• Military,  Tech

    Snipers and robot armies

    After reading these two articles (here and here) about new forms of sniper scopes, I have to wonder, why aren’t robot armies in the field right now? Granted, all of the shooting must somehow involve a human, but I would imagine that remote operator could be anywhere. We’ve had unmanned aerial vehicles for years now, and those fly, which would seem to be much more complicated and expensive.

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  • Bluegrass,  Funny,  Music

    My funniest line from last night

    Was when I said “I’ve seen the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by Dave Mathews”, which got a good laugh from my fellow acoustic purists who were going over new material at the open mic last night.

    Which I won by the way. I could just barely hear myself in the monitors, but evidently is sounded good in the crowd. I got my guitar showpiece, Bonaparte’s Retreat (in Drop D tuning) mostly right, which is a rare thing.

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  • Photography

    Loner into the waste did go…


    On Friday I happened to be driving through Kirkwood and happened by the old, abandoned Pullman Company Yards. I happened to have my camera with me, so I did some exploring.

    The Atlanta Preservation Center describes it as

    The Pratt Engineering Company purchased this property adjacent to the rail line in 1900 in what was once the City of Kirkwood. In the 1920’s, the Pullman Company bought and expanded the industrial complex for its southeast repair facility. Many of the industrial buildings, characterized by brick clad and riveted iron skeleton construction built by Pratt Engineering and the brick clad reinforced concrete buildings built by the Pullman Company remain on the site.

    Anyway, check out the photo gallery.

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  • Iraq,  Tech

    Sunday round up

    • A nice graph of the internet
    • If I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe in this one “I found Saddam’s WMD Bunkers“. The reason that no one in government is following up on them is that the US invasion forced the weapons into Syria, and the Bush administration didn’t act on the information quickly. The Democrats don’t want to move on it because it proves the main cause for the invasion. It’s a bit too cinematic to be believed, but quite interesting.
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  • Government,  Weirdness

    Keeping us safe

    This is something to bear in mind as recent events have brought gun control back onto the discussion list

    Phony fax gives prisoner almost 2 weeks of freedom
    Officials released a prisoner from a state facility after receiving a phony fax that ordered the man be freed, and didn’t catch the mistake for nearly two weeks.

    Timothy Rouse, 19, is charged with beating an elderly western Kentucky man and was at the Kentucky Correctional & Psychiatric Center in La Grange for a mental evaluation. He was released from that facility on April 6 after officials received the fake court order.

    It contained grammatical errors, was not typed on letterhead and was faxed from a local grocery store. The fax falsely claimed that the Kentucky Supreme Court “demanded” Rouse be released.

    Prison officials did not notice that the fax came from a grocery store because policies did not require checking the source of a faxed order, said Greg Taylor, the LaGrange facility’s director.

    “It’s not part of a routine check, but certainly, in hindsight, that would perhaps have caused somebody to ask a question,” he said. He added that misspellings on orders are common.

    The most damning part I suppose is that misspellings on Supreme Court “demands” are common.

    Even if strict gun control is theoretically possible and desirable, it’s got to be administered by someone. And guess who that someone is going to be?

  • Movies

    A movie to see

    Is the Asphault Jungle from 1950. It’s a good noir crime drama, with good acting by Sterling Hayden and a young Marilyn Monroe (playing a mistress, imagine).

    One hilarious moment is Hayden, is his classic tough guy growl, complaining that his bookie pointed out that he owed money, or in the slang of the time, “he boned me”. As in “He boned me in front of some guy I didn’t even know!”

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