Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

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  • I fucking Love Astrology: The Horoscope for May 28

    After last week’s choc-a-bloc and interesting sky, this week has decided that it’s revealed quite enough thank you and is being uncommunicative.  Celestial infinity, what can you do?  For example, it puts Mercury (change) in Taurus (stability).  This is obviously bullshit, and it’s a sign of how honest the Glibastrology staff is at this fine periodical.  A charlatan would try and use the alternate reading of Mercury to predict news about cattle futures, or McDonald’s announcing a sale or something.  I am not that charlatan.

    Last week we had that awesome double opposition that was keeping relationships on an even keel.  It’s completely fallen apart, though we still have a kinda-sorta-technically-an-alignment-but-a-really-crappy-one (known as a KSTAABARCO* in the astrology biz (not really)) of Mars-Venus-Saturn retrograde, so it’s offering some protection for your relationship if you tell your SO that they look particularly fat today, but not very much.

    Seriously, I'm going to start using this.
    BARCO Alignment, it’s not just for planets!

    In fact, whatever feeble protection that BARCO** alignment gives is more than offset by by the alignment with us of both Mercury and Luna, the two most instability-bringing influences there are.  Shit’s gonna change yo.

    Now having said all of that, there is one day that you might be able to get away with a little something… Memorial Day.  Ironically enough for a day dedicated to remembering, there is a Jupiter-Moon conjunction (in Scorpio!) that bodes well for concealing misbehavior.  However, the long-term risks of such misbehavior will not be mitigated; there is increased risk for contracting venereal disease this week, so wrap that rascal!

    In addition to the ongoing good fishing, this week is good for hunting.  Get out there, kill something, and eat it!  Particularly effective calibers will be 0.22, 0.44, .30-30 and .303.  There isn’t much about cartridge size, though with the Sun in Gemini, magnums are favored.

    As for star-related music, here’s the greatest band of the 20th century deciding they need to sound more like Muse and writing a song about the universe fucking itself:

    *I think I’m going to start using the acronym BARCO.  It has potential.

    **See?

  • Sunday Morning Better Than Swiss Links

     

    Swiss screwed you last night. Maybe because of the 23 beers he had, but that’s no excuse. So it’s time to rely on one of the Original Elders of Zion to bring you news.

     

    Do you know what common sense gun control would really look like? I’d say it should start with disarming cops. They really are far worse than the rest of us.

     

    Macron runs out of other people’s money. Hilarity ensues. Pire que Hitler!

     

    Here’s a delightful quote from a (Catholic, not St. Louis) cardinal:

    It is good to prefer your own kind when shopping, to avoid Jewish stores and Jewish stalls in the marketplace. One should stay away from the harmful moral influence of Jews, keep away from their anti-Christian culture, and especially boycott the Jewish press and demoralizing Jewish publications.

    So of course the church censured him. Hahahahaha, nope, Commie Pope has put him on the path to sainthood. Never change, Frankie, never change.

     

    Who do corruption? WE do corruption! Waukegan is the taint of Chicago.

    Best practice is not to have someone who could potentially be a suspect run the investigation, Newby added, and as an employee who worked in the district office, Newby said he and DeVonne could be suspects. It would also not be best practice to pick investigators who report to one of the people being investigated, he said, adding that Plascencia “is my supervisor (and) I’m her supervisee.”

    The set-up was problematic and leads people to “think you’re not telling the truth,” Newby said. He added that that this doesn’t mean the results of the investigation are wrong, but it can leave room for doubt.

    “Room for doubt.”

     

    Inbred idiot acts like an inbred idiot. Will we never be rid of these people?

     

    When Beer It Forward goes terribly wrong.

     

    Light the Warty signal! California NIMBYism is the best NIMBYism.

     

    OK, Old Guy Music for the maybe two of you who ever bother risking turning into your grandpa and actually listening to it. Country music gone problematic.

  • Open Links – Get yer OT on

    Actually, there is no OT. Here is your big chance to paste away, narrowed gaze and admonishment free.

    So, what’s the word, commentariat?

  • The Hyperbole’s Homebuilding Hoedown – Part The Fourth

    Previously on H3

    Part 1: Introduction, Caveat, and Stakeout

    Part B: Permits and Foundations

    Part III: Do’h, Stumps, Rodan!!!, and Framing

    Rough-in it, Hah!

    Really shoulda had an arc fault circuit breaker on those attic lights!

    The framing completed we can now move on to the electric, HVAC, and plumbing rough-in, well almost. While one could elect to start running supply lines and drain and pulling wire right away, it is preferable to ‘button-up’ the home first. Exterior doors and windows need to be installed and the roof needs to at least be felt papered if not fully shingled, this not only weatherproofs but keeps light-fingered passersby honest. Sadly with escalating cost of building supplies, theft is a serious concern even in the rural heartland of Ohio. The products and tools have improved but the processes remain the same, very few codes concerning doors, windows, and roof installation have changed or exist at all. What color they are is something else, but more on that later. Now with the buttoning-up completed lets rough-in it.

