The Physics of Batman

Cool. 

The Physics of Batman | Popular Science.

Fred lives again!

If you’re a principled conservative, I’m sure you’ve been anxious to hear what became of Fred Thompson since dropping out of the GOP primary race. He was one of the few candidates capable of expressing conservative beliefs, though his dislike for the daily march of a campaign doomed him in the every-second-counts media race.

Well, he’s turned up at Townhall.com. And I couldn’t be happier to hear from him. A sampling:

• Townhall.com::Blog
  Now isn’t the time for conservatives to be looking for a tailored message or a politically expedient route to victory if the end result is going to be the inevitable slide toward the liberalization and secularization of America, and the growth of government and loss of freedom that inevitably ensues. For us conservatives it must be about principles and policies that are grounded in freedom, free markets and the rule of law.

It’s good to have you back, Mr. Thompson.

PETA activists try to suck fun out of circus

James Taranto mentioned a story in the Washington Post yesterday, which displayed the, IMHO, retarded outlook of some animal rights activists. PETA-type groups protest Ringling Bros. circuses, telling little kids that the circus is cruel to elephants.

On the Other Tightrope

But the moral debate — whether its good or bad for kids to see circus animals doing tricks — is a serious parenting issue to some.”To see a bear ride a bicycle, it is ridicule. You’re really just laughing at that bear,” said Mel Levine, a renowned pediatrician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has written numerous books about child behavior and the way children learn. “So the question is: Whats the message youre giving to kids when you take them to the circus and they laugh at animals? I think to laugh at animals is to devalue them.”

It struck a chord with me, since Mrs. Bitterness has taken our four-year-old to see her first circus with her preschool class today. As a kid, I remember few things as incredible as witnessing lion-tamer Gunther Gable Williams’  farewell tour. i still have the poster from that circus, and always loved the pictures of Williams’ lions and tigers performing amazing tricks, and especially one shot of a leopard giving his “oppressor,” as PETA would have it, a big hug.

There is love in Williams’ eyes during that hug, and not a hint of fear that I ever detected.

The people-tricks — flying trapeez and tightropes &c — were impressive, but the animals were what really blew me away. My Labrador, Charlie, couldn’t even learn not to jump on my 8-year-old chest claws first, or to avoid the electric fence we put up to keep him from running away (guess that scuttles my hopes of PETA membership right there).

But this Williams guy convinced elephants to stand on step-ladders; lions let him put head and arms into their mouths. People can train long enough to perform most types of amazing feats. Big deal, we have large brains and lots of time on our hands.

But for an animal to learn how to perform and awe an audience, to me, is inspirational. They’re not being “subjugated,” or regarded with “intolerance.” They’re performing, and being paid in all the peanuts they can stomach, I expect.

If i find out any PETA-dweebs were picketing in Montgomery and scared my daughter, I might need to seek out someone’s nose to bust.

nature at its wildest; tornado season spins up

I know from personal experience how terrifying tornados can be. In fourth grade, my parents and I huddled in a bathroom as one twisted the tops of pine trees that towered above my house. It was about as close as you can get without actual damage, injury or loss.

but these tornado pictures are simply beautiful. What a lovely, terrible thing His creation can be.

Spectacular pictures of nature at its wildest, captured by the storm chasers who risk their lives to follow twisters | the Daily Mail

word of the day: larrikin

The long awaited return of the lower casefiles’ not-particularly-regular feature, the word of the day:

larrikin – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Ran across this one in the comments to a story about thuggish British children. One of the commenters witnessed a dispute between a pub owner and some 30-somethings. It seems the barkeep dared to ban their 13 year olds from the pub for being drunken, obnoxious larrikins.

The parents were pissed he’d kicked the kiddos out, because every other pub in the neighborhood had already banned the kids for rampaging, three-sheets-to-wind, elsewhere. The parents were TAKING UP FOR JUNIOR for being an obnoxious, violent drunk.

13 years old?!? As a parent, words fail me.

In those parents position, I’d have thanked the pub owner for notifying me, apologized for my kids’ rudeness, then gone home and let a leather belt to the rest of the talking on the little punks’ asses.

But that’s just me. I’d probably be in jail if I was British.

UPDATE: Found this article, too, which details the “larrikin” problem with wonderfully British flair.

For local residents, the protocol on Fore Street is simple: do not confront, do not engage, stay inside. A resident who raised thousands of pounds for a village youth club was repaid with a bag of horse manure, mixed with petrol, set ablaze against his front door.

