Fun With Math (With Update)

Out of 15,927 2008 Corvette Coupes. 51% are the 3LT trim level, 15% have dual roofs, 38% have the Z51 suspension package, 47% have dual mode exhaust, 34% have manual transmissions, 33% came with base rims, 23% are black, and 12% have a cashmere interior. That math works out to there being just one car with my exact combination of features (actually the math adds up to 0.67387416818 cars).

My car is 1 of 1. Wow!

It's a valuable collector's item! Only one like it made!

0.00627864632385% is 1 car divided by 15,927. All the percentages added are 0.0042310175688%.

Unless I have made a drastic error, and I am sure FuzzyGeff will correct me if I have.

UPDATE!

FuzzyGeff has, correctly, pointed out that just because 15% of all 2008 Corvette Coupes have the dual roof option does not mean that 15% of BLACK 2008 Corvette Coupes have the dual roof. For example, 2,389 2008 Corvette Coupes have the dual roof, if all of them are black then 65.2% of black coupes have the dual roof. That should have been obvious to me, but I couldn't restart the brain cell that blocked the path to my stats class.

Rev. Wright

The more this guy talks, the more I think I should be ashamed that I rejected the arguments of the KKK.

Listening to him makes one wonder if the Civil War was worth it now. If freeing an entire race from slavery leads to this kind of garbage, perhaps it would have been better to let the CSA leave.

But wait, that's condemning an entire people because of the actions of one "man". Nope, I can't do it; even if he can.

I have extended this offer before: Any person of slave descent in the nation who feels put upon by us white-folk can do one of two things; 1. Return to slavery, it was my people who fought and bled to free you and we don't really appreciate you hating us for it; 2. Return to Africa, but there you will not be a black, you will be an American and you will discover what hate without restraint looks like.

No takers? I didn't think so.

There was once a time when blacks were not welcome to join American society. That time is passed. If you think about it, the Civil Rights Movement would not have gotten anywhere if the majority of the nation hadn't decided that, yes, it's time we stopped being fools and treated blacks like people. That moment happened before I was born. It's becoming clear to me that the offer to join is going to expire soon if people like Mifuni, Wright, Jackson and Sharpton continue to be the spokesmen for race relations.

Equality is a good thing. Reversing the situation is not. For the same reasons it was wrong for blacks to be enslaved it is wrong to demand a position that is unequal in the opposite way. Women, take notes here, your leaders are guilty of this too.

To be equal you must be equal. That means ending special privileges. Just for example, what would the reaction be to a Congressional White Caucus? League of Male Voters?

What would happen if McCain's preacher said CENSORED?

If you want to end racism and sexism, you must not be racist and sexist in response to racism and sexism! Continuing to be so will eventually close the minds of the people who might have welcomed you as an equal, but now see that you seek a reversal, not equality, and wonder if perhaps the original situation would not be much better.

I'd rather have peers than subjects. What say you?

PS: the female thing is doubly baffling, they are the majority. Why do girls get minority status when 60% of the country is a female?

Krav Maga Observation

Watching a show on Israeli Commandos and they have the inventor of Krav Maga showing us how to get a gun away from someone who's put the barrel against your temple.

Yup, that technique would work to get the gun in that situation.

Person with the gun, repeat after me: A firearm is a RANGED weapon, do NOT take it into hand to hand combat range. In other words, if he can touch you before you can shoot him, you're using the gun wrong and deserve to have Mr Muscles take it away and shoot you.

Meme!

I found this meme at: http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.

"Now there are more people in the Grandgate district alone than in all of Dwomor, so Alorria is as lost here as I am," Karanissa continued. "The Guild brought Tobas here because he'd been doing research in countercharms, trying to fix some of the things that had gone wrong back in the mountians, so someone thought he was some sort of expert and called him in to help against Tabaea's magic Black Dagger, and he didn't argue-he thought it would be fun, and that he might know something useful. He does have the formulas for plenty of spells, including some that had been lost for centuries, but all the same, he's not really that good a wizard-more than good enough for Dwomor, or anywhere in the Small Kingdoms or outlying lands, but here in the three Ethshars he's only up to journeyman level, really."

There is a requirement to tag five more people. All of my readers! Post in comments or link to your blog.

Finally A Product That Expresses My Deepest Desires

A Wedding With Bitter Observations

"How was the wedding?"

All the normal stuff. The Bride was insane from being the bride. Note to Bridezillas everywhere, just because you have an excuse, doesn't mean you don't have to say you're sorry later. Behaving that way after the honeymoon will just lead to, "Why don't your friends ever come and visit us anymore, Lee?" It might even lead to, "Why don't they log onto the chat engine, reply to e-mails or answer their phones any more?" too.

