atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#4874: Cool science trick

Using an old digital SLR to detect exoplanets. This was cutting edge astronomy about a decade ago, and now you can do it in your back yard for $100 or so.

That price requires that you have a DSLR camera to begin with, but even so--if you wanted to do this but lacked any of the gear, you could probably get what you needed for under $500.

That's pretty f-ing cool, right there.

* * *

In the "not so cool" department we've got a bunch of nonsense related to Furgeson.

Don Surber espouses the "do not rebuild" idea. That's the rational thing to do, as I stated previously.

*

If a mob of people starts pounding on my vehicle with hammers do you know what I do? I gun it, that's what I do, even if someone's standing in front of it. I quietly turn myself into the police later, of course (once I've secured the services of a lawyer) but there's no way in hell that I'm going to get out and try to reason with them. Why?

Read Larry Correia's piece on self-defense. This part, specifically:
To be legally justified in using lethal force against somebody you need to meet the following criteria.
1. They have the Ability to cause you serious bodily harm.
2. They have the Opportunity to cause you serious bodily harm.
3. They are acting in a manner which suggests they are an Immediate Threat of serious bodily harm.
If your encounter fits these three criteria, then you are usually legally justified in using lethal force.
So let's look at these criteria. There's one of me, many of them, and they are armed with bludgeoning weapons. Ability, check. They are surrounding my vehicle. Opportunity, check. They are hitting my vehicle with hammers. Immediate threat, check.

It doesn't matter if they're white, black, hispanic, or martian; if this kind of mob is surrounding my vehicle and hitting it, I'm out of there even if I have to run them over to escape.

What I am not going to do is voluntarily disarm by getting out of my vehicle. It can be used as a weapon, and this kind of mob is relying on me choosing not to do so.

Never play by their rules.

*

They really are not helping their cause by doing this kind of thing. The big fooraw over the shooting of the so-angelic Michael Brown is spilling over into things that have nothing whatsoever to do with race, and when "protestors" decide to ruin a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, all they do is reduce sympathy for their cause.

Vox Day explains how. It boils down to the old saw about going once too often to the well; like the boy who cried "Wolf!" the incessant howls of "raciss!" are ceasing to have any effect.
...The 60's-instilled white guilt over slavery and white enthusiasm for the civil rights charade is rapidly dissipating in a considerably less white country where tens of millions of Hispanics, Asians, and Arabs simply don't give a quantumn of a damn about blacks or their historical sob story.

"Oh, lawsy, mah great-great-great grandpappy wuz a slave!"

"Qué chingados, cabron. I just got here five minutes ago. What the fuck do I care about your pendejo grandpappy?"

This mass indifference quite naturally causes many whites to wonder why they are expected to feel guilty about the continued inability of Africans to behave, or even to want to behave, like 18th century Englishmen....
The election of Obama has gone a long way towards pulling the fangs from the race-hucksterism of the radical left, because most people have enough sense to understand that the favored meme of the left, the United States is a racist country, is impossible to reconcile with the fact that we elected a black man to be President TWICE IN A ROW.

Most people--people who are not leftist intellectuals--understand that if a black man can be President, there really isn't all that much racism out there; certainly it is not mainstream enough that black candidates for office suffer an electoral liability due to their skin color.

Meanwhile, we are starting to see the communist core of the Furgeson protests as Doug Powers points out here, and I have to say that I am not even remotely surprised by this. I was, in fact, expecting it, because the civil rights movement has long since been captured by the radical left as a way to foment unrest and agitate for "revolution". I mean, the civil rights movement has been superfluous for ten to fifteen years (if not longer) but none of those folks want to have to go find honest work, and to be strictly accurate a lot of the people working in such movements are socialists anyway.

Right-wingers typically spend their college years on income-enhancing education, things like engineering and science and medicine, rather than social studies and basket-weaving. The lefties disdain such pursuits--"I want to make money," they say disparagingly--but once the real world comes calling they have to do something to pay the bills, and if they can get a sinecure at a nonprofit where the most challenging task they face is remembering how to color a rainbow, that's even better. Certainly it beats waiting tables or manning a cash register.

I tend to suspect that every large protest has radical left support behind it because, well, usually it does.

Like this, the big anti-WalMart crap that pops up every so often. The left hates Walmart, because it's the largest retail chain in America, it's non-union, and it supplies the products that people need at reasonable prices.

All of those reasons are related to one important concept: capitalism. Which they hate, because capitalism leaves too much power in the hands of the masses that the leftist purports to speak for. The very people who, in fact, the leftists trod upon as soon as they're securely in power. The boot stomping the human face, that isn't being worn by a Kulak or a Cambodian intellectual or a Jew or a homosexual; it's being worn by the person who told those people that his revolution was for them. But it's not. It never is.

It is always for the guy wearing the boot, to give him the power of life and death over everyone else. And when they tell you otherwise they are lying to you, and they know it. They may rationalize it by telling themselves that they're doing it for your own good, but at the core of all of it is the fact that they want that power, and they'll do whatever it takes to get it.

* * *

As for me, I've got much to do today. I sure am glad I got that sink fixed last night, though.
Subscribe

  • #9706: I am just a little bit overwhelmed

    Tons of stuff in the tab bar today. Working in the Monk's Cell because Mrs. Fungus didn't have today off, and I can't be in the computer room when…

  • #9705: I have to wonder about that

    Reportedly, Netanyahu was upset to learn that the Trump administration was negotiating with Iran without Israel having a representative present. I…

  • #9704: Short shrift again

    Went out to do some shopping and to get dinner, and didn't get home until after bedtime, so I'm going to be cutting this one short. Not too short,…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    When you submit the form an invisible reCAPTCHA check will be performed.
    You must follow the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of use.
  • 0 comments