Feral yobs run wild while adults live in fear of threats, vandalism and intimidation.

my new toy

I am really excited. I’m writing this post from my brand new (to me) IBM THinkPad. THis little thing’s so old, it runs Windows 98.

BUt I love it. I’ve always dug the design of this laptop. ANd actually, with the OS pulling so littel memory, it actually runs faster than my 2.8GHz desktop model, as long as I’m only doing Internet stuff, or word-processing.

ANd the click ofthis keyboard is very satisfying. It’ll take some getting used to, which is probably obvious; I left the less embarassing typos to be honest about the situation. But I don’t care how old it is, this is a nice machine.

HOpefully, since my ThinkPad has so little time wasting power, it can be the first home of my as-yet unfinished novel.

Easter greetings

Happy Easter, fellow readers. We had the all-but full holiday experience this weekend, from a Good Friday service (where we ducked out after communion so the kids wouldn’t keep wailing over the sermon), through to Sunday dinner at great-grandmother’s house. Good times, good food, some Egg-Hunt overtime with Kodi and JD: An enjoyable celebration all around, enhanced by the relative of all stops. Drive times and gas prices can play havoc with holy days if you let them.

So here’s my Easter Sunday anecdote, largely unrelated to the holiday (unless I devise some connection as I write). It starts a little shaky, but don’t worry. Nothing gross.

My 4-year-old, complaining of a tummy ache, made a run for the bathroom after lunch. “I have to poopoo,” she announced unashamedly.  When I went to check on her, I noticed only a couple squares of toilet paper remained. After checking a few places under the lavatory, I called for help.

“Nanny, where do you keep the extra toilet paper?” I asked, using the only name my to which my grandmother will respond.

“It’s under the sink,” she called back, “but you’ll have to tear off the part the mouse chewed up.”

She was explaining herself all the way up the hall. Nanny’s old fashioned, and proud of her clean house, but few things can resist a rodent in search of a warm burrow.

“It’s on the other side, Sugar,” she said, as I started blankly into the first cabinet I opened.

I opened the other door and saw the TP roll. It had been nibbled and torn to a few inches deep, but salvageable for our purposes. I reached out to grab the roll and SNAP!

The rat-trap popped out of the cabinet from recoil, almost hitting my eye. Nanny had just reached the door when I discovered the trap she’d so cleverly baited with a roll of Charmin. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen my grandmother laugh harder. She bent over and propped her head by the sink.

“The look on your face,” she said, before more laughter cut the sentence short. “I’m sorry! I forgot … to tell you.”

Kodi had a few more minutes left in her business.

“What was that Daddy?”

It’s hard to explain an old fashioned mouse trap to a 4-year-old girl who loves all animals and watches Mickey’s Clubhouse every day.

It’s supposed to catch the mouse’s tail, I told her, but it almost got Daddy’s fingers instead.

“Would it have hurt?”

It might have. I’m really glad I didn’t find out. Once we finished Kodi’s business, I went back to the dining room. Desert had been served, but the family was too tickled by Nanny’s story to start on the Brownie Delight.  Good times.

I very happy Easter. Hope all of yours was too.

ESPN ncb scoreboard

Tourney update

ESPN ncb scoreboard

possible tornado in downtown Atlanta

The sports networks were hours ahead of this story. So I was ahead, since it happened during a University of Alabama (my alma mater) basketball game broadcast on FoxSports. CNN just broke it a little while ago, I guess once the crew crawled out of their closets and bathrooms.

ESPN – SEC tournament delayed as Georgia Dome sustains damage – Men’s College Basketball

Northrop/EADS wins tanker contract

This is kinda old-news by now. But it dovetails with a story I’m working for our newspaper, an industrial overview of Elmore County. We’re some four hours north of Mobile, but with a composites plant on the eastern side of the county, this decision could mean big-time benefits for local workers.

Washington-state politicians (notably Democrats) have decried the choice of a non-American firm’s airframe.

Northrop/EADS wins tanker contract: Mobile Press Register

The Air Force announcement was met with disappointment in Boeing country. The company planned to assemble its tankers on its commercial 767 line in Everett, Wash., and modify them for military use in Wichita, Kan. The tanker program would support 44,000 American jobs, according to Boeing. Thats nearly double the 25,000 jobs that Northrop estimated its KC-30 would support.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told the Associated Press that he is disappointed in the decision and looks forward to reading the Air Forces justification for the decision.

I don’t have any real comment on this story. really, the casefiles are serving as my virtual notebook, since I’ll probably write the piece from home.