The Marine Forecast is always telling you obvious things, such as which way the wind is blowing, which you can figure out for yourself just by watching the motion of your spiderwebs. They never tell you about the serious boating hazards, which are located — write down this Boating Safety Tip — UNDER THE WATER. It turns out that although the water is basically flat on top, underneath there are large hostile objects such as reefs and shoals (or “forecastles”) that have been carelessly strewn around, often smack dab in the path of recreational boaters.
I discovered this shocking fact recently when some friends visited us in Miami, and in a foolish effort to trick them into thinking that we sometimes go out on our boat, we actually went out on our boat. It was a good day for boating, with the barometer gusting at about 47 liters of mercury, and we had no problems until I decided to make the boat go forward. For some reason, motorboats are designed to go at only two speeds: “Virtually Stopped” and “Airborne.” We were traveling along at Virtually Stopped, which seemed inadequate — barnacles were passing us — so I inched the throttle forward just a teensy bit and WHOOOOMM suddenly we were passengers on the Space Shuttle Buster. Every few feet Buster would launch himself completely out of the water and attain such an altitude that at any moment you expected flight attendants to appear with the beverage cart, and then WHAM Buster would crash down onto a particularly hard patch of water, causing our food and possessions and spiders to bounce overboard, forming a convenient trail for the sharks to follow. (“Look!” the sharks were saying. “A set of dentures! It won’t be long now!”)
In this relaxing and recreational manner we lurched toward downtown Miami, with me shouting out the various Points of Interest. “I THINK THAT’S A DRUG DEALER!” I would shout. Or: “THERE GOES ANOTHER POSSIBLE DRUG DEALER!” I was gesturing toward these long, sleek motorboats with about 14 engines apiece that you see roaring around the Miami waters driven by men with no apparent occupation other than polishing their neck jewelry.
So it was a pleasant tropical scene, with the wind blowing and the sea foaming and the sun glinting off the narcotics traffickers. As the captain, I was feeling that pleasant sense of well-being that comes from being in total command and not realizing that you are heading directly toward a large underwater pile of sand. I would say we hit it at about 630 knots, so that when Buster skidded to a cartoon-style stop, we were in about 6 inches of water, a depth that the U.S. Coast Guard recommends for craft classified as “Popsicle sticks or smaller.” This meant that, to push Buster off the sand, my friend John and I had to go INTO THE WATER, which lapped threateningly around our lower shins. Probably the only thing that saved our lives was that the dreaded Man-Eating But Really Flat Shark was not around.
Dave Barry, “Look Out! Dave’s At The Helm Of Buster Boat”, Orlando Sentinel, 1991-05-30.
July 8, 2017
QotD: Recreational boating
July 4, 2017
A Bit of Fry & Laurie – Nazi sketch
Published on 25 Apr 2007
Nazi Sketch
July 1, 2017
QotD: Lying about our age on Canada Day
“We are a young nation,” declared Prime Minister Paul Martin. “Look into the face of Canada, and you will see the world.”
Well, maybe. But, more likely, if you looked into the face of Canada, you’d wonder why the old gal keeps lying about how old she is. “We are a young nation.” How old were you when you first heard a Liberal apparatchik drone about what a “young” nation we are? Maybe you were young yourself, and now, as the healthy glow of late middle-age fades from your cheeks, you’re wondering why you’re so old but your country is younger than ever. It’s like The Passport Photo of Dorian Gray.
For me, no sooner did Paul start burbling about what a young nation we are than the years fell away, like calendar leaves signalling flashback-time in an old movie — the sort Hollywood used to make before it discovered there was a young nation up north where you could make them a lot cheaper. Anyway, the years fell away, and suddenly I was a wee slip of a thing again and it was 1497 and on the windswept prow nice Mister Cabot was saying to me, “Aargh, Mark lad, is me eyes deceiving me or is that a big rock up ahead?”
No, hang on, that can’t be right. We’re a young nation. My mistake, it was 1997 and I was at the “Canada Day” festivities at the Old Port in Montreal. We’re a young nation with an old port, don’t ask me how that happens. And Lucienne Robillard, then our citizenship minister, was addressing a couple of dozen brand new Canadians: “Fifty years ago we were British subjects,” she said. “We forget how young a country we really are.” Mme Robillard forgets more than she realizes: it was only 20 years — 1977 — since the term “British subjects” was discreetly removed from Canadian passports. But what’s a decade or two when you’re shaving half a millennium off your age?
