Lego eclipse predictor

Tonight's Lego recreation of an ancient Greek astronomical device, the Antikythera Mechanism:

From the video's description:

The Antikythera Mechanism: ... is the oldest known scientific computer, built in Greece at around 100 BCE. Lost for 2000 years, it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901. But not until a century later was its purpose understood: an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision. 

In 2010, we built a fully-functional replica out of Lego. ...

More on the Antikythera Mechanism:

The Antikythera mechanism (pronounced /ˌæntɨkɨˈθɪərə/ ANT-i-ki-THEER-ə or pronounced /ˌæntɨˈkɪθərə/ ANT-i-KITH-ə-rə), is an ancient mechanical computer[1][2] designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–01 from the Antikythera wreck,[3] but its complexity and significance were not understood until decades later. It is now thought to have been built about 150–100 BCE.[citation needed] The degree of mechanical sophistication is comparable to a 19th century Swiss clock.[4] Technological artifacts of similar complexity and workmanship did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.[5]

Jacques-Yves Cousteau visited the wreck for the last time in 1978,[6] but found no more remains of the Antikythera Mechanism. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the most recent study of the mechanism said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully...in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."[7][8]

The device is displayed in the Bronze Collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, accompanied by a reconstruction made and donated to the museum by Derek de Solla Price. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana, the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York, and in Kassel, Germany.

Not your average touchdown

Tonight's game-winning touchdown - Division III schools Trinity v. Millsap, with Trinity down 2 points, with 2 seconds and 60 yards to go:



[Via Eric Sammons' The Divine Life blog]

Good doggie

Tonight's ode to dogs video:

NYC by RCV FPV

Tonight's remote control vehicle (RCV) first person view (FPV) video of the Big Apple, including the Brooklyn and Verazzano Bridges, around Downtown Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty:




And here's a video interview with the pilot of the RC plane:

America's smartest woman

Tonight's humor:

An airplane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board, but only 4 parachutes. The first passenger said, “I am President Obama, the chosen one. The world needs me, I can’t afford to die.” So he took the first parachute and left the plane.

The second passenger, Nancy Pelosi, said, “I am the Speaker of the House. And I am the smartest woman in American history, so America ’s people don’t want me to die.” She took the second parachute and jumped out of the plane.

The third passenger, John Kerry, said, “I’m a Senator, and a decorated war hero from the Navy of the United States of America .” So he grabbed the parachute next to him and jumped.

The fourth passenger, ex-President George W. Bush, said to the fifth passenger, a 10-year-old schoolgirl, “I have lived a full life, and served my country the best I could. I will sacrifice my life and let you have the last parachute.”

The little girl said, “That’s okay, Mr. President. There’s a parachute left for you. America's 'Smartest Woman' took my backpack.”

:)

What you ought to know

Tonight's spelling matters video:

Halftime report: Big Fat Zero scores a big fat zero

Today's halftime scorecard, from Bill Whittle, on the Big Zero's record:




[Via Karl Denninger]

Winter wonderland

Tonight's remote-controlled model plane video trip through the snowy countryside:

It’s a bird, it’s a plane ...

Actually, it's a guy with a wingsuit. Tonight's wingsuit video - Halvor Angvik does some wingsuit jumps in the Romsdalen and Eikesdalen area of Norway:

Malkin: The progressive "climate of hate:" An illustrated primer, 2000-2010

Via Karl Denninger, comes this recap of the Left's history of violence-tinged rhetoric:

The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.

They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.

Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.

And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.

They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it. ...

Read it all here. A good reminder as we hear the Left try to spin the Tucson mass shooting as the work of some "right-wing extremist".

Onion rings

Tonight's food recipe - Onion rings, courtesy Chef John Mitzewich:



Yum. Get the ingredient quantities here.

Dependence Day

From Mark Steyn, writing at The New Criterion, on the decline of America:

If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.

