Explaining Partisan Hypocrisy

GorT raises another good example about partisan hypocrisy: generally, it’s bad when Republicans do X, but worthy of praise when Democrats do the same thing.

There are surprisingly few counter-examples—in which Republicans get off clean but Democrats get excoriated—which leads many Republicans to think this is pure hypocrisy and therefore the Democrats are full of crap.

So it may surprise some of our readers to learn that Democrats and their voters don’t see what the issue here is. Hypocrisy, you see, assumes that the examples are exactly the same; to Democrats, the examples are not the same, no matter how similar their outward appearances. This is because conservative Republicans typically align issues with logical reductionism (“if it looks like a duck...”), whereas liberal Democrats rely on feelings and intuitions. These are not opposites: these are completely incompatible alternative universes. Thus, because there are no equivalencies, there is no hypocrisy.

For some examples, we can begin with GorT’s example and go from there.

A politician proposes to place a black box in each car or use a cell phone’s GPS.	A Republican wants to monitor your movements and illegally spy on your domestic activities.	A Democrat wants increase your safety and protect you from harm.
A politician suggests a tax cut to corporations.	A Republican wants to extend corporate welfare, so that the companies can make huge profits at the expense of the middle class.	A Democrat wants stimulate hiring and lower employment to help the middle class.
A politician is caught in a sex scandal with an unmarried woman, two teenage male interns, a Sherpa, and an alpaca.	A Republican exhibits another pathetic weakness, making a mockery of these family values they purport to hold so dead. Sick pervert.	A Democrat is merely participating in a different lifestyle. This diversity is something we should embrace and celebrate, not shame and deny. Good for him. And the Sherpa.
A politician says he is a huge Boston White Sox fan.	A Republican says that because he is stupid.	A Democrat says that because he is tired, over-worked, and everybody knows it was just one of those slips of the tongue.
A politician makes a Hitler joke.	A Republican who supports Israel, and is also a cantor at his synagogue, says things like this because he is an ant-Semite and probably a Nazi.	A Democrat was merely joking. Get over yourselves. Like you never made a Hitler joke.

Republicans might have a hard time seeing why this isn’t hypocritical. So, it’s bad when we do it, but okay when you do it, right?

The interesting thing is that the Democrat looks at this from the other viewpoint: it’s okay when we do it; the problem is that Republicans are either stupid or evil. Or better yet, if you call them racist, then they can be both stupid and evil; this is a whole lot easier than deciding.

Let us look at it one more time. If a Democrat does something, it must only be because there is nothing but goodness in his or her heart. But when a Republican does the same exact thing, it is bad ipso facto because the Republican is stupid or evil. Like when you eat a sandwich off a plate on the kitchen table, that’s a good thing; when the dog does it, that’s a bad thing. That isn’t hypocritical, because you did the right thing and the dog is stupid and does not know the rules.

So if a Republican is assumed from the start to be stupid or evil, then his plans to avoid the fiscal cliff are stupid or evil. If a Democrat has a proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff, it is because he or she is really concerned about the Middle Class, because that’s, you know, good. Totally different.

Hence, no hypocrisy.

Good Black Box, Bad Black Box

The Czar raises an interesting problem but missed dropping a few nuggets of information.  Keep in mind, that GorT isn't a government conspiracy theorist who believes that the government is out to collect all this information about us and manipulate our lives (have you seen how they run some of their existing programs?)  And I don't believe the Czar is one either.  However, one should note that the Obama Administration filed on September 4th, 2012 a document with the DC District Court in which they argue that there is "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in a person's cellphone GPS data.  Therefore, the government, without a warrant, should be able to request cellphone company records about the location of their customers' phones based on cell towers.

It is of note that the US Supreme Court through out, in a 5-4 decision, the feds ability to install GPS tracking devices on suspects or suspects' vehicles without a warrant with Justice Scalia writing:

We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’

Many will argue that the Obama Administration is trying to argue around this decision for cellular GPS data.

So where's the outrage and the investigatory journalism that we saw towards the end of the Bush Administration when the NYT among others railed against the "warrantless phone tapping" program.  A program that tapped phone calls from suspected terrorists and their organizations from outside the US to people within the US.

So the takeaway is:  Republican tracking of suspected terrorists where US citizens' privacy might be impaired: bad.  Democrat tracking of citizen cellphone location data where US citizens' privacy will be impaired: good.

Your Own Private Black Box

Americans are supposed to be getting upset over considerations by the Federal government that all cars will be equipped with a black box sophisticated enough to determine your rate of travel, where you are, and trace your itinerary.

Outrage!

Of course, the black box cannot reveal who was actually driving the car at any given moment.

Fortunately, more people carry cell phones than drive cars at any given moment. And you can link a cell phone to a specific individual in most cases.

So were the government going to track all those things and link these things to you directly, well, that’s how the Czar would do it. How about it?

The Pathetic Media

Tying up some loose ends here.

The last two weeks, thanks to the Portland shooter, the Sandy Hook shooter, and the New York firefighter assassin, have triggered a hypocritical caterwauling from the liberal progressives about removing guns completely from the world. As a result, this website has taken a decidedly pro-Second Amendment curve. If firearms aren’t your thing, don’t worry: this gun chatter will fizzle away in the next couple of weeks and we’ll be back to grousing about the President.

A weird montage of seemingly contradictory information has come out in the popular news media; of course, it is self-contradictory only if you’re a member of the media. If you are a person who can look at two related pieces of data and recognize a possible relationship, you can figure this out.

But let us cut to the chase on a story you might have missed. Frank Sesno is the director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs (although the Czar remembers him at CNN as a field reporter). Mr. Sesno made the mistake of revealing the truth: the media has unilaterally declared war on guns: “The media themselves have a huge opportunity and power and responsibility to channel this.”

The media have a huge opportunity and power and responsibility to report the facts in a story. Anything more is overreach.

Yet there it is: a confession that the media have literally conspired to eliminate gun rights in the country. And you wonder why the Czar loathes them so much.

So in order to do this, here seems to be the game plan: continue to amp up as much media attention on guns. Ignore the stories about guns saving lives—there are indeed a couple of news feeds that provide hourly updates of bona fide stories of people using guns defensively. Yes, hourly: but you don’t see these stories because they are suppressed. Instead, the media intend to promote as many shocking stories of gun crimes as possible to promote the idea that there is some Wild West shootout happening all over the country.

After all, these stories are fuel for the next shooter. With all the publicity given the shooters in the last couple of weeks, some other depressed person with a dead-end life has decided to go out in a blaze of glory. No matter that the story will be replaced by the next shooter in a couple of weeks because for fourteen days he will be immortalized on television and the internet, and everyone will know his name and feel terribly sorry for everything wrong in his life. And that right there is reason enough to fire into a crowd, a classroom, or at firefighters.

Step one: amp up the stories to create an impression of chaos. Step two: gin up polls that stress how badly Americans want guns off the street. Make it seem that anyone who still believes in firearm rights is a rare lunatic.

Unfortunately, that step isn’t working. Polls are being headlined that 65% of Americans think we need more gun control! But later, buried at the bottom, is the curious finding that 70% of Americans want no changes to assault weapon laws. Huh.

The media cannot figure these contradictions out, and they never will—there is no contradiction. 65% of Americans favor smarter gun laws—but they don’t want your laws, media. Americans want easier access to firearms but common sense loophole closures that help mitigate bad guys and dangerous types from getting them.

The media fail to get this point. If you want gun laws, surely you want our ideas, right?

Well, no...not at all. In fact, the polls are screaming something else entirely: Americans want substantial reformation and simplification of gun laws. In fact, they want the exact opposite of what whiny progressives want. Hence, the seeming contradiction when viewed by people who do not comprehend their mistake. Hence, Soledad O’Briens’s amusing interview where she admitted she could not remotely fathom what an interview was telling her about gun rights.

