Bloomberg doubles down.

Looks like Bloomie wants to be President of the USA and is going to get there on the backs of 19 dead people from Aurora Colorado. What an asshole.

How to Break NRA's Grip on Politics: Michael R. Bloomberg

Its deathless prose, as you can imagine. Buddy is going to get stomped on like a cockroach.

In other news, he's backpedaling like a clown on a unicycle about the cops going on strike thing.

The Phantom

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As foretold, Big Brother will now be groping you at the bus station.

Predictably, starting first in California.

Footage shot at the Oceanside Transit Center in Southern California documents how the rollout of TSA workers is expanding out of the airports and into train stations and bus terminals. The clip shows TSA inspectors standing with police and drug-sniffing dogs. The TSA agents told the film maker that he was still allowed to take video and photos at the train station but may get "questioned" for doing so.

There were about six or seven TSA agents patrolling the station according to the uploader of the video.

The Transportation Security Administration was embarrassed earlier this year when Houstonians revolted over a program that would have seen TSA workers routinely ride city buses in the name of spotting terrorists and criminals.

Its going to be -really- interesting to see how TSA managers "handle" Phoenix Arizona, where every third person legally carries a big freakin' pistol. And/or a knife, taser or other stunner, pepper spray, New York reload for their main piece (that's another gun, for those of you not up on your self-defense slang), fold up baton, sword cane, ... the variations are many. And I've seen them all at the local supermarket hanging off some soccer mom's belt, one time or another.

Mr. Colt says "Don't touch my junk, man!"

The Phantom

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Comments on Aurora coverage.

Just got back from Boston, where I was subjected to just a tiny bit of the media "coverage" of the atrocity at Aurora Colorado. Channel surfing yielded noting but wall-to-wall talking heads interviewing each other about how terrible it all was and how little information there was, plus the usual Food/HGTV/Discovery/History channel canned programs. And Nickelodeon. So I had my choice of massacre TV, "reality" TV on tape, or cartoons.

I chose cartoons.

Because:

A) Colorado is too far for me to drive over and lend a hand.
B) The "news" stations had exactly ZERO useful information for me beyond the bare fact that Something Bad happened in Aurora.
C) I have enough violent, tragic shit stored up in my poor old brain to last me a lifetime already, most of it from Hollywood movies and the mainstream "news" coverage. I totally don't need to subject my frayed last nerve to one more lunatic acting out his malfunctions in the real world.
D) I already know pretty much word-for-word what the talking heads are saying. They're blaming the Tea Party, Republicans and the NRA. Sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly.
E) None of them are going to tell the truth. Which is that this kind of massacre only happens in liberal cities that are threat-free zones for criminals and lunatics.

We are never going to hear about the real fallout from this atrocity. It'll be off the radar as soon as the liberal politicians and the media figure they've wrung the last bit of propaganda juice out of it, or when the next shiny thing comes along.

My condolences and prayers to the wounded and the bereft. My offer of aid to any affected, should there be something my skills can provide.

A sneer and the back of my hand to the whinging media freaks and leftist propaganda chefs trying to conjure up support for their failed policies out of this preventable example of their policy, failing.

The Phantom

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Boston.

I'm in Boston this week. Its crowded, the traffic is extremely heavy but somewhat orderly, despite the many places where cars exiting and merging have to go past each other in not enough space. Many intersections have streams of traffic crossing each other while all moving forward, as people entering from the right lane try to exit in the left, and people entering from the left try to exit right, while people in the middle try to stay in the middle.  Its completely nuts, pretty much.

Following along with the GPS has been... interesting. I find that about a third of the time there's no street signs at intersections, you're just supposed to know the street.  Trying to get around here without a GPS or a -competent- navigator with a good map would be pretty much impossible. 

Also, like New York all the roads and streets are basically tree-lined tunnels, or building-lined tunnels. You can't see the horizon, or a vista of the city, or even the sun half the time. I've been here three days and I still can't point toward Boston from my hotel parking lot. Completely lost, depending 100% on TomTom to get me through. If a solar flare knocks out the satelites I'll have to hire a native guide.

Things I've seen.

