Save The World, Ten Cents A Bag

(Title singable to a semi-familiar tune). Indiana's House, having re-rearranged the gay marriage deck chairs (now, even illegaler! That'll stop 'em, you betcha), has set their sights on another Dire Scourge of Decency: plastic grocery bags!

They want you to pay a dime per each. Oh, it's a "deposit," you get your dime back when you bring them back (no word if there's extra money if you add bonus organic chemicals by using the bags to pick up after Spot or Rover before returning them) but the primary result of that would be that bums urban outdoorsmen would have a new way to earn drinking money by picking up trash. For the rest of us it will now cost more and take that much longer to check out at the grocer's and the five-and-dime as Jane Checker counts each bag she fills and adds the "deposit" to the total.

Yeah, good plan. And why shouldn't everyone who didn't bring a bag (or choose paper? No mention of good old traditional brown paper bags carrying penalties) have to pay more? Evil planet-killers! Headline you won't see: "Grocery Bag Tax: Poor, Retired And Unemployed Hardest Hit."

I haven't got a personal dog in this fight; I dislike plastic bags and take the traditional choice anywhere it is offered. But this is just another ill-considered do-good, feel-good bill; the opponents of gay marriage can muster more coherent arguments in support of their prejudice than the save-the-Earth antibaggers can find, even with all day and a hot Internet connection.

Just For The Record

It's cardioversion.

Not "cardio aversion." (Srsly, lolwhut?)

Not "cardio eversion." That's what they did in Central America to ensure the rains would arrive on time. They don't do that any more. Don't let the sharp blades fool ya: it's not actually a medical procedure.

I guess this should be a Linguistic Patrol post but I was aghast people could be so far off and so unaware.

Television Gone Wrong

A CBS station's reporter covering the Grammy awards suffered something a lot worse than the stumble or malapropism that is the bane of anyone who has to be on the air live and it's all over the TV and this here Innarweb.

Speculation leans heavily towards some kind of mini stroke or TIA-like event, right there in real time on people's TVs. Much as I am prone to make fun of The Media (which I can 'cos I kinda work there), the wonder is this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, especially at high-profile events.

Sure, it looks glamorous (or at least professional) but the reality is long hours with lousy food, worse hydration and little -- if any -- access to a washroom. By the time Ms. or Mr. Reporter has assembled the minute-and-a-half of news-like content you and I will sneer at, odds are good she or he is already physically stressed. Then, like a racehorse at the gate, there's a wait of uncertain length as the newscast proceeds and stories are shuffled around. Finally, the cue is thrown and they're off! There are no do-overs.

Look, the quality and depth of the content can be pretty variable; there are often slants and biases at work, both deliberate and unconscious; but the physical/emotional side of the job is challenging enough that, while it's not digging ditches, live field reporting is nowhere near as easy as most of them manage to make it look. (It's not like the movies; the usual field crew consists of A) Reporter and B)News Camera Guy, who is also Sound Guy and drives the microwave truck. One or the other or both of them edit any of the recorded parts and there's your entire crew).

You can criticize 'em on a lot of grounds but they're not lazy.

Oh, and the CBS reporter? They're still not sure what happened; word is she's back to normal now.

Quiet Night With Mom X

I'm sitting here in Room [redacted] of [redacted] Heart Hospital, to which Mom has returned from the rehab center. Seems her cardiologist thought her heart should have a more danceable rhythm and he wanted (additional) professional help. Plus he wanted to do some fancy imaging of the kind they keep the big machines for in hospitals

Naturally, by the time he reached this conclusion, the sun was over the yardarm and by the time Mom had been transported over and every last form had been filled out (in ink! In triplicate! Sign here, and let's see your card again...) , it was late afternoon. All the imaging pixies and cardioversionologolites had already packed it in for the day.

Probably just as well; these things go better after a good night's sleep. Which I hope she's getting. She's a light sleeper and is drifting in and out of dreamland now. I'll stay as late as I can and perhaps she'll get some decent zzz's.

She snores way better than I do. (I occasionally receive nasty notes from seismologists).

Free Wireless For Every--

--Whattaya mean, "it's not that free?" Whattaya mean, "They have to take that space in the RF spectrum from somebody else?"

As the above-linked Atlantic Wire piece notes, the White House push to hand you broadband free for nothing on the streetcorners, exactly as they now dole out air,* has a teensy li'l problem: they need 500 MHz of bandwidth to do it and the radiofrequency spectrum is a zero-sum game. How big a chunk is this? If they started from DC, 500 MHz would run up past the whole AM band, all the shortwave bands, all of FM and aircraft radio, take TV channels 2 through 13 and keep on for another 230-odd MHz, wiping out the Family Radio Service Band (462 - 468MHz, roughly) before the grab stops. All of it, gone.

Of course, that's not how they'll do it; most of those frequencies are lousy for hooking your laptop up to Teh Innerwebz, so you can keep 'em. But UHF television, now, that's another story! Heck, there's nothing up there but that horrible over-the-air TV and you can get that stuff on cable. Or satellite. Or from The Phone Company--

That's right. To get you that "free" wireless (you'll still probably have to pay somebody), Uncle Sugar will be taking away some of the free TV you already have. Oh, not entirely; they want to take those sparkly-shiny super clear High-Definition TV pictures (the one you bought a new TV to see) and smash them back down to what's called "standard-definition," like old-time TV with a hint of YouTube, then spit out several channels in a slice of RF the same size as one full HD channel: the same lousy TV you had before the analog shut-down, only now on a great big screen so every flaw is that much bigger! Hooray!