Step three: bully and badger. We see asshat domo Piers Morgan on CNN insulting and offending gun enthusiasts. A local newspaper openly printed the names and addresses of all gun owners in the community. New York politicians are discussing confiscations. These are all attempts to scare folks away from their positions.

In short, the media formula is simple: create an atmosphere of terror, invent widespread support for a progressive agenda, and attack anyone that fails to support it.

This formula is already failing as we mentioned. And small wonder.

If you look at those polling numbers and line them up against political numbers you get some fascinating results. Lots of liberals own firearms. Lots of democrats own firearms. The poll numbers outweigh traditional Republicans and/or Democrats. Did you know both Harry Reid and Joe Biden are shotgun fans? In fact, Biden once gave a rousing defense of gun owners and assured everyone that he would aggressively defend himself against anyone who came after his two prized scatterguns. Missed that? Sure you did—because it is being suppressed as part of Step Two.

Let the Czar make this simple: Congress has no ability, interest, or authority in curtailing gun rights. They will, conversely, subvert any executive order to do the same. There will be no bans, no confiscations, no outlawing of assault weapons because the polls are terribly clear that Americans will reject any such attempt.

Instead, President Obama will come up with some meaningless report that concludes gun violence is an issue and we need to close some loopholes here or there. Nothing will happen, and the President will be seen as having at least tried to do something except the obstructionist Republicans (including evidently Joe Biden and Harry Reid) prevented it. Four more years!

Moreover, we are seeing that nearly all the serious talk about bans, confiscations, and measures are originating in the media, and the media are sustaining the entire conversation. Basically, this whole thing is a media invention, not a political one.

As always, the media have become the story—and whenever this happens, they have lost their argument and their way. How pathetic are these people?

Is there a Nurse Practioner in the House?

Dr. J.'s Work Wife II has something to say about your lisinopril.

Dr. J.'s Work Wife II forwarded this NYT editorial to him last week and this was the first opportunity he has had to comment on it.

When one gets past the douchebaggery that is the title "When the Doctor Is Not Needed," and the token, 'I hate extenders' quote from a backwards thinking physician, the article makes some interesting points that Dr. J. has spoken about in the past. These are the salient points. The increased demand for services due to an aging population, Obamacare and a medical profession not growing with those demands, demands will be met with delayed access to care. There are a finite number of doctors, but there are also physician extenders. Specifically, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and clinical pharmacists.

An extender's scope of practice and how they can bill for services varies from state to state. Their training is much more limited than a doctor's, with PA's having Masters level education, NP's having Masters, and, in some cases doctorate level education. Clinical pharmacists having doctoral level education and a 1 or 2 year pharmacy residency.

PA's typically have technical skills. They can supervise stress tests, assist in procedures (e.g. harvesting the vein for bypass surgery, placing chest tubes, etc...), and see patients. NP's are usually more clinic based. They can see, examine and diagnose patients in the inpatient and outpatient setting. They sometimes have additional skill sets such as interrogating and adjusting pacemakers/defibrillators.

The key to a successful use of extenders is as follows:

1) The extender must be cost effective. Through a combination of being able to bill for the services he is providing, and maximizing the ability of the physician to be clinically and economically productive the extender must be able to provide value to the system.

2) The extender must capable of performing tasks within his scope of practice within an appropriate degree of autonomy.

For example clinical pharmacists know drugs and can manage medications very well. A practice can have a protocol for titrating blood pressure and cholesterol medications, and a clinical pharmacist can follow up patients checking BP, blood chemistries, and lipids, and other objective biomarkers and make adjustments. They can also initiate medicines within the protocol if that is within their scope of practice. For example LDL cholesterol is not at goal on 80 mg of Simvastatin, it can be switched to 80 of atorvastatin or 40 of rosuvastatin per protocol. Alternatively, niacin can be added per protocol, with the physician prescribing. Clinical pharmacists adjust warfarin (Coumadin) per protocol. Now once the patent maxes out the protocol, the clinical pharmacist can have the physician manage the situation. This would be in 1 out of, say, 10 patients.

Nurse Practitioners similarly can see established patients for routine follow up care, not only for drug titration, but for routine f/u of pacemakers, patients with congestive heart failure, and stable CAD. NPs and PAs can do wound checks and some amount of surgical follow up as well. In some states, their scope of practice will permit new patient and urgent care visits as well. The advantage they have over clinical pharmacists is that they have better physical diagnostic skills. Dr. J. believes, however these are complimentary degrees (NP and PharmD.) and each contributes something different to the team.

The physician can then spend his time seeing new consultations, sick or complex follow up patients, or be reading imaging studies. He can also be providing useful oversight to his extenders, being a resource for complex issues. Each person in the team can use their degree to its fullest potential and to maximize revenue for the practice, allowing it to thrive and thus remain open. The fact is we are still, as a profession, trying to figure out how best to partner with our extenders, but this opinion piece at least introduces the topic. Dr. J. has seen it work well, and with talented extenders a group can deliver outstanding care efficiently.

Turnabout, Fair Play, And So Forth

The Czar is, of course, dead set against the idea that Piers Morgan can, or should, be booted out of the country because he has willfully and persistently demonstrated that he is of low intelligence. In the unlikely event you are unclear as to what this is in reference, an online petition to deport the CNN airhead is now approaching 70,000 signatures, driven by his ignorant and offensive comments about firearms on his show.

Mr. Morgan, of course, was exercising his First Amendment rights. So on that count, deporting him for this is distinctly un-American. So why does the Czar find this so damned entertaining?

Because this is perfect medicine for Mr. Morgan.

He used his First Amendment rights to punish those who appreciate the Second Amendment. He therefore can now enjoy seeing his First Amendment rights punished by those same people. Not so pleasant, is it, Mr. Morgan? We thought not.

The irony continues: he used a postion of celebrity to offend an audience of many thousands; in turn, many thousands are offending a celebrity in some position. Rich, eh?

And to see him whine and bellow on Twitter about how offended he is, well—good. He deserves to be offended. Badly. Alack, he is probably not bright enough to see how deliciously ironic this response is.

No doubt the new management at CNN, which is already demonstrating some pretty smart moves in order to change the tone of the network, will explain it to him in short order. Probably by 2014 he will again be a celebrity judge on some C-list variety show, which is about where he should be.

RIP Gerry Anderson

Some of you may be saying, "Gerry Anderson?  Who is that?"

Gerry Anderson was a staple in GorT's youth as the Saturday night lineup was the Muppet Show followed by Space: 1999.  Mr. Anderson died at the age of 83.  In addition to Space: 1999, Anderson is known for a number of marionette shows (before people jump on me, it is referred to as "supermarionation") such as UFO, Captain Scarlett and the Mysterons and the Thunderbirds.

If you've never watched either, it is an interesting look back into the 1960s and 1970s and how a child's imagination could be inspired by what we would cast aside as cheesy or cheaply done these days.  GorT has watched episodes from all of the mentioned shows and is unfamiliar with Supercar (Volgi, I know there's no such thing of supercar), Firebird XL5 and a few other works.

I recommend following this link to a view of Gerry Anderson in images by the BBC and maybe look at Netflix, Redbox or Amazon's Instant Video to see if you can catch some of his work.

FAB.

Word of the day...

You can tell a Prog by the yellow eyes.  Filthy creatures!

Proglodyte - (prog•luh•DITE) - noun - slang - A derisively accurate pejorative likening a Progressive to a blind, amphibious cave dweller. The term has a delicious irony in that the Progressive expects us to live like troglodytes as penance for their comfortable lifestyles issuing decrees from their posh salons.

Context: What caused the housing bubble? Not greedy bankers, but greedy proglodytes with their Community Reinvestment Act. Is it a wonder that people continue to believe their promises to fix the economy.

h/t - Libertarian Facebook Friend

Mailbag - Toaster Edition

Happy Boxing Day, gentle readers...Your Gormogons took the day off yesterday to spend with our families.

Nevertheless we wish you all a Merry Christmas.