Peabody Museum was kind of a let-down after all the build-up. Anybody who studies Anthropology knows that the Peabody has EVERYTHING in it. Caveman stuff from France, Medieval stuff, weapons, skeletons, clothing, fossils, tools... they have every damn thing in their collection.  What's on display? Indians.  Man, I can see more and better Indian stuff at the ROM any time than what they have on display here.  Saving grace, they had two really nice Alaskan kayaks from the ~1890s and a very nice lady to tell me all about it as well. 

The Stata Center.  Super famous building opened in 2004. Right now its surrounded in scaffolding, as the (no doubt very expensive) brick veneer is rotting off in quite a few places. Somebody got suckered!

Harvard Museum of Natural History was everything the Peabody wasn't. They have some extremely kewl dinosaurs, They have a Great Moa skeleton which is ~10ft tall. They have the entire head of a really big trilobite, about as big as my fist. They have a forty foot seamonster skeleton, its as big as a city bus and has a head that could swallow a kayak whole. And really big freakin' teeth. But best of all, they have a pickled Coelecanth. I remember when I was a kid I was right into dinosaurs. They found one of these things and it was in the paper and in a book I had. The one I saw in the museum is that one. So cool.

Today I visit the MIT Museum, tomorrow maybe the Boston Museum of Science. And buck traffic like a big ol' mountain goat.

Onward!

The Phantom

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Dark matter found!

Big times in science these days. First the Higg's Boson and now Dark Matter!

Scientists have, for the first time, directly detected part of the invisible dark matter skeleton of the universe, where more than half of all matter is believed to reside.

"We found the dark matter filaments. For the first time, we can see them," said Jörg Dietrich, a physics research fellow in the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Dietrich is first author of a paper on the findings published online in Nature and to appear in the July 12 print edition.

Dark matter, whose composition is still a mystery, doesn't emit or absorb light, so astronomers can't see it directly with telescopes. They deduce that it exists based on how its gravity affects visible matter. Scientists estimate that dark matter makes up more than 80 percent of the universe. To "see" the dark matter component of the filament that connects the clusters Abell 222 and 223, Dietrich and his colleagues took advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

Freaking cool stuff! Article is at Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11224.html  Costs money though. :(  Anybody know a free mirror?

The Phantom

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Finally, a rescue plan for Detroit the whole population can take part in.

The plan? Zombie theme park.

Derelict areas of Detroit face being taken over by hordes of 'flesh and brain-eating zombies' if an ambitious business plan takes off.

Entrepreneur Mark Siwak wants to create live-action terror theme park 'Z World' on Motor City's run-down and abandoned streets.

Customers would pay to be chased by professional actors [or whoever they scraped off the street outside that morning] and try to seek shelter in ghostly homes, factories and businesses.

Shouldn't have much trouble getting actual zombies to stock the place with, Detroit's got thousands. No word if its going to be live-fire, but I wanna try out my Zombie Blaster shotshells. KaBOOM baby!

The Phantom Zombie Hunter

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"Don't be evil" turns out not to mean what one would think.

Google famously has as its unofficial motto: "Don't be evil". Key word being "evil", there is a quote from The Princess Bride which applies here. Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Dear Merchant,

We're writing to let you know about some upcoming changes to the product listings you submit to Google. As we recently announced, we are starting to transition our shopping experience to a commercial model that builds on Product Listing Ads. This new shopping experience is called Google Shopping. As part of this transition, we'll begin to enforce a set of new policies for Google Shopping in the coming weeks. A new list of the allowed, restricted, and prohibited products on Google Shopping is available on our new policy page – http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/ApI7UWRj6OCZpd.

Based on a review of the products you're currently submitting, it appears that some of the content in your Merchant Center account, HamLund Tactical, will be affected by these policy changes. In particular we found that your products may violate the following policies:

Weapons

When we make this change, Google will disapprove all of the products identified as being in violation of policies. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your feeds and/or site to comply, so that your products can continue to appear on Google Shopping.

"Weapons" of course means "guns" and any/all accoutrements there of. Comments to the article indicate things like swords and knives are also banned. Presently one can still search for information and web pages about weapons, guns etc. but the Google Shopping deal is closed off. Please note, the most important word in that sentence is "presently", Google having essentially served us all notice that they can and are happy to censor anything they like whenever they like. So tomorrow you might want to search "Mauser 98" on Google and come up with "no match found".

No word if restaurant equipment like chef's knives are also banned. I guess it depends on this week's definition of "evil" .


The "I'm using Bing now" Phantom.

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