Read it.

No, it’s not a joke involving Armenians.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list.

8. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.

Read it.

A remote-controlled aircraft owned by an animal rights group was reportedly shot down near Broxton Bridge Plantation Sunday near Ehrhardt, S.C.

Imagine that.

Steve Hindi, president of SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness), said his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying.

“It didn’t work; what SHARK was doing was perfectly legal,” Hindi said in a news release. “Once they knew nothing was going to stop us, the shooting stopped and the cars lined up to leave.”

In other words, they were a bunch of shits devoted to sticking their noses into other people’s business — their citizenship may be American, but their hearts are European.

He said the animal rights group decided to send the drone up anyway.

“Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out,” Hindi said in the release. “As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter.”

Quelle domage.

He claimed the shooters were “in tree cover” and “fled the scene on small motorized vehicles.”

Laughing like loons all the way, I’m sure.

“This was SHARK’s first encounter with the Broxton Bridge Plantation, but it will certainly not be the last,” Hindi said in the release. “We are already making plans for a considerably upscaled action in 2013.”

Perhaps the next time higher caliber weapons will make their appearance. I should think a drone an even more challenging target than a clay pigeon. Just sayin’.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that there were National Bagging Championships. (For some of you: I’ll bet you didn’t know that in certain backwaters of Flyover Country there are still kids that bag your groceries.)

The bagging issue might be familiar to Strib readers; a story this week noted that Target is pushing plastic over paper, and some people don’t like it. Agreed: Plastic makes you feel cheap, somehow. Soviet. I am carryink goods from People’s State Sustenance Node No. 23 in glorious People’s Sack.

When done with them, some people also feel guilty throwing them away. So they get shoved into the Plastic Bag Full of Smaller Plastic Bags, which eventually becomes the size of a beanbag chair; then you take it to the store and put it in the Really Big Plastic Bag for Holding Smaller Plastic Bags Filled with Even Smaller Plastic Bags, and this absolves you of all sin and guilt.

We’d like to think they’re compressed into incredibly dense cubes and used as building materials in poor countries, but for all we know they take them out behind the store, douse them with gasoline and torch them.

Of course, the truly enviro-conscious have reusable totes, even if they do accumulate so much grot and bacteria they’re like a Shake ‘n’ Bake bag for salmonella.

Read it.

But you knew that.

Read it. And watch the video.

When you care enough to send the very best.

Read it. And watch the video.

‘Judge, it needed killin’.’ Sometimes the old ways are best.

Check it out.

Tell the truth: You’ve always suspected as much….

Read it. And watch the video, which is freaky.

We have the technology … almost.

Check it out.

Really, does it get any better than this?

Freeberg explores the wonderful world of computer errors.

Read it. And watch the video.

Now that’s entertainment.

Read it.

Read it.

Welcome aboard, Niall. Don’t forget to wipe your feet.

Watch it.

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at anything so hard this year.

Well, so far, anyway.

Lileks.

Huge blocks of artisanal ice were imported for the Modern Sculpture Ice Carving Competition, and local artist Hannah Botello’s “Incomprehensible Thing Meant to Encourage Despair” won top honors, with second prize going to a piece of conceptual art called “Essence,” a dish of liquid water over a can of Sterno.

“Challenges our very notions of ice,” said one judge.

Read it.

Buzzword Bingo a là Gingrich.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

Read it.

And that’s what makes Us different from Them.

Read it.

The new entrepreneur: Making money off of helping people cope with the bureaucracy. Not that this is a new thing (do a Google search for ‘tax help’) but they have a nice narrow niche and they’re serving it beautifully well.

Read it.

Just about every product or service that makes our lives better requires a mass market or it’s not economic to bother offering. Those who invent and produce for the mass market get rich. And the more these innovators better the rest of our lives, the richer they get but the less they can differentiate themselves from the masses whose wants they serve. It’s the Pages and Bransons and Zuckerbergs who have made the unequal equal: So, sure, income equality may widen, but consumption equality will become more the norm.

Read it.

Truly, this is a great time to be alive. And it will only get better.

Read it.

went to the Mall of America on a rainy afternoon, curious to see how the retail world was holding up. Three years into the Interminably Grinding Recession, you expect tumbleweeds. The lingerie parlors will be selling burlap sacks; the kiosks will have practical gifts, like Complete Dinner Kits that come with rabbit traps and knives fer skinnin’.