The Czar was celebrating with his extended family, and by celebrating, Dr. J. means impaling serfs on pikes for sport.

Mandy, well, he was locked in the Castle, doing who knows what, but Dr. J. suspects it was something sinister as Mandy Jr. was cackling alongside of his old man.

The GorT clan were enjoying melange laced delicacies.

Volgi took some time out from enjoying the Pope's Christmas greeting in 46 of 65 languages to wash his car. We don't question Volgi's eldrich ways.

Puter was of in some corner playing with knives and muttering 'Stabbie, stabbie, pokie, pokie."

Dr. J. spent Christmas Eve listening to mass from behind a stone column, Christmas morning opening presents with the Lil Resident and Lil Medstudent. Indeed, he received a brand Sith Lord robe from the family and was most appreciative.

Seriously, this is the robe.

Operative JW writes:

Dear Dr. J., 

I believe the TV/toaster example is a bit of a stretch. My wife and I have been married not quite 35 years and purchased the third TV of our marriage earlier this year. We replaced the first when the channel changing knob was stripped too much to actually change channels. (Younger readers can ask their grandparents about knobs). Our second was replaced when color TV wasn't. The thing is, despite inflation, we spent just over $300 on each purchase. Amazing when you consider the change in the dollar and in TVs in that time. I've lost track of the number of toasters but we're on our second in just seven years. 

Best, Operative JW

JW, you bring up two interesting points. The first is regarding Dr. J.'s toaster analogy being a stretch. Dr. J. is speaking anecdotally regarding the toaster. He, is on the cusp of purchasing his third one in 11 years of marriage.  That and the fact that you've lost count makes my point. 1977 was not only the year Star Wars was released, but also during the Carter Administration. It was at that point in time, the late 70s and early 80s where our society's overall consumer demands experienced a paradigm shift away from quality and customer service oriented purchasing, and migrating more towards a savings uber alles approach to many items. The sheer number of $9 headphones Dr. J. went through as a yout' with his Walkman (and the number of Walkman knockoffs, sheesh).

Television sets, given their price point, etc... were indeed more of an exception, as the expectation of durability never wavered. Indeed, given the lack of moving parts in modern TVs, breakdown is less acceptable. Back when Dr. J. was a yout' our Zenith had a lifetime service contract, and we enjoyed a couple of picture tubes and several 'minor' vacuum tube replacements. Dr. J. was shocked that it lasted as long as it did from a parts availability standpoint more than anything else.

Merry Christmas

In Which New Traditions Replace Old...

Are you ordering take out for me, Master Jedi?

Dr. J. who is half-Italian on Mama J.'s side was raised to enjoy the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. The tradition is that seven dishes made with varying seafood are served the night before Christmas. This was one of Dr. J.'s favorite traditions. When he was up in Philly, Mama J. or his Great Aunt would host the meal. Various dishes were served, clams and spaghetti, fried shrimp, flounder, smelts, crab cakes or a delicious crab casserole (imagine one giant crab cake), anchovy bread (pizza, hold the cheese and add anchovies) and bacala salad. One year, when Mama J. was feeling particularly lazy, she she made boulabase which covered about 5 of the fish, along with two other staples. Moving to New Atlantis, Dr. and Mrs. Dr. J. went home the first two years, then in year 3 and 4 attempted to cook the Feast but it is an expensive and wasteful proposition so it got cut to 3 fishes. Then the Lil Resident had no interest in fish, and Christmas Eve is always hectic, so we started getting take out from Maggiano's. Dr. J. would get fried calamari and a second seafood dish, just to get his fix, but Lil Resident and Medstudent would get what they like (Rigatoni Alfredo with a side of meatballs).

Now that the Lil Resident and Lil Medstudent are a little older, Mrs. Dr. J. floated the idea of making a few seafood dishes at home. Tears welled up in the Lil Resident's yellow-red eyes, force lightning crackled in her hand and she said, "...b-b-but mom, Maggiano's is our Christmas Eve TRADITION!" Mrs. Dr. J. looked to Dr. J. for his thoughts...he said, "Well, I am working on Christmas Eve, and also some traditions change, and has become our tradition, so be it. Maggiano's it is."

We have word for that...Barista

Which one of these is not like the others?

Dr. J. saw this post on NRO and suffered a case of the #headdesk.

Apparently, Stanford University has found the need to appoint an atheist chaplain to the chaplancy at the school.

There's a rationale for this, according to Stanford:

“But atheist, agnostic and humanist students suffer the same problems as religious students – deaths or illnesses in the family, questions about the meaning of life, etc. – and would like a sympathetic nontheist to talk to.” Figdor, 28, is one of a growing number of faith-free chaplains at universities, in the military and in the community who believe that nonbelievers can benefit from just about everything religion offers except God.

Dr. J. agrees with Mr. Cooke that the agenda may be more sinister:

The “atheist chaplain” is latest example of the ongoing postmodern assault on the meaning of language. When words and terms mean whatever people want, we lose common frames of reference...It is amusing how the irreligious so often seek to coopt religious terminology. But it can also be subversive because words and their accurate meaning are crucial to our ability to communicate.

Dr. J., however would like to go farther in his analysis. There are two things at work.

First the need to hire atheist chaplains demonstrates that there is a clear spiritual void in many atheist, agnostic, and humanist students. Why else would there be a demand for this service? A service that is sufficiently different than can be administered by councilors is clearly desired. But can an atheist chaplain slake the first of the spiritually needy? Dr. J. thinks not.

The second point Dr. J. would like to make is with regard to Mr. Cook's point regarding the assault on the meaning of language. He is correct. There is a strong desire within the Progressive movement to change the definition of anything and everything to suit their desire for equality, and by equality, they mean equally subject to the state.

When one group self-segregates in an organized manner within the confines of a government funded construct, be it through the existence of a chaplain, or a religious student organization, the Progressive left flips out.

What about teh atheist'z??!?!  is the modern cry, when in prior days they were speaking 'on behalf' of  Jews,  who as a group probably didn't care about such silly notions.

The truth is that Progressives, who have no sense of the sacred are all about tearing down the sacred and replacing it with the totem of the state. Just as the majority of Jewish people have no desire to erase Christmas trees and Merry wishes this time of year, Dr. J.'s truly hardcore atheists chuckle at Dr. J.'s sky god made man, but wouldn't be caught dead going to a chaplain for any sort of counciling. They are far to rational for that and would rather to to a like-minded psychologist, bartender, or most likely, a barista.

Chaplains, by their very nature, provide spiritual succor to those in need. Father Mulchaey from MASH tended not only to Catholics, but Protestants, Jews and others in need. He did not discriminate, nor was he turned away, other than to serve as a McGuffin for the growth of a character within the following 22 minutes of airplay.

Dr. J. finds it difficult, were he in need of a chaplain, that an atheist chaplain could, in good faith, so to speak, deliver the goods. A protestant (even a Methodist), Jewish, or  a Muslim chaplain, could as we all worship the same God. Even a Buddhist and a Hindu believe in something more than 'reason' and would be able minister to the spiritual needs of someone.

When Dr. J. envisions an atheist chaplain, he sees a void. He isn't alone. With no sense of irony, Rabbi Resnicoff proposes a change in the military chaplain insignia. To be fair, Dr. J. suspects the blank page is a tabula rasa from which the various faith insignias are to be derived, and Dr. J. does not disagree with Rabii Resnicoff's article. The truth is makes no mention of atheists. Dr. J. just found the picture amusing in the context of this discussion.

It would be fitting, however if the blank page were that representing the atheist chaplain. However Dr. J. has his own suggestion:

Didn't see that coming...

How Things Work: Santa Claus Edition

Where do you think he got those tattoos?

Your Gormogons are the stuff of legend, and as such run into other legends at the annual convention in Las Vegas. While Dr. J. has assurances from the Tooth Fairy that what happens in Vegas (long before he met Mrs. Dr. J.) will stay in Vegas, the Gormogons have a space-based dental drill positioned to insure her silence, but Dr. J. digresses.

