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Last miscellaneous stuff post before the promised megapost on nuclear energy.

Marijuana as the new herbalism. I really have nothing to add to this. The disingenuous, slippery slope introduction of medical marijuana measures, and now the absurd curative powers attributed to the stuff are all things I've seen ( Read more... )

I'm sure many of you have seen this video:

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I find it infinitely aggravating that to sell anything today, you have to claim that it's some sort of panacea. Packaging is everything. Nobody cares about things that are merely nifty. It's got to cure cancer and double your gas mileage. Slices, dices and brings peace to the Middle East! Yessir, ( Read more... )

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I haven't delved particularly deep into the workings of this silencer. There have been 12 gauge silencers before, but my understanding was that they were problematic because shotgun exhaust is at quite low pressure at the muzzle, and it's easier to rob energy from high-pressure gas for thermodynamic reasons. Also, while muffling the noise of a 12 ( Read more... )

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“Class is intrinsically used in the service of sexism,” says Sontag; however, it is this very concept of "service" that makes possible subversive semiotic connotations aimed at challenging conventional predialectic narratives of class and sex. In Ratt's Round and Round traditionalist intersectionality is inverted, and themes of radical class ( Read more... )

I found this interesting column called Front and Center about military history. I think it will be interesting to my regular readers (who, I am firmly convinced, do exist). My favorite so far is the three part article (1,2,3) on the Italy-Ethiopia war of 1936. The author's thesis is that this war is unfairly overlooked and seen as the ( Read more... )

It is possible that I have fallen out of love with writing. There used to be a wonderful frenzy whenever I had some notion or phrase I thought worthy. There was a naive, complete conviction that my talent at writing was something very special indeed that would elevate and enrich me ( Read more... )

Everyone here is doubtless already familiar with Patton's D-Day speech (at least, Patton's D-Day speech as performed by George C. Scott), so instead

FDR's "Poignant Hour" speech:

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This speech is, ideologically, much that I despise. It follows in the old Yankee tradition of sacralizing a particular conflict, and by extension elevates one side to ( Read more... )

One of the benefits of being a major industrial power is having redundant military/industrial organs. In theory, the military never becomes beholden to a single company. Also, everything can be done in duplicate ( Read more... )

A very pretty shot of the Chengdu J-20:


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