perfidy

JohnL, the proprietor of Texas Best Grok, has found hisself a coblogger. And this seems to have upped the posting frequency a bit. The new addition, Planet Stories, provides some insight into the mind of the engineer:

Understanding Engineers: Take Four

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons and Civil Engineers build targets.

Understanding Engineers: Take Nine

An engineer was crossing a road one-day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do anything you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, and that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

All true. I remember back in my sordid youth, I spent a lot of time in bars. One night, I was hanging out at Larry's Bar, Grill and Seminar of Lower Woodruff Avenue, and a pair of charming and attractive women joined me at my booth. We fell to talking and it turned out that one of the two was an engineer - specifically, an engineer working in the environmental field - dealing with toxic waste and whatnot.

"Cool!" I said. "One of my best friends does that too. Let me call him, and invite him over." So I called my friend (let's call him Dave) and said, "Hey, there's a hot Macedonian chick over here who's an environmental engineer. Stop jerking off and come over to Larry's." And so he did.

Now, the conversation continued. I learned that Emily (or so we'll call her) was by training a Civil Engineer, but at the time I thought nothing of my friend Dave's deep and abiding hatred of civil engineers. Nothing whatsoever. About twenty minutes later, Dave arrives, and flops bonelessly into a chair at the end of the booth. "Rough Day?" I asked.

Dave mimed putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. "I fucking hate civil engineers."

"Dave, this is Emily. She's a civil engineer."

Panic. "I, uh, fucking hate civil engineers that I work with. That's what I meant to say."

Dave didn't mention that he, as recently as the week before, had said in confidence that civil engineers were people who failed out of all the real engineering disciplines. "How hard," he asked, "is it to get water to run downhill?"

Of course, Dave blamed me for not warning him that Emily was a civil engineer. Now I ask you, am I responsible for Dave's engineering bigotry? I think not, but it was certainly fun watching Dave preface a disparaging remark later with a question to the two young ladies - "None of y'all are from Texas are you?"

So says Romanian Air Force Major Cristian Popovici, commenting on exercises between his MiG-21s and USAF F-15s on the former commie's home turf.

Yes, in terms of machine vs machine the Romanians would be hard pressed to come out on top; factoring in pilot experience tips the scales against them further. But what would be the training value of proving that? Instead, by running various scenarios Eagle drivers got a taste of quick, agile fighters that, as Major Popovici described, can't be counted out if they get the drop on you. Which, come to think of it, is probably true about most any adversary.

Left unsaid is the fact that such training against those particular jets might be doubly valuable; China fields about a million MiG-21s.

Well, OK, 999,999 since our formidable recon aircraft took one out in '01.

Full article at Stars n Stripes here.

From H. L. Mencken:

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

Decision making is fraught with risk. Will our choices be to our benefit, or will things go awry? When the stakes are high, sophisticated aids to planning are needed. Historically, important choices have been left to traditional oracular methods, such as flipping a coin. The binary limitation on outcomes proved a hindrance to the wide scale adoption of coin flipping in complicated situations.

Advances in technology over the centuries improved decision-makers options. The invention of dice, first in the simple cubical six-sided form, and later in diverse polyhedral forms, allowed for choosing between as many as twenty or even fifty outcomes. The problem here, of course, was making the list of outcomes. Perhaps the ultimate advance in this form of decision aid was the introduction of the Magic 8-Ball, which provided graduated responses to a single question.

However, these methods allowed for a only single decision maker. Technology had left choosing between leaders far behind. Voting, the best solution for millennia, was cumbersome and time-consuming. When two people needed to choose between them, voting was impractical. Other methods (typically adaptations of single-leader methods and dependent on chance and probability) were often less than optimal for situations which required a leader to win, not merely be the recipient of the blessings of the laws of probability.

Trial by combat was often resorted to, to be sure, but this often left the loser incapacitated. What was needed was a bloodless, strategic, quick, portable and trusted method of determining a winner.

For centuries, that method was rock-paper-scissors. Rock-paper-scissors (RPS) was so dominant, for so long, that few had the temerity to question it even in the smallest particulars. However, certain weaknesses had become apparent over time. Most notably, the frequent ties that were a necessary side effect of having only three options. Nevertheless, the psychological power and strategic possibilities seemed endless.

While some engaged in pointless revisionism (Pirate-Cowboy-Ninja; Cat-Foil-Microwave), in the free-wheeling seventies, some daring souls expanded the sacred trinity of RPS to five, in the hopes of mitigating, if not eliminating, the problem of repeated ties in Rochambeau. The new version was called Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard, or RPSSL.

In the way of things in these modern times, five was not enough, and a good idea was run straight into the ground.