In the days when I used to write for Fleet Street, a lot of readers and several of my editors accused me of being anti-British. I’m not. I’m extremely pro-British and, for that very reason, the present state of the United Kingdom is bound to cause distress. So, before I get to the bad stuff, let me just lay out the good. Insofar as the world functions at all, it’s due to the Britannic inheritance. Three-sevenths of the G7 economies are nations of British descent. Two-fifths of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are—and, by the way, it should be three-fifths: The rap against the Security Council is that it’s the Second World War victory parade preserved in aspic, but, if it were, Canada would have a greater claim to be there than either France or China. The reason Canada isn’t is because a third Anglosphere nation and a second realm of King George VI would have made too obvious a truth usually left unstated—that the Anglosphere was the all but lone defender of civilization and of liberty. In broader geopolitical terms, the key regional powers in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived—from Australia to South Africa to India—and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you’re better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados? ...

Read the rest here.

Hot Wheels Superhighway

Tonight's Hot Wheels mega-track:

Shopping

Tonight's shopping cart dexterity:

Go ahead, take a head start

Tonight's fast car video, from BBC's Top Gear -- a street car, rally race car, and a Formula 1 car do a lap of the Grand Prix racetrack at Silverstone, England:




And here's a matchup between a McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 car vs. a Mercedes DTM racecar, and Mercedes CLK 63 AMG and C350 street cars:

Places to visit

Tonight's world traveler destination - New Zealand:




[Via The Nomad Lawyer]

Obama's busing plan

Tonight's transportation satire, from The Onion:

Urban decay: Detroit in ruins

Today's photo essay - photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's document the dramatic decline of the Motor City:

The ruined Spanish-Gothic interior of the United Artists Theater in Detroit. The cinema was built in 1928 by C Howard Crane, and finally closed in 1974.  Photo: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

East Side Public Library.  Photo: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

See the rest here. The urban decay of a failed city. Interestingly, Detroit has been run -- right into the ground, apparently -- by Democrat mayors for the last 48 years or so -- almost a half century; you have to go all the way back to 1961 for the last time the city's residents elected a Republican mayor.


On a related note, read Karl Denninger's New Year's musings, Part 1, and Part 2.

The joy of stats - 200 countries, 200 years, in 4 minutes

Tonight's data visualization video, from the BBC - the income and life expectancy of 200 countries, over 200 years:

A look back at the Space Shuttle program

Tonight's space travel video - a compilation of Space Shuttle video, produced by Matt Melis of the Glenn Research Center, and narrated by Matt Melis with Kevin Burke.

According to the video's description:

... This compilation of film and video presents the best of the best ground-based Shuttle motion imagery from STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions. Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the Shuttle imaging team and the 30yrs of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program. ...

Speedflying

Tonight's winter adventure - speedflying in the Swiss Alps near Wengen, Switzerland:

10,000 resolutions

From Paul Tripp, writing at Desiring God blog:

I've told the story many times of talking impatiently with my wife one Sunday morning and having my nine year old son interject—

Daddy, is this the way a Christian man should be talking to his wife?

Rather sarcastically I said,

What do you think?

and he replied,

It doesn't make any difference what I think, what does God think?

I went to my bedroom and two thoughts immediately hit me. First, my pride reared up. I want to be a hero to my son and I was embarrassed that he had been troubled by my attitude and words. But that didn't last very long. I soon thought, "How could it be that God could love me so much that he would give a twit of care about this mundane little moment in the Tripp bathroom?"

That's love at a level of magnificence that I am unable to capture with words. This was but one moment in one room in one house of one family, on one block on one street in one neighhborhood, in one city in one state in one country on one continent, in one hemishpere on one globe in the universe. Yet God was in that moment, working to continue his moment-by-moment work of transforming the heart of this man.

...

Most of us won't be written up in history books. Most of us only make three or four momentous decisions in our lives, and several decades after we die, the people we leave behind will struggle to remember the event of our lives. You and I live in little moments, and if God doesn't rule our little moments and doesn't work to recreate us in the middle of them, then there is no hope for us, because that is where you and I live. ...

Read the rest here.

Happy New Year

Wishing everyone a blessed and prosperous 2011, filled with the Lord's Peace and Grace.