Isn’t there something deeply weird about an entire nation that lies about its age? Canada is, pace Mr Martin, one of the oldest countries in the world — the result of centuries of continuous constitution evolution. Even if one takes the somewhat reductive position that Canada as a sovereign entity dates only from the 1867 British North America Act or the 1931 Statute of Westminster, that would still make us one of the oldest nations in the world. We are, for example, one of the founding members of the United Nations, ahead of three-quarters of the present membership.
As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” A nation’s collective memory is the unseen seven-eighths of the iceberg. When you sever that, what’s left just bobs around on the surface, unmoored in every sense. Orwell understood that an assault on history is an assault on memory, and thus a totalitarian act. What, after all, does it really mean when Mme Robillard and Mr Martin twitter about how “young” we are? Obviously, it’s a way of denigrating the past. Revolutionary regimes routinely act this way: thus, in Libya, the national holiday of Revolution Day explicitly draws a line between the discredited and illegitimate regimes predating December 1st, 1969, and the Gadaffi utopia that’s prevailed since. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge literally reset the clock, to “Year Zero.”
Mark Steyn, “Happy Dominion Day!”, The Western Standard, 2005-07-01 (reposted at SteynOnline, 2015-07-01).
June 30, 2017
QotD: Rent-seeking
Calling someone a rent-seeker is sort of an economist’s way of telling them to die in a fire.
Scott Alexander, “Contra Caplan on Mental Illness”, Slate Star Codex, 2015-10-07.
June 24, 2017
How To Insult Like the British – Anglophenia Ep 12
Published on 8 Sep 2014
If you ever get into an argument with a British person, you’ll wish you’d have watched this video. Siobhan Thompson gives you the tools to sling insults like a Brit.
Here are a few other insults via the Anglophenia blog: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2012/08/the-brit-list-10-stinging-british-insults/
June 19, 2017
QotD: The Pope
I am not a Catholic but I understand that, unlike the position of Archbishop of Canterbury, where total contempt from the congregants more or less comes with the job, the Bishop of Rome is generally held in some respect by his church.
Mark Steyn, “Last Laughs in Europe”, SteynOnline.com, 2015-09-28.
June 17, 2017
QotD: The Progressive comedy pause
Tell a joke to a liberal. Between your punchline and his laughter, there is a Progressive Comedy Pause. In this second or two, the liberal will process the joke to make sure he is allowed to laugh.
Is that joke racist? He mentioned Obama, but didn’t make light of him, so to speak. He also mentioned Michelle, but I didn’t notice sexism. Is it dismissive of the LGBTQIA community? Latinos? Muslims? Vegans? Will this joke hurt progressive causes? Will my laughter trivialize oppressed communities? Will I appear intolerant? I think it’s okay if I laugh. Yes, I’ll laugh now to signal my appreciation and to indicate that I’m not a joyless liberal scold.
“Ha ha.”
I first noticed the Progressive Comedy Pause while sharing my hilarity at office staff meetings. The majority would laugh but the committed lefties would stare blankly, each eye like that spinning wheel your smartphone shows while an app is loading. (The PCP might be why progressives just hoot and clap at Bill Maher’s jokes; the laughter reflex is considered problematic.)
[…]
It’s harder to laugh when you’re scared and much of the left is terrified. They know that an inappropriate chuckle, the wrong tweet, or last year’s term for an aggrieved minority can lessen their standing with progressive peers, if not get them fired from a job. Lefties also have turned the negative of humorlessness into the positive of moral superiority. Sniffing “That’s not funny!” at an inoffensive Caitlyn Jenner joke signals that you are more evolved than the average cis-het-white-oppressor. The same people who laughed at Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” now aspire to be her.
Jon Gabriel, “Jerry Seinfeld and the Progressive Comedy Pause”, Ricochet, 2015-06-08.
June 9, 2017
Can my dog understand me? – James May Q&A (Ep 34) – Head Squeeze
Published on 16 Aug 2013
Sit, Fetch, Lie Down! James May answers Luke from Durham Johnston Comprehensive’s question on whether dogs can understand humans.
Links
The British Science Association: http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/National Science + Engineering Competition: http://www.nsecuk.org
Can dogs understand words: http://animal.discovery.com/pets/dogs-understand-words.htm
Shame your pet: http://www.shameyourpet.com
June 4, 2017
QotD: The Empire of the Cow
Whatever you might say against European imperialism and colonialism, it was good for the dairy industry. Ditto the railways which, beginning with the Great Western, made a fortune delivering rural milk supplies to the Great Wen of London, using methods soon copied by entrepreneurs in Paris, New York, Bombay. We forget, don’t we, that before 1860 or so, almost all dairy farming for urban consumption was done within the cities; to say nothing of other animal feedlot operations, including poultry and eggs; market gardening, horticulture and so forth. I’m with the hipsters for bringing it all back.