One of his favorite drinking buddies at the convention is good old Santa Claus. Dr. J. has forgiven him for never delivering on that Millenium Falcon back in 1979, but the Atari 2600 in 1980 more than made up for it. There is a lot of misinformation on how Santa operates, and consequently this misinformation shakes the faith of many a child, resulting in them no longer believing in Santa Claus and resulting in great expense to the parents.

So, Gentle Readers, this is how Santa gets more done in a day than most folks get done in a year.

• Santa doesn't go everywhere - Santa reduces his workload significantly by only delivering to the homes of believers. Entire regions of the world become fly-over country for him punctuated by brief stopovers for the occasional child. 
• Santa has field agents who cover different parts of the world - Indeed St. Nicholas covers the Netherlands and northern Germany on December 5th with his controversial drowish sidekick 'Black Pete.'  The Three Wise Guys cover Mexico on the Epiphany. La Befana brings gifts on the eve of the Epiphany to good little boys and girls in Italy, The Christkind used to drop off gifts to good Germanic little boys and girls on the 6th of December, but he breaks up his deliveries on that date AND the 24th. St. Lucia breaks up Italy with La Befana as well, delivering her gifts on the 13th, largely to Sicilian and Tuscan children. Dr. J. could give more examples, but he won't, because he has other points to make. 
• Those guys at the mall - Again, more field agents. Deputized Friends of Santa, much like our minions. 
• Santa doesn't even hit all the houses of American believers on Christmas Eve - There is no way that Santa can make it everywhere in a single night. Let's just be honest there. Despite all of the planning, relativistic time-dilation, magic and immortality, 'you canna change the laws of physics...' so he doesn't try. The families are on a rotation schedule of who receives there presents via UPS/Fed-Ex/USPS every year. Those presents Almanzo Wilder found in the barn with Royal. The ones that are sitting in Dr. J.'s closet presently? All of those were shipped from Santa in advance. You see, here is the dark secret. Amazon.com is a front organization for Santa's North Pole operation. Who would think a company named for an equatorial river would have anything to do with the North Pole (a 90º turn, indeed). Think about it. J.B. Jeff Bezos, Jingle Bells...coincidence, Dr. J. thinks not! 
• Why is he fat? - On Christmas Eve, burns far more calories than than even his frame can hold. Please leave him cookies and milk. 
• He knows if you are bad or good - That permanent record file from school, you know, the one with the confiscated notes, chewing gum, slingshot...the one that becomes your personnel file? There's that. When you go to that child-bearing class at the hospital when you/your wife is pregnant, they give you Santa's naughty/nice line. 1-800-BAD-COAL. Operative BG, let Dr. J. know how that works out for you! 
• Why do some kids get more presents for Santa than other kids - Santa has access to Mom and Dad's tax returns, and after a few Snakebites at the bar at The Cosmopolitan, muttered something to Dr. J. about income inequality, the real meaning of fairness, plausible deniability, President Obama, and coal. 

We hope this answers your burning questions!

Merry Christmas from your Dr. J. and the Gormogons!

Spend Christmas Eve With the Czar!

 Greetings. cretins! Today is Рождественский сочельник, or Christmas Eve. This is a big deal for people with Slavic blood; in fact, outsiders might think that Christmas Eve is a bigger deal than Christmas Day for Slavs. This is understandable: Christmas itself is viewed as a solemn, quiet day to be spent in church. As a result, it is a perfect day for nursing a bad hangover. And that makes Christmas Eve a perfect reason to party yourself sick.

Because Russia is a big place, there are many traditions. It is probably impossible for any one family to follow them all: there are modern traditions, Orthodox religious traditions, Soviet traditions (the bastards), and many pagan traditions that all mix together. It is not uncommon for two neighboring families to have totally different traditions and therefore hate each other passionately.

Today, the Czar would like to welcome you to his dacha where he spends Рождественский сочельник with his family, and give you a sense of what it must be like to spend a festive day with us as a guest.

When you first arrive in Muscovy, you will be delighted at its festive fortification walls used to keep out the Progressives. Piles of bones reflect their unsuccessful attempts to get in. Or these could be the bones of Cutco knife salespeople. It is hard to tell at this point, and frankly it isn't the Czar's job to clean any of this up.

Anyway, as you are a special guest of the Czar, you will have no trouble whatsoever with these walls, and should soon find the gates opening wide.

Entering into Muscovy, you will find we are a quiet, friendly village with lovely homes and pretty lake. You are only about two miles from our dacha, and about 15 miles from downtown Chicago.

The big building you see in the center of the picture here is Lansky's Hardware. Their prices are a little higher than we would like, but they always seem to have the bizarre part you need. Oh, and they have really good, inexpensive paint there.

As you arrive, you will see the dacha is delightfully decorated for the holidays by the Царица, who is always excited for the holidays. Yesterday, she spent the day making cookies.

The Czar wishes he could do something about the front lawn, but his old neighbor was terrible at lawn care and let the dandelions and weeds ruin both of our lawns. The Czar hopes his new neighbor will take better care of the lawn so that our lawn can recover. The new neighbor has assured us of this; his name is Doug.

As you come up to the main door, be sure to note the guard towers. These are wonderful in summer. A Muscovy Christmas tradition is for the children to await the arrival of Дед Мороз, who along with his granddaughter Снегурочка, brings gifts to all the little ones. Although, to be blunt, if some bearded old man shows up at our door with some chick, the guards in this tower are very likely going to shoot him. Shooting first and then figuring things out later is another very old Russian tradition.

Once inside the gate, you will probably meet the guards. This is what they look like, and yes, the Czar knows they are hardly intimidating. But the fact is they are really good guys, and the Царица has been trying to teach them to read for a number of years now. Some of them are getting fairly respectable at it.

In truth, of course, most of these guys will be sent home for the holiday with whatever might pass for their families. The Czar generally handles dacha defense by himself when he is at home, and uses the guards only when at Castle Gormogon.

And who is at the door to greet you in person but the lovely Царица herself! No, she does not usually carry a scary crossbow. This is another holiday tradition for us: Russians often serve a honey-lentil dish called sochivo on the holidays, and guests sometimes throw a spoonful up in the air: if the sochivo sticks to the ceiling, the guest has good luck all year! The Царица uses the Christmas crossbow to shoot anyone who ruins her expensive ceiling by doing so. Otherwise, she packs a 9mm. Say hi to Царица!

Moving into the side yard, you can see some various implements we use to hang, gibbet, or string up various reprobates in the community.

Please do not let this picture mislead you about what goes on mere yards from the house! Those piles of dirt are not graves, but part of the shooting range. We may be cruel but are not barbaric! Indeed, all those who expire during our sessions are simply dragged off by the guards and left by the curb for trash day. Which reminds us: due to the holiday, trash pickup will be on Friday this week, not Thursday.

On the other side of the house you can see the old water well. Because the dacha has full hot-and-cold running water, we don't use the well anymore but we leave it up because it looks so cute.

The goat you see is not a pet, but is a Muscovy tradition. The goat represents fortune, health, and happiness; its horns symbolize forward thinking, and its white fur symbolizes peace and understanding. Tonight, the Царица will slit its throat, bleed it out, and cook it for us to eat with our bare hands.

You will be staying in the attached cottage. It is beautiful, no? It has a two good-sized bedrooms, a large family room with extra couches, a well-appointed kitchen, and two bathrooms! A person could easily liver here year round.

And indeed, the Czar's aged mother does live here, but because you are company, she will be spending the night outside with the goat. Until we kill and eat her. The goat, that is, not mama. She is too grizzled to eat. We should have done that 40 years ago.