Today's display of joyful exuberance to start the New Year, with over 33 million views on YouTube -- Where the Hell is Matt?



The song used in the video is Praan, by Gary Schman.

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude -- the obligatory Auld Lang Syne, on this New Year's Eve:

Farewell to Kodachrome days

Tonight's end-of-an-era tribute -- Paul Simon's 1973 hit, Kodachrome. Via Denninger, we learn from CBS News that the last film lab in the world to process Kodachrome, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, is processing its last roll of Kodak's legendary color transparency film today. Kodak had announced last year, in June 2009, that it was discontinuing the film after 74 years. Dwayne's Photo is apparently the last lab -- anywhere -- to process it.

From the CBS Story:

"It's going to be really sad day, it was an important part of our business and Kodachrome was an important part of the history of all of photography," Grant Steinle said. "To know it was the first consumer color film that was available. Lots of really iconic images of the 20th century were captured on Kodachrome."

Steve McCurry captured one - the 12-year Afghan girl on the cover of National Geographic in 1984. Actually, he captured two, when he returned to Afghanistan and found her 17 years later.

"Kodachrome was my mainstay film, this was the main film I used for 30 year," McCurry said. "I have about 800,000 Kodachrome transparencies in my archive, maybe more, and this was probably the greatest film ever made."

When Kodak announced it was discontinuing Kodachrome last year, he had an idea.

"I called my contacts, my friends at Kodak and said you know I'd really like to get the last roll and do a project with it to kind of honor this passing of this iconic film," he said.

He picked a region in India where he'd come across the perfect subjects.

"I decided to pick a community which was disappearing," he said. "It was a nomadic community which I spent a week with and traveled with them and photographed their way of live because again, like Kodachrome their way of life is vanishing."

He used most of the last roll of Kodachrome ever made, but saved just a couple of frames, which he shot in parsons just before dropping the film off at Dwayne's.

The very last image ever made with Kodachrome is a civil war cemetery in Parsons, Kan.

"I was going to the lab in the next 15 or 20 minutes and I drove past the cemetery and I thought this would be a sort of perfect ending to the roll of Kodachrome - a cemetery," McCurry said. "It's a passing of an era." ...

The end of an era, indeed.

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Celtic Woman performs Amazing Grace:

Old rockstar songs

Tonight's musical humor - comedian Tim Hawkins sings the songs old rock stars will be singing in their old age:

New Jersey town spends over $17,000 to defend $5 fee it charged resident .. and loses

Today's no-wonder-your-state's-broke story comes from the Garden State, where the town of Bridgewater spent more than $14,000 in legal fees to defend a $5 fee it charged resident Tom Coulter for a CD of a town council meeting. The town lost its fight, and had to pony up another $3,500 for Mr. Coulter's legal fees, along with a $4.04 refund for the overcharge on the CD.

Read it here. So, $17,504.04 of the taxpayers money down the tubes. Hey, it's not like New Jersey is in financial straits, or anything, right? Obviously, $17K is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in the hole New Jersey's government at all levels is in, but it speaks to the kind of contempt that their politicians have for their taxpayers money, that they would spend waste that kind of money over a $5 matter.

But for the most part that's representative of socialist governments, always happy to waste other people's hard-earned money. Then act surprised when the money runs out.

Ball in a box, spud edition

Tonight's culinary carving:

A Christmas story

Today's inspirational story, from the Boston Globe:

MELROSE — Everybody was waiting for Rudy.

On Tuesday night, Patty and Rick Parker were in their cramped kitchen with their 8-year-old son Ben. Dinner was over. Bedtime was near.

Ben’s twin brother, Sammy, lay on a cot in the narrow hallway just outside the kitchen. Unable to see or speak or control his limbs, he coughed or let out a little moan every now and then. Rick and Patty took turns feeding Sammy, who has cerebral palsy, through a stomach tube. He cooed when they kissed his face or stroked his cheek, and when they cooed back, he opened his mouth into a wide, joyful O.

A few feet away was the narrow, winding stairway that is the family’s biggest burden lately.