The result is RPS-25.

The advantage here is that ties are almost never going to happen. The disadvantage is memorizing 25 hand gestures and their 300 possible outcomes. A sample of the madness:

Click on the picture for all the outcomes and gestures. Or go here for a flash instantiation of the concept.

[wik] Of course, that wasn't enough. And now we have RPS-101.

Utah, the home of the 2002 Olympics and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Utah, which once fought an almost war with the United States, and which once claimed to own Southern California. Utah, home of Utards.

• Utah welcomes you and your 50 wives!
• Like Georgia, Only Mormon
• Coffee, a forty, a pack of Newports and Utah
• Now open 7 days a week
• Killer, Polygamous, Bees
• Birthplace of TV and the BMG
• Michael Jackson is now almost white enough to live here
• Putting the "white" in "red, white, and blue"
• The Salt Lick State
• Our Jesus Is Better Than Your Jesus
• Utah: 62.4% Mormon, 100% Sexy
• If you ain't Mormon, get the fuck out!
• Want Sheep?
• Utah is Utahded
• At least we’re not Montana
• Just think how spastic we’d be if we drank coffee
• Into Weird Religions Way Before It Was Hip
• The Righteous Hammer of the Central Rockies
• We know we didn’t deserve the Olympics
• There’s a stripper hiding behind every tree
• Life, Multiplied
• The LDS is not part of the Illuminati
• The Hive
• Five alimony payments is not even funny
• I’m not retarded, I’m Mormon
• Utah, we love thee and thee and thee
• With OUR God, all things are possible
• Where’s the chicks?
• Land of the Saints. And we don’t mean the lamer football team.
• It really sucked giving up multiple wives
• Bicycling and ties, two great tastes that taste great together
• Gateway to lifeless desolation
• Utah: Mormons As Far As The Eye Can See
• Industry macht frei

[wik] Bonus slogans:

• That's U-tah, not Me-tah

Last weekend my suburbic municipality offered a gun buy-back.

And I jumped on it.

I had a Chicom SKS for 14 years. I bought it at a gun shop in Killeen, TX for about $100. I was really in the market for an AK, but they were going for $225-ish and I just couldn't swing that kind of bread as a young enlisted soldier. I mean, what the hell was I supposed to drink with if I blew all my dough on an effing rifle? My company commander bought one soon after, and we even went to the range together once.

After I got out, I shot it mmmmmaybe four times, and not at all since about 1995. Just had little time for the range, and once the gun laws changed in my state I was ass-out anyway; I couldn't shoot it legally. Well in the intervening decade or so I moved a half-dozen times, took a few college degrees, got married, and did all the other stuff one is supposed to do to exhibit maturity and adulthood. And in all those years, that rifle quietly sat locked up in this or that closet. In time, surface rust slowly appeared and spread, and I noticed a hairline crack in the face of the bolt. Even less incentive to put my face near it and pull the trigger.

About a year ago I asked my local PD how I could get rid of it; I thought they might could use it for training purposes. But they didn't want it, and said that if I really wanted to get rid of it, I could arrange to leave it with the State Police, who would destroy it. But I held out. I just knew that a buy back would be coming along sooner or later. It was later, but it finally came. And I got that weapon out of my life for good.

Now the local PDs here are- with some exception, I grant you- blatantly anti-2nd Amendment, anti-gun-in-private-hands, and as firm in their belief that they know what's best for everybody as they are in their conviction that they know weapons better than any mere citizen. Call it the arrogance of the badge if you like, every adult has seen it at some time. So it was not without mild amusement that the first guys I spoke with, who were not in uniform so I don't know that they were cops or not, didn't know what the weapon even was. Since they asked, I explained the weapon's history (call it a paragraph's worth of info), and showed them how the action worked (as best I could with a cable lock in it). Then the uniformed cop I turned the rifle in to couldn't manage the cable lock (which I had minutes before made sure was functional), so to avoid doing it for him in front of everybody just quietly told him he could cut it if he had to. Oh, and that was after he exclaimed it was an "assault rifle" which, in my state, it is, but in the real world you could do alot better than "assaulting" with a 10 round internal magazine rifle with a design that harkens back to an era of Sherman tanks and propeller-driven fighter planes. But I found his excitement over netting both an "assault rifle" and, after a quick going-over, determining that it was "yup, a semi-automatic!", humorous.

So after a filled out an anonymous questionaire about my gun-related habits ("Do you feel safer now that you have turned your gun in?"- type stuff) I got $75 in Wal Mart gift cards. Now, I didn't even know how much or in what form I would be getting my reward. But I was very happy with what I got. Don't laugh. With a toddler in the house, I can blaze through $75 at Wal Mart easily- a box of diapers (up to level 5 containment now), some juice, maybe a new book, and some jammies or something'll wipe that out quick. Oh, and I took 2 new cable locks too on the way out.