The Bride's mother: She didn't understand that just because I am here as a friend to The Groom, that didn't give her the power to order me about. I did not hear a single please or thank you from her. By the way, one of the reasons The Bride was so damn nervous was you not leaving her alone and fretting over every single thing that had already been covered. Things were missed because you couldn't shut the hell up and stay the fuck out of the way! It wasn't YOU getting married, it was your daughter, and you nearly caused four of the wedding party to walk.

To everyone who accused me of taking The Groom's Brother's clothes; Go fuck yourselves! I am an adult now and childish pranks like this are reserved for friends. The Groom's Brother is not my friend and there's not a goddamn thing I can do to him that is worse than letting him continue to be himself. The "go fuck yourself" goes double for The Bride's Father who'd only met me the day before and made the decision that "It had to be me." Didn't think I would hear about your big goddamn mouth, did you? Well, prick, see you at dawn if you have the balls. You fuckers were awfully damn brave behind my back, weren't you? It was only out of respect for my friend that I didn't go off right there and then.

The wedding party got stuck with the clean-up job. We got told about this detail just after the marriage ceremony. For future reference, that's the fucking venue's problem, not mine. It was just FuzzyGeff, The Maid of Honor, her daughter and me doing it. The Bride's brother, his wife, ADD child (try telling the little shit 'no' from time to time, or even once) and baby bailed as soon as the Rolls was out of sight. The Groom's Brother sat in his parents car and pouted about the clothes he left unattended to be mistaken as the band's stuff in the restroom. FuzzyGeff and I unloaded the huge load of crap, including the trash from the party. If anything is lost or broken, we did our best, but it was an entire pick-up load of crap. An entire pick-up load. That's excessive. We really would have been well within our rights to say, "not our problem, these are ceremonial titles and carry no responsibilities." We were definitely put upon, and I am not pleased about it. FuzzyGeff can speak for himself, but he doesn't sound real pleased. If there's a next time, you're getting a card from me not an appearance.

I behaved. I was a good boy. For the most part, I swallowed my pride and sucked up the abuse. Don't get used to that level of behavior. There won't be a wedding to destroy next time. Next time I am going to be me all the way. Black humor and all. If you think your knowing an astronaut on Columbia trumps talking Lou Ries out of killing himself because he thinks he should have been able to program the flight control system to save the shuttle on one wing, we will have words. If you fly in an experimental aircraft you are accepting that you might not live through the experience. By the way, pick the world you wanna live in. Either you are an equal adult, and have to play by the same rules I do, or you are not an equal and have no grounds to approach me on any matter. I leave criticism to my peers, thank you.

Note to Texans: Want it pronounced May-nohr? Don't spell it Manor. I know you think it's cute that out of towners don't know that you can't read. That's just shows us how damned ignorant you are. The explanation as to why you do this stupid shit is even better, and can be countered with one sentence; "You lost the goddamned Civil War, pretending that the pronunciation rules are different to laugh at the winners makes you look both stupid and petty." Keeping the stupid and petty shit up for 145 years makes you look even stupider.

I would excuse the profanity, but it's my blog, I can say what I want here.

Science And Global Warmering

Quote of the day: "[S]cience does not try to fit the observations to the theory. It creates the theory to explain the observations."

Wow, just wow, this pithy statement really hits Al square between the eyes. Not only is he attempting to fit the observations to the theory (CO2 and temp tracking together in the wrong order) he's not making good observations either (temp recording stations moved around a lot and entire eras are ignored).

Well I Am Glad That's Over

It's caused some stress here at home, and I must apologize, but the holes are filled. The die had been cast and the Rubicon crossed... Thanks for being tolerant of the obsession Honey!

I sold a lot of my guns to pay bills in the months before moving to Florida.

Thanks to the inheritance, I have replaced them all. With upgrades in all the niches really.

The Mini-14 has been replaced with Kaylee.
The FAL has been replaced with Dottie.
The FIE Titan has been replaced with a Colt Junior.
The .45 Colt Anaconda has been replaced by the same and supplemented with a .44 Mag.
The M-1911A1 has been replaced with a Springfield M1911-A1 GI.
The Brazilian M-1908 Mauser is sort of replaced with a Remington M-1903A3. I originally bought the Brazilian because I wanted a nice Mauser type rifle. The 03A3 is the pinnacle of the military Mauser development.

The SIG and .44 are the only real additions to the pile since the inheritance. The .45 and the Junior are actually pre-inheritance guns, paid for with my stipend from the VA.