Which is where 17-year-old Rudy’s simple, life-changing act of kindness comes in.

Until recently, Rick carried Sammy up those 14 stairs to his bedroom each night. But a few months ago, Rick had major surgery for a life-threatening heart condition, and now he can’t lift much at all, let alone a 75-pound child.

“We thought Rick was going to die, and we were terrified,’’ Patty recalled. “We knew right away he had to stop carrying Sam.’’

Patty couldn’t carry him, either. Desperate, she called her pediatrician, who put her in touch with Elizabeth Paquette, the nurse at Malden Catholic High School. Paquette said she’d take care of it. The boys at Malden Catholic are taught to embrace service: She’d find plenty of students to help.

Rudy Favard was the first kid Paquette came across after that call. At Malden Catholic on a partial scholarship from the Catholic Schools Foundation, this son of Haitian immigrants was one of Paquette’s treasures. The linebacker, cocaptain of the football team and honor roll student was always willing to lend a hand.

The nurse had barely begun telling Rudy about the Parkers before he said he’d help. Another boy would fill in for Rudy on game nights. And a third boy was on standby in case neither of the others could make it.

When Paquette brought the boys to meet the family for the first time, the Parkers cried. ...

Read the rest here.

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Canon Rock:

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a merry, and very blessed Christmas!

Tonight's Christmas musical interlude - Sir Colin Davis conducts the London Symphony Orchestra, with Susan Gritton, Sara Mingardo, Mark Padmore, Alastair Miles and the Tenebrae choir performing For Unto Us a Child is Born from Handel's Messiah:

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Faith Hill's rendition of Joy to the World:

Conan the horseman

Tonight's horse story - Conan O'Brien visits Martha Stewart's ranch in New York:

Casteller

Tonight's human castles, from Tarragona, Spain:

From the video's description:

In the city of Tarragona, Spain, castellers gather every two years to see who can build the highest, most intricate human castles. This uniquely Catalan tradition requires astonishing strength, finesse, and balance. Not to mention courage.

Musical interlude

Tonight's festive Christmas lights and musical interlude, from a house in Frisco, TX (from a Christmas 2005 display). The song is Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Wizards in Winter:

Simulated driving

Tonight's advanced automobile simulator:

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Carol of the Bells, by male a cappella group Straight, No Chaser:



And Andrea Bocelli sings Angels We Have Heard On High:




[Both via Aggie Catholics]

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Earl Scruggs and Steve Martin do a little Foggy Mountain breakdown:

Sleepless (and Icy) in Seattle

Tonight's icy road video -- from a snow/ice storm last month, on Seattle's John Street in Capitol Hill according to the video's description:

A mugger's Christmas story

Today's video Christmas card, from Tiger Valley, a firearms training facility in Texas [hat tip: Tom O.]:

What's that you say?

Tonight's speech perception video - the McGurk effect:

A few Christmas lights

Tonight's Christmas lights compilation:

When lawyers take Viagra

Tonight's lawyer humor:

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus performs 'Behold the Lamb of God' from Handel's Messiah:

The turbo entabulator

Tonight's gobbledygook explanation - the Turbo Entabulator:

Fisherdog

Tonight's K-9 fishing video:

San Francisco

Tonight's tilt-shift video - scenes from San Francisco:

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Silent Night, by Celtic Woman live at the Helix Center in Dublin, Ireland:

Floating green

Tonight's unusual golf green - the floating green at Coeur d'Alene Resort golf course in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho:

That's Mistress Sarah to you, Left Wingers

Zombie over at Pajamas Media gives his take on the Left's obsession with Sarah Palin:

Why are liberals obsessed with Sarah Palin?

Because she is their dominatrix.

I posit that American liberal men are, as a group, masochists in search of a sadist. Sarah Palin at first walked into the dominant role completely unwittingly, but once she grasped the erotic control she wielded over her opponents, she became not quite as unwitting about it as some may think.

Sexual kinks are a peculiar thing: they often make no logical sense to an outsider who does not share the fetish. How can liberals denounce Sarah Palin as a Nazi and a bitch and an idiot yet simultaneously harbor a masturbatory fascination with her?