    Back in ’88 dad hired an electrician to wire the spec house. He was good enough to let me help and willing to teach me all I needed to know about wiring a home. If he was ever concerned about training his own replacement he never let on, he had plenty of other work and I have, over the years, learned that there is a friendly competition between most tradesman. Sure, some might dislike each other but most will buy rounds for each other in the local bars and swap stories about insane clients and stupid inspectors. The exception being anybody who would give the rest of us a bad name, guys who do shoddy work and rip people off. If you’re talking to a tradesman you’re thinking of hiring, and he tells you all his competition are losers and no good, be cautious, especially if he brings it up unasked. If you ask and he speaks well of his competitors that’s a good sign he’s being honest.

    Unless we were too busy, I wired our homes for the next ten or fifteen years. I stopped and we again hire an electrition to wire our jobs, mainly because the codes kept changing and it wasn’t worth it to try and keep up with them. I’d estimate in those early houses I would run a total of maybe fifteen-twenty circuits for the average house, now it can take over thirty and some need to be ground fault protected, some arc fault protected. It seems like every appliance needs to be on a dedicated circuit and you have to put fewer and fewer outlets or lights on the rest. Meaning that there are more home runs from the service entrance panel, and wire isn’t getting any cheaper. For those arc-fault protected circuits, one can lay out up to 10x what a standard one costs. Our electrician also has to install two grounding rods, tamper proof outlets, CO2 alarms, etc. I estimate that changes in the electrical code alone have added up to five thousand dollars to the cost of a new home.

    We have almost always hired out the plumbing. For the first few years, we used a father & son and son crew, the average home would take them one day to rough-in, well, the father and one son did; the other son installed the furnace. When the furnace son bought the farm, oh relax, he bought an actual farm and raises llamas or ferrets or something, dad and I took over the furnace installations. A few years later for various reasons, we switched to another plumber and he started installing our furnaces, which made me very happy. I hate ductwork, I doubt that I installed one single furnace that doesn’t have my blood on it, that metal is sharp, and I must have used up a good chunk of my profanity quota by mumbling “CodKnobbin’ Melonfarmer!” while fighting with it. Plumbing codes have not changed much, ‘Pipe’s still round, shit still runs downhill, and payday’s still on Friday’. The plastic supply lines are now the norm, copper prices being what they are. The furnace/ductwork installation is the same as well, the furnaces are more efficient but nobody has improved ductwork and it still sucks balls Seriously, you’d need armed forces to get me to install another furnace, I’ll go back to delivering pizza first.

    Decks

    Deck Pics!

    When I’m not involved in the roughing-in, this is usually a good time to build the decks. Unlike ductwork I love decks. I like framing, and I really like finish carpentry, but my favorite has got to be building decks. Framing gives you instant gratification, you can get a lot done quickly, but it’s crude and almost anyone can do it.  Finish work requires skill but it’s very repetitive- measure, miter, cope, install, measure, miter, cope, install -repeat ad nauseam. Decks offer the best of both worlds, they make an instant visual impression but are a finished product so one can get his woodworking on — it’s not like building a cabriole legged table but it not exactly slapping up a chicken coop either.

    Structurally decks haven’t changed much– posts and beams, joists and decking, railings and stairs. I use screws now where I used to use nails, and structural lag screws replace some of the through bolts. Somewhere along the way, the maximum spacing between the railing went from 6″ to 4″ which means you need more balusters and that could cost a pretty penny on a deck with lots of railing. After building three or four railings I was sick of the standard 2×2 balusters and since then I try to come up with a new and exciting design for each deck and railing. There are fancy kits and pre-formed balusters but they are costly, same with the composite decking boards. They have nice hidden fastening systems and an occasional power washing is a lot cheaper than staining every few years but you pay for it up front. A composite board costs between three and five times the cost of a wood one and the composite boards require more framing and labor.

    The important thing to remember is that this section was added primarily for me to show off some of my handiwork. Look on my works, ye Glibby, and despair!

    Big Deck Pics!

    Inspections

    Back in ’88, we had our first ‘inspection’ at about this point, as I’ve mentioned a few more have been added since, but this is still the first real one, the others are more ‘take a quick look and check a box on the form’ type of inspection. In ’88 the ‘inspectors’ were volunteers on the HOA’s code enforcement detail. They really didn’t know much about construction (there were a few retired engineers and they at least knew what they didn’t know), they were better suited for enforcing the HOA rules regarding how long your grass was or if you could leave the RV parked in the drive for four straight days. The Inspections were more of an open house than anything else, some ‘inspectors’ would bring their buddies or wives along, everyone wants to check out the new house on the block. Lot’s of “So this is the kitchen?” and “Are you putting in tile?” questions…not so many “What’s the span on those joists” type questions.

