08:24 – The news stories from the EU Summit-of-the-Month report that Merkel has backed down. Nothing could be further from the truth. With regard to the only thing that matters–Germany paying everyone else’s bills–Merkel hasn’t yielded a centimeter. The EUrocrats have simply spun a couple of minor decisions to appear major. All they’re about is allowing the leaders of Spain, Italy, and France to save face. Nothing has changed. There’s been a minor decrease in Spanish and Italian bond yields, but that’s unlikely to last long. The euro comes out of this conference no better off than it was going in, and probably worse. As always with the EU, it’s Videri Quam Esse.
I just issued a big purchase order for kit components to one of our three major wholesalers. I’ll get the other two issued today. Which means this weekend we need to get the piles of boxes that are currently stacked in the library downstairs to make room for the new piles of boxes that’ll be showing up soon.
17:29 – Even the columnists for The Telegraph, who are usually quick to see through the EUrocrats’ smoke and mirrors, are missing the point entirely this time. The so-called agreement they reached does not guarantee Spain and Italy anything. Everyone is talking as though Spain and Italy can now draw on EFSF/ESM funds to recapitalize their banks without those loans showing up on sovereign balance sheets and without implementing austerity measures. That’s wrong. Germany retains the absolute right to veto any such disbursements, and will do so unless Spain and Italy comply with previously-agreed conditions. Neither country can meet those conditions, which are economically and politically infeasible. In other words, Spain and Italy both walked away from the conference claiming that they’d gotten what they demanded. They did no such thing.
We got some heavy wind and rain passing through that knocked off a couple radio stations in Indy and have brought temps down to around 70°F from around 103. Raised the humidity from around 80% to over 95%, though. The Weather Channel temp maps show a pocket of no color, surrounded by 100°+ temps pink.
The rain is too late to help farmers; they needed a couple days of rain about 2 weeks ago, not just an hour of it. Wind was so high my front lawn is covered with maple leaves, and the tree it came from is 4 houses down the street.
WSJ’s Dan Neil conceded today that he lost the bet with Elon Musk that maintained it was impossible that a viable production model electric-only car could be rolling off an assembly line before the end of 2012. Neil donates $1,000 to Doctors Without Borders, while Musk has pledged, that even though he won,—due to Neil’s good sportsmanship,—he will act as though he lost and donate the $1 million to DWB that was his end of the bet, should he have lost.
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2012/06/29/to-elon-musk-and-the-model-s-congratulations/
Musk, born in South Africa, university-educated in the US and now a US citizen, has had an amazing run in every area of life he wanted to influence, making PayPal a global financial player (Internet), founding Tesla Motors and producing an electric luxury sedan (clean energy), and founding and running SpaceX which produces the next generation space shuttle (space).
Decided on the replacement for my 18.5 year old sedan. Placed an order for a Subaru Forester. Will be taking delivery week after next.
We have a friend who’s had a Suburu Forester for several years, and she’s extremely pleased with it. Of course, I’m not sure that our Forester is the same as yours, but I suspect it is.
One of my pals is an arch 4WD enthusiast, and I ran the choice past him. He thinks the Forester is an excellent vehicle, although probably not tough enough for him. When he buys a 4WD he immediately has the standard suspension replaced with a really tough after market one. He frequently drives in areas that would kill a normal 4WD, let alone a car.
Everybody I know who has a Subaru would buy another. Every last one. That is high praise. Enjoy!
You’re not going to be putting a ‘Roo bar and start talking like Crocodile Dundee, I hope!
No roo bar, but I intend to get some machine gun turrets put in to protect against marauding atheists, anarchists, Mormons, Moslems, Canadians and other miscreants.
What about cats?
Stealth, ninja cats (some redundancy there) who will creep up on your in your Forester, leap on your face, and make you drive into a roo? You’ll wish you had that roo bar then, you betcha.
Nah, I’ll just get a poodle, who’ll be able to take care of the nastiest of cats.
I must have been mistaken. I thought that it was very difficult for individuals to own automatic weapons in Australia.
Since it’s not, I think your idea is good. I’ve known several people who had machine guns mounted on their 4X4’s, mostly .30’s (M-60’s and MG-42’s), but one guy had a Ma Deuce. Everyone always gave them lots of room. Including, I suspect, the planes the state police use for traffic enforcement. A Ma Deuce can reach out a long way and touch someone.
It’s very difficult to own a pop gun or water pistol in Australia.