And here is the Czar, happy to greet you. With us is the Царевич, our seven-year-old. Our ten-year-old is the Цесаревич, but he is inside playing Halo 4. The black-robed guys on either side are our loyal okhrana. These are the guys who give us inside information such as our prediction that Israel would attack Iran in 2011 and that Romney would sack Obama in 2012. Yet we keep them around. Here were are reminding them that the Czar might not be around for ever, and that the boys will one day be in charge of them. And that neither boy is nearly as nice and forgiving as the Czar is.

Anyway, someone will bring you over for dinner. We will be eating every conceivable combination of potato, dumpling, onion, cabbage, and meat. For example, you will have meat rolled up in cabbage, potatoes in dumplings, onions and cabbage, potatoes and onions, onions rolled up in meat, potatoes and cabbage, and meat with dumplings. One year, someone brought a fish to dinner and we had no idea what to do with it. One of the boys fed it to a borzoi.

Speaking of which, after you have stuffed yourself sick with great food and the Царица has finished sticking anyone who hurled food onto her ceilings, we enjoy great entertainment. Because the weather is so nice and mild in Muscovy this year, we will adjourn to the backyard to watch serfs try to outrun the borzois. This is largely a traditional event without any real gambling because the fence ensures the borzoi always catch the serfs. It sounds brutal, but let the Czar assure you personally that the borzois never get hurt. We do this until the light gets too dim to see or if we run out of Uzbeks.

After this, we go back into the house and unwrap Christmas presents. You read that right: most Slavs open presents on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas morning. The origin of this is purely practical: you will be too physically sick to leave the bathroom the next morning from the combination of rich, buttery foods and grain alcohol on Christmas Eve. In fact, you will be so ill that you doubt would be able to go more than ten minutes without racing back into the bathroom. And then time for a two-hour Church mass where you will discover you were right.

Anyway, we hope you had great fun spending the day with us. There are other important traditions the Czar left out, including such beautiful and moving ones such as breaking of bread with each member of the party, because they were not funny enough to relate.

Merry Christmas, everyone! See you tomorrow.

For Whom The Quad Bell Tower Tolls

Somewhere in one of the dusty conference rooms at Castle Gormogon, the Mandarin and the Czar met to discuss higher education. Of the great many things discussed, we concluded that higher education as we know it could be on considerably borrowed time.

The Czar remembers his days at college, discussing with Father Фёдор Изгрунмицков Ялголпин about such popular majors as Alchemy, Feudal Management, Hagiological Sciences, and Witchcraft and Gender Studies.

Thousands, if not millions, of colleges and universities are dumping students out onto the streets with no discernible or desirable job skills. The Czar will be the first to concede that higher education is not an employment training institute, but basically economic reality kicks in for these graduates.

An example: a student majors in Women’s Studies, currently found at a hundred schools. She (or he) graduates magna cum laude and discovers... no one is hiring women’s studies majors right now. Week after week, month after month, no offers. Eventually she (or, one supposes, he) winds up working part-time in retail until a full-time position opens up. Five years later, she (or even he) winds up managing a mall store.

Eventually, like all Ponzi schemes, the ones lowest on the totem get the pole. You can peruse the web pages of any number of universities and colleges and read ludicrous majors.

But criticizing the utility of liberal arts degrees is old hat; the flip side of the coin is not much better: schools are churning out science majors and business majors as well to no advantage. A BS in Chemistry with a great GPA is discovering no one is returning his or her calls either: the one entry-level position has been filled by an MS in Chemistry with four published papers and a managed a four-year research project. That sort of thing is happening.

Or worse, the position was filled by a BS in Bioengineering. Yes, there are a whole bunch of new degrees out there—from a Human Services/Gerontology degree (from Phoenix) to a Bachelor of Science degree in Project Management (TCU). These are weird courses if you’re over 35, but welcome to the future.

Something else of interest: a huge portion of these “new” degrees are placing graduates in jobs. And the lion’s share of these “new” degrees are at so-called online or distance learning universities. Right: remember the weird technical college that offered veterinary tech training and that advertised on the higher UHF channels? Those guys are killing it right now in job placement.

So much so that traditional brick-and-mortarboard institutions are paying attention. Professor Mondo writes that his big box is establishing a major in social media. Our own venerable alma mater dei gloria is offering a major in something called informatics. Keeping up with the times is a good thing, as even Mondo appreciates.

Even established majors like Psychology are completely pivoting: instead of your psych major consisting of boring analysis like organizational psychology, your psych major will now be studying consumer behavior. And perhaps get hired by web design firms and marketing agencies.

But is it too little, too late? Probably—the market for a lot of this stuff has been cornered pretty well by the online markets with established metrics on how many students wind up getting a job and paying off their loans. And here’s the kicker—they tend to be a heck of a lot cheaper than the traditional schools and vastly more accommodating to students’ crazy schedules.

An online school that costs a fraction of a stuffy old college, and gets you hired for a job you find interesting? Or that stuffy old college dad wants you to go to because he likes their football team?

Pretty soon the bigger schools will have a hard time justifying their monster tuition. And that’s when the bubble is going to burst.

In order to compete—and as much as we admire these new online colleges, the traditional schools have a lot of experience at competition—expect big changes, particularly in cost.

And how exactly will colleges and universities lower their costs? By cutting overhead: dumping departments that don’t produce results. Yes, there will always be a History department and a Philosophy department; but look for those to go the way Psychology is going: a totally new focus on socially useful skills. Majors ripe for re-branding include Psychology and History, of course, but also Library Science, English, Political Science, and Ecology.

But prepare to see many become mere minors, such as Classical Studies, Social Work, Theology, Anthropology, Sociology, and Mathematics. Yes, some of these are sciences; but in terms of job producing? They either don’t get people hired (Sociology, Mathematics) or prepare you for jobs with long waiting lists (Social Work, Anthropology).

Further, most of the money can be saved by dumping some really questionable majors. None of these should surprise you because they guarantee under-employment or no possibility of real wages: women’s and gender studies, African-American studies, Latin-American studies, dance, music, language studies, theater, and more.

But many sciences will not go away completely; many of them will remain in some form, somewhere...but not everywhere. Select schools will continue to teach astronomy, agricultural sciences, marine science, energy science, material science, meteorology, and so on, but the majority of colleges and universities will either drop them or link up to partner with other schools to offer pieces of them.

Sound crazy? Ask graduates of veterinary sciences, pharmacy, nursing, and dental, who already have only a small selection of very discriminating schools from which to choose. This model will likely extend to the rest of the STEM majors as well.

And this by no means that liberal arts degrees are gone or gutted: look for liberal arts to focus on more technical aspects: apparel and textile design, graphic design, film and broadcast technology, interior design, landscape design, urban planning, web design, social media, industrial design, and so on. Most liberal arts colleges are seeing enrollment in these areas increase while crowding out the others listed above.

With the elimination of so much overhead, colleges and universities will begin to see tuition drop while revenues increase. Likewise, they will begin to invest heavily on long-distance learning and e-learning tools to compete with the online schools. And they will have to, because there is increasingly little choice: while die-hard university types will chuckle over the notion that a small online college will threaten their ivy walls, the kids in high schools today don’t know that. All their input is coming from social media, and guess who is advertising like a rash on social media? Hint: it ain’t State University.

In a followup essay, we might suggest why this will be fantastic for Americans since it means the Left will lose control over the academic culture (because there won’t be one as such), and that higher education will be forced to embrace basic free market economics. But for now, the forthcoming collapse of academia as we know it is inevitable; indeed, the very word forthcoming might be incorrect. In many respects, the bubble is already tearing in several places.

Is It Nice, My Precious? Is It Juicy?

GorT and family saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey last night and it lived up to the other Jackson adaptations of Tolkien's works.  We ended up seeing it in 3D which I actually feel benefited the movie in some of the more dramatic scenes - notably, the orc pursuit with Radagast, the fight through the goblin kingdom, the mountain fight, and the giant eagles.  Amazingly, the theater was rather empty so the audience reaction wasn't there but the movie deserves plenty of reaction.  The humor is well done and the more poignant scenes like Thorin's re-evaluation of Bilbo are touching.