    Today we have a real inspector, he was an electrician and then a building inspector one county over before the HOA hired him. He is thorough and fair, he does a pressure test on the drain lines, he makes sure the wiring is secure but not too tightly stapled. He knows what is structurally required and he follows the codes. I really can’t complain about him, if you are going to have codes and enforce them better a by-the-book guy than looks-good-to-me type. You know what you’re getting with the former, some (most) of the codes may be redundant, subjective, or overkill but they are what they are. In the latter case, who knows what B.S. they might come up with.

    The Dunning–Kruger effect or ‘knows just enough to be dangerous’ rule applies here as well. Between the totally unqualified looky-loos we started with and the professional we have now the HOA went through half a dozen others. One, I mentioned in the introduction, he stuck his thumb on top of his head and extended his fingers up if his pinky could touch the ceiling there was a headroom problem. I had to explain the difference between a ridge beam and a ridge board to the next guy every time we had a cathedral ceiling that extended into a loft. A few feel it’s their job to find something wrong, not ensure things are right, they’ll make up ‘issues’ on the spot to justify their phony baloney jobs. I’ve had a few say ‘I’m happy about X but I’m not sure if that’s covered in the codes, I’ll look into it and let you know.”

    A competent inspector will add some value to a homeowner if he catches some oversight or incompetence on the part of the builder. He may also add a little peace of mind in that a second pair of eyes looked over the construction, which may be of some value. A bad one can cost the homeowner real money, either by forcing the builder to either fight some arbitrary rule, and time is money, or go along with it to get things done. Worse case scenario he misses something that causes problems down the road. People assume that if it passes ‘inspection’ it’s all good, buyer beware has gone out the window; Big daddy government or the HOA has my back.

    Due diligence is a thing of the past, we offer to show potential customers the last five homes we’ve built, not cherry-picked ones, the last five. We’ll give them the number of the owners so they can call them personally. (Yes, we get permission to do this, we have never had a client not want to show their new home to others, many tell us to send people their way without us even asking) As far as I know,  no one has ever taken advantage of this, granted we get most of our business through word of mouth so people are getting referrals in a way. But still, for most people, a new home is the single biggest expense in their life and given the chance to check out our credentials most people just give it a ‘meh’. I don’t get it.

     

    That’s it for Part the Fourth, I know I promised a story about color codes, but I spent a ridiculous amount of time formatting this article so that the first letter in each line spelled out a secret message, then I realized that everyone’s browser and window settings are different and all that work was for naught. So this is what you get, no anecdote, no red sauce recipe. I’ll make it up to you next time, promise.

    Not when it comes to decks or ductwork

  • Something for Everyone

    I like to think there is a little something for everyone here.  It isn’t necessarily out of spite that I do this, but I’ve drawn inspiration from the comments before.  Why stop now?


    This is my review of Perrier Peach.  Hat Tip:  mikey.


    What, this isn’t beer?  You don’t say?

    I actually drink a lot of these during the day a a substitute for something else I used to drink a lot of:  energy drinks.  About a year ago I stopped when it occurred to me that I was drinking three to four of them a day.  It all started during the fall 2007 when I was assigned to the airfield lighting crew.  It was a nice gig at the time because all airfields are a high voltage series circuit.  Each light is connected to a device called an isolation transformer, which is connected in series with each other like Christmas lights, so it is easy to troubleshoot.

    It also meant we had to complete the check prior to the start of the ops day, which meant I reported in at 0430.  I compensated for this when I discovered something called Boo Koo Energy Drink.  This eventually led to me switching to sugar-free energy drinks due to a concern for the amount of sugar I was drinking. 

    So why stop?  It had absolutely nothing to do with concern for aspartame which is a bit of a myth.  It turns out there is no causal effect between aspartame and cancer.  This, according to the American Cancer Society.

    It really didn’t have anything to do with concerns over aspartame and nerulogical disorders either.  Apparently, this is the claim floating around the ether:

    75% of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA each year including seizures, migraines, dizzinesss, nausea, muscle spasms, weight gain, depression, fatigue, irritability, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety, tinnitus, schizophrenia and death.

    None of these are linked to aspartame.  In anything, these symptoms have more to do with other compounds like food dyes, used in products along with aspartame.  It’s only been used in food products since the 80s, if it caused seizures wouldn’t this kind of information show up beyond WordPress sites and Facebook memes?