Read it here.

8Pen

Tonight's text input interface:

I guess you could call it a kalamari impersonator

Tonight's unusual sea creature - the Mimic Octopus:

Weimar, an anecdote

Today's hyperinflationary anecdote, from Alex Nevalainen at Coinflation.com, who quotes the following story from Max Shapiro's The Penniless Billionaires (now out-of-print) on the hyperinflation that hit the Weimar Republic in 1922-23:

CHAPTER FIVE
The German Hyperinflation, 1922-1923

In the autumn of 1923, Lott Hendlich, a German widow in her fifties, returned to her native Frankfurt after an absence of more than four years in Switzerland. In 1919 she had gone to spend a few pleasant weeks in a Swiss village where her relatives lived. But almost immediately, Frau Hendlich broke her hip in a fall. During her long convalescence her chronic cough became worse, and the doctor attending her advised her that she was suffering from advanced tuberculosis. The months and years of her illness dragged on interminably even though her relatives were genuinely solicitous (they insisted on defraying all her expenses, including the fees of her doctor). At last, in September 1923, she was "cured" and considered well enough to return home. Her much longed-for homecoming soon became a nightmare.

In the stack of accumulated mail she found three letters from her bank; they delineated her ruin. The first–written in mid-1920 by a minor bank officer who had befriended her–advised her "to invest most of the funds in your rather substantial bank account" (amounting to over 600,000 marks, or the equivalent of more than $70,000 at the exchange rate prevailing in 1919). "It is my judgment," the writer continued, "that the purchasing power of the mark will decline, and I suggest you try to guard against this through some suitable investment which we can discuss when you come into the bank."

The next letter, dated in September 1922, and signed by another officer said, "It is no longer profitable for us to service such a small account as yours. Will you kindly withdraw your funds at the earliest opportunity?"

The third letter, dated several weeks before her return from Switzerland, announced, "Not having heard from you since our last communication, we have closed out your account. Since we no longer have on hand any small-denomination bank notes, we herein enclose a note for one million marks."

With gathering panic Frau Hendlich looked at the envelope that had contained the letter and the million-mark note. She noticed that affixed to it there was a canceled postage stamp of one million marks. Her bank account–which four years before seemed large enough to provide her with a serene existence to the end of her days–had been utterly consumed by inflation and could no longer pay for an ordinary postage stamp.

Got precious metals?

Floating cube

Tonight's optical illusion:

Sportscaster in training

Tonight's sports news recap:

Awesomeness

Tonight's compilation of awesomeness:

Human dummy

Tonight's ventriloquism routine - ventriloquist Paul Zerdin does his routine at Comedy Rocks:

Amateurs in space

Actually, amateur radio operators in space. For those who may not know, the International Space Station (ISS) has an amateur ("ham") radio station, callsign NA1SS. The video below is by Col. Doug Wheelock, ISS Expedition 25 commander, talking to US amateur radio operators down on terra firma:

Please use the white courtesy telephone

Tonight's airport announcement humor:

TSA abuse, compiled

Via Popehat, we learn of the TSA Abuse Blog, which is compiling stories and articles related to the TSA abuses ongoing across the nation.

Also, Reason Magazine has compiled some of the "mainstream" media's editorial positions on government-approved sexual assault, aka TSA's "enhanced pat downs": Editorial Boards to the Little People Complaining About the TSA: Bend Over and Take it Like a Man!

Finally, definitely go read Popehat's post on the matter here: The TSA’s Junk Gets Fluffed, which juxtaposes Passengers' Stories of Recent Travel collected by the ACLU, with some op-ed quotes from the Left-wing extremist, aka "mainstream", media.

The ACLU's take on the over 900 passenger complaints it has received:

Recurring themes in these reports include:
• The searches are extremely invasive
• Many travelers are reporting intense feelings of violation and humiliation
• Some report being physically hurt by the searches
• Some feel their searches are punitive
• Reports of gawking by agents
• Reports of seemingly unnecessary repeated touching of intimate areas
• Many vow not to fly any more
• Any traveler may be forced to undergo one of these searches

The TSA: Keeping you "safe", one scrotum and vagina at a time.