While I thought the movie was a bit slow to start, it picked up speed quickly.  It moved from action scene to action scene - as Thorin and Gandalf say in the movie, "out of the frying pan and into the fire."  Clearly much attention was paid to the small details, even in the special effects as they could be appreciated, particularly in the 3D format.  About the only drawback to the 3D was wearing those glasses which I find annoying.  Martin Freeman does an excellent job in the role of Bilbo (as a side note, if you enjoy his performance, I highly recommend the BBC series Sherlock where he plays Dr. Watson to Benedict Cumberpatch's Sherlock Holmes in a modern version of Sherlock Holmes).  The supporting cast was great - Fili and Kili were amusing and GorT particularly enjoyed James Nesbitt's Bofur.

There are two threads of "controversy" on teh intranets regarding the movie.  First is the dust-up over director Peter Jackson filming the movie at 48 frames per second.  Look, Jackson is crazy.  But the 48fps doesn't detract from the movie.  It adds a level of detail to the action scenes that is worthwhile whereas the normal 24fps could lead to a blurring effect.  There is plenty of debate over what is the best framerate to film movies and what the human eye can discern but it gets into some complicated questions. The second controversy is the changes Jackson made to the content of the film from the original Tolkien book.  GorT's position is that people should view this trilogy broader than just the book, The Hobbit, but rather Jackson utilizing various elements from the Tolkien universe sourced from a number of Tolkien works.  The addition of the pale-orc antagonist is fine and helps move the story and the portrayal of Thorin is a great change.

GorT has a number of other movies on the docket:

• Les Miserables - I enjoyed the Broadway musical and look forward to the movie, it looks well done.
• Jack Reacher - ok, bear with me here.  I'm a huge fan of the Reacher novels.  And yes, I'm the first to crazy-go-nuts over the casting of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher - author Lee Child describes his protagonist as being 6' 5" tall with a 50-inch chest, and weighing between 210 and 250 pounds. He has ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair.  Ok, clearly not Tom Cruise.  But I'm excited to see these action novels brought to the big screen.
• Oz: The Great and Powerful - the Volgi, 'Puter, and GorT have a tie to Wizard of Oz stuff and the casting looks interesting.

NRA Speech Had Major Flaws

Three things were wrong with Wayne LaPierre’s speech on behalf of the National Rifle Association. Some of us are members of the NRA, by the way, while some of us are not. Even so, and even though the NRA tends to side with conservatives on firearm issues, there are three bones of contention that conservatives should have with Lapierre’s statements.

First, he blames video games for inspiring gun violence. This is so outlandish as to be laughable: blaming a first-person shooter for encouraging kids to shoot at people is utterly unfounded on any recent research. While the theory is sound—shooting simulated bad guys on a screen could well desensitize youth against the horrors of a real killing—it is based on very faulty suppositions. Pulling a trigger on a wireless controller is not the same as pulling a trigger on a real firearm: on a real firearm, the sudden shock and noise and flash is going to snap anyone out of a desensitized trance. This is as absurd as claiming a watching a television program about thunderstorms will desensitive a kid from the startling shock of a real-life M-80 firecracker going off five feet away. LaPierre should take some defensive shooting courses, such as those offered by the NRA, to learn how completely different a simulation is from the actual thing. In fact, blaming a video game for violence is as stupid as, well, blaming the gun. And he should be sensitive to that.

Second, another thing LaPierre should be sensitive about is his preposterous and grotesque suggestion to register those with mental illnesses. This is beyond satire: if anyone should want to resist any form of registration, it’s a gun owner. And there is something more sinister about registering human beings on something so suggestive. Is registering a person who might have a mental illness that far off from registering them due to their religion? Their race? Their ancestry? The idea is so anti-American that it’s lunacy; perhaps LaPierre should be number 00000000001 on his registration proposal.

Third, any conservative with the slightest lean to libertarianism should reject the idea of having an armed police officer (at least one) in every school. There are hundreds of thousands of schools in the US; this would mean hiring hundreds of thousands of officers. Perhaps LaPierre is okay with a massive expansion of unionized, government workers with billions in taxpayer dollars, but polls suggest that Americans are pretty much tired of it. Conservatives certainly are.

LaPierre should have waited another week if this is the best he could come up with. He should also realize that NRA members also vote for who will be president of the NRA, and he probably put himself on thin ice Friday.

With all the media coverage, he might have said something more intelligent and better argued.

...and I feel fine.

Hmm...still standing... civilization was Rick-Rolled on a cosmic scale:


Well played Mayans, well played!

We'll pay you back with some old blankets we have lying around...

It's The End of The World As We Know It...

Last one out of Guatemala is a rotten egg...

Point Forward for the Washington Generals

So it seems that Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski thinks that Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State and former Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense would be a heckuva powerful and effective team.

The Senate should consider that fair warning. This is like Criswell picking your lottery numbers; he’s wrong more often than random error would allow.

Yes, Zbigniew Brzezinski: the man that brought you the Rise of Islamic Fascism. This uniquely makes him a bad spokesperson for both State and Defense matters.

Someone needs to add his opinion to a different list of opinions.

Mailbag - Built-in Obsolescence

Dr. J. was over at Jonathan Last's blog the other day. It is totally worth adding to your bookmarks. He discusses politics, science fiction, comics, and the decline in Western civilization that correlates with the decline in fecundity.

Dr. J. was struck by this article regarding the mythical Apple Television set (not to be confused with the Apple TV device). Jonathan basically says that he wonders what it would contain that would make it a 'game-changer.' Given Apple's current business model which involves frequent refreshes of affordable hardware, will something like a TV set be viable?

Dr. J. opined at his blog saying:

Jonathan, 

My first television set (4:3) lasted from 1995 to at 2008. We replaced it because a) it was at that point obsolete and b) I could afford a bigger screen). We subsequently replaced my wife’s 1995 set in 2010. After moving this year, we purchased a third for an additional room in our new house. They all have ‘Apple TV’s’ which we use due to our large digital library. We anticipate keeping these TVs for quite some time. Therefore, my question regarding the economics of an Apple TV set, is not only the cycle life, like you address, but what’s going to make me replace these great sets I already possess. Additionally, the newest was bought to fit into a hutch in our living room, so size is a factor as well.

Basically, Dr. J. said that buying a TV is a bigger investment than an iPod, or even an iPhone. Furthermore, size can be a big factor depending on where you would be putting it in your home. Lastly, it isn't something that you want obsolete in three years. More than anything else, it's a window to the digital world. The ways you get to that world currently are with your cable box, bluray player, Apple TV, and other ways of getting on the internet.

Dr. J. loves his Apple TV, but he only recommends one if you have a quite bit of digital content.

Jonathan wrote back:

Dr. J, 

I'm basically with you. 

I'm very much a bleeding edge tech nerd--I had both HD DVD and Blu-Ray. But the idea of replacing a TV panel even every 5 years strikes me as kind of insane unless your living situation changes; ie, you move and are in a different space with different screen size requirements. That's what happened to use 5 years ago when we moved. Our new place really needs a bigger screen because the main viewing area is about 6 feet further from the screen than in our old place. But even so I've found it hard to justify upgrading from my 42" to the 55" I need now. (Plus, I'm sort of waiting to see what the rate of price-drop is on the 4K screens that are going to start being pushed out over the next 12 months. Because I want one of them *bad*.) 

Hope all is well in the Gormogon lair. 

Best, 

JVL

This gets to the point of built in obsolescence.

Much of our technology is disposable and if the hardware doesn't wear out (e.g. battery life), software upgrades makes it legacyware within a few years (Dr. J.'s iPhone 3GS was an example a software upgrade 6 months before the 4S came out made me ponder buying a 4 but made me get a 4S for sure).