But no. It all looks shiny and prosperous and merry. Enormous silver trees stand in the atrium while an orchestra of well-fed children saws away at holiday songs. Perhaps the retail mix has adjusted to the new economic realities, and the stores that used to sell $45 bars of soap infused with panda tears have gone under, but I didn’t notice.

Watch it.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

Freeberg looks at a .700 caliber rifle. Watch the video.

The rifle, with just a 16.25? barrel, can push the 1132 grain of lead up to 2300 fps. Thats 13,000 ft/lbs of energy, right up there with the .50 BMG and far exceeding the .700 Nitro Express. The cast lead bullet has enough energy to pass clean through a 1/4? steel plate.

.700 caliber is about the diameter of a penny and just shy of the size of the bullets used in classic smoothbore muskets. Needless to say, having such a weapon in your possession, much less actually owning one, would be illegal in most European countries.

Steve Sailer is shooting some post-Turkey-Day fish in a barrel.

On p. 6 of Back to Work, I tripped over a sentence of 85 words. Alerted, I began to keep track of Clinton’s XXXL-sized sentences. By page 20, I had found additional leviathans of 91, 105, 110, 98, 118, and a round 200 words. I decided to give up counting. But, then, on pp. 23-24, Clinton lets loose with a blue whale of a sentence comprising 346 words.

Cicero did that all the time — but then, he wrote in Latin; it’s doubtful Clinton could distinguish Latin from latte.

In the past, the Clintons have been notorious for not acknowledging their ghostwriters. For example, Simon & Schuster paid Barbara Feinman $120,000 to write It Takes a Village for Hillary Clinton, but the First Lady refused to mention Feinman’s name.

Shucks, I’d have done it for half of that.

Read it.

A former NBA superstar was been tugged in by a bunch of hoop-shooting strippers as their head coach ahead of the launch of a basketball league comprised entirely of topless dancers.

The 23-strong Rick’s Cabaret International chain of “upscale adult night clubs” set up its league after spotting a hole in the market – due to an acrimonious dispute between the NBA and players that has shut down the league for the last five months.

Just think of the ratings.

Read it.

Led by bioengineer James Hickman, the team pulled off the feat with help from Brown University Professor Emeritus Herman Vandenburgh, who collected muscle stem cell samples from adult volunteers. After close examination, they then discovered that under the right conditions, these samples could be combined with spinal cord cells to form connectors, or neuromuscular junctions, which the brain uses to control the body’s muscles.

Read it.

A team of open source enthusiasts is putting together instructions for how to build 50 tools essential to establishing – or reestablishing – a civilization.

The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is being developed by the Open Source Ecology (OSE) group, and includes such basic tools as a well drill, steam engine, and brick making machine, along with more complicated devices such as a bulldozer, 3D printer, and 50kW wind turbine. These can be built from scrap or recycled materials at a fraction of the cost of commercial machinery.

Read it.

A Child of the Crust will never want for bread.

‘And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.’

Read it.

Not that it made any impression.

“Real class acts, the Chicago Board of Trade,” tweeted Occupy Chicago. “This week, it’s McDonald’s job applications they litter from the windows. Soulless place.”

Hey, at least they have jobs. (And bathe regularly.)

Read it.

According to foreigners, anyway.

From a Canadian perspective – being able to walk into a store at 3am and purchase a can of beer the size of my head.

Drive-through everythings. Drive-through ATMs, drive-through bank tellers, drive-through pharmacies, drive-through liquor stores in some states. On the flipside, the paucity of sidewalks/pavements in many parts of the US, where your European would receive funny looks from his hosts if he suggested walking to a relatively nearby destination, and might even be stopped by the cops if they spotted him strolling along a residential area.

The first time I tried to cross a road by myself, it took me at least 15 minutes to get the rhythm of the traffic lights and how much time I had to make it to the other side. Streets are a lot wider, so the timing is completely different. And drivers in Southern California do not give a shit about pedestrians. And the multi-lane intersections… aaah. So confusing.

This guy obviously hasn’t tried crossing a street in Boston.

People using checks is antiquated in terms of other developed countries.

DID YOU HEAR THAT, YOU ASSWIPES WHO HOLD UP THE LINE WHILE WRITING A CHECK? IT’S A NEW CENTURY. GET A DEBIT CARD LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING.

A mate of mine was asked honestly if we have electricity in Australia.

Of course they do — they make it out of beer.