    Finally, I didn’t stop drinking them because energy drinks are all that dangerous.  In fact, there are no fewer than 2097 studies on the subject, as determined in a literature review published in 2014.  They concluded,

    Energy drink consumption is a health issue primarily of the adolescent and young adult male population. It is linked to increased substance abuse and risk-taking behaviors.

    In other words, people that engage in risky activities, like to drink Red Bull.  Funny, given Red Bull markets itself with people that engage in high risk activities.

    Red Bull is not responsible for injury, accidents, or death resulting from extreme sports

    So why did I stop drinking energy drinks?  I never let my kids drink soda, and it seemed hypocritical that I drink so much of it in front of them. So I quit.  The caffeine withdrawal subsided after a couple months but I still choke down a cup of coffee or two.  The mineral water is…nice.  Its water, but with little bubbles.  The lime flavored one is much better; the peach is weird.  Perrier Peach:  0/5.

  • Saturday Morning Links of Horror

    I warned you. Well, nothing more needs be said, let’s get to links, which will not help you to forget that image.

     

    Any news story that has the words “ejaculating puppets” in it is worth reading. In this case, it’s a legal battle between the son of Jim Henson and the commercial juggernaut of Sesame Street. It’s nice to see that Brian Henson has inherited some of his dad’s creativity and a lot of his dad’s delightfully dark side. I know which side I’m pulling for.

     

    Dogs, eggplants, Australians… this story has it all. Victoria is the antipodean Florida.

     

    So let’s get this straight- there’s no evidence of asbestos in the product, there’s no evidence connecting the product to this lady’s cancer, but they’re an EEVUL KORPORATION, so let’s mulct $25 million from them, just because. Ahh, the wisdom of California juries. And did I mention how much I hate lawyers?

     

    If I were to carve out an exception to the First Amendment, it would be to ban media outlets and politicians from talking about science. These are some ignorant congressmen. The writers at factcheck.org are equally ignorant and highly mendacious “journalists.” Their sources are a dead giveaway. Want to know the actual truth? Read the analyses of actual scientists here, here, here, and here. Bottom line: it’s complicated, buried in the noise, and basically we just don’t know. Just like anthropogenic climate change. Perfect for politicians and politicized “journalism.”

     

    Speaking the high quality science being done by our government, here’s another gem, this time to bolster the latest pants-wetting SCARIEST DRUG EVER NEED MOAR LAWS panic. It’s… a reach. But it hits the narrative in an intersectional way, all directed toward more government. Note that there’s nothing quantitative presented, no links to peer review, no actual risk assessment. And of course, the mandatory ties to unrelated but SCARY research.

     

    I always said that I’d be a gynecologist if I could specialize in hot young girls. I had no idea that this specialty actually existed, but apparently my spirit brother managed to carve out that niche.

     

    OK, Old Guy Music, as if you were going to get away without it. A wonderful song, and some delightful playing by a talented kid.

  • ZARDOZ FRIDAY EARLY EVENING LINKS

    A LITTLE SEEN VERSION OF THE ICONIC PHOTO…

     

    ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ IS AWARE THAT MANY OF THE CHOSEN ONES WILL BE ENTERING A THREE DAY WEEKEND….FOR THERE IS A HOLIDAY HONORING THE FALLEN U.S. ARMED BRUTAL EXTERMINATORS.  WHAT? OH, FALLEN U.S. ARMED FORCES MEMBERS. VERY WELL… STILL, A WORTHY DAY. ZARDOZ WILL GIVE YOU THE GIFT OF THE LINK TO START YOUR WEEKEND OFF RIGHT. ALSO, ZARDOZ WILL MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PLENTY OF BREAD FOR YOUR CHOSEN ONE GRILLING ACTIVITIES.

    ZARDOZ COMMANDS HOT DOG BUNS TO BE DELIVERED TO SECTOR 7-18!

     

    • ZARDOZ READ THIS WITH GREAT INTEREST. HOWEVER, DON’T EXPECT ZARDOZ TO SHARE THE SECRET OF HIS DRIVE WITH ANY BRUTAL SCIENTICIANS. THEY CAN SCIENCE IT FOR THEMSELVES!
    • ZARDOZ INQUIRES – “YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS FROM AUSTRIA AND TURNED A HARD EYE TOWARD FOREIGNERS?”
    • AN IMPRESSIVE FIGURE, TO BE SURE. NOW, COLLECTING IT… MIGHT GET A HUNDREDTH OF A PENNY ON THE DOLLAR. ZARDOZ IS AVAILABLE TO HELP “PERSUADE” ANY ASSET HOLDERS TO “COOPERATE”.
    • THE OLDEST BRUTAL EXTERMINATOR? MAYBE ZARDOZ SHOULD RECONSIDER THE AGE LIMIT ON RECRUITING…

    ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.