I know it's hard to understand why those niches getting filled was so overwhelming. If I had sold them because I was tired of them, there would have been no feeling of loss to eliminate. I feel no such feeling about the Polytech M-14S, Enfield No.4 Mk.2* or Daewoo DR200 I sold.

Thoughts On Shitheel

First, a recap;

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel, as we all know, is in jail for violating his probation.

His eldest son, by wife 1 of 3, Orca Shitheel believes that The Lovely Harvey turned Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel in. I didn't and have no reason to believe The Lovely Harvey did. Leading suspect is Orca Shitheel's first wife from the way she's behaved since she met Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel and Wife 3 of 3 for lunch the day before his arrest.

Wife 3 of 3 is a total nutcase, absolutely co-dependent.

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel has not communicated with anyone except Wife 3 of 3 unless they happen to be sitting in the room when he called Wife 3 of 3. Since we do not live in Iowa, we have not had any communication from him since he went to jail. The Lovely Harvey has written several times. Via Wife 3 of 3 we know that he has written to Wife 3 of 3, and nobody else.

Orca Shitheel has been spreading all kinds of lies and half truths about The Lovely Harvey and I since Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel got arrested. I think he's more motivated by our refusal to fund his move from Iowa to Florida than anything else.

End of re-cap.

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel is scheduled to be released on 18May08. Because he's made no attempt to contact us, in fact he's refused our request for visitation, I don't feel inclined to join in any celebration of his release. I will fight against him coming to my house ever again. I will advise The Lovely Harvey to not communicate with him, his wife, his children, his ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, and his children's wives, ex-wives and girlfriends.

I am not a huge fan of how law enforcement operates in this day and age. Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel has brought the police into my house with his bullshit four times to date. I don't want the cops here unless I called them. The laws are especially gray about whether a felon, like Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel, can be in my gun-owning house at all. I think it's legal for me, but not him, and would prefer not to test that post-arrest.

His eldest is another thorn. Orca Shitheel's bad-mouthing of us has affected my mother-in-law's job. If Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel had a sense of honor, he would do something about his son. Condemn Orca's behavior vocally if nothing else. I get the impression that he'd be proud of how Orca Shitheel behaves. I base this belief on how Orca Shitheel is following an identical pattern of being a loser as his dear old dad.

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel has fathered five children that have been paid, predominately, by welfare. Orca Shitheel has three, with a fourth on the way, again paid for by welfare. Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel's sister has two, paid for by welfare. Number two son has at least one, guess who paid? Notice a pattern?

It is the example of this family that makes me believe that we should not pay a single penny more on welfare. What welfare has bought is three generations of mistreatment and abuse. When we've been interviewed by agents of the state investigating Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel, I got the impression that the Shitheel's are typical not exceptional. I don't want to pay to perpetuate that.

The fun does not end with Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel release from the Pasco County, Florida, jail. He has a warrant for his arrest in Story County, Iowa for failure to appear and leaving the county while under bond. "I was in jail!" is not a good explanation when defending your failure to show up in court.

Back From The Range Again

Kaylee is once again zeroed. Shot about a 4" group at 100 yards. I think 100 yards is pushing the limits of a 16" 5.56x45mm. At least it's the limit for the cheap 55gr Remington Express ammo.

Marv shot Dottie. He's impressed. He's also upset that he doesn't have the spare $400 to convert his 5.56x45 to the much more manly 6.8x43mm. Poor Marv. He'll get there soon.

A Quote I Keep Losing And Finding

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur? What if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"

--Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, the story of the 60 million Russians who suffered, and the 20 million who died in Soviet slave labor camps.

That quote, by the way, is why when they come you should go down fighting. You might only get one or two. But if it takes two for every arrest, we win. Sucks to be the martyr, it always has, but since we out number them by so much, we only need to get one or two per arrest. After a few, they will start to fear the attempt.

Pre-SENT ARMS!

For Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor.

MoH, posthumous, for jumping on a grenade to save his mates.

He'd previously gotten a Silver Star for other acts of bravery.

Order, ARMS!

For SGT Matt Maupin; What We Should Really Do About His Death

The Grave of the Hundred Head
R. Kipling

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall.

They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face --
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race --
They made a samadh in his honor,
A mark for his resting-place.

For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in state,
With fifty file of Burmans
To open him Heaven's gate.

The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village,
The village of Pabengmay --
A jingal covered the clearing,
Calthrops hampered the way.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With Jemadar Hira Lal.

The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.
The Jemadar's flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shickaris
Went back to their grave again,

Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village --
The village of Pabengmay,
And the "drip-drip-drip" from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way.

They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man's chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below --
With the sword and the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.

Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris --
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a white man's head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

All Me Day

Today is the day of fools!  Perhaps the most important day on the Thag calendar, for today, he belongs.