Dr. J.'s 10th grade Marxist American History Teacher would tell you that this is simply Da Man's way of making you buy more stuff. Dr. J. thinks that it is a demand-side issue in that since the 1970s, folks want cheap goods more so than high quality goods, with exceptions. As a consequence, they're built cheaply and last not very long. Indeed Dr. J. needs a new toaster. His last one was a cheapie, but it finally has begun dying after 5 years. Mama J. by contrast had the same toaster oven for the first 20 years of her marriage, and a Zenith TV set, bought with Green Stamps from the 1960s to probably 1985 or so. We did it to ourselves.  Over 20 years. Dr. J.'s lasted 13 years, but the switch to HD drove his decision to buy new TVs. He'd probably still have them if not for the switch. Dr. J. also 'blames' HIV. HIV really transformed the medical community to a 'disposable' culture. We would re-use cloth surgical drapes, glass IV bottles, etc...now we reuse many surgical instruments (clamps, scalpel handles, but not blades) but that's about it. HIV drove medicine to a disposable mode. Dr. J. has noticed that our society has move in that direction, over that timeframe. Coincidence, maybe. But maybe not...

Magazines By Mail

Figures there would be nitpickers. Well, maybe that’s unfair; perhaps they are sincerely concerned.

Long-term Operative BG takes a break from training sea turtles to carry encoded messages to our trained attack infantry whales (The GormoPodForce™) to hector the Czar a bit:

I don’t have any problem with most of your recommendations for assault weapons banning. But can we carve out an exception for recoilless rifles? Ski resorts use them for avalanche control. During the 2011-12 ski season, 30 people were killed by avalanches in the U.S., which I’m pretty sure is many times the number of people who were killed in schools and shopping malls by maniacs carrying bazookas.

Well, ski resorts have a business case that would easily exempt them from the prohibition. The Czar would not worry about those applications in his proposal. You know, some Swiss resorts allegedly use automatic fire to trigger controlled avalanches, and we know that the media is hoping for a total ban on private ownership of automatic weapons as soon as 1934. So there is plenty of precedent.

Over at the alternate universe that is Twitter, Bill Goldbold (@wfgodbold) contends that:

Your box-magazine requirement could still cover AR-15s.

Yeah, but to some extent that’s just silliness. No doubt those things sell pretty well, and some prepper* is probably loading a bunch of .223s into one right now. But take it from a shooter or two who will assure you that such a magazine is going to get a snort of derision at the practice range.

Monster box magazines like that have a tendency to jam quite often (particularly with the reloaded ammunition that such an owner would likely want to use),** and throw off the balance of the weapon by quite a bit. Remember that 100 .223 rounds would add about 3 pounds of weight forward of your grip, which would be like holding three 16-oz bottles of soda in your palm. Not comfortable, but you can adjust your grip.

Now firing at a fast rate of speed will empty that box in about 45 seconds, which means the weapon begins dropping weight fast as you shoot. Meaning, of course, that your muzzle will tend to climb more until and unless you keep readjusting your grip as you shoot. Generally, that’s a no-no: your loaded firing grip should be no different from your unloaded firing grip. Better to have a few magazines loaded and ready to go than use an oversized box (or even a drum).

Curiously, although most folks don’t appreciate it, there are actually good, practical reasons that rifle magazines are 20 or 30 round boxes and no more.

* Actually, the Mandarin has been running several interesting scenarios on preppers for the last couple of years. They think they’re preparing for the End As We Know It, oblivious that they have been executing specific instructions by him the whole while. Some tricky math even the Czar doesn’t pretend to get, but that woman who hoardes 20 gallon-sized jars of mayonnaise is no accident.

** Technically, the most common problem is a failure to feed. The bigger the box, the more complex the spring system inside. If a cartridge is not perfectly sized due to reloading or cheap manufacture, you wind up with a non-firing weapon.

Helping the Media With Their Obsessions

Okay, the Czar is willing to compromise on an assault weapons ban. He recommends Congress quickly pass the following restrictions through:

The following weapons (“assault weapons”) shall be banned from sale effective the date of passage:

• Weapons with a detachable box magazine consisting of 40 or more bullets (excluding drums)
• Rifles or other long guns with permanently affixed bayonets
• All weapons, regardless of size, that feature continuous fire upon a single pull of the trigger to the point that the magazine is completely expended even if the trigger is released.
• Any weapon featuring only iron sights that can accurately fire into a target one mile away in high wind.
• Weapons exceeding .59-inches in caliber.
• Recoilless rifles.
• Semi-automatic bolt action rifles with multiple barrels.

That seems reasonable, and will certainly seem like a great idea to the media.

Mailbag - Droid Factory Edition

Operative BG writes in:

Dr. J., 

Is it possible I’ve divined the actual location of Castle Gormogon? 

Dr. J’s prescription shows the castle’s phone number as 888-867-5309, which is apparently located at 2209 Whitten Road, Memphis, TN 38133. 

I’m thinking this might be in error, since, according to Al Gore’s Amazing Internet, that address is identified as “Sears Parts and Repair Center.” 

Best, 

Operative BG 

Dear BG,

You are correct in your incorrectness. Castle Gormogon can be found as follows:

The Castle travels in time and space, but can be found on the Plateau of Leng, when it appears just outside of the scenic hamlet of Fond-du-Lac, Wisconsin. Take Route 45 North to Kinker Road, and turn right (heading East). This will become Westmoreland Drive (Exit 5). Head North to Castle Road and follow the signs. If you reach WI- 114/10, you have gone too far North. You’ll soon know what that means. Guests of the Castle may park in the rear for free, behind the Hippodrome. One of our Tcho-Tchos will be happy to park your vehicle for you, or at the very least, tear your seats apart with his teeth. If you need help with your bags, feel free to ask, and they will hurl them off the plateau.

Indeed, Uncle Jay describes his trip to the Castle here.

If you need maps, this may help:

OUR Castle Road is not listed. This is as close as you get on Google.

'A' denotes the point closest to Castle Road on Google Maps. Apple Maps will reveal the exact location of the Castle, but its sanity was the price it paid. Even then it requires a password only known to our closest minions.

Here is a view right before you descend to Castle Road:

Abandon hope, all ye who enter...

So what is going on in Memphis? Well, we have specialized field offices, all with concomitant front businesses to mask our eldrich ways. 

This is a satellite view of the field office you describe:

Nowhere near Lake Winnebago...

But what goes on there? Well, as you could read it is a Sears Repair Shop specializing in electronics, but in the back, Dr. J. and 2-1B work our magic, specifically with regard to cyborg implantation, our specialty. Despite being a purely cash-pay practice, we are worried about how the Obamacare device-tax will affect our business. We suspect, given the unique nature of our practice, we will weather the storm.

Here are a few examples of our work:

First, 2-1B works on one of our more famous patients:

Just another day on the job...

And a pre-operative mock-up of work planned for our mascot, Hello Kitty:

She has no mouth, not even a cyborg one, and yet she must scream!

Dr. J. hopes this clears things up!

Thanks for writing in...

Nothing Will Change

Liberals want to have a “national conversation” on the subject of guns. Uh-oh! Whenever liberals want to have a national conversation about anything, what they mean is that they want you to shut up with your reality-based facts and figures and simply do what they say.

Nothing says liberals are losing the argument like the desire to exploit a national tragedy with a national conversation. Perhaps they fail to realize conversation means dialogue not monologue, but whatever.

“If they think television is responsible, then they don’t even understand the tragedy, let alone the solution.”The Царица, who is every bit as smart and witty and powerful as the other Gormogon wives, kind of exploded this evening on the Newtown, Connecticut, tragedy. As a school teacher, she had the opportunity to discuss the event with other teachers, and she lit up on the Czar this evening when he relayed the Mandarin’s disgust that the Discovery channel has pulled all of their firearm-related shows because of two complaint letters relating to Newtown.

Her tirade went along these lines: “That’s completely inappropriate and fails to solve anything. If they think television is responsible, then they don’t even understand the tragedy, let alone the solution. The liberals keep pushing this narrative that everything needs to be on the table: not just gun rights, but school procedures and mental health should be considered too. It’s crap: this is 99% a mental health issue, about 0.9% school procedures, and 0.1% gun rights. Bottom line.”

