I barely get this, but this Star Trek lookin' saucer-shaped super gun launches bullets electrically, and delivers, they say, 120,000 rounds per minute.

The bullets don't seem to be merely ignited electrically, which is no big whoop. Seems more like a railgun type thing. Electric propulsion, via centrifuge, not just ignition.

Look how cute this looks:

No heat, no recoil, no sound, no gunpowder, no flash -- just 120,000 rounds per minute of pulverizing power. The next generation of weapons systems has arrived: the DREAD centrifuge-powered weapon system.

DREAD Weapon System
Maximum firepower: Design for the DREAD Weapon System.

By David Crane
Editor, DefenseReview.com

Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee (HMMWV), any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable?

That would really be something, wouldn't it? Some of you might be wondering, "how big would it be," or "how much would it weigh"? Others might want to know what it's ammunition capacity would be. These are all good questions, assuming of course that a weapon like this were actually possible.

According to its inventor, not only is it possible, it's already happened. An updated version of the weapon will be available soon. It will arrive in the form of a tactically-configured pre-production anti-personnel weapon firing .308 caliber projectiles (accurately) at 2,500-3000 fps, at a variable/programmable cyclic rate of 5,000-120,000 rpm (rounds-per-minute). The weapon's designer/inventor has informed DefRev that future versions of the weapon will be capable of achieving projectile velocities in the 5,000-8,000 fps range with no difficulty. The technology already exists.

The weapon itself is called the DREAD, or Multiple Projectile Delivery System (MPDS), and it may just be the most revolutionary infantry weapon system concept that DefenseReview has EVER come across.

I give this acronym the AEGIS award, which stands for "Acronym Which Has Almost No Letters In Common With The Phrase It Purports to Represent."

...

The first generation DREAD (production version), derived from the tactically-configured pre-production weapon, will most likely be a ground vehicle-mounted anti-personnel weapon. Military Humvees (HMMV's) and other ground vehicles (including Chevy Suburbans) equipped with the DREAD will enjoy magazine capacities of at least 50,000 rounds of .308 Cal., or 10,000 rounds of .50 Cal. ammo.

Here's a video:

Do I buy this? Not really.

But the gun looks like the Enterprise. That's gotta be worth a multimillion dollar DARPA grant right there.

Thanks to Kin.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (38)
Post contains 488 words, total size 4 kb.

It's from WND, but you can judge for yourselves:

After 33 years of secrecy, the U.S. State Department has finally declassified a document admitting it knew the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, plotted and supervised the murders of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan in 1973, a cover-up first exposed by WND in January 2001.

Yasser Arafat

The document, released earlier this year, with no fanfare, makes it clear the Khartoum operation "was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval" of Arafat, a frequent visitor to the White House throughout the 1990s who died in 2004.

In the attack March 1, 1973, eight members of the Black September terrorist organization, part of Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, stormed the Saudi embassy in Khartoum on Arafat's orders, taking U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, diplomat Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore and others hostage, and one day later, killing Noel, Moore and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid.

The admission comes 33 years after James J. Welsh, then the National Security Agency's Palestinian analyst, saw a communication intercepted from Arafat to his terrorist commandos in Sudan.

Within minutes, Welsh told WND, the director of the NSA was notified and the decision was made to send a rare "FLASH" message – the highest priority – to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum via the State Department.

But the message didn't reach the embassy in time. Somewhere between the NSA and the State Department, someone decided the warning was too vague. The alert was downgraded in urgency.

The declassified document is excerpted at BizzyBlog.

Thanks to Larwyn for tipping me.

Posted by: Ace at 03:03 AM | Comments (39)
Post contains 299 words, total size 2 kb.

eman reflects upon the toxoplasma story:

Makes one wonder just how much of our human nature is really ours, and how much of it is alien behaviors imposed by foreign organisms.

That's it, I'm quitting cat shit today. Well, I'll finish this last batch, then that's it!

Indeed. My quitting date is January 1st. Looking cool at parties just isn't enough to outweight the risks of eating catshit.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 PM | Comments (15)
Post contains 76 words, total size 1 kb.

Check out the first sentence of AP's story.

Brian Bruggeman caused a stink at the Lincoln County Jail earlier this month and will now have to answer for it in court. Another inmate, Jesse Dorris, alleges that Bruggeman's flatulence, passed in close proximity to Dorris, sparked a Dec. 14 fight between the two at the jail.

...

The two began scuffling, County Attorney Jeff Meyer said Tuesday, because Dorris was fed up with Bruggeman's flatulence.

...

Bruggeman, of Hershey, is serving a 90-day sentence for violating a protection order.

It's all adding up.

...

Sheriff Jerome Kramer said the incident was a result of overcrowding.

...

"You just can't get a reprieve from one another," Kramer said. "When you've got a guy causing problems passing gas, there's no way to get away from the smell."

The forcible gay sodomy was bad enough. But what fresh hell is this?

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 PM | Comments (23)
Post contains 156 words, total size 1 kb.

A while ago I linked this article suggesting that schizophrenia may be caused by the cat-borne bacterial parasite toxoplasma gondii. Which makes sense -- maybe those crazy cat-ladies are crazy because of their cats.

When when we last saw Toxoplasma gondii, it was being blamed for causing mice and rats to get themselves killed, in order to perpetuate itself:

This single-celled parasite lives in the guts of cats, sheddding eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host's body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy. That makes good sense for the parasite, since a cat would not be particularly interested in eating a dead rat. But scientists at Oxford discovered that the parasite changes the rats in one subtle but vital way.