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - OK Go's This Too Shall Pass, filmed with the Notre Dame Marching Band:



And the band's more widely viewed version of this song:

Random act of culture

Tonight's random act of culture - a flash mob of over 100 singers sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah at the Seaway Mall in Welland, Ontario, Canada on Nov 13th:

Would you like fries with that?

Tonight's fast food order:




According to the video description, this was not staged, and the Taco Bell order taker got the order (almost) all right.

Daily Bell: Oath-Keeper Stewart Rhodes on the rise of authoritarianism and how law enforcement can take a stand for freedom

Today's reading, from the Daily Bell - Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, interviewed by the Daily Bell. An excerpt:

Daily Bell: Do law enforcement officials perceive the problems that you perceive? How many? The majority? What do the FBI and the ATF think of your organization? Have you heard from them?

Stewart Rhodes: Many rank and file police officers understand what is going on, and are very much aware of how the Bill of Rights has been relentlessly eroded. I don't know what percentage are awake. I'd like to say it was half, but I think it is less than that. But that is the point of my organization – to wake them up, and the percentage that are awake and aware, and studying the Constitution, is growing. The efforts of Oath Keepers Board Member Sheriff Mack, in particular, are making real headway among the police and sheriffs. In addition to many active duty police and sheriffs personnel who have become members, we now have several current serving police officers within our Oath Keepers state leadership. And for each officer who openly joins Oath Keepers, I think it is safe to say that there are hundred and perhaps thousands more who are of like mind, but who prefer to stay under the radar by not joining. So I can say without a doubt we are making an impact. The same is true among the military.

As for the federal officers, we have not heard directly or officially from the FBI or ATF, but we have heard from FBI agents, through intermediaries, who tell us that many among the rank and file are sympathetic to our position, but they also tell us that the powers that be in Washington are not happy, and would love to try to make us look like a militia, such as the Hutaree, so they can more easily discredit us. We intend to make it hard for them to do that.

One interesting bit of "intel" we got was from someone within the NSA who told us that the "powers that be" are "concerned about the Oath Keepers effect if/when they decide to give certain orders, but have no way to quantify that effect." In other words, we are like an iceberg: there is a very visible, credible "tip" of active duty who have stepped up and signed their John Hancock by joining, but there are many more who have not joined, and are thus the great mass under the surface that is hard to quantify. "They" don't, and can't, know how big that mass is until they test it. I like causing that kind of uncertainty in the minds of the self-anointed power elites. Hopefully it will make them hesitate to attempt to pull the plug, thus buying us more time.

Daily Bell: Here are some points you and other Oath Keepers adhere to and some questions regarding these points: You will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. Why not – what makes you believe this will be a problem?

Stewart Rhodes: Once a people are disarmed, they are nearly defenseless against oppression. That is something our forefathers understood, and it was the attempt to disarm them that finally led to the fighting that kicked off our Revolutionary War. Add to that example the many examples since of disarmed populations being tyrannized or even mass-murdered. It is a critical line in the sand that must not be crossed, and not just because our Second Amendment says so, but because it is a violation of the inherit, human right to self preservation, and because the lessons of history show what happens to people who allow themselves to be disarmed. And the wholesale disarmament during Katrina shows that it can, indeed, happen again, right here in America. ...

Read it all here.

Jeep in a jiffy

Tonight's fast mechanics:

Musical interlude

Tonight's post-dinner meditation - George Winston's Thanksgiving:

The lost Thanksgiving lesson

As we move headlong to Communism, John Stossel reminds us of an early Pilgrim lesson:

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.

"So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented," wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, (I) (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land."

In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic. ...

Read the rest here.

Coachella 2010

Tonight's look at the 2010 Coachella Music and Arts Festival held in Indio, California:

TSA - The tip of the Police State spear

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Ben Franklin.

