realists" a long time ago. The formalists said things like, "Well, if the boilerplate of a contract (i.e., the stuff that no one reads and no one negotiates) is in fact part of the contract, then it should be treated as binding."

The realists argued (and ultimately successfully, by and large), that we should look to actual business practices, not legal formalism, to resolve these questions. And if the reality was that businesses were simply not reading the boilerplate nor negotiating the boilerplate, then a true "meeting of minds" had not taken place as regards those provisions, and the boilerplate should be dismissed as what it was in reality -- i.e., more or less total bullshit.

This was not, by the way, a left-right argument (although, yes, the right does prefer bright-line rules, as does Scalia, as do I). It was just a question of whether or not law should seek to emulate real world practices, or real world practices should be forced to comport with legalistic formalism.

Now, that is not actually a Constitutional point, so that's why I say it's not really perfectly analogous with the recent ruling striking down soldomy rules. But the basic spirit of it -- Are we going to just keep goofy laws on the book and pretend they're real laws when we know full well they're not? -- I do think can be used on occasion to void a goofy law (although, of course, Justices can't strike down a law on the basis of "invidious goofiness;" they have to come up with some alternate, acceptable theory for doing so).

Let's be honest: sodomy also includes, err, stuff involving the mouth, to put it delicately. Are we really, at this point in 2005, saying that we need some laws on the books, "as a nod to conventional morality," banning the practice of a bit of oral stimulation?

I don't doubt there are a lot of people who refuse to engage in oral sodomy based on strongly-held principles. We call these people "wives."

But most of the rest of us have, yeah, engaged in this horrible immoral practice from time to time, and it's just f'n' silly for us to go on pretending that we really believe it is, or ought to be, deemed a criminal act.

I'm not talking about a phoney-fakey "national consensus" like the one Kennedy concocted recently to claim that the Constitution forbade the execution of vile murderers who just happened to have killed just shy of their 18th birthday.

But I gotta say, on this one, I think there really is a national consensus, whether we're all comfortable admitting it or not.

That said-- Antonin Scalia slices like a hammer. Generally.

Correction/Clarification/Update: Michael cautions that what I said about "boilerplate" not holding is sort of, well, wrong.

I simplified in my haste. I was talking about a problem that occurs when businessmen keep sending back modified contracts to each other, each containing their OWN boilerplate (which of couse always favors themselves).

There was a question over which of these various contracts should be held as the real one; a doctrine evolved that the LAST contract should be considered the binding one. This is how these "battles of the forms" were handled.

The formalist/realist debate on this question wasn't so much over whether or not boilerplate should be recognized as binding, but WHOSE boilerplate. Should the last contract signed be considered authoritative, even if no one really negotiated those terms? Why not the first contract? Why put any emphasis at all on a particular version of the contract when, in reality, the boilterplate was never really negotiated?

The UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) attempted to deal with this issue, hewing more closely to the realist position than the formalist, and provided default terms for cases where key terms had not, in fact, been truly agreed upon.

Anyway. Loose shit. If you're reading this blog for contractual advice, you really are the slobbering retards I always imagined you were.

I don't do this for a living. This is, like, new to me.

Posted by: Ace at 02:08 PM | Comments (107)
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Well, I told ya. You can't say I'm not straight with you.

At least as far as I'm concerned, it went okay. Quite frankly, I was more interested in discussing the social con-libertarian split, which we never got to. Stuff about yourself is sooooo boring.

As for bringin' the funny? Well, look, I blog stuff specifically when I see a funny angle. I'm not quite able to come up with funny stuff about any old topic that's thrown at me. And I also don't want to be That Guy, the guy who just strains to make a joke for every single question asked (although I did try a bit, to indifferent effect).

I thought the hosts did okay. The trouble is, they really didn't know what to ask me. I assured them I was able to offer glib opinions on most matters, but I guess they considered me a bit of retard and thus unable to field anything more involved than "Do you like puppies? If so, why? If not, why not?"

Again:

I don't do this for a living. This is all, like, new to me.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (208)
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