Overheard at the Range

I spent Saturday and Sunday fulfilling my Oakdale Gun Club membership requirements in the form of 18 hours of range service. On Sunday I may have overheard one of the most cringe-inducing conversations in my history as a shooter. The conversation was regarding one shooter’s AR-15:

Questions Guy: “Is that an AK-60?”

Me: I just sighed but honestly there is no foul in not knowing what a particular gun is.

AR-15 Owner: “No, it’s an M-14.”

Me: Ohjesuschristonapogostick.

It’s an entirely different thing when you down know what your own gun is. Before anybody asks, no the AR-15 owner did not sound like he was simply giving the other guy shit.

Exactly Like This

Many of the participants at the numerous occupations have been complaining about the recent increase in “moochers” taking food and donated goods meant of the occupiers. Rob Allen has presented a novel idea for dealing with this problem:

Since you have all the food necessary to feed the people, we can consider it a place where you store goods… I dunno, call it a ‘food bank’ or something. We know that because you have only a limited amount of food, you need to ensure that the food is distributed correctly. One way you could do this is issue vouchers for food with the condition that those who take food promise to bring more in later to replenish the stocks. Call this “a food loan”. Even the homeless people would have to agree to pay back their fair share of food. By doing so, your bank can ensure it always has enough food to feed everyone!

Finally, when you realize that there’s not enough food to go around, you can tell all the people holding ‘food credit’ that they need to pay up and when they complain that their degree in Domicile Avoidance hasn’t permitted them to obtain sustenance (you’re gonna love this part) you can forgive everyone’s food loans!!!!! Just like that!

Exactly.

Top Ten Reasons Why the Mafia is Better Than the State

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.

Sometimes Software Bugs Shouldn’t be Fixed

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.

Congress Takes 4th Grade Class Hostage; Demands $12 Trillion Ransom

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 4th 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.