A Geek With Guns

I feel as though all the news I deliver on this blog is downright depressing so here’s something to make you smile instead:

It’s rare that I find a skit on Saturday Night Live worth watching but the ending of this spoof of the recent Republican Presidential Candidate debates is solid fucking gold:

Now we know the true reason for Ron Paul’s absolute support of the Second Amendment.

I often compare the state to the mafia but as this document [PDF] written by Emily Sandblad points out, the mafia is actually better than the state:

Reason Number 10: The Mafia has a sense of honor. If they say that they will do something, they stick to it. Nobody in the government has a clue what a sense of honor is. If they say that they will do something, you can count on it only if you’re getting screwed.

Reason Number 9: The Mafia code of conduct is simple and clear, and unfettered by legal doublespeak and millions of regulations.

Reason Number 8: When competing Mafia families go to war, they don’t kill hundreds of thousands of civilians as “collateral damage.” War is the health of the state, but for the Mafia, it’s bad for business.

Reason Number 7: Instead of conducting the war on drugs and the American people, the Mafia is perfectly happy to peacefully provide high-quality products to those who desire them.

Reason Number 6: When you buy protection from the Mafia, you get protection. The Mafia has a good track record for limiting violent crime in the areas that they protect. When you buy protection from the state, you can dial 911 and die.

Reason Number 5: The Mafia’s protection is much less expensive than the state’s. The Mafia wants ten or fifteen percent of your profits, while the various levels of government will try to snatch at least 40 to 50 percent of your profits.

Reason Number 4: Unlike the state, the Mafia wants your business to succeed. They know that ruining your business means that you can’t pay for protection. The Mafia imposes almost no regulatory overhead, nor do they require that you waste your time filling out zillions of self-incriminating tax forms.

Reason Number 3: The Mafia won’t keep you from having a gun to protect yourself and your property. The state prefers that you be disarmed. The Mafia will gladly sell you the means to protect yourself and they won’t bother with a Brady check, either.

Reason Number 2: The state wants to regulate what you do in your bedroom. The Mafia not only does not want to regulate what you do in your bedroom, they will gladly sell you whatever you need to enhance your enjoyment.

And the number one reason why the Mafia should replace the state:

Members of the Mafia have a great sense of style, dress far better than government bureaucrats, and are much easier on the eyes.

So there you have it. The next time that somebody argues that anarchy results in an increase in organized crime, smile sweetly and tell that person it would be a real improvement over the state.

Heh.

There are times in a programmer’s life where he receives a bug report and realizes right away that it’s not a bug but the user failing to understand how to use the software. This is one of those cases:

I am the developer of some family tree software (written in C++ and Qt). I had no problems until one of my customers mailed me a bug report. The problem is that he has two children with his own daughter, and, as a result, he can’t use my software because of errors.

Those errors are the result of my various assertions and invariants about the family graph being processed (for example, after walking a cycle, the program states that X can’t be both father and grandfather of Y).

How can I resolve those errors without removing all data assertions?

Obviously a case of user error.

There are times I absolutely love The Onion:

WASHINGTON — Brandishing shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, members of the 112th U.S. Congress took a class of visiting schoolchildren hostage today, barricading themselves inside the Capitol rotunda and demanding $12 trillion dollars in cash.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has emerged as spokesman for the bipartisan group, informed FBI negotiators this morning that the ransom was to be placed in stainless-steel suitcases and left on the Capitol steps by 4 p.m. sharp. If their demands are not met in full, the 11-term representative announced, “all the kids will die.”

[...]

Shaken witnesses reported that the ordeal broke out around 10 a.m. this morning, when in the midst of a Capitol building tour, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) suddenly burst into the National Statuary Hall with a pair of black panty hose over his head and began firing a Beretta 9 mm handgun into the air, shouting, “Everybody down! Everybody get the fuck down!”

Sadly unlike myself the federal government doesn’t have a sense of humor:

US police are investigating tweets by a satirical news website about a fake security alert at Washington DC’s Capitol building.

The Onion said on its Twitter account that “screams and gunfire” had been heard inside the Capitol. It later said schoolchildren had been taken hostage.

I’m pretty sure a vast majority of the people on the planet realize that The Onion is a satirical news source. When you see something going across their Twitter account you know it’s a lead up to new piece of satire.

Let’s also be honest, who here would be surprised if Congress took a class of 4^th graders hostage? They use the it’s-for-the-children excuse to push through so much erroneous legislation that they might as well physically kidnap kids next time. Either way they would be doing the same thing they always do, hide behind children as an excuse to advance the police state.

Something is wrong with this advertisement but I can’t quite put my finger on it (click image to embiggen):

Government bureaucracy .

This post really has nothing to do with anybody but the subject matter amused me. I love it when somebody delivers a great comeback such as this one:

Today, Contessa “educated” a conservative Representative that without the bailout, the country would be in “a depression.” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) said he disagreed which prompted the MSNBC host to ask him if he had a degree in economics.

“Yes ma’am, I do. Highest honors,” Rep. Brooks responded.

According to his Congressional page: “Mo graduated from Duke University in three years with a double major in political science and economics, with highest honors in economics. In 1978, he graduated from the University of Alabama Law School.”

That would be like asking Wernher von Braun if he was a rocket scientist. If you’re going to insult somebody’s credentials you would do well to first find out what that person’s credentials actually are.

I really love Larry Correnia’s blog because he has a way with words. It’s almost as though he is an author of some really awesome books or something. Obama warned that New York Times bestselling authors (who he implied are as rich as hedge fund managers) aren’t off the hook when it comes to paying their taxes. Larry finally spills the beans:

Now you know the truth. A secret cabal of bestselling writers has been sabotaging the US economy all this time. Sure, you may have thought that our situation was caused by stuff like out of control government spending, or onerous regulations, or our complete lack of coherent energy policy, or the devaluation of the dollar, or people/companies living beyond their means and then expecting the tax payers to bail them out, or entitlements that are mathematically impossible to pay, or employers being afraid to hire because of fear of ObamaCare and coming taxes, or the quadrupling of our debt over the last couple of years, but NO. That would be silly!

It has been because of us bestselling authors all along.

My favorite quote from his post though is this one:

Michael Crichton was presiding (he’s not really dead, he just didn’t want to fill out his 1040ES for that quarter’s royalties).

So there is hope for a third Jurassic Park! My day has been made and all is good in the world again.