Amazing what will fit on a ram stick.

In a rare moment of non-worship, the New York Slimes talks about Cuba and the computer "revolution" they are having.

“It passes from flash drive to flash drive,” said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who, like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his last name not be used for fear of political persecution. “This is going to get out of the government’s hands because the technology is moving so rapidly.”

Cuban officials have long limited the public’s access to the Internet and digital videos, tearing down unauthorized satellite dishes and keeping down the number of Internet cafes open to Cubans. Only one Internet cafe remains open in Old Havana, down from three a few years ago.

By fair means or foul, Cubans are getting access to The World, downloading it onto ram sticks, and secretly passing it around among themselves.  Raoul Castro is sitting on a steam kettle.  She's going to blow pretty soon.  My totally wild assed guess is maybe he lasts five years.  Ram sticks are getting bigger and cheaper every day, and there's the One Laptop Per Child program.  Talk about subversive, holy crap Batman!

Maybe some enterprising soul could set up a WiFi antenna that can reach an OLPC laptop in Cuba, eh?  Maybe a nice dirigible floating around the Florida coast...

The Phantom

High end RAID for $50 bucks.

This caught my eye today, a high end RAID solution that runs in software.

Raidcore solutions have repeatedly beaten practically all other competitors in our tests since the feature set of the complex software layer always trumps the competition's hardware. It was not only the first company to offer professional options such as online capacity expansion and RAID level migration in the small-business space (SATA). The company's controllers also provide unparalleled scalability due to the lack of an integrated RAID XOR unit. Instead, the system processor handles these calculations. The advantage is that you can simply add more controllers to a system, allowing easy expansion of existing RAID arrays.

Now, anyone can buy the Fulcrum RAID software architecture for only $49. VST Pro 2008 comes with the Raidcore software that is used in the RC5000-series of controllers. Provided the system contains an Intel S-ATA controller, you can now use the entire range of Raidcore's High-End RAID features on any computer, allowing you to create RAID arrays using the existing S-ATA ports.

Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks = RAID, and if you've ever had a hard drive puke and lost all your stuff, you know what its good for.  Cheap insurance!  In these days of huge music and video collections and 500 gig hard drives, RAID can be useful even to the humble house PC.  Being able to use professional level kit for fifty bucks is just icing on the cake.  Not too long ago this would have cost you thousands.

The Phantom

Personal fabrication

This here is what I've been SAYIN'!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/90

Go watch the video and be filled with the future, kids. He's talking
about science fiction right in your garage. Personal fabrication of
pretty much any doodad, machine, toy, gizmo, material, gimcrack or any
damn thing you can think of. At your house. Which is damn cool, all by
itself.

But beyond that, what's cool is the unleashing of humanity from the
coils of ignorance and want. He talks about taking a $20,000 "Fablab"
to third world countries and watching 8 year olds latch on to the idea
and run with it. He's got a video of this little kid whipping up a
working circuit board in a day that he says his engineers couldn't have
done in less than a week. Twenty grand is cheaper than a new Buick, kids.

We are living in interesting times already. They are about to get a
hell of a lot more interesting.

The Phantom

Farewell Fidel!

Over at Small Dead Animals, Kate has posted something interesting. An internal memo from CNN regarding how Fidel Castro's "retirement" is to be handled. Kid gloves is not an unfair description. So I thought I'd provide some coverage of Fidel's leave taking from a uniquely gearhead perspective.

Friends and family have been to Cuba over the years. I haven't as a matter of both principal and penury. Formerly penury, lately principal.



They uniformly state that while the beaches and hotels are lovely and the staff friendly, if you wander off into town things go rather downhill. If you wander far enough a nice man in uniform with an AK47 tell you to please go back to your hotel.

Most cars are wonderful American 1950's customs, hand built and beautiful.



Which is great, until you think about it and realize those cars are still running from the 1950's, not rescued, restored by avid hobbyists and running again. Because relics of '50s American iron is all there is to drive.

I just happen to have a chunk of old American iron. 1947 Ford 2 1/2 ton COE.

My experience with it tells me that Cuba probably has the greatest masters of fixing cracks in cast iron in the entire world.

I've got two of those ancient Ford flat heads out in my driveway right now. Here's the first one being torn down. See all the crud on there? There's nasssty things hiding under it.
This is one of about 10 or so cracks I found in the block. This one is no big deal, but even by itself it would eventually lift the head gasket and get coolant in the oil pan. Probably one of the reasons they parked the old bastard in the first place. There's nine more like this one, some in the valve area, some headed for the cylinder walls. That's just on the top of the deck, I don't know what's in the lifter valley because we stopped cleaning when this lot showed up.

I found a guy in the next town over who had a flat head for sale, managed to score it off him for $50 bucks. Great score!

But, one problem. Flat head blocks are known for cracking. They pretty much always crack. If both blocks are like this I'm going to stick a late-model fuel injected Ford engine and transmission in my 1947 truck and be happy. Drive it on Sunday. Why? Because I can, of course! Hope mine turns out as nice as this one.

But what about the Cuban guy? His block is going to be as trashed as mine is.

The Cuban guy is going to fix all the myriad cracks with screws, by hand. He's going to get the resulting block back into service as quick as he can, Why? Because that truck is his only ride. Without it, he has no job. And no lunch. Those people who needed him to move something with his truck? They are all S.O.L., because its the only truck in town.Here's the Cuban guy's truck on the job. Note all is not well under the hood.Note that this truck has 8 lug wheels. Note that Cuban guy has only 4 wheel nuts. If you look real close you'll notice he only has 7 wheel studs. You want to carry a couple ton on that wheel? Me neither.

Why can't the Cuban guy buy wheel nuts? Or a new engine? Hell, why can't he buy a new truck? Oh, the American Embargo? Ok, why can't he buy a German truck? Japanese? Indian? Russian? Chinese?!!!

Fidel said. That's why.

Here's another Cuban truck.And here's a 1959 Buick. There's 11 people in that thing.
Viva Fidel. What took ya?

Another stupid idea returns from the dead.

We are, I kid you not, going to be subjected to yet another round of social Darwinism.  I'm going to barf.

The process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes, a new study finds. Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes. Speeded or slowed rates of evolution typically indicate the action of natural selection in analyses of the human genome.

The Stanford team studied reports of canoe designs from 11 Oceanic island cultures. They evaluated 96 functional features (such as how the hull was constructed or the way outriggers were attached) that could contribute to the seaworthiness of the canoes and thus have a bearing on fishing success or survival during migration or warfare.

They also evaluated 38 decorative or symbolic features (such as the types of carved or painted designs). They analyzed mathematically the rates of change for the two groups of canoe design traits from island group to island group. Statistical test results showed clearly that the functional canoe design elements changed more slowly over time, indicating that natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs. This cultural analysis is similar to analyses of the human genome that have been successful in finding which genes are under selection.

There seems to be some subset of social "scientists" who just can't leave this alone.  No matter how many times the idea gets debunked, there they are back at it, trying to stick the round peg of human culture into the square hole of Natural Selection.  What makes them keep doing this?

Examples of cultural approaches that are putting humans at risk include "everything from the economic incentives, industrial technologies and growth mentality that cause climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, to the religious polarization and political ideologies that generate devastating conflict around the globe," Rogers said. "If the leadership necessary to undertake critically needed cultural evolution in these areas can't be found, our civilization may find itself weeded out by natural selection, just like a bad canoe design."

They're Lefties.  Members of a political ideology that generates devastating conflict around the globe.  They can't help themselves.  Must be genetic or something. 