And in the end everybody wins. Do illegal weapons get turned in at these things? I don't know. Do old pieces of crap get turned in at these things, which people just don't want anymore? Definitely. But in the end it probably doesn't matter much. I got rid of a piece of junk for about $75 more than it might be worth (especially considering that brand new packed-in-grease models of Balkan manufacture are still under $200), which was far more preferable to giving it to the Staties for free; and the day after the buy-back the cops get to say they snapped up howevermany assault rifles off our streets. Here "our streets" means rusting quietly in my closet, but ok. The public says "great job" all 'round, and we all sleep snugly at night.

On the way home, Lady Lethal asked me if I was thinking about turning in either of my other guns. "Fuck no!" I exclaimed, "They're worth money!"

Although, thinking about it now, if the constabulary cares to come up with, say, an even grand, I might consider it.

Really, queer.

Subject: Tragedy vs Accident

Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, while visiting a primary school class. They suddenly found themselves in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.

The teacher asked both men if they would like to lead the discussion of The word "tragedy".

So the illustrious Rev Jackson asks the class for an example of a "tragedy".

One little boy stood up and offered: "If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a runaway tractor comes along and kills him, that would be a tragedy."

No," says the Great Jesse Jackson, "that would be an accident."

A little girl raised her hand: "If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy."

I'm afraid not," explains the exalted Reverend Al. "That's what we would call a great loss." The room goes silent.

No other children would volunteer.

Reverend Al searches the room. "Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?"

Finally at the back of the room little Johnny raises his hand. In a stern voice he says: "If a plane carrying the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton was struck by a missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy."

Fantastic!" exclaims Jackson and Sharpton, "That's right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?"

Well," says little Johnny, "because it sure as hell wouldn't be a great loss, and it probably wouldn't be an accident either.

(h/t Kiwi)

Just a note to remind the Ministry's loyal reader...dammit, readers...readers... that we are only three months away from Moon Conquest Day.

I hope everyone can take some time out and reflect on the stellar travellers who we have lost, commemorate America's first off-planet adventure, and celebrate telling the Russians to suck it. "It" being our collective wang which, given its interplanetary reach, is among the largest on our world.

And let's think about what symbol we can add to the flag to represent the moon. If states are stars, what can the moon be?

...and once again, I find myself astounded by the institutionalized idiocy of the Transportation Security Administration.

Thanks to Richard Reid, for instance, I still get to experience the silly waste of time inherent in removing my shoes and running them through the scanning equipment. Thanks to the efforts of the 21 alleged terrorists in the UK during the summer of 2006, passenger screening personnel still get to inflict the silly waste of time inherent in depriving passengers of any liquid or gel not contained in a properly sized receptacle, or that receptacle itself not contained in the proper 1-quart see through bag. (See also this item on the Department of Homeland Security's designation of an entire state of matter as a national security risk)

A screener told me yesterday, with no small hint of pride, that, Yes! We still check all passengers' shoes! This, in sleepy little Myrtle Beach, SC, where many, though not most, of the flights are turbo-prop or 57 seat commuter jets with presumably low value as flying projectiles, and even lower value as targets for suicide bombings.

The experience reminded me of the many instances in which Bruce Schneier has had occasion to comment on the misguided nature of our government's reaction to events, including its apparent fetish for adding every new terrorist's trick to the permanent list of reasons for inconveniencing the traveling public, while adding no safety to the equation at all. Zero. I would direct the curious reader to this list of articles on Mr. Schneier's site for a thorough review of all that's wrong with the manner in which our bureaucratic overlords maintain their ridiculous pretense to be adding to our security. He's rightly called it "Security Theater", among other things.

At the time of this writing, the link just above produces a list of 244 such articles. They cover the failures of security, the knee-jerk TSA reactions to events, the useless political correctness and abuses of power inherent in current process, and the arguably unconstitutional restrictions on rights to redress for incorrect blacklisting or commentary about the process as you're having it inflicted on your person. Add to this the gaping productivity hole (estimated at $10 billion/year and up) left by the process, the passengers' costs for security (you didn't think the airlines were absorbing that, of course), and factor in a rational cost/benefit analysis (even under the assumption we wanted to guarantee that no person ever died except from natural causes) and it seems clear that security is not just irksome - it's poorly and stupidly implemented.

Luckily, it's not yet illegal to parody the process while away from airports.

(also posted at issuesblog.com)