People without passports.

Passports are only for people who want to leave the country. Only wierdos want to leave this country; that’s why foreigners are always trying to come here, sneaking in if they can’t do it any other way.

The realization that while you may be familiar with American celebrities, journalists, politicians, and geography from it’s broader worldwide audience, no one in America has a clue about eqiuvalent sundry things from my country of origin.

That’s because no rational human being gives a shit about your country of origin; otherwise they’d be buying your stuff, not American stuff.

That it’s not unusual to see soldiers travelling in full uniform in the USA (I’ve seen this often at Grand Central, and at various airports around the USA). In many parts of the UK, soldiers, airmen, etc. are unable to wear their uniforms off base due to the level of abuse they get from the public. (Yeah, WTF?)

That’s why Britain (and other European countries) are turning into such behavioral sinkholes.

Read the whole thing — it tells you quite as much about how quirky non-Americans are.

Read it.

Somewhere in the old Cincinnati-Dayton Defense Area that spans Southwest Ohio and Southeast Indiana sits a $1.5 million “man cave.” I made my way to the site on a warm fall morning with Google Maps and GPS coordinates supplied by my real estate advisers, Matthew and Leigh Ann Fulkerson of 20th Century Castles, LLC. Built in a decommissioned Nike missile site, the residence boasts a kitchen, four bedrooms, two baths, an exercise room, indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, and an elevator for lowering the owner’s classic automobiles below the surface. On clear days, the doors that once exposed anti-ballistic missile for launch can be opened to let sunshine penetrate the otherwise dimly lit basement.

Want your own missile base? It can happen.

Read it.

You know you want one.

Check it out.

Check it out.

Read it.

Read it.

Truly, you can make anything out of Legos.

Read it.

Read it.

Traits that make great software testers _ intense focus, comfort with repetition, memory for detail _ also happen to be characteristics of autism. People with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism, have normal to high intelligence and often are highly skilled with computers.

Aspiritech, a nonprofit in Highland Park, Ill., nurtures these skills while forgiving the quirks that can make adults with autism unemployable: social awkwardness, poor eye contact, being easily overwhelmed. The company’s name plays on the words “Asperger’s,” “spirit” and “technology.”

Check it out.

Steven Hayward speaks for all right-thinking people.

The trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor for involuntary manslaughter.  The new network TV season.  (Why is it that Hollywood always resembles the birds on the telephone line, who all take off in the same direction when the first crow squawks “Mad Men”?)  Doonesbury.  New York Times op-ed columns; all of them.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg….

Read it.

Some people have entirely too much time on their hands.

Check it out.

This Is So Cool….

Read it.

The State of Kansas this year established the office of State Repealer.

Oh, I would love to have that job….

Read it.

If everybody did things the Texas way, we’d all be better off.

Read it.

Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia.

Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication.

“It’s a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner,” she says. “You become a technological leper because you can’t be around people.

Libiamo ne’ lieti calici

Feel free to sing along.

Don Boudreaux, Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University, spanks another (purported) economist (who ought to know better).

Prof. Peter Morici
University of Maryland
Smith School of Business
College Park, MD

Dear Peter:

In your guest blog-post yesterday at CNBC you argue that the destruction caused by hurricane Irene will spark a “process of economic renewal [that] can leave communities better off than before” (“Economic Impact of Hurricane Irene“).  Central to your argument is your claim that, because of the rebuilding, “the capital stock that emerges will prove more economically useful and productive.”

In other words, whenever assets still in use are destroyed, wealth will thereby be created – that is, people whose assets are destroyed will be made richer – because these destroyed assets are replaced with ones that are newer and more productive.

I hereby offer my services to you, at a modest wage, to destroy your house and your car.  Act now, and I’ll throw in at no extra charge destruction of all of your clothing, furniture, computer hardware and software, and large and small household appliances.

Because, I’m sure, almost all of these things that I’ll destroy for you are more than a few days old (and, hence, are hampered by wear and tear), you’ll be obliged to replace them with newer versions that are “more economically useful and productive.”  You will, by your own logic, be made richer.

Just send me a note with some times that are good for you for me to come by with sledge hammers and blowtorches.  Given the short distance between Fairfax and College Park, I can be at your place pronto.

Oh, as an extra bonus, I promise not to clean up the mess!  That way, there’ll be more jobs created for clean-up crews in your neighborhood.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Read it.

Now that’s comedy.