Quotulatiousness

October 11, 2018

The wisdom of Zim Tzu, post-Eagles edition

Filed under: Football, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

After every Vikings game, win or lose, NFL rules require the head coach to meet with local (and sometimes national) media to discuss the most recent game and any other issues the team may be facing. It’s well known among the cognoscenti that Minnesota’s head coach Mike Zimmer considers this somewhere between distasteful and actual torture, but he forces himself to meet the ravening horde of unwashed media types … because he doesn’t want to get fined.

As a result, although Zimmer is known to be a straight-talker, what he says in these gatherings might not be exactly what he really means. Fortunately for those of us in the Vikings fanbase, the Daily Norseman employs the world’s leading Zimmerologist, the only man who can reliably listen to the words spoken to the masses and successfully decode the real meanings. Let’s hear it for Herr Doktor Professor Theodore “Ted” Glover:

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Prometheus – Origins – Extra Mythology – #1

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Religion — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 8 Oct 2018

Let’s start at the primordial beginning. The first “peoples” on the earth were Cyclops and Titans. Prometheus was one of these titans, and in fact just one of two remaining after an unfortunate conflict with, you guessed it, Zeus…

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It’s all in the spin – “Another ‘human trafficking operation’ that wasn’t”

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Elizabeth Nolan Brown on how to pitch a “human trafficking” police sweep that doesn’t actually uncover any human trafficking at all:

One hundred and twenty-three missing Michigan minors were found during a one-day “sex trafficking operation,” the New York Post reported yesterday. Similar statements showed up in other news headlines across national and international news. What the associated articles fail to mention for multiple paragraphs is that only three of the minors are even suspected of having been involved in prostitution.

Officials said the operation — a joint effort of the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, Michigan State Police, and multiple local Michigan police departments — identified three “possible sex-trafficking cases” among the 123 minors that were located on September 26, according to a press release.

What’s more, all but four of the “missing children” were not actually missing. In the remaining cases, minors were listed in a police database as missing but had since been found or returned home on their own. “Many were (homeschooled),” Lt. Michael Shaw told The Detroit News. “Some were runaways as well.”

The one-day “rescue” sweep was a long-time in the making, with police beforehand “investigating their whereabouts by visiting last known addresses, friend’s homes and schools.”

Nothing in the U.S. Marshals report on the operation makes mention of any arrested kidnappers, “traffickers,” or other adults involved in endangering or exploiting any of the missing minors that were identified. Which makes sense — very few missing children are actually abducted. And when runaway teens do engage in sex for money, the vast majority do not have “pimps.”

Steyr StG 77, aka the AUG

Filed under: Europe, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 21 Sep 2018

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Today’s rifle is not quite an Austrian military StG-77, but it is virtually identical. This is one of the commemorative rifles sold by Steyr, which has been rebuilt with military parts and is a registered dealer sample machine gun (which is why I can show you the complete full-auto functionality in the trigger group.

The AUG (Armee Universal Gewehr) was one of the wave of bullpup-style military rifles developed and adopted in the 1970s, along with the British SA80 and French FAMAS F1. The AUG embodied a number of very forward-looking elements in its design, including extensive use of polymers (including the entire fire control group), a completely modular barrel, and standard integrated optical sight (albeit one considered obsolete today). Mechanically, the rifle’s operating mechanism is a derivative of the Armalite AR-18, as are many other service rifles from this period.

Special thanks to Bear Arms in Scottsdale, AZ for providing this rifle for video!

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

QotD: The radical, right wing US Supreme Court

Filed under: Law, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We don’t have a “radical right-wing Supreme Court,” despite lots of mewing on the left to the contrary. Here are some things that would be at the top of the list for a radical right-wing Court: (1) ban abortion nationwide as a violation of the right to life protected by the due process clause; (2) rule that publicly-provided (but not funded) education is unconstitutional because it inherently involves viewpoint discrimination by the government, or at least require vouchers for those who object to the public school curriculum; (3) overrule an 1898 precedent and completely abolish birthright citizenship; (4) Use the First Amendment as a sword to require “fairness” in the left-dominated media. Not only is the Supreme Court not about to do any of things, I don’t think any of these things would even get one vote on the current Court. Moreover, merely bringing the scope of Congress’s constitutional back to where it was, say, in 1935, which was already much broader than the original meaning of the Commerce power, probably wouldn’t get more than one or two votes. What you are looking at right now is a conservative Court that will only affect society on the margins, not a “radical right-wing” Court.

David Bernstein, “WE DON’T HAVE A ‘RADICAL RIGHT-WING SUPREME COURT'”, Instapundit, 2018-10-09.

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