  • What Are We Reading – May 2018

    Old Man With Candy

    After a conversation with Warty, I remembered perhaps my favorite scientific biography ever, Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age by Paul Nahin, and have been giving it a reread. Heaviside is only vaguely known among people in the physical sciences (I only knew the name because of the Heaviside step function in math), but ought to be far better known; for example, what physicists and engineers think of as the Maxwell equations (the foundations of electromagnetic theory) are actually the Heaviside equations. Maxwell’s formulation was clumsy and complex- Heaviside reworked them into a simple but comprehensive set of partial differential equations, the ones familiar to contemporary students and practitioners. His operational calculus laid the groundwork for Laplace transform methods routinely used in circuit analysis. His work solved the massive problems of the nascent telegraphy and telephony technologies and brought us into the 20th century.

    But that’s what makes him interesting specifically to geeks. What makes him interesting overall is the sociology associated with him. Unlike most prominent British scientists of the era. Heaviside was a true outsider, born into poverty, and completely self-taught. Moreover, he was an odd personality, and if he were alive today, we’d put him somewhere on the autism spectrum. He had almost no social interactions beyond his immediate family, refused to adopt the manners and mores of the gentlemanly scientists with whom he interacted in scholarly journals, and larded his papers and books with thinly veiled invective and humorous insights (“It is wonderful how little work there is when you know how to do it.” “It is as unfair to call a vector a quaternion as to call a man a quadruped.”). Of course, establishment figures fought to keep this outsider outside, but the sheer power of his intellect swept that aside. Trigger warning: to understand what Heaviside did, some equations will inevitably present themselves. If you’re on the other side of CP Snow’s two worlds, you can skip over them and take my word that what he did was brilliant, significant, and vastly influential. This book is fascinating, a study in sociology and psychology as much as it is about physics, an absolute delight.

    SugarFree

    I had been meaning to read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer since it won the 2014 Nebula for Best Novel, but it wasn’t until the announcement of the Netflix adaptation that I finally got around to it. It involves a scientific expedition into Area X, a portion of the southern United States coast that has been inexplicably quarantined by an invisible and deadly barrier with a single, deliberate opening to allow people to explore. Inside, mutant animals and an inexplicable structure beg to be explored. Almost everyone that goes dies or disappears or comes back insane, with amnesia or riddled with strange cancers.

    I really have to say, I don’t understand the hype around this book. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really anything groundbreaking or even exciting. It is written in a limited viewpoint from an unnamed and probably unreliable narrator in a journal. In fact, none of the characters have names and are just referred to by their job or functions on the expedition, The Biologist, the Linguist, The Psychologist, etc. In an experiment to find the optimum psychological conditions for an expedition that can both survive and return with some sort of coherent information about the conditions inside the barrier, all the members on this trip are women.

    Like much modern music, it seems like VanderMeer took a dozen or so better works, threw them into a blender, and hoped the reader wouldn’t find too many recognizable chunks floating around in the slurry. But I’m good at spotting chunks: There are bit and pieces of Solaris, Roadside Picnic, Rogue Moon and–for the first two–their cinematic adaptations, as well as all the movies and books derived from them (Event Horizon, Cube, et.al,) countless “found” memoirs of the inexplicable, the mind-flaying horrors of Lovecraft and even a solid piece of gristle from Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

    The movie is a pretty disappointing follow-up to the excellent Ex Machina by Alex Garland. It takes a few things from the novel, but otherwise pretty much ignores it to create a strange mash-up of “The Colour Out of Space” and The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard (minus all of Ballard’s Heart of Darkness overtones.)

    Riven

    I finally passed my exam and have been celebrating by reading exactly nothing–except the dialogue in Persona 5. That said, Mr. Riven and I listen to some podcasts when we’re lifting or traveling. Last week we traveled to Missoula for the USPSA Area 1 Championship. Mr. Riven has been especially delighted with his recent find of the Myths and Legends podcast. It dovetails nicely with his current game of choice–God of War. The writer and host covers a wide variety of, well, myths and legends with a good deal of fairly dry humor and a flair for entertaining. Besides the Norse lore that’s so apropos for God of War, they also cover Slavic fairytales, epic Viking tales, and all of the standard classics: Greek and Roman mythology, King Arthur’s court, mythological beasts, etc. There’s plenty more besides what I’ve listed here, and we greatly enjoyed a lot of the Slavic tales on our trip. Fans of John Wick might also appreciate the stories that include Baba Yaga, who is seems to be equal parts hilarious and terrifying (just like an ancient boogeyman should be).

    mexican sharpshooter

    It came to my attention that my younger brother was not a prog, but is still in college, so I decided to pick up a few books he might benefit given his environment.  I got through this one pretty quickly, given Bastiat is pretty straightforward and concise.  I also picked up The Road to Serfdom.  This one is taking me longer.