I cast no aspersions on the milkers of buffalo, goats, sheep, camels, donkeys, horses, reindeer, yaks, when I recognize that the Holstein/Frisian cow was the great cause and inspiration for the rise of what Max Weber murkily called the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, emanating from the north-west of Europe. Instead, as will be seen, I champion them.
Neil Cameron interviewed the learned Professor Gerhard Fleischkopf, in a cover piece for the Idler magazine, more than a quarter-century ago, to publicize a thesis that still hasn’t been taken seriously enough by the historians. Contra Weber, Fleischkopf showed that it wasn’t the Germans, Dutchmen, Normans, English who launched this cultural revolution. Rather it was their cows, who forced them to rise very early every morning, lest they be kicked upon finally approaching the engorged teats with their milk-stools and pails; forced them otherwise to adopt patterns of behaviour entirely in the interest of the cows. Their philosophical and theological outlook — a dramatic break from the mediaeval scholastic synthesis — was not in any sense original to them, but instead an artefact of their cultural and intellectual manipulation, by cows. And so, too, their adaptive pushiness towards those of other lands — those lesser breeds without modern dairying techniques — whom they subjugated in turn, as agents of the cow.
David Warren, “A new model for society”, Essays in Idleness, 2015-07-20.
June 3, 2017
The Government Hates Boobs
Published on 2 Jun 2017
From nipple censorship to breast milk regulation, the government is making it hard to have breasts. The FCC maintains oversight of how much and what kind of breasts can grace public airwaves. Its decisions have ripple effects, since cable broadcasters often voluntarily comply with FCC guidelines.
A more dire issue than strategic anatomical censorship is the issue of breast milk. Between one and five percent of American women aren’t able to produce breast milk, and some babies can’t drink formula. When the two overlap the demand for breast milk is life or death. But acquiring breast milk from donation-based milk banks can be difficult and prohibitively expensive. So some women buy their breast milk on an online “gray market” that stifles suppliers.
In this week’s Mostly Weekly Andrew Heaton explains why the government should get its hands off our boobs.
Performed by Andrew Heaton
Written by Sarah Rose Siskind with writing assistance from Andrew Heaton and David Fried.
Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind.
Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.
The tedious tropes of modern Young Adult science fiction novels
Guest-posting at According to Hoyt, Christopher M. Chupik describes the typical YA novel:
… I never read much YA when I was a young adult. Early on, I vaulted past my contemporaries. Most of the books aimed at kids my age were depressing “problem novels”. I didn’t want to spend time with depressingly realistic kids with depressingly realistic problems. I had school for that. Escape was what I wanted.
Working at a library now, I handle a great deal of the new YA books that come our way. The success of The Hunger Games has unleashed a flood of copycat dystopian fiction. I read the jackets and feel a depressing sameness creeping in:
“In the dystopian near future, climate change has wrecked everything. The EvilCorp/EvilGov has taken power, crushing freedom and reorganizing society into an unfair class system designed to make teens angsty. Actiongirl Unlikelyname is completely ordinary and totally special. She must join the Resistance and make a choice that will change her world forever: which generically hunky guy will she be with at the end of the trilogy?”
This Twitter feed does a great job of mocking the cliches:
There’s a few YA novels set on other planets, but they almost invariably involve evil corporations or “the one-percenters”, who of course have colonized space on the backs of everybody else. What a great way to get the kids interested in space exploration, than to turn it into tedious left-wing class warfare propaganda, right?
And most of these came out back in the Obama years, when left-wingers, and by extension their fiefdoms in the publishing industry were optimistic about the future. But now that they lost the election one can only imagine the outpouring of over-the-top dystrumpias which is about to flood bookshelves in the months and years to come.
Now, let it be known that I’m not entirely against the dystopian trend. I did grow up reading John Christopher’s Tripod and Prince in Waiting trilogies, after all. I certainly see the value in showing the younger generation that leaders should not be blindly trusted, that “progress” is not a guarantee and that freedom is not something that you inherit, but something that must be constantly renewed, lest it be lost forever. All are important points.
