I got the link to this video from the Villainous Company blog. It is a video of Marines doing live-fire in Camp Lejeune, NC.
Really impressed with how well the crew works, efficiently and, more importantly, safely. I think that’s an M198 155mm howitzer, which fires a 95 pound high-explosive projectile up to 14 miles away. I’m fascinated by watching what each person is responsible for during this video. The full crew is 9 men, but I think we only see 6 of them in the video.
Hey, while you’re here, why don’t you hit the big thermometer on the right and donate to Project Valour-IT to help rehabilitate injured servicemen? You know you want to, and you know you want the Marine team to “beat” the other teams during this fundraiser.
I apologize for the generic post, which this is, as I feel like my blogging has been neglected a lot lately. So, here is a random post of bits on today’s topic: things that are quick.
I have no idea how I came across this, but here is a shoelace tying technique called the Ian Knot. You can hit the creator’s website for directions (and other stuff), but here is a video I found illustrating it.
Here is a Radical SR8 setting a speed record at Nurburgring in Germany — “widely considered the toughest, most dangerous and most demanding purpose-built race track in the world,” says Wikipedia. It’s my favorite track in racing games like Forza Motorsport and Project Gotham Racing. It’s funny, I recognize the turns from driving on it so much in those games.
Haha, I was looking for more things that were fast and came across this video, “World’s Fastest Everything.”
I consider myself a moderate, insofar as I believe issues should be examined on a case by case basis and, more specifically, that strict adherence to a “party line” is willfully ignorant at best. If it seems like I am anti-Republican and/or pro-Democrat these days, it’s largely because most so-called Republicans are acting like jackasses these days, made worse by the fact that it follows 8+ years of jackassery by their party leadership.
So, here are the latest ways they are pissing me off.
Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as ‘Death Care’ - this is just crazy. Brian M. and I occasionally spar on political issues – to his credit, he is one of the most rational people I debate with when it comes to political matters – and rebutted this by calling the referenced legislation “purposely vague” regarding mandated hospice care and deferral of life-extending medical care. I read pages 425 to 430 of HR 3200 and found nothing of the sort. Read it for yourself. It sounds to me like they are mandating that physicians make sure patients know about the benefits of living wills and medical directives, and of the availability of hospice care, and nothing at all about the physician actually making a decision on whether to stop life-extending treatments. On page 430, there are four specific situations that may require a judgment call, and none of them explicitly deal with “killing granny.”
Bear in mind, also, that this document is 1017 pages long, and the right-wingers have managed to pick 9 lines (lines 9 to 17 on page 430) on which to hinge their anti-healthcare scare-tactics. As far as I can tell, these 9 lines, the only ones that could possibly be “vague”, have yielded these quotes from the right:
“guiding you in how to die”
“an ORDER from the Government to end your life”
promoting “death care”
in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny”
“tell them how to end their life sooner”
teach the elderly how to “decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short”
“may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia”
Here’s this interview of Rick Scott by CNN’s Rick Sanchez. Oh my lord, you can’t make this up. This is pure comedy gold, or would be if it weren’t true. By the way, Rick Scott is leader of CPR – Conservatives for Patients’ Rights – basically the guy responsible for “regular people” showing up at healthcare town halls and protesting, etc.
Scott was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 in the midst of the biggest health care fraud scandal in U.S. history, a scandal that ultimately led to a payment of $1.7 billion to settle charges including the overbilling of state and federal health programs.
Scott defended his former company, saying other health care companies had paid fines too. Sanchez cut in: “You are the guy that is sitting here telling us we can’t allow the government to do this because it won’t work and they might take over or do some things that are wrong. How much more wrong can you be than what you just said? Not only has your company screwed up and you just admitted it … You are saying, look at all the other companies, they did the same thing.”
Shameless. And let’s not forget the people that Obama joked about: “I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.”
Or people who are anti-socialist programs, but were happy to take a $4500 government handout when they needed a new car. You know who you are
Politics As Usual
This video is one for the ages in political posturing, or anti-posturing as the case may be. Let’s watch Rep. Anthony Weiner kick the Republicans in the nuts.
Gee, did the Republicans vote for the proposed end of Medicare? Didn’t think so. Is it because they’d be voted out of office if they had to tell their constituents they took away their Medicare? Yeah… big talk, until it’s time to put up or shut up.
Suck it, Republicans.
Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as ‘Death Care’
I’m sure many of you have already seen this thing, as it sweeps its way ‘cross the Net, but here it is anyway, in case you haven’t. It’s made of pure awesome.
EDIT: boooo, embedding disabled. Oh well, click the link in the image to watch the video on YouTube. It’s good stuff.
I’m kidding about the versus part, of course. I caught this (somewhere) and wanted to share. John Hodgman, most well-known as the PC in those smug, irritating Apple television ads, is also a writer and humorist, apparently. Here he is speaking at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, calling out Obama on his nerd credentials.
Actually, for that matter, Obama himself gave a pretty humorous speech at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner a while back, in which he roasted quite a few people. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.
Wow. To quote one comment I saw on YouTube, “This is why I have an internet connection.”
A fresh-off-the-farm Israeli in Tel Aviv recently discovered the wide world of music and, apparently, loves funk and psychedelia. He decided to compose original music using YouTube videos, mixed and spliced together all sorts of ways. This isn’t even a genre of music I listen to normally, but the results are amazing. He did seven songs total, plus a little “about” clip.
The first clip is embedded here for your aural/visual pleasure.
I guess this has been around since 2006, but I just recently saw it on Raph Koster’s blog. I found a version on YouTube, which I’ve embedded here:
Crazy stuff. I remember reading in Omni magazine (I think) back in the 80s that the sum total of human knowledge was supposed to double every year by the year 2020, or something like that. Mind boggling, and now I’m living in these times. I wonder if Alvin Toffler is still around, talking about Future Shock, originally published back in 1970. He coined the term “information overload” — pretty amazing for 38 years ago, less than a year after ARPANET was first turned on and about 20 years before this new-fangled World Wide Web was invented.
One could become alarmed thinking about this exponential growth of technology/information, but this reminds me of a statement by an objectivist at a lecture I once attended at OSU, when discussing man’s impact on nature and global warming, etc. He said that if the Earth gets too hot, we’ll just build better air conditioners. A glib response, to be sure, but basically he felt that if Man makes a problem, he’ll just adapt to it or produce a solution. Likewise, I’m inclined to think that if technology grows too fast, then there will just be a collapse, or a burst bubble, and it will slow down again while everyone catches up. It might be painful for some, or even societies, but I think we’ll be alright.
I’d like to get settled on a set of tools (widgets) and design (templates and themes) before I get too far along in this blog’s life, so prepare for an onslaught of test posts.
Here, let’s try out YouTuber for embedding video. I present to you: the Large Hadron Rap.
Next: crosslinking. I get my game info on over at BGG aka BoardGameGeek. (Those should be hyperlinked automatically.)