    I also bought The Federalist Papers since I never read them.  I have to admit, I don’t like Hamilton.  I can deal with his arguments droning on, taking several pages and multiple essays to convey–I’ve read boring stuff before.  I simply find a lot of them ineffective, and he does not always adequately explain why something regulated by a state might be bad but it is totally okay for the federal government to do it.  It might be my biases as a former federal employee, and seeing ineffective, incompetent implementation of seemingly simple tasks for several years.  I do realize I should try to decouple that when reading a historical document.  I found myself flipping through Hamilton’s essays and finding the next one Madison wrote as his seem better thought out.  In all, it leaves me wondering if the natural born clause in the Constitution was intentionally written to keep certain assholes from being president, a certain asshole named Hamilton.

    Web Dominatrix

    I just started (and then finished in swift order) To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink. As a business owner I have to spend time selling, and I’ve hated it for years, which is why I was so delighted to discover this book which explains how to sell without feeling like a sleezeball backed up with case studies.

    I am now reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg as my habits need some major work. There are habits I have that are good, others that are bad, and others that just simply aren’t serving me in the best way.

    Tulip

    I would like to recommend three short story collections. First is American Housewife by Helen Ellis. These are great little vignettes. My two favorites are “The Wainscoting War” and “My Novel Is Brought to You by the Good People at Tampax.”

    The second is Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson. I love her short stories. She is probably familiar to most as the author of The Lottery. She also wrote The Haunting of Hill House. I read that in one sitting when I was fifteen. It was a hot, August day and when I finished, I was in a cold sweat. I’m still not sure why, but that book creeped me out like no other.

    The last is Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold by various authors. Most are based on old tales, but with a modern twist. They are dark, creepy and sometimes funny.

    SP

    I’ve just started reading Bad Things Happen (David Loogan Book 1) by Harry Dolan. I’m enjoying it very much so far. It’s a noir-ish mystery, which I love in books and film. If it stays true to the promising beginning chapters, I’ll most likely pick up the rest in the series.

    Also reading several vegetarian and vegan cookbooks. I’m getting a little tired of the same old plain stuff I’ve been eating during my 60 day 100% plant-based window (in which I’m trying to cement the practice), and need to mix it up some. Highly recommended: The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook: A Fresh Guide to Eating Well With 700 Foolproof Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen. 250 or so of these recipes are vegan. I’ve cooked from this before and everything just works. I’m thinking about putting a post together with brief reviews of several others, if there is any interest.

    And, last, but certainly not least, a quick read through Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens in Less Than 10 days by Peter Burke has inspired me to begin growing soil-raised sprouts in the house. I love that I’ll be able to do so next winter!

    Brett L

    I finished Mark Lawrence’s latest, Grey Sister. Its probably his least best work, and still better than almost anything out there in the SF/F genre right now. It definitely ends on an Empire Strikes Back note, so I expect the third one to really kick ass. I read John Conroe’s latest collection The Demon Accords Compendium, Vol. 1. I give it a B. I think that universe has mostly run its course. And then Exam Ref 70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions because this Azure shit is hot and I need to keep my LinkedIn profile popular. Azure is fun and I wish I was 23 and single and could spend 2 or 3 nights a week messing around in it for 3-5 hours at a time.

    STEVE SMITH

    STEVE SMITH READ ABOMINABLE BY HOOMAN WRITER DAN SIMMONS. ABOMINABLE LONG BOOK BUT SHORT ON HOT YETI ACTION; STORY ALL MOUNTAIN CLIMBING AND NAZIS! STEVE SMITH FIND HOOMAN SIMMONS AND STEVE SMITH SHOW HIM WHAT ABOMINABLE REALLY MEANS!

    jesse.in.mb

    AWOL on the Appalachian Trail: I have a confession to make. Travelogues make me bitter; I was miserable thinking about how little I’d traveled while watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty…on a flight to spend a week in Berlin and Prague on my own for New Years, and was bitter *both* times I saw Under the Tuscan Sun (some of you are too young to remember when airlines just played one movie at a time)…while flying back from a month in Rome with side trips through the Tuscan countryside. So I reaaaally shouldn’t have read this delightful travelogue about hiking the AT because his motivations felt familiar and the adventure sounds absolutely awful, but doable.

    Happy Dreams: This novel, about a peasant who moves to the city to be a trash picker, was a constant aggravation and a struggle to read, but I’m glad I kept chipping away at it. Toward the end of the novel I ended up caring about the characters even if their behavior still grated deeply. The author’s afterward really should’ve been the intro. Once I understood where he was coming from the entire story came together as beautiful in its grind.