Clearly these people have never built anything with their own hands.  If they had they would know that tools and materials determine how the work goes.  There's only so many ways you can lash an outrigger to a canoe that will not fall off in the waves.

Alternate explanation, isn't it possible that bad canoe designs are weeded out because Polynesian canoeists were smart enough to bite their finger and knew a piece of shit canoe when they saw one?

The Genetic Phantom

fun with molecules

Today's Kewl thing of the day is hydrogen bonds.  Some guys have a theory as to why wimpy hydrogen bonds can make spider silk proteins stronger than steel.

In a paper published in the Feb. 13 online issue of Nano Letters, Buehler and graduate student Sinan Keten describe how they used atomistic modeling to demonstrate that the clusters of three or four hydrogen bonds that bind together stacks of short beta strands in a structural protein rupture simultaneously rather than sequentially when placed under mechanical stress. This allows the protein to withstand more force than if its beta strands had only one or two bonds. Oddly enough, the small clusters also withstand more energy than longer beta strands with many hydrogen bonds.

“Using only one or two hydrogen bonds in building a protein provides no or very little mechanical resistance, because the bonds are very weak and break almost without provocation,” said Buehler, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “But using three or four bonds leads to a resistance that actually exceeds that of many metals. Using more than four bonds leads to a much-reduced resistance. The strength is maximized at three or four bonds.”

Put this together with the nanowire maker from yesterday, you've got some serious potential for a brand new generation of super strong materials.

How about ligament replacements for guys with knee ligament tears that are stronger than the original and less prone to immune response problems?  That'd be outstanding.  These days ACL/PCL tears are replaced with a piece of your own ligament stolen from some other place on your body.  I always thought that solution sucked.

The Ligamentous Phantom

Bulk nanoscale wire is now possible.

Materials science is one of my favorites.  They do the most fascinating things.  Today we have a group that has invented a way to make wire that is 100 nanometers thick and as long as you want.  Just to put this in perspective, Intel is currently producing its Core2 Duo chips on a 45 nanometer lithography process.

To use the new process, the researchers begin with a reservoir of ink connected to a glass micropipette that has an aperture as small as 100 nanometers. The micropipette is brought close to a substrate until a liquid meniscus forms between the two. As the micropipette is then smoothly pulled away, ink is drawn from the reservoir. Within the tiny meniscus, the solute nucleates and precipitates as the solvent quickly evaporates.

So far, the scientists have fabricated freestanding nanofibers approximately 25 nanometers in diameter and 20 microns long, and straight nanofibers approximately 100 nanometers in diameter and 16 millimeters long (limited only by the travel range of the device that moves the micropipette).

To draw longer nanowires, the researchers developed a precision spinning process that simultaneously draws and winds a nanofiber on a spool that is millimeters in diameter. Using this technique, Yu and his students wound a coil of microfiber. The microfiber was approximately 850 nanometers in diameter and 40 centimeters long.

To further demonstrate the versatility of the drawing process, for which the U. of I. has applied for a patent, the researchers drew nanofibers out of sugar, out of potassium hydroxide (a major industrial chemical) and out of densely packed quantum dots. While the nanofibers are currently fabricated from water-based inks, the process is readily extendable to inks made with volatile organic solvents, Yu said.

If the process can be scaled up to produce wire and thread in real quantity, as in by the mile, then we are going to see some really serious changes in materials pretty soon.  One of the ways to make composites stronger is to make the fibers thinner and longer.  Another way is to include fibers of different material to get different properties included in the cloth.  How about a rope that is spun from fibers only 800 nanometers across?  How about a fiber optic cable with like a billion threads in it?  That's some serious business.

The Thready Phantom

Recycling and why it sucks.

Every once in a while an article comes by that just perfectly encapsulates my thinking on a subject.  Here we have one of those perfect articles.

For a long time now I've quietly resisted recycling.  It seems to me that if I'm paying for garbage collection, then I should get garbage collection.  You know, where they come and take the garbage away.  Should anyone wish to sort through what I have paid hard money to have hauled off in the hopes of making a buck on it, they have my blessing.  But if I am going to be required to use my time and energy to pre-sort so that somebody else's job is easier, I expect to get paid for it.  Like, apply the profit from the sale of recyclable material to lower my garbage collection bill.  More fool am I!  They increase my taxes and reduce the service instead, Hamilton is going to go to one-bag-per-week collection rules.

Strangely, I find this irritating.

When I complain about the foul nature of government mandated recycling, people always tell me about Sweden.  Northern eco-paradise where everyone recycles and all is bliss and love.  Or not.

The way it has been presented to me, Sweden has succeeded with what most other governments at best dream about: creating an efficient and profitable national system for saving the environment through large-scale recycling. And the people are all in on it! Everybody's recycling.

The latter is actually true: everybody is recycling. But that is the result of government force, not a voluntary choice.

So, how's that working out for them?

Economically, Swedish recycling is a disaster. Imagine a whole population spending time and money cleaning their garbage and driving it around the neighborhood rather than working or investing in a productive market! According to the government's books, more money flows in than flows out; therefore recycling is profitable. But this ignores the costs of coercion.

The government bookkeepers also take advantage of the cost cuts they have been able to realize through centralizing the garbage collection system. These "cuts," however, are mostly cuts in service, whereas rates for consumers have been increased. A recent problem with the garbage-collection centers is that the containers aren't emptied very often (a typical example of government "savings") and thus remain full, which means that people's garbage piles up next to the overflowing containers while the government contractors sit idle: they are only paid to empty the containers on schedule, not to pick up the trash sitting next to these containers. The result? Disease and rats. Newspapers have been reporting on a "rat invasion" in Stockholm and in other Swedish cities in recent years.

If we consider the costs in monetary terms, in terms of wasted time, and in terms of increased emissions from automobiles, this is hardly environmentally friendly. Adding the annoyance and the increased risk for disease, Swedish recycling is at least as disastrous as any other government scheme.

Just about as expected, then.

So the next time some good hearted soul chides you about not sorting your glass from your plastics, tell them about the Great Swedish Rat Invasion.

The Phantom Recycling Denier.

Rodents of Unusual Size!

A Rodent of Unusual Size has been discovered in South America. No not
Chavez, this one's dead already.
>
> The fossilised skull of a rat the size of a car has been unearthed.
> The creature lived about four million years ago, weighed about a tonne
> and ate mostly soft vegetation. It was so big that it probably spent
> much of its life semi-submerged in water, like a hippo, to reduce the
> stresses caused by its size.
>
> Palaeontologists found the skull in rock deposits in Uruguay. It is
> believed to date back two to four million years to a time when giant
> wildlife was commonplace in South America.
>
And yes, they are calling it Mighty Mouse. What else?

You though this was going to be about DemocRats, didn't ya? ~:D

The Tricksy Phantom

They're driving too much! TAX THEM!

Yet another example of why Big Government is the enemy of life.  I added some emphasis in red to cut to the actual information part of the article.

A special commission is urging the government to raise federal gasoline taxes by as much as 40 cents per gallon over five years as part of a sweeping overhaul designed to ease traffic congestion and repair the nation's decaying bridges and roads.

The two-year study being released Tuesday by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, the first to recommend broad changes after the devastating bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August, warns that urgent action is needed to avoid future disasters.

Under the recommendation, the current tax of 18.4 cents per gallon for unleaded gasoline would be increased annually for five years - by anywhere from 5 cents to 8 cents each year - and then indexed to inflation afterward to help fix the infrastructure, expand public transit and highways as well as broaden railway and rural access, according to persons with direct knowledge of the report, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the report is not yet public.

So just to belabor the point to death, the Big Government answer to deteriorating public infrastructure, which was built with tax money and was supposed to be maintained with tax money (but oddly seems not to have been), is to tax people to the point where they can't afford to drive anymore  and then use that NEW tax money to fix what was supposed to have been fixed with the old tax money but wasn't.  By a miracle the money will be spent to actually fix the road this time.  Maybe.

Some people on the commission appear to have a brain cell or two still firing.

The commission's chairwoman, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, and two other members oppose gas tax increases and were issuing a dissenting opinion to the report calling instead for private-sector investment and tolls.

The Bush administration has said that raising taxes won't cut congestion and creates additional risks for congressional pork, such as Alaska's infamous multimillion dollar "Bridge to Nowhere," which has been scuttled.

That makes three people on the commission with a functioning cerebral cortex, they are all Republicans.  The rest are either DemocRats or wish they were.  Coincidence?

The tone of the article is designed to make these three Republicans seem obstructive and unreasonable, since they are being killjoy meanies who want to let bridges fall down to save a couple of bucks.  This explains why Reuters stock was reduced to SELL! yesterday.  The article was written by some doofus from the AP, but there's no difference between Reuters and AP.  May they join each other in the toilet of bankruptcy as soon as possible.  If you've got MSM stock, my condolences.

The Phantom Obstructionist

the Left is now, officially, a parody of itself.

The last few years it has been getting harder and harder to satirize the political Left.  You make up something completely idiotic, the wildest, dumbest thing you've ever thought of, and the sons of bitches will top it a week later in an official policy release.  That has got to be tough to do.  In order to keep up this trend of self-parody excellence, Moveon.org has just hired professional help.

The powerful liberal activist group has wooed Peter Koechley away from the satirical newspaper The Onion, where he was managing editor.

So now when you hear something about Moveon.org and you think it sounds like The Onion, you'll know why.

The Phantom Satirist.

Now here's a scary poll.

Wall to wall positive press coverage has its advantages it seems.

OTTAWA -- A new poll suggests Canadians would root en masse for whichever leading Democrat winds up facing the Republicans in this year's U.S. presidential election.

The Canadian Press/Harris Decima survey suggests Canadians so overwhelmingly favour the Democrats, it barely matters whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton win today's New Hampshire primary.

I've got ten bucks right here says not one of those polled in favor of DemocRats could name one single policy of Obama's, yet they -say- they love the guy.  Or Hillary, its ok either way.  Given the number of unflattering pictures of Hillary that started circulating this week that may change, as the masses of asses start to respond to the media hatchet job on Nurse Rached.

In the world of biology there's a name for this: regurgitation.  The puking back of what has been shoved in, completely un-digested.  And we wonder why this country is an over taxed, over regulated mess.


The Phantom

Dakar/Rat Patrol Memorial Rally and Turkey Shoot

The boys and girls over at Small Dead Animals have convinced me I need to field a team in this year's canceled Dakar Rally.

No Problem! Here's our chase vehicle and supply wagon.
As you can see from this New Year's Day pic, the race prep is almost complete!
Ok, well at least the motor is nearly ready!Perhaps "nearly ready" is slightly optimistic, but at least I got it to the machine shop yesterday. Pretty soon I'll have 88 smokin' horsepower to shoehorn into my wreck... er truck.

Moving right along, here's Team Phantom's invincible race vehicle!

No, that's not Photoshop, it really does say "The Phantom" on it. Yes, I do have a big head. And here it is today, as of 11AM this morning, race-ready and rarin' to go!
Anybody got a shovel?

The Phantom

Of course you realise this means war...

Gearheads of the world take note, Al Queer-da has moved from obscure head cutting swine to official pain in the ass with this latest move.  The bastards have caused the cancellation of the Dakar Rally!

Al-Qaida threats against the Dakar Rally and an attack in Mauritania forced organizers to cancel the annual race on Friday, the eve of the 5,760-mile trek across North African desert scrubland and savannah.

It was the first time the automobile, motorbike and truck rally has been called off in its 30-year history. In a statement, organizers blamed "threats launched directly against the race by terrorist organizations." the Dec. 24 killings of a French family and international tensions.

Yep, the sons of camel crap gunned down a whole family on Christmas Eve while they were having a picnic beside the road.  Also blew up a UN office in Algiers on Dec. 11th (they love numbers, eh?) and killed 37 people.

Patrice Clerc, who heads the company that organizes the rally, told The Associated Press the threats against the rally came from al- Qaida's North Africa wing. He said the French government warned explicitly that the race was threatened but did not share its intelligence.

"Yes, we perhaps bowed to terrorism but our company today does not have the right to run this risk for all those people who trust it," Clerc added. "We don't have the right to play games with safety."

This is true.  You boys grabbed your freakin' ankles for 'em.  Not a proud moment for Europe, France in particular.

On the one hand, it would be stupid to get killed over a car race.  On the other hand, guys get killed in car races all the time.  Nobody goes in the Dakar Rally thinking its going to be this nice, safe walk in the park.  The Gearhead Way would be to say thanks for nothing, government of France, get gun permits from Mauritania for every man, woman and grease monkey in the entire race entourage, and GO RACING.  Its the fucking Dakar, its supposed to be dangerous.  That's the whole point of it in the first place.  Gee, maybe the French PUSSY government could send some guys too!

I daresay the noble freedom fighters who bravely shot unarmed women and kids on Christmas Eve would bravely face 3,000 ARMED and pissed off racers and pit beasts, plus the army of Mauritania, plus maybe even some guys from the French Foreign Legion if Sarkozy actually has a pair.  Or not.  Either way, backing down from these assholes is not going to make the world a safer place. 

Fuck 'em!  Go racing.  If they stick their retarded heads up, shoot 'em off.

Crazy accident from kangaroo country.

Today's crazy accident comes to us from Down Under, courtesy the upside-down department of energy.  I knew there was a reason to clean up grinding dust, because it gets into everything, will discolour water based paints and dull wood working tools rather horribly.  But this is something I never thought of.

A safety coordinator at the Esso Oil Company plant in Longford, Australia, was using a belt grinder in his home workshop to smooth the edge of a hacksaw cut on a 2" length of 1.5" angle iron. He had been grinding for about 1.5 to 2 minutes when there was a loud "THUMP" accompanied by an approximately 2-foot diameter brilliant yellow orange fireball. The fireball lasted no more than 1 second and then completely extinguished itself. It completely enveloped the machine, his hands to half way up his forearms, and the front of his torso.

I'll spare you the gory details.  The guy got burnt a bit, needless to say.  Good thing he was wearing his glasses, eh?

Now, what on earth makes a belt grinder explode? 

Nothing on the bench was burning. A few streaks of white powder were deposited on the bench top and on a few items lying on the bench. The workshop was filled with dense white smoke with very little odor.

Hmm, white powder?  White Smoke?  The plot thickens!  One last piece of info is missing.

A few days before the event, the man's son had ground the heads off about twelve aluminum pop rivets.

Aluminum makes a belt grinder explode?  Yes it does my friends!  Aluminum dust plus grinding dust from steel makes thermite.  Add a bunch of heat from grinding sparks, and POOF goes your eyebrows.  The good news is that thermite is very difficult to get going.  This poor guy's loss of eyebrows was pretty fluky.  But if you grind a lot of steel and a lot of aluminum...

So all you hot rodder slobs like myself who work with steel AND aluminum, get busy with the vacuum cleaner.  The facial hair you save may be your own.

The "but am I paranoid enough?" Phantom

HRC, the gauntlet is cast! Right in their teeth too.

Mark Steyn has a new post up at his blog regarding his upcoming hearing before one of our Human Rights Commission tribunals , and may I say that the battle is surely joined.

Here's my bottom line: I don't accept that free-born Canadian citizens need the permission of the Canadian state to read my columns. What's offensive is not the accusations of Dr Elmasry and his pals, but the willingness of Canada's pseudo-courts to take them seriously. So I couldn't care less about the verdict - except insofar as an acquittal would be more likely to bolster the cause of those who think it's entirely reasonable for the state to serve as editor-in-chief of privately owned magazines. As David Warren put it, the punishment is not the verdict but the process.

That is the kind of talk I like to hear from targets of Liberal persecution.  Bring. It. On.
The ladies and gentlemen of the Canadian Conservative Party should be moving to forward this battle with all possible speed.  Go git 'em boys 'n girls!

The Phantom

Wind power done RIGHT!

Ahhh, now this is how you do wind power.

"To latch onto the powerful winds prevailing well above the surface, the kite attached to the high-tech steerage unit flies up to 300 meters high to tug the 10,000-tonne ship forward, supporting its diesel engines and cutting fuel consumption.  Under favorable wind conditions, the 160-square meter kite shaped like a paraglider is expected to reduce fuel costs by up to 20 percent or more ($1,600 per day)..."

Wind power that saves money, what a freakin' concept.  One problem, the damn kite costs $750,000 so they are going to have to have about 15 months of days under "sail" to break even.  MV Beluga might want to work on that part a bit.

Incidentally, the above two sentences are about all the useful information in the article.  MV Beluga attaches kites to freighters, and saves them 20% on gas.  The whole rest of the article is "carbon footprint" and  climate change bollocks.

I don't care.  My container gets across the ocean  20% cheaper, I save twenty bucks on a $100 item.  (Yes, I know its not that simple.  But ultimately, cost reductions end up in consumer pockets.)  Added bonus, less actual pollution gets spewed into the air.  You know, poisonous gases.  The kind nobody ever seems to talk about anymore, but have not gone away.  I don't want to smell fartfull sulfur dioxide any more than the next guy, so here's a way to cut it by 20% and make money, not lose it.  Awesome!

The Fartfull Phantom

Mechanical component to wound healing discovered.

Fun facts, sometimes when you get a cut and it scars up the scar keeps on scar-ing and end up making a fascial adhesion, sometimes leading to fibrosis.  New discovery announced today gives a little insight into the process.  The interesting thing is that a purely mechanical component to the pathway is mentioned.  Basically growth hormone is released for cell activity by pulling on the fibers being created.Fascinating article.  Read it!  ~:D

The Myofascial Phantom

Only in Canada you say? Pity.

Some things have happened this last week I thought you should be aware of.

First, the natives are restless in Caledonia.  Not the Six Nations idiots, I mean the people who live in Caledonia.  Seems that illegal smoke shops (as in more than one) have been springing up along Highway Six in the occupied Douglas Creek Estates confusion zone.  People in Caledonia don't like it because its illegal, blocks traffic and is an eyesore.  December 1st they had a  demonstration in front of one.  Not the first time residents have staged a demonstration, but it IS the first time 200 OPP cops didn't show up.  This time they sent eight (8).  Predictably, the noble Six Nations Protesters punched out fat, diabetic old Gary McHale who frankly looks about as dangerous as a fire hydrant. 

The other casualty happened when the OPP tackled and seriously injured a resident with a video camera.  You know, before he captured somebody doing something they shouldn't be, like Indians shoving and hitting the cops while the cops ignored them and faced the residents who were NOT shoving and/or hitting anyone.  But there's still video of Gary McHale getting attacked from behind though.  Walking away too.  That's not going to play well in court I bet, when the noble Six Nations Protesters try to get McHale charged with assault.  Love those camcorders.  OPP Chief Fantino was rumored to be blaming McHale for assaulting Clyde Powless's fist with his face, Gary says he's going to cooperate only with the RCMP, not the OPP.  Good luck with that, Gary.

Second, last week Toronto had its 80th murder.  That's getting near a new Hogtown record I think.  The record may be broken this year, I heard they found a 7/11 attendant stabbed to death this morning.  On the bright side, more victims were bludgeoned and/or hacked to death compared to 2005.  According to the mayor, "Fearless Leader" Dave Miller, that's a cause for celebration.

So things are not looking great in Ontario, "Yours To Duck and Cover", from a policing standpoint.  What then are the Great Minds in Queens Park doing about this?  Its a beauty, believe me.  Check it out:

The provincial gun regulator will begin inspecting the homes of older gun owners in Toronto to ensure they are storing their firearms safely, an initiative one sporting association said amounts to "harassing" seniors.  Ontario's Chief Firearms Office says it is responding to concerns raised by Toronto police, which have in the past been called to the homes of gun owners who had either died or been hospitalized and did not have their registered firearms securely stored.

Yep.  Going to go check up on Grandma and Grandpa, make sure them eeeevile shootin' irons ain't lying around where they could jump up and stab a convenience store clerk.  That's what Metro police are going to be doing for the next little while.  Can't be too careful about them old geezers, they're friggin' dangerous.


Thought you'd like to know, eh?

The Phantom

DemocRats: Party of the rich?!

Say what?!

In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats.

The Democrat Party, best politicians money can buy!

The Phantom

Serious Chinese toy issue. Parents, listen up.

A toy made in China has been found to have a lot more wrong with it that
a little lead paint. Check this out.
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071107.wchinatoy1107/BNStory/International/home>

> Australia announced a nationwide ban on Wednesday on a Chinese-made
> toy which investigations showed contained a chemical which metabolizes
> into a "date rape" style drug when swallowed.
>
> The ban across Australia's six states and two territories came after
> three children became severely ill after they swallowed the toy beads
> called Bindeez.
>
> Toy importer Moose Enterprise issued a voluntary recall of Bindeez,
> named Australia's 2007 Toy of the Year, saying some batches of the
> beads did not match the approved formula.
>
This toy is being marketed in Canada and the US as Aquadots. Its on
kid's TV all the time. Here's the poop:
>
> Three Australian children suffered seizures and needed intensive
> hospital care in the past two weeks after eating the plastic beads,
> which scientists discovered contain a chemical that breaks down into a
> potentially fatal recreational drug.
>
> Ms. Burney said an investigation was under way into how the dangerous
> chemical 1,4-butanediol came to replace the safe chemical
> 1,5-pentanediol in the manufacturing process.
>
> "The issue of how a dangerous substance was used in these beads and
> not the non-toxic substance ... that is going to take us a few more
> days to uncover," she said.
>
I think now would be the time to */not/* buy toys that say "Made in
China" on them. A wee bit of lead paint, ok whatever, don't let the kid
eat the ALL the paint off the thing. But this here, this is a whole new
level of Chicoms not giving a shit.

Bottom line, if it's made in China there's a good chance its hinkey.
'Nuff said.

The Phantom (who ain't buying any more Chicom made toys, Mr. Walmart sir.)

A little good news on cancer for a change

Disclaimer first, this is an experimental drug showing good results in mice.  Not humans.

A new study of an estrogen-derived drug shows promise as a treatment for breast cancer and breast cancer metastases to bone.

The study, which was done in mice, appears on the cover of the November issue of Cancer Research.

[snippage]

In studies of other cancers, 2ME2 has been shown to induce cancer cells to self-destruct. Otherwise, tumor cells evade this process allowing them to continually divide and spread throughout the body.

Clinical trials of 2ME2 for breast cancer patients are in progress. These trials are based on an oral version of 2ME2 to treat primary tumors, but this method has limitations as the oral version of 2ME2 is poorly suited to getting into the blood system and reaching tumors. Researchers resolved this problem by delivering 2ME2 by injection and found it was much more effective.

[more snippage]

Researchers described 2ME2 as an “attractive candidate for controlling tumor growth, metastasis to bone and bone disorders,” such as osteolysis caused by the spread of breast cancer.

“This is potentially of very substantial importance because this agent has few of the unpleasant side effects of most chemotherapy drugs and targets both bone resorption and the cancerous tumor cells,” Turner said. “It really is the first agent that has been clearly demonstrated to do that.”

So there you go, some nice hopeful info for you to balance off the land slide of daily bullshit.  If the stuff is in drug trials in one form and it passes, it could end up on the market in the other form as well assuming no deal breaking side effects crop up.  Like extra nose syndrome!  When something shows good results like this they sometimes fast track the hell out of it.

The Bony Phantom

Even a blind squirrel finds the odd acorn.

Known for chittering madly and running headlong into every stump and rock in the forest, Sheila Copps is the very Platonic Ideal of a blind squirrel.  Today is a red letter day, for our Sheila has found an acorn.

Nothing makes my blood boil more than to see a parade of so-called experts trashing reductions to the Goods and Services Tax. Having endured the scars of that hated tax a, I welcome any move by any government to listen to the people.

Behold, even Sheila "Tax'em 'till they bleed!" Copps knows the GST is a bad thing, and every reduction in it is a good thing.  Even Sheila understands that the Federal government can't keep jacking up taxes while running record cash surpluses.  Even the Blind Squirrel of Hamilton understands that a party which defends the GST is doomed to destruction.  Somebody phone Dion and McGuinty, tell them their own alumni is firing on them.  Incoming!

Repeat after me everyone:  "There is no such thing as a bad tax cut."

The Over Taxed Phantom

I hate being right. Again.

Ladies and gentlemen, y'all will recall a while ago I posted some articles to do with the computer in your car, and how it stores data on your driving habits.  The cops can and do use this data in court against drivers all the time.  Cars also phone home to Momma, OnStar can track any of their units with GPS already, and do.  Sometimes to catch car thieves, sometimes just speeders.

At the time I opined in typical feverish Phantom paranoia that pretty soon the computer would be able to shut the car down if the cops didn't like what you were doing.  Well, it didn't take long.  I hate being right.  From the AP write up:

Starting with about 20 models for 2009, the service will be able to slowly halt a car that is reported stolen, and the radio may even speak up and tell the thief to pull over because police are watching.

OnStar already finds 700 to 800 cars per month using the global positioning system. With the new technology, which OnStar President Chet Huber said GM will apply to the rest of its lineup in future years, OnStar would call police and tell them a stolen car's whereabouts.

Then, if officers see the car in motion and judge it can be stopped safely, they can tell OnStar operators, who will send the car a signal via cell phone to slow it to a halt.

Why would GM do this?  The cops asked them to.  Seems the cops would very much like to be able to stop cars by remote control as well as track them anywhere.  One immediately assumes the criminal car chase scenario, which would be just fine.  But how about if they would like to stop all the cars on a certain street?  Or all the cars in a certain town between the hours of 11 PM and 7 AM, or ... you get the picture.  And remember kids, what is optional now can be made compulsory any time.

Man I hate being right.

The Not Nearly Paranoid Enough Phantom

new media chew toy: Andromeda Strain!!!! ieeeee!

It had to happen.  Global Warming is starting to be shot to pieces (finally!) as bloggers and smart people discover where the Gaia worshipers lied.  What's the MSM response?  Find a new scare!  Gotta fill those column inches with something, why not make shit up?  Its cheaper that way.

So here it is, killer bugs from space!  I couldn't make this up if I tried, its just too mental.

Now there's a new kid on the inter-planetary catastrophist's block: superbugs. Super spacebugs. Scientists working on and with the space shuttle have found certain bugs, dangerous enough when earth-bound, will grow more powerful in space. Like salmonella, which acts differently, genetically, in space, making it stronger, more deadly.

The newsies have discovered that bacteria act different under zero G.  Holy crap, we're all gonna die!
This is my favorite bit right here.  What about the Man Made© bugs Batman?

...But what of the bugs that might be attached to all the space junk, the old satellites, rockets, probes, missiles constantly falling back to earth?

There's no shortage of outdated, second-hand space trash orbiting the earth while harbouring who knows what kind of mutating space bugs in the weightless environment so conducive to extraordinary growth and genetic variation. Do stories like Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain really give us an idea of what we might face as we dabble with space discovery and scientific experiments ostensibly aimed at furthering medicine and mankind's advancement as a civilisation?

Yes friends, lets start worrying about the Andromeda Strain and mad scientists brewing up superbugs on rocket ships in space.  Its never too early to jump on the Next Big Scare and make a million lobbying Congress to clean up all that deadly orbiting space junk.  Hey, if nematodes could survive the shuttle crash then so can the Bug That Ate My Face, only squared.

Oops, I used math.  Squared is like times two only different, 'kay?

The Phantom Bug Ignorer

Photon drive! Woo hoo!

The photon drive is now a reality.  No, I'm not kidding.

Part of the Photonic Laser Thrust's secret lies in amplifying and bouncing the photon beam.  The photon beam is bounced back and forth between a set of mirrors, creating a powerful net propulsion force.

Dr. Bae Young built the PLT using off the shelf components at the Southern California laboratory of the Bae Institute.  The patent pending device uses an egg-size laser head to produce a laser so powerful, only massive weapons and commercial grade lasers are able to match it.

The laser generates 35 uN of thrust and is scalable to much larger amounts of propulsion.  Dr. Young Bae has stated that the device could propel a spacecraft to speeds well beyond 100 km/sec.  He recently announced that a spacecraft utilizing the PLT could transit the 100 million km to Mars in less than a week.

As usual, Dr. Bae is NOT part of any big government brain trust, he's running his own shop.  Now that he's got the thing working, the brain trusts are happy to come rain money on him.

At any rate, this is a Big Deal in spacecraft technology.  You can use solar panels to generate as much electricity as you want (in principle anyway) and convert that to thrust with this laser.  No word on how efficient it is, but when the electricity is basically free, that's not too important.  The satellite or ground station with the laser is stationary, it blasts away at the object to be accelerated with the laser.  By bouncing the light beam back and forth between the source and target Dr. Bae gets much more thrust than one would by simply firing a laser. 

One of his ideas is to tie satellites together with a cable and keep them in position by firing the laser, keeping them pulling taut against the cable.  A very, very large telescope can be made cheaply using an idea like this.  Another is to boost small spacecraft (pop can size) to very high speeds, to get them to the outer planets much faster than usual.

Very cool.  ~:D

The Phantom

So what ARE they there for?

A new report says that although there are tens of thousands of CCTV cameras in the Greater London area, 80% of crimes go unsolved.

London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today.

But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.

That's because cameras aren't supposed to prevent crime.  They are like gun control.  They allow the politicians at the local and the national level to be seen Doing Something About Crime just by spending a little of your money, and they add another layer of control on the general populace.  CCTV sucks for solving general crime, but it rocks for collecting taxes and spying on individuals.

It also takes cops off the street and puts them in a nice warm, safe office where they can drink coffee all day and don't have to run around in the rain writing tickets.  That's why cops love CCTV.

Incidentally, the 200 million pounds was for just the cameras, not the control/recording network or the guys to watch them.  Imaging the storage needed for video from 10k cameras running 24/7.  Petabytes.

Just remember that the next time some ponce of a city councilor proposes cameras.  Its crap.

The Photographed Phantom

Super computer for $2500. Cheap enough for you?

Geeking out here just a little, 26 gigaflops/second for 25 hundred bucks.  Microwulf.    Homepage.  Frickin' cool!

The Geekster Phantom

Solar powered remote WiFi!

News article today about a new start-up selling solar power solutions for off grid applications like WiFi and security cameras.  Solis Energy is the company.

A small US startup has announced technology for running Wi-Fi routers in remote places using only the power of the sun.

Among the first round of products from Solis Energy is the Solar Power Plant, touted as being capable of supplying 12, 24 and 48 Volts DC for use in stand-alone applications such as surveillance cameras and outdoor Wi-Fi.

Comprising a large solar panel connected to a generator unit, the system claims to be able to power such devices for up to seven days without sunlight to recharge its batteries, hence the out-sized panels. In normal use, power stored during the day keeps the system running at night.

They have a couple more interesting things, like a power tap for running wifi routers off street lights.  Cell phone and cable companies better get the lead out or wifi/Voip is going to eat their lunch.  Bring on the fiber optic-to-home installs.

In other news, San Francisco discovers that wifi alone does not a dollar make.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's high-profile effort to blanket San Francisco with a free wireless Internet network died Wednesday when provider EarthLink backed out of a proposed contract with the city.

The contract, which was three years in the making, had run into snags with the Board of Supervisors, but ultimately it was undone when Atlanta-based EarthLink announced Tuesday that it no longer believed providing citywide Wi-Fi was economically viable for the company.

And no wonder.  Get this:

In January, the city agreed to a deal in which EarthLink would have paid the city $2 million for the right to build, install and run a free Wi-Fi network and to partner with Google to provide Internet service. People could have paid $20 per month for a faster connection.

In other words, its hard to make money off "free" internet service when you have to pay two million bucks for the privilege AND pony up all the equipment, installation and insurance etc.  Funny how this San Francisco socialism fails every time its tried.
Better idea, the city steps out of the way and lets private companies rent or buy space to put their routers, and doesn't try to dictate to them how it will all be paid for.  They'd end up with two or three competing wifi providers insead of one monolithic Soviet-style piece of crap.

They'll never do it.  No wifi at all is better than cheaper/faster capitalist wifi.  For the poor.

The Phantom

more brilliance!

Today is a good day for cheap, clever hacks!  Check this:

Until now, determining the mechanical properties of these thin films was either an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, requiring powerful microscopes to view the films, or scientists examined composite structures and made uncertain assumptions. This new research will give scientists a simple way to access the material properties of most thin films.

"As we delve more into the nanotechnology, it becomes increasingly important to know if the material properties of ultrathin films differ from their properties in the bulk," said Thomas Russell, a program director in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. "Everyday we see examples where a material's dimensions can change its properties. Aluminum foil is flexible, whereas a bar of aluminum is not. But what happens when a film's thickness approaches molecular dimensions" These experiments give us a simple, inexpensive way to measure mechanical properties of films that are only tens of nanometers thick."

Russell and his colleagues use a low-power optical microscope to observe what happens when they place a tiny drop of water on thin film as it floats in a Petri dish of water. The "capillary tension" of the drop of water produces a starburst of wrinkles in the film. The number and length of the wrinkles are determined by the elasticity and thickness of the film.

In some of the materials studied, the wrinkles in the ultrathin polymer films vanished with time, unlike the skin of a dried fruit or the crumpled hood of your car after an accident. This vanishing provides insight into the relaxation process of an ultrathin film by yielding information on the way polymer chains move in the highly confined geometry.

That's clever.  :)  And a kid can do it in the basement too.

The Phantom

What makes glass... glassy?

Today's piece of  gear head geeky brilliance, a rig for watching teeny weenie particles with a video camera.  Why?  To see why glass is the way it is, of course!

"One idea for why glass gets so viscous is that there might be some hidden structure," says Weeks, associate professor of physics. "If so, one question is what size is that structure""

The Emory Physics lab began zeroing in on this question two years ago when Hetal Patel, an undergraduate who was majoring in chemistry and history, designed a wedge-shaped chamber, using glue and glass microscope slides that allowed observation of single samples of glassy materials confined at decreasing diameters.

For samples, the Emory lab used mixtures of water and tiny plastic balls Ð each about the size of the nucleus of a cell. This model system acts like a glass when the particle concentration is increased.

The samples were packed into the wedge-shaped chambers, then placed in a confocal microscope, which digitally scanned cross-sections of the samples, creating up to 480 images per second. The result was three-dimensional digital movies, showing the movement and behavior of the particles over time, within different regions of the chamber.

"The ability to take microscopy movies has greatly improved during the past five to 10 years," Weeks says. "Back in the mid-90s, the raw data from one two-hour data set would be four gigabytes. It would have completely filled up your hard drive. Now, it's just a tiny part of your hard drive, like a single DVD."

Emphasis mine.

Glass, crazy glue and a microscope, and you can test the theory that's been bugging people for years.

This gets an Official Phantom A1 Awesome award for doing science with no money.  NASA take note.

The Phantom Cheapskate

Clever new hack in archaeology.

Something new under the sun in animal archeology, which doesn't happen every day.  A new and fabulous way to discern the locomotion style of an animal based on only the skull.

"We have shown that there is a fundamental adaptive mechanism linking a species' locomotion with the sensory systems that process information about its environment," says Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Penn State University, one of the team's leaders. The researchers studied 91 separate primate species, including all taxonomic families. The study also included 119 additional species, most of which are mammals ranging in size from mouse to elephant, that habitually move in diverse ways in varied environments.

The project is the first large-scale study to document the relationship of the dimensions of the semicircular canals to locomotion. These structures are filled with a fluid, which moves within the canals when the animal moves. The fluid's movement is sensed by special cells that send signals to the brain, triggering the neck and eye muscles to reflexively keep the visual image stable.

The basic hypothesis of the project was that the organ of balance -- which helps stabilize an animal's gaze and coordinate its movements as it travels through the environment -- should be irrevocably linked to the type of locomotion produced by its limbs. "If an animal evolves a new way of moving about the world, its organ of balance must evolve accordingly," Walker explains. From the visual information, the animal tracks its position relative to stationary objects such as tree trunks, branches, rocks or cliffs, or the ground. Having a stable image of the environment is especially crucial for acrobatic animals that leap, glide, or fly.

By mapping the structure of the balance organ to each style of movement they have created a map for comparison of extinct species.  Example, baboons have much more development of the semicircular canal than sloths.  Humans have more than baboons. Given a skull fragment with most of the canal structure in it and a CAT scanner to image it, you can arrive at a general idea of what kind of animal it was.

Damn that's clever eh?  I love cleverness like that.

The Phantom

Punks with guns.

Having got nowhere trying to kill Jews and Lebanese Muslims, the Palestinians have settled for killing each other.

Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement's most important security installations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, and witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen from the building and killed them in the street.

No independent confirmation on the killing them in the street part, but the media spin is predictable:

The moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.

Translation from MSM Speak, gang leader Abbas's murderous punks aren't as tough as the Hamas punks, and besides Hamas is getting better bang bang stuff from Egypt.  Must have a special deal with the Egyptians,  without whom, by the way, these rival gang shit heads would be reduced to fighting with pointed sticks.  Hamas probably paid somebody off bigtime.

The MSM is now dignifying this with the title "Civil War", but really its a case of two criminal gangs fighting over turf.  Change the names Hamas and Fatah to get a better idea of what is going on.  Crips vs. Bloods in San Diego, with RPGs and mortars they bought from Mexico using money they got from the UN and the EU.  But less organized.

Whoever comes out on top is going to be the next bunch of a-holes the Israelis are expected to "negotiate" with.  Kind of a special revelation on the complete futility of the Mid-East Peace Process.  Looks like Israel had the right idea with the Wall.  Put up a fence and let the rats duke it out over UN table scraps.

Speaking of the UN, lets see how much aid the Egyptians sends to help their suffering brothers and sisters in their time of need.  I'm betting they send zippo, other than selling the bastards more ammo.

The Phantom

Another step on the road to perdition.

Today the Supreme Court of Canada announced that collective bargaining is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Previous decisions of the Blackbirds held that Canadians have no right to private property.  Or freedom of speech (that'd be the hate speech legislation).  Or guns.

Just to be clear, unions are protected by the Charter but not people.  This concludes our Perdition road trip for today.

The Phantom

Pipeline bomb plot: mostly crap, kids.

Ok, so they caught four guys plotting to "blow up" the fuel pipeline that runs into NYC.  Good cop work, a well earned attaboy for Homeland Security.

But now we get the overheated media "lets make a buck!" coverage.  Example, "Pipeline Security A Joke" from the NY Post.

Or, "Ex-Airport Worker Plots Massive Attack On JFK"  (Officials Believe Attack Could've Been Worse Than 9/11)

Uhm, no.  There's two unalterable facts about pipelines.  First, you can't guard them.  Not a chance.  They are too long, and they are too numerous.  Second is that you can't "blow them up" as described in the red-hot but dead-wrong MSM reports.

The most you can do to a pipeline is put a hole in it.  If it is running natural gas or gasoline you can get a dandy fire going where the hole is, but you can't ignite the whole pipeline.  No oxygen in it, just fuel.  The most that Abdul Bin Dumbsheisse and his merry band of idiots could do is interrupt fuel deliveries for a little while, maybe make the MSM some more money selling doom and destruction stories.

When exactly did "educate and inform" become "alarm and dishearten"?  I'm starting to think journalists are a bigger problem than these moronic terrorists.

The Phantom

Mother Sheehan hangs up her spurs.

In a blog post entitled "Good Riddance Attention Whore", Cindy Sheehan calls it a day.  Seems she's tired of taking abuse from all sides.  Poor baby was fine as long as she restricted herself to slagging the Republicans, but when she started in on the Dems she made a shocking discovery.

Unlike Republicans, the DemocRats aren't gentlemen.  They use live ammo!

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party.  This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

So, Mother Sheehan slinks off into a well deserved obscurity, another tool used to destruction and cast aside by the Left.  These are the wages of fraud and deceit, as many a useful idiot has discovered.

I can't say it makes me happy to watch this woman suffer.  She's just another example of the Universal Law:  what goes around, comes around.  Don't be a jerk and the Universe probably won't go out of its way to crap on your head. 

From these examples we learn wisdom.

The Phantom

Palestinian refugee camp shelled!

Yep, the Nahr al Bared  refugee camp has had the living crap blown out of it this week.  Bet you didn't know that.

On May 20, ... troops surrounded the camp, with tanks and artillery pieces shelling it at close range. Army snipers gunned down anything that moved. At least 18 civilians were killed, and dozens more injured. Water and electricity were cut off. By week's end, much of the camp had been turned into deserted rubble. Thousands of terrified residents fleeing the camp reported harrowing stories of famished, parched families trapped in their basements.

Palestinian women and children dying of thirst, lots of photogenic explosions for TV crews, guys getting blasted by snipers in broad daylight, big friggin' tanks tearing around blowing shit up... and not a peep out of CNN.  No mutilated bodies of kids, no stuffed animal pictures, no Green Helmet Guy.

How can this be? 

Its because it happened in Lebanon, not in Israel!  In Jenin the Israelis sent infantry to remove dug in Palestinians, with careful attention to civilian casualties.  The Lebanese Army just drove up to the fence and walked a barrage across the place.  For a week.

Just as Lebanon's stew of eternally warring Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Hezbollah terrorists and militarized clans serves as a Mediterranean microcosm for the political dysfunction of the Arab world, this month's events capture perfectly the utter cynicism of the Islamic world's trumped up vilification of Israel, and the West as a whole. As with the Muslim- on-Muslim slaughter in Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza and a dozen other hot spots, the siege at Nahr al Bared shows that what inflames "the Muslim street" (for lack of a better cliche) isn't Muslim suffering, but the relatively tiny fraction thereof that jihadi propagandists and their Western apologists can lay at the feet of Jews and Christians.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what makes the Lefties and their willing accomplices in the Main Stream Media such a bunch disloyal, lying bastards.  A pox upon them.

The Phantom

A picture of matter waves.

Remember back in high school when the teacher said matter was made of waves just like light?  And you nodded while thinking "As IF!!!" to yourself?


Check that out.  Matter waves.  Do we live in a cool time or what?

The Quantum Superimposing Phantom

Re: Panel loaded with gun buffs

Dear Ms. Delacourt,

With regard to your article of May 28th, "Panel loaded with gun buffs", you say that like its a bad thing.  Unlike previous governments over the last 17 years, the Conservatives have appointed a Firearms Advisory Council composed of people who actually know something about guns.  Odd that their opinions on the gun registry would be different than your own, isn't it?  Why would that be?

Its dozen members include a man who argued that more guns in the hands of students would have helped in the recent Virginia Tech massacre, in which 32 people were killed, and another shooting aficionado who described a weapon used in last September's Dawson College killings in Montreal as "fun."

The committee's pro-gun tilt lends to the perception that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence – especially in Toronto. Jordan Manners, 15, was killed last week in a school shooting, days after philanthropist Glen Davis was gunned down.

Let us take these objections in order.  First, it is self evident that the Virginia Tech Massacre wouldn't have been any such thing if even one of the students or staff had been armed.  Your outrage at the suggestion indicates you may have a very low opinion of people generally, and may consider them too unstable and/or unintelligent to be trusted with firearms.

Second, the weapon used at Dawson College was a Beretta CX4 according to the CBC.  That is a small rifle chambered for 9mm pistol ammunition.  Prior to Kim Campbell's gun ban of 1992 I used to own a rifle something like it.  They are fun at the range, as the man said.  Their purpose is primarily sporting, as in shooting pop cans and possibly the odd ground hog.  Your outrage at the suggestion that such a thing could be fun indicates you may be a spoil sport.

Third, the committee of men and women who are not just buffs but widely respected experts in the fields of firearms and policing "is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence– especially in Toronto."  I agree, and I suggest the reason for that may be the unrelenting campaign against self defense and firearms generally by the kill-joy misanthropes in the Toronto press.  You tell people the same story often enough, and no matter how idiotic the story may be, many of them will start to believe it.

Your outrage that this panel refuses to conform itself to your views indicates you may be more attached to your propaganda campaign than you are to preventing more murders of little boys, because clearly your gun registry/gun ban ideas are not working.  Jordan Manners' murder is sufficient proof of that, if more proof was needed. 

There has been strict registration of pistols in this country since the 1930's, and a billion odd dollars has been spent registering all other types since 1995.  Yet a 17 year old with poor impulse control, who no doubt has a police record three feet long, was able to acquire and carry around the pistol he used to murder a 14 year old at school.  Possibly increased gun registration may not be the most effective means of stopping such atrocities.  A panel of experts would probably know that and advise accordingly.

Doing more and more of what isn't working seems to indicate your side of the argument has run out of ideas, wouldn't you say Ms. Delacourt?  Why not let somebody with a clue have a go?  I doubt they could do worse than Kim Campbell and Alan Rock.

The Phantom

News of America's decline premature.

Jihadis and other like-minded wankers of the world listen up.  Here's what you are messing with.


For those of you who didn't get the get the image, this is an 11 year old kid with a humongous revolver leaning on a wild hog.  A nine foot, four inch hog.  Its as big as a Volkswagen.

Jamison [Stone], who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Through it all there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation of doing.

Ya.  Think rhinoceros here.  Think half ton of pissed off pig with five inch teeth.  They needed an earth mover to get it out of the woods.

These are the kind of people Al Queerda thinks are going to be easy meat.  Doubt it eh?

The Phantom

Inevitable gun control screaming begins.

Well, here we are back again.  A little boy was killed yesterday, at school, in the Jane/Finch shooting gallery.  Guns are to blame. Ban the guns!

Ontario politicians called on the federal government Thursday to get tough on handguns following a tragic high school shooting that claimed the life of a 15-year-old Toronto boy.

"We have seen too many shootings result in too many funerals for our young people," Premier Dalton McGuinty wrote in an open letter to federal party leaders, urging them to push through proposed criminal justice legislation and implement a "real ban" on handguns.

"Handguns are designed for one purpose only – to shoot people – and should have no place in Ontario or anywhere in Canada."

Ontario AG goes farther, blaming those eeeevile gun owners.

The value of allowing handgun collections should be reconsidered, said Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant.

"There's got to be a balance between people's property rights and personal responsibilities to others," he said.

That rascal, he's pretending we Canadians have rights to property.  What a card!  Hee hee!

Finally the mayor of Hogtown gets to the real truth:  It isn't just those reckless gun "collector" lunatics, its the Americans, stupid!

Toronto Mayor David Miller, who voiced his support for an outright ban, went a step further and recommended that handgun regulation should become an international issue.

"We know that there's two sources of guns used in Toronto: one is guns that are stolen from collectors, and the other is guns that come from the U.S.," Miller said.

"The U.S. has to take some real steps, otherwise we're going to keep seeing tragedies. ... I mean, a 15-year-old boy. You know it's absolutely tragic."

To their credit, the (Red) Star actually includes the existing law in the comments which serve to mock these Liberal apparatchiks.  We've had full handgun registration for 60 years, handguns are extremely well controlled under the law, and carry permits are nearly nonexistent.  Meanwhile back in Ottawa there's some gun related legislation being stalled in committee by, yes friends, the Liberals!  Why?  I can only surmise because it isn't THEIR legislation, and it doesn't involve banning guns.  The Conservatives are pursuing the novel idea of actually jailing people for doing crime with a gun.  Liberals are afraid this might reduce the number of killers on the streets and give the Conservatives a win, so they resist with all available force.

Some random kid getting whacked in a school isn't a problem for the Liberals, its an opportunity! They get to whip out those polished speeches of outrage, make some mileage in the main stream press, and generally collect brownie points in the Toronto electorate.  Win win win!

Meanwhile, drunks armed with Kalashnikov style assault rifles (banned since 1992, thanks Kim Campbell) wander around Caledonia Ontario shrieking death threats, in plain view of Ontario Provincial Police, and indeed shoot young people with no intervention from the OPP.  I note that Premier Dalton, AG Mikey and Mayor Dave had nothing at all to say about that incident.  Could be because it didn't happen in Toronto, or possibly because it was only an Indian that got shot and they expect that kind of behavior from Indians.

Or, as an outside possibility it could be that the three of them are so full of shit their eyes are brown.  Hey Mayor Dave, we're going to "keep seeing tragedies" until murderers start getting life with no parole (at least!), and armed robbers get 25 years, no parole.  You point a gun at somebody, you go to jail.  No bail, no time off for good behavior.  After a couple hundred of these goblins get stuck in a hole someplace the crime rate should respond rather nicely.

Media logic.

Here we have an article by Mr. Don Cayo of the Vancouver Sun today.  I couldn't pass this one by.  Its just too illustrative of the kind of drek the MSM serves up as commentary.  Way to go Mr. Cayo.

He's reporting the findings by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that taxes make up 1/3 of gas price at the pump.  Which they do.  The title of the piece is "Our gas prices are shocking -- they're far too low"

"A third?" I said when I saw the figure. "Is that all?"

I feel this way because the amount falls far short of what Canadians' love affair with the car actually costs our citizens and the economy.

Ok, here we go.  After the usual litany of PC offenses the humble car makes against humanity, he comes up with this beauty:

Driving-related taxes -- not just gas taxes, but also taxes on vehicles and repairs, licensing fees and the like -- add up to more or less enough to cover direct driving-related costs, such as road-building and maintenance. But if you subtract the general taxes like GST and PST -- which apply to everything else, so why should driving be an exception -- the revenue for government falls well short of the expenses.

And if you toss in the massive externalities -- the cost of car-related injuries and deaths, of productive hours lost to congestion, of health and economic losses caused by noxious and greenhouse gases -- then the extent of the free ride for car drivers starts to become clear.

Indeed, if the car hadn't been invented a century ago, there's not the slightest chance it would be allowed to be built today.

Can you imagine how a regulator might respond to a proposal to introduce the automobile now? I fancy the conversation would go something like this:

"You say that these new-fangled 'automobiles' will kill 300-400 British Columbians -- as many as 3,000 Canadians -- a year, and they'll injure tens and tens of thousands more? That they'll trap people for hours on end on roads, and tie them up so badly that Greater Vancouver alone will lose half a billion dollars a year, give or take, in forgone productivity? That they'll spew gases which may collect in the air and make vulnerable people sick in places like the Fraser Valley, and they'll become the biggest single contributor to global warming?

Clearly they do not teach logic in journalism school.  Or perhaps they do and Mr. Cayo is just being more biased than usual. 

Picture this headline:  Appendectomies kill hundreds annually! That's not even a lie, I'm sure a hundred or so people die world wide on the table or due to complications from appendix surgery.  Can you imagine how a regulator might respond to that?  If he had half a brain he'd say "well, but how many people die from burst appendix every year?"

This is a favorite rhetorical trick of some "journalists", they just cut off half of the cost/benefit ratio and then rage on about the cost part.  In this particular case we are treated to the spectacle of Mr. Cayo preaching in support of taxes to Canadians, who have nearly the highest level of taxation in the developed world.

Next up, the di-hydrogen monoxide threat.  It kills hundreds every year!  Deadly chemicals in our food!!!!  Run away!

The Phantom

Common sense prevails for park wardens.

Here's a refreshing change from the usual Liberal crap.

Canada's park wardens were stripped of all law enforcement duties and equipment Thursday, the day after a federal ruling called for them to be issued handguns.

Parks Canada has taken away enforcement tools such as batons, handcuffs, body armour and pepper spray from wardens. They have also been asked to turn in badges that identify them as peace officers.

And if they encounter any anything criminal on the job -- from wildlife poachers to noisy campers -- they are now under orders to call the RCMP and stay back until police arrive.

...

Parks Canada was ordered to either arm wardens and give them weapons training or remove their law enforcement role in a 200-page decision issued by appeals officer Douglas Malanka Wednesday.

What makes this a good thing?  Because for a really long time federal park wardens have been doing cop stuff out in the woods with NO guns at all.  Which is really, really stupid.  These guys are HOURS away from backup, not minutes.  For my money they should be issued .308 assault rifles, not just pistols.  Sometimes they have to shoot animals.  You get a rabid grizzly bear, ain't no little pistol round going to stop it.

Finally a somebody with the brains God gave a goat.  Arm the wardens or send cops, no middle ground.  Now if we can just get some progress on arming campers in bear country...

The Phantom