But I’m worried that all our kids are seeing of the future is doom and gloom. There was some of that when I was growing up. The media of the ’80s played up the threat of impending nuclear war for what I’m sure were completely non-partisan reasons. And then there was the steady drumbeat of ozone hole/acid rain agitprop. But I had Star Trek to show me something better. And even though I look at Trek‘s worldview with some skepticism now, I still appreciate that it’s a fundamentally optimistic view of humanity’s future. YA science-fiction readers aren’t getting that. What they’re being told, over and over, is that the future sucks and that science-fiction is the genre about how much its its going to suck.
June 2, 2017
Schrödinger’s Paris Accords
As Ace points out, the Paris Accords apparently have the same kind of precarious state of existance as Schrödinger’s cat:
The central argument of Trump's rationale is false. The agreement is non-binding. Nothing in it stops the US from doing whatever it wants.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) June 1, 2017
This is a common signal from Progressive Messaging Central. The claim being made is that the Paris Accords are simultaneously an ineffectual nothingburger of meaningless symbolism, so why even bother withdrawing?, but also are The Only Thing That Will Keep the Earth from Literally Dying.
Obviously, these can’t both be true at once: Either the Accords do something, or they do not do something. They cannot exist in a state of quantum indeterminacy where they remain in a mixed probabilistic waveform of both “doing something” and “doing nothing” until a Progressive Political Physicist takes a measurement of which state is most helpful for his Religious Fervor at this moment.
This one isn’t over the top, so much as stupid.
Update: Brendan O’Neill posted this to Facebook:
The demented response to Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement — the world is doomed, our children will die, people will drown, locusts will swarm, fires will burn, and any criticism whatsoever of climate-charge alarmism is a species of heresy that must be destroyed — has reminded me why environmentalism is my least favourite ideology. Fearful, shrill, anti-progress, censorious and shamelessly marshalling sad-eyed children to the political end of stymying economic growth despite the fact that half of humankind still lives in poverty: greens are the worst. Trump is a rank amateur in the politics of fear in comparison with these bourgeois moaners and misanthropes.
May 21, 2017
What Fans Never Knew About Weird Al Yankovic
Published on 19 May 2017
With his seemingly endless optimism and light-hearted satire, Weird Al Yankovic has a power that goes beyond innovative lyrics and catchy tunes: he makes people happy. But Weird Al Yankovic’s path to success hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Here are the weirdest moments in Weird Al’s journey from a nerdy, accordion-playing teen to the Prince of Parody…
Dr. Demento | 0:23
Bathroom success | 1:15
Voice actor | 1:52
Band-mates forever | 2:35
The Saga Begins | 3:05
Top 10 triumph | 3:54
The UHF bomb | 4:33
May 20, 2017
Net Neutrality Nixed: Why John Oliver is Wrong
Published on 19 May 2017
Progressives are freaking out now that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is beginning the repeal of Net Neutrality regulations, which give the government the right to regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
—————-
The main arguments in favor of Net Neutrality are really arguments guarding against hypotheticals: that ISPs could otherwise block and censor content (they never have) or that they’ll run their operations like shakedowns, requiring content providers to pay up or slow their traffic to molasses. The main documented instance of an ISP favoring one content provider over others wasn’t sinister collusion. Metro PCS offered unlimited YouTube in a budget data plan but not unlimited Hulu and Netflix, because YouTube had a compression system that could be adapted to the carrier’s low-bandwidth network. In a different context, critics might have applauded Metro PCS, since bought by T-Mobile, for bringing more options to lower-income customers.Net Neutrality is a proxy battle over what type of internet we want to have — one characterized by technocratic regulations or one based on innovation and emergent order. Progessives are generally suspicious of complex systems existing without powerful regulators present and accounted for. Small-government folks are repulsed by bureaucrats in general, and think the internet will fair better in a state of benign neglect. The FCC has come down on the side of an organic internet, instead of treating the internet more like a public utility.
We don’t know how the internet is going to evolve over time, but neither do the government administrators trying to rein it in. But given the record of free-market innovation vs. government-regulated services, the odds are with market forces and entrepreneurs.
Written and performed by Andrew Heaton, with writing assistance from Sarah Rose Siskind and David Fried.
Edited by Austin Bragg and Siskind.
Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.
Theme Song: Frozen by Surfer Blood.
Top 10 ugliest Warships (Pre 1930’s)
Published on 31 Jul 2015
WARNING! Ugly lives here! My Top 10 ugliest warships (Pre 1930’s) This video showcases some of the ugliest warships ever made. From a sunken barn with a gun mounted on top, to a Russian UFO…these ships look better sunk then floating.