The stories of the TSA sexual assault gropings / perv-scanners continue apace. From Karl Denninger comes this list (with sources):

The following are 22 quotes about enhanced pat downs and TSA groping.  They are presented without commentary because they speak for themselves.  Please share these quotes as widely as possible.  If Americans do not wake up now, when will they ever wake up?….


#1 Blogger Erin Chase:
I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.


#2 ABC News producer Carolyn Durand:
“The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around.”


#3 Wendy James Gigliotti:
“She said ’spread your legs.’ And then she took her full palms and started at my neck and ran all the way down my body, full palms, constant contact. And when she got down to my feet, she was in constant contact from my ankles all the way up to my groin, across my groin, and down the other leg. And she did that twice.”


#4 Female air traveler Ella Swift:
“The female officer ran her hand up the inside of my leg to my groin and she did it so hard and so rough she lifted me off my heels.”


#5 Flight attendant Cathy Bossi:
“She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’.  And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”
...

Please read the full list (22 items, all with linked sources) here. Also available here.

These are nothing less than assaults and batteries on peaceful citizens. Naturally, members of the ruling class such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller thinks TSA head John Pistole is doing "a terrific job".

At some point, red-blooded Americans may decide to implement their own, uh, kinetic response to such travesties. And if that happens, the bloodbath the ruling class seems to keep pushing for will be on. Heaven help us.

Here's Congressman Ron Paul on the TSA [via Karl Denninger's Market Ticker]:



Some of the machines even seem to require that you assume the surrender / "I give up" position:

How appropriate, no?

Back to Back to the Future

Tonight's look back at Back to the Future, an interview with the movie's stars Michael J. Fox and Lea Thompson:

A little privacy, please

Tonight's curious privacy screen - the window of Nicholas Roy's workshop in Berlin, Germany has an motorized curtain that positions itself in front of any passing pedestrians using a video camera and software running on a laptop computer:

Sneaky

Tonight's touchdown play - Driscoll Middle School uses deception to get past the defense:

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Toto's Africa, from their Live in Amsterdam album:

A Gentlemen's Duel

Tonight's aristocrat brawl:

No need for pumping iron or boob jobs in movies anymore

Tonight's movie special effects technology:



Looks a lot like the technology portrayed in the 1981 Michael Crichton film Looker:



Which starred the lovely Susan Dey (sorry, I could only find the French language clip):

Notte Sento

Tonight's short movie, made from 4500 still photographs taken with a Canon EOS 30D:

Musical interlude

Tonight's musical interlude - Duran Duran's Rio:

Bendy Wendy, er, Zlota

Tonight's ultra-bendy girl:

Why Chuck can't get his business off the ground

Today's vast-regulatory-state video:

A random act of culture

Tonight's random act of culture - the Opera Company of Philadelphia and 650 singers perform the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah at Macy's in Center City, Philadelphia:

From the video's description:

On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the Opera Company of Philadelphia brought together over 650 choristers from 28 participating organizations to perform one of the Knight Foundation's "Random Acts of Culture" at Macy's in Center City Philadelphia. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ - the world's largest pipe organ - the OCP Chorus and throngs of singers from the community infiltrated the store as shoppers, and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" at 12 noon, to the delight of surprised shoppers. This event is one of 1,000 "Random Acts of Culture" to be funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation over the next three years. The initiative transports the classical arts out of the concert halls and opera houses and into our communities to enrich our everyday lives. To learn more about this program and view more events, visit www.randomactsofculture.org. The Opera Company thanks Macy's and the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ (www.wanamakerorgan.com) for their partnership, as well as Organ Music Director Peter Conte and Fred Haas, accompanists; OCP Chorus Master Elizabeth Braden, conductor; and Sound Engineer James R. Stemke. For a complete list of participating choirs and more information, visit www.operaphila.org/RAC. This event was planned to coincide with the first day of National Opera Week.

Not so handy, man

Tonight's D-I-Y fail compilation:

Travel Teleprompter

Tonight's iPhone app:

Flyover

In honor of Veterans Day, tonight's NFL pre-game flyover video:

Water rocket

Tonight's water-power video - water-propelled toy rocketry, from Air Command Rockets: