First Post-Work Beer Of The Year

Friday Train

Damn, I like trains!

Surgery Friday

AR 2.0 Drone 1 under the knife.

I started surgery Friday evening on Drone 1. I replaced the Central Cross: hope the electrical connections work! Now, I need to finish surgery, by moving all four motors from the broken Central Cross to the new Central Cross.

Meanwhile, Sally had knee surgery Friday morning, and seems to be recovering well.

The Parking Lot At Work Was Frosty Friday Morning

I've never seen that before.

All Obama Had To Do Was Show A Little Backbone

Barack "Gumby" Obama finally learned something in Washington:

When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. I thought that by ruling out any way to bypass the debt limit, the White House was setting itself up, at least potentially, for an ignominious cave-in. But it appears that the strategy has worked, and it’s the Republicans giving up. I’m happy to concede that the president and team called this one right.

Sydney Sets A Record

Hot!:

Temperatures in Sydney hit their highest level on record on Friday, with the mercury in Australia’s biggest city reaching 45.8 degrees Celsius (114.4 Fahrenheit) in the mid-afternoon.

Sydney’s previous hottest recorded temperature was 45.3 degrees set in 1939.

The Second Amendment Was Intended To Preserve Slavery, Not The Ownership Of Guns

Digby highlights this article, and it is persuasive. That's why the Second Amendment has the odd language it does:

The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote.

...In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the "slave patrols," and they were regulated by the states.

...It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.

...Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45 - including physicians and ministers - had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.

...By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.

...Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.

This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. "Liberty to Slaves" was stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washington's army.

Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through military service.

...But Henry, Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word "country" to the word "state," and redrafted the Second Amendment into today's form:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State [emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations, newly defined as "persons" by a Supreme Court some have called dysfunctional, would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their "right" to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder schoolchildren.

Rage Room

The Serbs learn something from American television:

Since it opened in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad in October, the Rage Room has drawn a flurry of attention in the Balkan country where two decades of war, political crisis and economic hardship have driven many people over the edge. Inspired by a similar "Anger Room" in Dallas, Texas, Serbia's version was set up by two teens who saw the U.S. original online and figured it could be a way to earn pocket money.

...The Dallas version costs up to $75 per session and has an array of objects to destroy, including computers and office furniture. Serbia's Rage Room, organized in a refurbished garage, is much more basic — and cheaper.

Don Rickles Roasts Jerry Lewis

Watched A Bit Of "Nacho Libre" Last Night

They had 2006's "Nacho Libre" on the teevee last night. That movie is way, way hilarious! One of the best comedies of the last ten years, and, to date, Jack Black's best work!

I started watching too late to catch one of my favorite scenes, where Nacho (Jack Black) and Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez) discuss baptism. What makes this discussion really interesting is that it precisely captures Mexican history, which has been split in half since the Enlightenment by people of faith, and those of science.

All people of Mexican heritage (and other heritages too) are children of this deep split. I never met my grandfather, so I can't for sure tell exactly how he thought, but from what I know, he sounds like a science guy. My grandmother was a faith woman. My uncle and aunt were faith people, and while my father was mostly a science guy, he tried fashioning a compromise between the two outlooks (which I found unsatisfactory). I'm extreme science; so much extreme science that I'm practically completely off the Mexican scale, just like Esqueleto, which is why I identify so much with him.

It's Still Too Early To Tell What The Mushy Storm Coming In Next Weekend Portends

That cutoff low that forms off the West Coast next week sure looks interesting, and brings much-needed tropical moisture north. But it forms too far off shore, and then it goes symmetric, and all wimpified, before it approaches the California coast. The unknown question is whether a second cutoff low might form the week after that, and in a much closer place that can actually do the Southwest some good. We will have to wait and see.

An Australian Fairy Tale

Didn't Realize How Hard It Is To Find This Image On The Web These Days

My blog basement is choked with artifacts.

Get Off My Lawn - L Street Edition

On Saturday, I was driving on L Street near the State Capitol, when a motorcycle club began blocking lanes with a meandering kind of demonstration meant to signify club solidarity, or some damn fool stupid thing like that.

Hmmm. From Cotati. They came a long distance just to annoy the hell out of me.

Well, at least it was a nice day.

Late Night TCM Note Regarding Mary Hisgen

I was watching TCM late - very late - last night, when they presented a frivolous musical short film: Henry Santry and his Soldiers of Fortune. It was a group of musicians dressed as soldiers singing songs. Then, came on an amazing dancer - remarkably limber - who performed, essentially, as a clown. Apparently her name was Mary Hisgen: a true talent! But she never made it big, apparently. Just another remarkable person in the performing arts; a blooming flower who must have been clobbered by the Great Depression. Not much on the Internet about her. Someone should write her biography (1910 - 2006, apparently).

Hayden Panettiere - Telescope

I don't follow Country Music (or Musica del Campo, as an illegal I once knew used to say), but I will make an exception for Hayden Panettiere.

Missing The Fun In Albuquerque

A reader comments:

Walt's house has fake greenery on the trees and his neighbors have roses in full bloom. (It's January 13, 2013 with a low of 10 degrees tonight.) The house numbers are not 308 yet. Drive by and check it out!

Interesting But Puzzling Drop In Juarez' Murder Rate

Crime policing or cartel politics?:

There are other theories that the decrease in violence in Juarez had little to do with the actions of the security forces or government. As outlined in a report released last October by Southern Pulse, the peace was arguably achieved because the Sinaloa Cartel took control of the city. Violence first began to surge in 2007 after the Sinaloans attempted to take over Juarez's highly prized drug trafficking routes. Local enforcer gangs like La Linea and the Aztecas fought a bitter war, often using unrestrained violence that targeted civilians and drove up the murder count. Southern Pulse argued that these local gangs will likely continue fighting over turf, but the larger conflict between the Sinaloa and Juarez Cartel has already come to an end.

Short Hops With The AR Drone 2.0

I got impatient waiting for the repair kit for Drone 1 to come in. So, on Saturday, I went back to the store and bought a brand-new Drone 2. Which immediately had stability problems of its own. So, I basically had about $850.00 worth of brand-new aerial junk. According to Online Forums, stability can be a problem initially, and can be fixed by allowing the drone a look at the horizon.

This video is pieced together from about five other videos from both Drones 1 & 2, and features short hops, inside and out. Both drones were hard to control on this day, in part, because there was a stiff breeze; in part, because Drone 1 has its patched-together leg to contend with, and in part because Drone 2 seemed to have trouble with basic stability. And, as always, operator incompetence was important.

Outdoor flights were conducted at Davis Musical Theatre Company (DMTC), in Davis, CA, on Sunday afternoon, January 13, 2013, while "Follies" played on-stage inside. Indoor flights were conducted later that evening in the DMTC lobby.

Music is Kylie Minogue's "The One" from her Aphrodite/Les Folies (Live In London) album.

Poking Endless Fun At The NRA

This thing apparently barely exists:

The game wasn’t ever designed to even be played — it was designed to be a series of outrageous screenshots that conservatives would freak out about.

I'm all in favor of further development. If the NRA thinks they can use their guns to bully the rest of the country in the comfort of anonymity, then they'd better get used to the blowback.