Nikon = Piece of Shit

After about six cycles, the battery in my Nikon DSLR has died. It won't take a charge. (The battery is an EN-EL14 LiON OEM battery, not a knock-off.)

Which has made the camera itself little more than a delicate paperweight.

Hooray for my Canon A1000. It is irritating to use with a flash, for it'll think about it for a few seconds before firing, but at least it takes two AA cells and it always fucking works.

Unlike a more expensive Nikon DSLR. Piece of shit.

Shorter Connecticut Ruling: "Now, We'll Come For Your Horses."

The Connecticut State Supreme Court is deciding a case as to whether or not horses are a "naturally vicious species".

I don't know anything about the judges on the CT appellate court that said that horses are "naturally vicious", but I suspect that they know as much about human history and the history of the domestication of animals as they do about the composition of Pluto's atmosphere.

The consequences of the state supremes upholding that ruling are fairly easy to guess at. With such a determination allowed to stand, it would be far easier for people to sue horse owners and win. As a result of that, horse owners, riding academies and boarding stables would find it next to impossible to purchase insurance. As for the horses themselves, they'd likely be euthanized.

"Nutmeg State", it should be renamed the "Nutter State".

Shorter Veterans Administration Medical Protocol: Dope Them to the Gills and Hope That They Die Soon

After reading this story about how the Veterans Administration grossly over-prescribes pain medications, it's hard for me to reach any other conclusion.

Or you can listen to the story:



If you subscribe to the maxim "never blame on cupidity that which can be blamed on stupidity", then one might conclude that the VA's medical system is overtaxed and that the doctors are prescribing pain meds because that is all they can do to help right now. The doctors hope that they can eventually get to everyone's real problems, but they can't, so they hand out the pain pills and hope that the vets can maintain until its their turn.

But many don't. They die. And the VA is, in part, complicit in their deaths.

Cheaper to just wave the flag and say "thank you" to a uniformed soldier than it is to spend money to try to help them. One might have to raise taxes on the plutocrats to do that.

Tab Clearing and Bangity

Say a man walks into your business and applies for a job.  He's a white guy.  He has a couple of visible tattoos and hazel eyes.  Your state has its legal cases online, so you run his name through it.  He has a few traffic tickets, nothing more.

No red flags, right?  Au contraire, Pierre!  You had just interviewed a potential member of the Future Felons of America. Which, as the article noted, means that we're edging into precrime territory.

On the other side of the coin, now we're going to have white guys yapping about how unfair it is to be profiled.

New rule: The little doors on digital cameras may stay open only so long as the camera is on one's hand. Following this rule may save you a bit over a hundred bucks.

Metadata may not work for shit for finding terrorists, but it works pisser for finding government officials who are blowing the whistle on government fuckery. (H/T) If you work for DasGov and you want to blow the whistle, you had better study up on tradecraft.

I had a little bit of trouble with my S&W 696. It wasn't hitting the primers hard enough to touch them off. A local S&W guru suggested checking the mainspring strain screw to see if it was loose and if it was, snugging it down. Loose, hell, it took two full turns to snug it up.

Much better:

There was a good stiff breeze from the right. As you can see, I've really cheaped out on my targets. I use a "bingo marker" from a dollar store and a sheet of typing paper, the cost of the target is about a penny a sheet.

Anyway, the guru advised me not to use threadlocker on the screw. There is a shoulder that's supposed to keep it from backing out if the screw is snugged up. There was a noticeable increase in the trigger pull; I'll look for that and if it starts feeling light, I'll know what to check.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Beware of Jet Blast!

NSA Oversight: To Difi, It Means "Sitting In a Higher Chair Than the Witness."

Senator Feinstein has felt the heat and now she has seen the light. Whereas previously, she was unwilling to consider any sort of legislation that would annoy even the littlest finger of the Stasi NSA, now she is willing to consider it.

Color me "unimpressed".

Feinstein, for all her fealty to the NSA, might as well be drawing a paycheck that was personally signed by Emperor Alexander. Her "reforms" were either written by the Emperor's staff or approved by him.

I can think of at least three things that are needed to begin to reform this mess. First, the "black budgets" must end. The American people have the right to know where our money is going.

Second, an independent inspector general must have the authority to investigate abuses at Department of Defense intelligence agencies. The IG must not be under the command of the Secretary of Defense, but someone appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate and answerable only to them.

Third, a public/Constitutional advocate must be appointed to represent us in all FISA court proceedings. The public advocate (and, for that matter, the IG) should serve only for a set period of time to prevent "regulatory capture", the bureaucratic analogue to the Stockholm Syndrome.

Alexander and his "boss", Jimmie the Perjurer, have been lying for years about the scope and quality of the NSA's surveillance of the American people. As Sen. Wyden put it:

"You talk about the damage that has been done by disclosures, but any government official who thought this would never be disclosed was ignoring history. The truth always manages to come out.... The NSA leadership built an intelligence data collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people. Time and time again the American people were told one thing in a public forum, while intelligence agencies did something else in private."

The intelligence community is also ignoring history by their repeated assurances that they can be trusted not to abuse their powers. History teaches us that power corrupts, period. Power, both large and small, can be counted on to be abused by the person holding the power. The only way to stop such corruption is to have watchdogs, both inside and outside the government.

The "outside the government" watchdogs are supposed to be our free press. They have fallen down woefully on the job. The NY Times has continued in the Judith Miller tradition of acting as a stenographer to the powerful. The revelations throughout the NSA Affair have been made public by foreign news organizations, with the Times and the WaPo coming in behind them in "oh, this is out there, so we can print it now" mode.

Caturday, NSA Edition

NSA cat is not impressed with your sarcastic t-shirt.

Because It's Friday

A Shay locomotive, another logging locomotive.

I do have a gripe about this video: It has too many shots that look towards the left side of the locomotive. The interesting side of a Shay is the right side, so you can see the running gear working on this three-truck Shay.

NSA Wants to Collect Every Phone Call

So sayeth Emperor Alexander. They want it all. And this crap about a "searchable lockbox" is just that.

The NSA has a track record of doing whatever the fuck it wants to do. And, like all of the rest of the Federal law enforcement agencies, not to mention state and local cops, they have a very hard time distinguishing between dissent and treason.

The distinction between the NSA/CIA/FBI and the KGB/MVD/Stasi seems to be mostly a matter of quibbling.

Shorter NSA: Only Al-Qaeda Sympathizers Oppose What We Do.

That's pretty much the takeaway from the NSA's critique of those who oppose unrestricted drone warfare. The NY Times continued its stenography beat by publishing anonymous smears on drone opponents by NSA functionaries.

This matters today because the Brits are using anti-terrorism laws to harass those who criticize the drone program.