    Macbeth: A Novel: Audible had it on sale, and it was read by Alan Cumming. I’d never read it or seen the play (unless you count THRONE OF BLOOD), and I figured Cumming reading Macbeth would be awesome…except it’s not Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it’s Macbeth: A Novel. I kept thinking it didn’t *seem* very Shakespearean, and then looked into a it a bit and was annoyed.

  • A Visit To The Browning Museum

    It’s hard to overstate the influence John Browning had on the firearms industry.  He designed firearms ranging from .22 rifles to 37mm cannon; from the classic, time-tested 1911 pistol to the famous Auto-5 shotgun to the historic Browning Automatic Rifle.  He designed the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, still, after almost a century, the world’s best heavy machine gun.  In fact, his list of cartridges and firearms designed is extensive:

    Cartridges

    • .25 ACP
    • .32 ACP
    • .38 ACP
    • .380 ACP
    • .45 ACP
    • .50 BMG
    • 9mm Browning Long

    Handguns

    • FN M1899/M1900 (.32 ACP)
    • Colt Model 1900 (.38 ACP)
    • Colt Model 1902 (.38 ACP)
    • Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammer (.38 ACP)
    • FN Model 1903 (9mm Browning Long)
    • Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless (.32 ACP)
    • FN Model 1906 Vest Pocket (.25 ACP)
    • Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket (.25 ACP)
    • Colt Model 1908 Pocket Hammerless (.380 ACP)
    • FN Model 1910 (.32 ACP, .380 ACP)
    • S. M1911 pistol (.45 ACP)
    • Browning Hi-Power (9mm Parabellum)
    • Colt Woodsman pistol (.22 LR)

    Shotguns

    • Savage Model 720 long-recoil semi-automatic shotgun
    • Ithaca Model 37 pump-action repeating shotgun
    • Stevens Model 520/620 pump-action repeating shotgun
    • Winchester Model 1887 lever-action repeating shotgun
    • Winchester Model 1893 pump-action repeating shotgun
    • Winchester Model 1897 pump-action repeating shotgun
    • Winchester Model 1912 pump-action repeating shotgun (actually designed by T.C. Johnson but based on the 1897 Winchester)
    • Browning Auto-5 long-recoil semi-automatic shotgun
    • Browning Superposed over/under shotgun
    • Remington Model 17 pump-action repeating shotgun

    Rifles

    • Winchester Model 1885 falling-block single-shot rifle
    • Winchester Model 1886 lever-action repeating rifle
    • Winchester Model 1890 slide-action repeating rifle (.22 LR)
    • Winchester Model 1892 lever-action repeating rifle
    • Winchester Model 1894 lever-action repeating rifle
    • Winchester Model 1895 lever-action repeating rifle
    • Winchester Model 1900 bolt-action single-shot rifle (.22 LR)
    • Remington Model 8 semi-auto rifle
    • Browning 22 Semi-Auto rifle (.22 LR)
    • Remington Model 24 semi-auto rifle (.22 LR)
    • FN Trombone pump-action rifle (.22 LR)

    Crew-Served Arms

    • S. M1895 air-cooled gas-operated machine gun
    • S. M1917 water-cooled recoil-operated machine gun
    • S. M1919 air-cooled recoil-operated machine gun
    • S. M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)
    • S. M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun
    • S. M4 37mm Automatic Gun

    Of those, you can find the M1911, the Stevens 520, Ithaca Model 37m Browning Auto-5 and the Winchester Model 12 in the gun rack here at the Casa de Animal.

    John Browning held 128 patents on firearms and associated devices.  He was, truly, the DaVinci of gun designers, probably the single most influential gun-maker of the modern era.

    A couple of years back I spent a little over a year in his home town of Ogden, Utah.  While there I had several chances to visit the Browning Museum; if you’re ever in the area, I recommend it.  The museum houses a whole bunch of neat stuff:  Hand-made Browning prototypes, one-offs, design specs, you name it, it’s there.   Some highlights:

    The Man Himself.

    The museum is first and foremost a tribute to the man himself, shown here at the entrance holding one of his more famous designs.  Born in 1855, the son of a gunsmith, John designed and built his first firearm at age 10.  He was awarded his first patent at age 24 and went on to spend his life as one of history’s most innovative gunmakers.

    Some early Brownings.

    The museum contains several of the senior Browning’s guns as well as some of John’s earlier pieces.  John’s father, Jonathan Browning, had been part of the Mormon diaspora from Nauvoo, Illinois, and set himself up as a gunsmith on the move to Utah; his son took the baton and ran with it.