...And which stations will be doing this? Hint: FCC is offering Big! Cash! Rewards! Your local high-dollar network affiliates, they don't need the bucks. But the little independent stations, the guys that run old movies and oddball syndicated shows? Times is, as they say, tough. Your local PBS station may want some more green from the Fed'ral trough, too; you didn't want to see Nova in HD anyway, right?

...Oh, and meanwhile? It turns out 98 percent of the population in the States are already in the coverage area for wireless broadband service.

Government: It giveth what you already have and taketh away what you already enjoy. And gets even that wrong.
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* What? The .gov doesn't provide that service? Oooooo, I'm gonna hafta write Maxine Waters and Bernie Saunders about that right now!

Question Of The Day

Why would you name a pinniped "Goodyear?"

So Sweet: Huffies All Huffy Over Atlas Shrugged

It's almost as good as seeing the film: the Usual Suspects, villains, moochers and looters at The Huffington Post are incensed -- vexed! Waxing wroth, even -- that anyone would even dare to turn Rand's best-selling bestseller into a movie.

Heh. I'm already receiving good value and I haven't even bought a ticket yet. It's beneficence, not charity, though inadvertent withal.

Progressivism And The Aristocracy Of Incompetence

I woke up from half-remembered dreams to the TV playing news and a realization that several things that annoy me are actually different aspects of the same thing.

(And I just published that first para. as a teaser.)

What I'm connecting is Progressivism, with its bureaucratization (administrative control bias), long-standing trait of meddling in people's lives to produce so-called "social justice" through progressive taxation and draconian regulation, and that insane kind of "aristocracy" in which people who have only a few skills pride themselves on how little else they are capable of.

It results in a system in which achievement is punished, in which the best return on effort comes from finding the bracket or niche providing the greatest return with the least "bite" from taxation and regulation. It favors narrow specialization and utter incompetence outside it; the "winners" are those with the highest-paid specialties with the best tax breaks and and the fewest skills outside them -- city managers, some attorneys, union officials, lobbyists and similar jobs. The most "progressive" cities have no shortage of meddling, publicly-funded "community activists," winners of the Progressive game.

And those people -- many of them quite innocent, creatures who have grown into the pre-existing niches they have found -- are the natural foe of any libertarian or small-government conservative. And way too many of them are the same blithe boobs who proclaim, "I don't know anything about changing a tire/basic plumbing/my computer," and remark at work that if they do poorly enough at a task they dislike, eventually they won't have to do it. They've found their spot in the ecosystem, their role in the hive; they've dug their rut and will only hate anyone who expects them step out of it.

There ya go: that's what Progressivism encourages.

Florida Carry

Bless the Sunshine State for getting the modern respect for the Second Amendment moving; but being an early adopter means missing some subsequent advances and it's time to fine-tune Florida's laws.

Good folks are working on those laws and they could use your help. That link takes you to Robb Allen's summary and sample letter-to-legislators.

First and worst, Floridians are, like Texans, required to maintain concealment: no open carry. That's not just an issue for them, it's a problem for every CCWer from states with better laws, too, since we're not as used to having to fret about "printing" or the occasional firearm revealed by a sweater riding up or while searching through one's purse.

There's plenty more on the counter -- reforming the laws for colleges and universities, bringing Florida's out of state long-gun purchase limits in line with Federal law, among other items.

Florida Carry is carrying the ball on this one. Help 'em out -- at least pass along these links! Florida's CCW experience showed the antis for the self-panicking dissemblers they are and started the modern armed citizen movement. Let's ensure they aren't left behind.

Atlas Hoists A Film Camera?

Found at Joe's: the trailer for Atlas Shrugged. Holy cow, it looks like they're really doing it. I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I saw the release date. Oh, yeah. Hollywood: they don't all lean left, you know. From what I see in the trailer, some of 'em may've bent over backwards to do this one properly.

...Oh, and for those muttering, "...You could never do that entire book as one movies...," this is only Part One. Hey, it worked for The Lord Of The Rings, didn't it?

Some folks are gonna be finding out who John Galt might be, by and by.

Speaking Of Pink Guns

Bersa actually did it right. It's a "pink" Thunder 380, possibly the the most common of the PPK-inspired handguns and generally good value for money if you're after a small carry piece.

First, they have a reason for the pink gun: breast cancer awareness.

Second, they ship the gun with black grips and pink grips -- if the photo is accurate, the first are what's on it as shipped. (One review says the gun arrived with three sets of grips -- and pink-dot sights).

Third, the gun itself is gun-colored (black). The case it ships in is pink, and just old Barbie pink, not SHOCKING OMG THE GLARE pink or funky-bubblegum pink. Whew!

Still not quite to my taste but a lot more tasteful than the usual frikkin' pink gun.

USSF Lander?

Interesting tidbit from the Hidden Frontier: the old USSF lander design has surfaced, with a plausible cover story.

That's all I've time for this morning! Off to the Skunk Works.