...

Then the researchers put Toxoplasma-carrying rats in the enclosure. Rats carrying the parasite are for the most part indistinguishable from healthy ones. They can compete for mates just as well and have no trouble feeding themselves. The only difference, the researchers found, is that they are more likely to get themselves killed. The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn't make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The scientists speculated that Toxoplasma was secreted some substance that was altering the patterns of brain activity in the rats. This manipulation likely evolved through natural selection, since parasites that were more likely to end up in cats would leave more offpsring.

So, back then, they began wondering if the parasite could cause changes in the behavior of humans. The answer may be "yes." Self-destructive, risky behavior, sort of like cats.

A COMMON parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

...

Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.

"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women,'' Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

"Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens''.

I'm convinced that this is the next wave of medicine -- finding how important a part viruses and bacteria play in altering our brain chemistry and hence our behavior and very personalities.

Makes sense to me. These things work on the nano level. If nanotech can build computers one day out of little else but carbon sludge, surely these little nanobugs can cause serious changes in our brains.

Then again, I'm an optimist. I just want to go to a doctor, take a shot, and finally be normal.

Thanks to Marcus.

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 PM | Comments (20)
Post contains 613 words, total size 4 kb.

Idiotic gut-courses offered by the women's, gay, and black studies departments, plus the increasingly stupid history departments at colleges.

Here's one:

Occidental College’s The Phallus covers a broad study on the relation “between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism.”

Skip down about 3/4ths of the way to read the whole thing.

Daddy, you'll be so proud of me! I'm majoring in cock!

Didn't chicks used to just sort of build up credits in that in their spare time?*

* This observation comes not from my own experience, but from watching college sex movies like Hardbodies and Fraternity Vacation.

Posted by: Ace at 05:30 PM | Comments (34)
Post contains 126 words, total size 1 kb.

I didn't get to drop this little anecdote on Hugh Hewitt.

There's an idiot named David Nieuwert who writes an ultralefty blog called Orcinus. He's absolutely convinced this country is about to be taken over by the white power skinhead movement, and he churns out crappy books and crappier blogposts endeavoring to prove this.

He's also a journalist. Sort of. He had some kind of job at MSNBC for a while. What he does now, I don't know.

At any rate, we used to spar on Slate's old Fray forum. He began mocking Jimmy Carter for saying "nook-yoo-lar" rather than the correct "nuke-lee-ar." I offered that this was just a regionalism, that it really didn't reflect on his intelligence. (Other things do, certainly, but not a common mispronunciation.) I then ragged on him for presuming superior expertise on matters nuclear than someone who used to work the nuclear reactors on submarines.

At this point, he began asserting his "expertise" in journalism actually made him an expert of sorts in the fields he reported on.

He actuallly claimed to have an expertise in the law, common, criminal, and constitutional, simply by virtue of the fact he covered some legal stories and interviewed lawyers.

You're as much of an expert in the law as an actual, you know, practicing lawyer?, I asked, incredulously.

I don't know if he claimed that level of expertise, but his answer was definitely in that ballpark -- simply by working as a journalist for a while, he'd managed to pick up, by osmosis, the equivalent a three-year law education and several years of experience in practicing law.

This sort of smug retardation infects reporters, I think. I don't think it's just this Nieuwert moron, or Joseph Rago. I think these people believe that simply because they write a few stories in a field, they become, more or less, experts. Certainly they don't mind playing expert on Chris Matthews or the like.

I think reporters are like the Roman nomenclatura, the aids to senators who would follow them around, whispering into their ears the names of each person the Senator met, so the senators could greet them by name as if they'd remembered.

Reporters know the names of experts, and all the various people in government. Modern day nomenclatura. But they've mistaken this fairly minor bit of rote memorization for an actual working knowlege of the fields they cover. And they seem to get a bit touchy when it's even suggested they're simply non-experts in almost every field (except for the field of journalism itself), and ought not to pretend to be more than that.

It rankles them. They know the names of the main staffers for the Supreme Court justices. Doesn't that mean their opinions on constitutional law ought to be respected?

Well... not really, dude. Not really. Anyone can have an opinion on the law, and most people do. But simply having done some interviews in local criminal cases hardly elevates your expertise above the plebs you like to look down upon.

If you read the transcript of Hewitt's interview with Rago, you find Hewitt straining to find what field Rago might be an expert in, since he belives journalism to be the province of "the experts." Apart from some experience as a rower on a Dartmouth crew team, the search is futile.

So why doesn't Rago follow his own rule -- only experts can offer opinions -- and shut his piehole already?

Because, of course-- he's a journalist. A gen-u-ine, bona fide, instant omniversal expert without portfolio. An expert on whatever he happens to be reading that day, and which he thinks about for an hour or two.

J-school taught him that.

Posted by: Ace at 04:48 PM | Comments (165)
Post contains 623 words, total size 4 kb.

Key quote:

“We can’t resist,” said Musa Abdullahi, 18, who quit his unit after half his comrades were cut down by Ethiopian helicopter gunships. “We thought this fighting would be like the others. It’s not.”

Awesome.

Posted by: Ace at 04:22 PM | Comments (34)
Post contains 52 words, total size 1 kb.

Funny comedy rant about, oddly enough, Pachabel's Canon in D, and how 90% of the songs in the world are just reworkings of it:

From Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 04:19 PM | Comments (24)
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

Who cancelled? Not sure. I'll be talking, as usual, about things I know nothing about.

Posted by: Ace at 04:03 PM | Comments (12)
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.