She shares the Czar’s distaste with some pro-gun suggestions to arm teachers. Look, thanks to her, the Czar knows a boatload of teachers, and you can’t trust half of them with craft projects, let alone firearms. Can you imagine Linda Heffner snapping out a 9mm, we asked. The Царица chuckled in agreement.

Protecting a school against a Newtown-level event is like protecting a school against a meteorite hitting it. Nothing will ultimately work. The nature of disaster is that many things have to happen, which means one solution will never solve anything.

Or put it this way: Sandy Hill did everything right. They exceeded standards for school security. The Connecticut gun laws worked. The police responded as they were supposed to. And still 18 beautiful kids were butchered. Although evidence is still being put together, it appears that the killer went to his mother’s house whereupon she let him in. He then grabbed one of her legally owned and properly maintained weapons, shot her, and then took the rest. He continued over to the school and shot out the glass on a locked door, reached inside, and opened the door for himself from the inside. Hey—fire code says those doors must open from the inside. Fires happen in schools all the time; shootings only rarely. With that trick, he was able to continue unimpeded. The police arrived within minutes, and the shooter had already killed everyone he was going to kill that day.

No, he didn’t need a Bushmaster rifle. And he didn’t need high-capacity magazines. Nor did he work some loophole in the laws. Heck, he didn’t need firearms at all: he could have easily killed as many children with gasoline and a match. Or an axe. Or a chainsaw. You name it: the outcome would be identical.

But dammit, something has got to be done. Or so the politicians tell us: especially those at the federal level who have no business being involved in these issues at all. These are ultimately state and local issues (even if the shock is felt around the world), so all this posturing is pointless.

In fact, the Czar will share with you the future. By 2018, the Newtown event will have achieved absolutely nothing:

• The media will continue to glorify killers by detailing every aspect of their unhappy lives, and put their faces on television, on magazines, and on newspapers, making them anti-heroes with rock star recognition.
• The next killer will see that attention and decide he wants it too: there will be another mass shooting.
• School safety and security procedures will continue almost exactly as they are today.
• Mentally ill and dangerous people will still be free to act on their impulses because there will be no state facilities or laws that easily enable family members the ability to enroll such people in working programs with productive outcomes.
• There will be no ban on assault weapons because assault weapons do not exist except in the minds of people who know little about firearms.
• Detachable box and drum magazines will continue to hold 15, 20, 30, or even 100 rounds because this is an effective way to hold ammunition.
• People will continue to carry concealed weapons (likely in all 50 states).
• Semi-automatic weapons will continue to dominate firearm sales because they are incredibly efficient.
• Movies will not tone down the levels of violence, and will never be able to provide a link to acts of real violence.
• Video games will not tone down the levels of violece, and will never be able to provide a link to acts of real violence.
• America will still have a firearm fatality rate per 100,000 people on par with many so-called enlightened countries.
• Nothing is going to change.

The reasons are complex and intertwined, but one of the simplest explanations is because liberals (both Republicans and Democrats, by the way) continue to construct false arguments based on faulty premises that create such unwiedly social constructs to ensure that nothing gets done.

So what should be done? What would be the Czar’s response? Take a step back: violence of this sort is decreasing dramatically, since its record high in 1929. Newtown is, thankfully, an almost unheard-of rarity.

In fact, while we clearly need a massive overhaul of local and state mental health solutions to provide help (and not incarceration) to millions of people regardless of Newtown, we might want to address a tragedy even worse than this: 18 dead children is a freaking weekend in Chicago. Sure, it isn’t spectacular like Newtown—just as a plane crash killing 80 people is more spectacular than the 32,000 people killed in traffic accidents in the US—but to a grieving mother and father, the tragedy is just as painful.

So we can all talk and make bold promises and weeping speeches and beat our breasts in woe, but nothing is going to change or magically correct these tragedies. Watch and see.

Is The Matrix Fake? Are Some Scientists Morons?

It takes a special gift to write a scientific news story about something so unscientific that the author, Joel N. Shurkin, clearly thinks is stupid as well. And he has a model example for you to read.

A professor—what is going on at UDub anyway?—his graduate students, and someone named Silas Beane of UNH (the story does not reveal what Beane’s CV is) wants to run a test on cosmic rays to see if our universe is in fact real, or is some vast computer simulation.

The restraint Mr. Shurkin shows while shoveling this obvious editor assignment (“Joel, get me 2,000 words on this reality study”) is remarkable. He discusses the test, the theory on which it is based, and even has an easy rebuttal from a more experienced scientist at the University of Minnesota who thinks the whole idea is lunacy.

Basically, the whole thing sounds very scientific: examine high energy cosmic rays to determine any evidence of non-isotropic symmetry. In other words, the real universe will demonstrate consistently distributed cosmic rays; a universe simulated in a computer, in which we all somehow ignorantly live, will demonstrate irregularities based on, well, based on what some British goofball said after seeing The Matrix in 1999. No, that isn’t an exaggeration: that dumbass over-rated movie seems to be the trigger for this whole study.

In fact, that movie tends to be quite popular among nerds who feel they should be much more successful with the opposite sex. “If only we weren’t living in some simulation, because real life would have made me much more social.”

The problem with this theory is that it is ultimately untestable on its face. A simulation, the theory states, would divide its time up among powerful computer processors, resulting in tiny but measurable gaps in the distribution of quantum particles as the simulation runs various parts at different times. Real life, the study contends to show, would show a uniform distribution of quantum particles.

First, let us ignore Heisenberg on this one and say that might be true; but it assumes the universal simulation is run on a terrestrial computer designed by humans—which uses threaded processing to tackle different parts of a simulation at different times and interpolate values between. An analog computer of alien design might easily show no such constraints, invalidating the entire test.

If, of course, you have any problems believing that you live in the real world. Which, it seems, 49% of us might indeed.

Read This

The Czar found this on our Twitter feed, and is not sure who retweeted it but that is unimportant.

The Czar knows many of our readers are not on teh tWitter, and may have missed this. If you want to read a first-person encapsulation of everything we have been talking about in regard to Newton, Connecticut, please read this:

Thinking the Unthinkable.

Beats anything the Czar could have written. And thank God for that.

Democrats Know Tax Hikes Will Hurt

Sources tell the Czar that there is a whisper campaign going on among the Democrats, in which a group is quietly advising the President to go along with the Republicans on the fiscal cliff issue; that fundamentally the GOP math checks out. Of course, the President is not interested in helping the economy: he wants to punish the Republicans for losing the Presidency.

Because when it comes down to it, the entire Democrat philosophy on taxation is nonsense and they know it. GorT for example listed how comedy writer and part-time Senator Al Franken has somehow just now discovered something Republicans have been saying for three years: that Obamacare is going to raise taxes on producers of medical devices. As a result, many of these manufacturers (who reside in his homestate of Minnesota and employ thousands of voters) are looking to leave the country. Whoops! Suddenly, Franken wants to eliminate that tax in order to prevent “job killing” taxes.

We saw this in 2011, when Democrats went along with Republicans for the Hire Heroes Act—due to the widespread unemployment among veterans, this law will lower taxes for companies who hire veterans.

You see, Democrats claim that higher taxes are the solution to help the nation’s unemployment problem. But when it comes right down to reality, Democrats quietly know that lower taxes reduce unemployment. Because that’s pretty much what they do when reality sets in every freaking time.

So with unemployment at numbers higher and longer lasting than the Great Depression (it was Great for Democrats; for Americans, not so much), the President is raising taxes. No, not just on the imaginary two percent—in case you missed it because the media is concealing it, taxes are already going up on all of us.

If lowering taxes is the way to lower unemployment, so agree Republicans and Democrats, why would the President be raising them? Apparently, 51% of the country thinks the President can help the economy. 100% of us will not like the result.