    John Browning designed guns for every kind of shooter.  Big game rifles, shotguns, handguns, crew-served military weapons, you name it, the agile and innovative mind of Browning broke new ground on it.  He gave us the 1911 and its ultimate development, the Hi-Power, two of the finest martial handguns ever made.  He gave us the Auto-5, the first successful commercially produced semi-auto shotgun.  He gave us the Superposed, the first successful over/under shotgun, a refined version of which is still made today as the Citori.  He gave us the original America’s rifle, the 1894 Winchester, and its pistol-caliber counterpart, the Winchester 1892.  He gave us the bottom-eject Ithaca 37 and the reed-slim bottom-eject Browning .22 semi-auto.  He truly was a legend in the world of gun design.

    The Browning museum is the repository for a lot of John Browning’s genius – including some significant hand-made prototypes.

    Most gun folks are familiar with the Auto-5, one of John Browning’s most famous inventions.  But it wasn’t his first semi-auto shotgun.  Here are two prototypes, hand-made by the man himself, of a semi-auto shotgun based on a toggle action – yes, that’s right, like a Luger.

    Toggle-action shotguns!

    Browning was concerned about infringing on the Borchardt/Luger design, so instead produced the first prototype of what became the immortal Auto-5; note that the original didn’t have a handle on the bolt, but rather the bolt was (oddly) connected by an operating rod to a handle on the underside of the stock.  That was an oddity that Browning corrected in the second prototype, which lead to the production models.

    The second and third Auto-5 prototypes.
    The first and last production Auto-5s.

    A row over from the Auto-5 one can find the rifle racks, including the prototypes for both the Winchester ’92 and ’94 rifles.  The ’92 was immortalized in any number of Western movies; John Wayne owned several examples and was a fan of the rifle.  It’s light, handy, fast into action and packs a decent punch at short range.  The ’94 has probably killed more deer in North America than any other single rifle design and is still one of the best lever guns available.  The ’94 is most commonly found chambered for the .30-30, one of the most popular rifle cartridges ever made; the trienta-trienta is still in common use from the Yukon to the Canal Zone.

    1892 Prototypes
    1894 Prototypes

    Last but not least, some of the finest handguns ever devised came from the mind of Browning.  At the museum you can see his first auto pistol, gas-operated even, as well as the prototypes of the 1911 and the Hi-Power:

    The first Browning auto pistols.
    Browning’s hand-made 1911 prototype.

    The original building where John Browning and his brothers designed and built fin guns is only a few blocks away from the museum as well, but there is a sad note there; the building is identifiable by the patina remaining that shows where the “Browning Bros” and “1875” signs were, but the edifice is now empty and seemingly abandoned – a sad note for a structure from which emanated some of the finest firearms ever built.

    The Browning HQ, as was.

    John Browning was a singular mind.  He was, as I’ve said, the DaVinci is firearms; no other single person in the late 19th/early 20th century had the influence on firearms design that he did.  If you own more than a couple of guns, chances are you have a Browning design or a derivative thereof in your collection.

    If you’re ever in Ogden, Utah, stop by the Union Station building and visit the Browning Museum.  It’s worth the relatively few shekels you’ll spend to see some unique pieces of American firearms history.

  • GlibFit 2.0, Son of Glibfit – Week 2

    Week 2 – IIFYM

    When I was starting to lose weight, I knelt at the altar of Keto. I thought it was the best way to lose weight, bar none. What I’ve learned since then is that it was the best way *for me* to lose weight. And it didn’t work because the mighty forces of Beta Hydroxybutyrate valiantly went to war and defeated the Goblins of Insulin Bog. It worked for me because I could eat on a significant calorie deficit every day without being hungry.

    Every successful weight loss boils down to a simple conservation of energy. Put a lot of energy into your body and the extra gets stored. Put to little into your body, and your stores get used. Thermodynamics, how does it work?

    So do I think keto is necessary? Nope. Is it a good way to keep yourself happy on a calorie deficit? Yep.

    But really, the important thing is to set your goals and stick to them. How do you know what your goals should be? Glad you asked. Go use this little work sheet.

    Follow the steps given, and this worksheet will spit out your macronutrient targets for every day. For weight loss, the most important target is your calorie target. Eat less than your total daily energy expenditure and you’ll lose weight one way or the other. After that, your protein goal should be met every day. That’s important for keeping your muscles from wasting away with your fat. After that, your fat and carb goals are set.

    Once you have this, you’ve done all the hard work. Deciding on what food to eat and how much is just a matter of making it fit your macro goals. Should you eat a hamburger slathered in butter? It’s not a moral question where you have to decide. You just need to figure out If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM).

    To make this work, you pretty much have to be willing to log what you eat. Or at the very least keep a tally of your daily calories. Is that a little bit of work? Yes. Suck it up and be an adult.

    But this it the epitome of working smarter, not harder.

    Bonus 2 Week Challenge

    Get a tape measure and calculate your body fat percentage.