There’s a well known, elderly guy who lives on a farm near here, who is married to the local member of the NSW Parliament, Pru Goward. A year or so back the cops sprung a surprise inspection of his residence and found a loaded gun in a gun safe, for which he was charged. (You’re supposed to have the gun unloaded and the ammo in a separate safe.)
The story is here: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mps-husband-to-face-court-over-gun-charge-20110809-1ikyh.html
From the story: “‘I (Pru Goward, Barnett’s wife) rise to inform the house that today local police carried out an inspection of our family farm at Yass with my husband, Mr David Barnett,” she said
”Although locked, his gun safe contained a loaded rifle and also housed live ammunition.”
So this is what we have to put up with here. I’m currently re-reading Without Remorse by Tom Clancy and one of the characters says something like “There’s nothing more useless than an unloaded pistol.”
I mean, the loaded rifle was in a locked gun safe on a farm. Talk about the nanny state.
When did Australia become such a nanny state ? Don’t you need guns in the outback, that gator guy in the movies always had a gun .
Nah, I think he had a knife.
“That’s not a knife. This is a knife.”
Yeah, I remember that scene. I remember thinking, “That’s a *small* Bowie knife.” (A big one has a 24″/60 cm blade.)
Speaking from experience, a large knife (or short sword, which you’re discussing, even if they call it a knife) is difficult to carry concealed.
As a practical matter, I can carry a blade with about a 15″ total length on my back under a light jacket, and that’s pushing it. I prefer to carry 12″ bowies in pairs in an upside-down V harness on my back.
The only knife I carry routinely is a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife. In the field, I’d carry a standard hunting knife with a 6″ or so blade. I’ve never learned anything about knife fighting, and never had any desire to do so. I’d never forget a comment one of my martial arts instructors made back when I was 18 or so. He said that the winner of a knife fight was usually hurt worse than the loser of of any other type of fight.
That was right around the time I started learning combat pistol.
That’s certainly true in general. Not so much if one of the fighters is very good. I’ve practiced enough to be very good. (At least in practice fights with rubber knives or sidewalk chalk taped to handles. It’s never been an issue where another guy had a real knife and one of us was going to die.)
In a confrontation I like a big knife because it’s more intimidating than a pistol, even a large-caliber pistol. Despite the claims of my detractors, I don’t actually kill everyone who confronts me at night, so being able to scare them off without having to hurt them is a plus.
And I’m not a fool. I also carry a pistol if I’m carrying the knives.
“I prefer to carry 12″ bowies in pairs in an upside-down V harness on my back.”
” I also carry a pistol if I’m carrying the knives.”
Damn, son; IT sw development work is a LOT more dangerous than it used to be. Well, Vermont is your kind of state, sir! We don’t worry about stuff like that and there are no, let me repeat that, ZERO, firearms laws here. Knives? Axes? Chain-saws? Not even on anyone’s list. These are all just TOOLS. Plus we have some pretty heavy-duty weapons ranges up this way, one on the scale of Picatinny down in NJ.
I feel very sorry for our English-colony cousins in O Kanada and Oz; folks there need to get back to Magna Carta and throw the bums out and take control again. We could also use a lot of that sorta thing in this country, 310 million of us apparently prepared to live on our knees.
Haha. That’s not what I carry to work in the software field, that’s what I carry when I’m expecting problems elsewhere. I used to terrorize ex-boyfriends who wouldn’t leave the ex-girlfriends alone, do car repo, do some bodyguarding, do a bit of investigation which involved talking to less-than-upstanding citizens, and so on. Even a bit of bail enforcement (sometimes called bounty hunting, not quite correctly). I don’t do it any more, except for a bit of boyfriend terrorizing and other low-risk tasks, because I have a small child. Still, I lack any kind of submission reflex or back-down-from-a-confrontation reflex, so the day-to-day encounters with rude or aggressive or dishonest people tend to escalate. I can fight bare-handed, but generally can’t demonstrate that without actual violence. (Once in a while I’ll punch out a car window, like if the driver almost hit me and then got aggressively assinine about me calling him an asshole.) It’s better to have a weapon in hand in order to de-escalate without needing to actually hurt someone. (Even if, frankly, I don’t think the species really needs a lot of the people who tend to be a problem. I don’t quite trust my judgement enough to go around slaughtering them just for, say, being mouthy assholes who can’t drive. There’s also the issue of legality, but I don’t trouble myself over-much with that except as a matter of practical inconvenience.)