"We should always be disposed to believe that what appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides."

St. Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises

Speaking of health care....
I'd just like to point this out, to our friends and enemies on both sides of the health care debate: government-run health care will, by necessity, be run by the Government. Yes. So too is the Post Office, and I don't think enough people remember this. So, I'm going to tell you a story.

I just got back from my local branch of the United States Post Office, where I tried to mail a letter. The time was 12:06. To my surprise, I was barred from entry. The reason for this was, you might have guessed, that the Post Office closes at noon on Saturday.

In what reasonable world does the Post Office close at noon? But I digress; it closes at noon because it closes at noon.

Now, there were probably about 15 to 20 people standing in line inside, and what looked like a family of 4 or 5 children, all cavorting about and having the time of their lives. They were still being served, but because I was 6 minutes late there was "nothing [they] can do" for me.

This, like arbitrary closing times despite the four other people behind me trying to get in is typical of government thinking. Had I been at Mailboxes Etc., I probably would have been let in. Since it was a State-run operation however, the letter of the law states that my simple 50-cent transaction must occur before noon on Saturday--not 12:01, 12:02, or 12:06. I am an aberration if my needs don't match the services available. Truly, this is the kind of thinking we want in our hospitals.

What's going to happen to people when the Government runs our health care? Now, I'm really not that put out over having to mail my letter on Monday morning, and the guy who turned me away was rather polite about it all. That's not the point. What I worry about is things getting worse because the State's getting involved.

There will inevitably be many claims against our new insurance overlords. Who arbitrates these claims against the State? Yep. The State. How do you unionize against the State? Sure, you can fire the bastards but that still leaves us (not them) with the problem.

It'll happen whether we want it or not. We await silent Tristero's Empire.

In defense of the last outpost

Concerning a Council Use Permit for Angel Tattoo

To Caswell's, Mesa's Premeir Shooting Range

Year of the Potato

My Fellow Americans

Dear Fellow Electorate

Dear East Valley Tribune

30 June, 2010 Jam Handy's Daily Dose
I am continually surprised, running into people online who I knew growing up, to find them still living there. I guess I expect everyone to want to get as far away as they can from the town they grew up in, like I did.

22 June, 2010 Still working out the kinks, but ...
The beginnings of a Forum (fora, actaully) present themselves. I still need to theme the thing, and I'm interested in suggestions for board topics, so head over to the new VioPac Fora before we sell you into slavery to support all this infrastructure.

08 June, 2010 Some actual site news
Oh look, we have a FAQ now (or an FAQ, depending on your pronunciation), and the Book of the Month Club got a facelift. Part of the problem with updating the site has been that, when I designed the backend I did so intending to write a framework to deal with things like story generation and such, but that never materialized (why reimplement Drupal, after all?) (Because someone has to, have you seen their code? Yikes) (Anyways) (Now we're doing it in LISP. Great.) Moving on: the backend is really nice if you're a computer and looking to piece together a page, but it's annoying to do manually. So I'm working on fixing that. Something in me just doesn't want to turn over VioPac to a CMS. I've always done it myself.

Update 17 June: Also in the works are a forum and the possibility of merging the Mesa section with the front page.

28 May, 2010 Requiescat in Pace
Martok Adomány, 09 April 2003 - 26 May 2010.

My favorite h4xx0rk1tt3n. Taken 25 June of 2003.

14 January, 2010 How to fix the HTC Dream, AKA Android G1 phone
This is a nice little phone but it is seriously underpowered. Little space to install apps, little RAM, slow CPU... waiting a minute and a half to load your contacts might bring back a teary-eyed nostalgia for 9600 baud dialup but it sucks on a phone. So, here's how you fix it.

1. Root the damn thing.
2. Install a decent ROM, we suggest CyanogenMod.
3. Get yourself a Class 6 SDHC card and make three partitions: the first and largest, VFAT; the second, ext3 or ext4, and a swap partition. This will allow you to install apps on the SDHC, instead of the internal phone storage. It's essential; Cyanogen takes care of it automagically if your sdX2 is some sort of ext[2-4] partition.
4. Get yourself a decent task manager; I like ES Task Manager.
5. Grab the 10 Megs of Video RAM, because only a loser plays 3D games on their phone. It's dead simple.

23 October, 2009 Smashie-Smashie!
And now, a po-em.

Remember, remember
the 9th of October,
telescopes, reason and plot
I can think of no treason
more 'fitting the season
than smashing that bright lunar dot!

14 September, 2009 Sheer lunacy!
Don't forget folks, on 9 October LCROSS impacts the moon at Cabeus A, a nice dark crater in the southern polar region. Cabeus was named after a Jesuit philosopher opposed to the crackpot theories of some guy named Galileo. Personally, I'm thrilled to be blowing up his crater.

04 August, 2009 WHAT HAS BEEN SEEN ... CANNOT BE UNSEEN
Thank the gods July is over with. Returning to pressing matters, a party of beach-goers in Tiburon, CA apparently had a disagreement over who in the family was more pleasant. Officers from Tiburon PD responded to the scene and offered emotional support and counselling to all involved.

I'm not making this up. These people are real. Thanks to Lizajane for the pointer.

More in the archives

Getting those annoying phone calls purporting to warn you that your automobile warranty coverage is about to expire? How about sales calls to your cellular phone? Your pals and mine in the FCC have a handy little form you can use to file a complaint. It doesn't take long and it does seem to work.

10 July 2010 update: Looks like someone heard you.

VioPac's Book of the Month Club,
where we club you until you read it

:: 2010 ::

- * June * -

Is it a coincidence that cultures that produce lousy soldiers seem to be made up of people who live longer, healthier and happier lives? I'm looking at you, Italy and France. Along those lines, and taking a break from the Rah Rah Rah Democracy trend we've been hammering you with of late, VioPac's extensive Reading Corps took it upon themselves to work through Sebastien Japrisot's A Very Long Engagement, translated from the Freedom-hating French by Linda Coverdale into Liberty-loving God-fearing Flag-waving English.

With that bit of jingoism out of the way, you'll read this book because it's not simply a dime-store story of true love and perseverence, but a remarkable exploration of the idea that sometimes, making our mark on this world is goddamn hard work. That sometimes you lose everything in the attempt, and when you do, when it seems that there is incontrovertible evidence that your enterprise has failed, that moment is when certain people of a certain genius manage somehow to stubbornly refuse to yield.

You'll also read it because we'll kick you in the face if you don't.

- * May * -

Ah, David Weber. We're re-reading the Honor Harrington series this month, so ah, don't expect much in the way of highbrow reviews. It's commies blowing up in deep space and the unkillable Captain boldly fighting off the Forces of Evil[tm] for God, Queen and Country. Stiff upper lip, old chap. Tally-ho.

- * April * -

The view from the other side of the hill, to shamelessly plagiarize Lidell Hart, is often one to shift our perspectives, and the memoirs of Generalmajor F. W. von Mellenthin are no exception. Called Panzer Battles they purport to be a recollection of the tank battles of World War II, from the German side, and with the exception of some broadly-described actions at the outset, it is actually far more interesting as a diary of sorts. It is eerie to read his thoughts on German occupation ("German administration, while not always popular, was at least efficient.") but the pride he has in his men and the performance of their duty is freshly startling. It might not be a bad introduction to mechanized infantry and armored warfare, and is required reading for anyone looking to fully understand the period.

- * March * -

Hmm... We don't have any reccomendations for March because everything our Board of Indoctrination read wasn't worth this space. So the lot of you can go soak your heads for all we care.

- * February * -

This month we bring you Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Annointed: Self-Congratulation as Social Policy. Sowell articulates very well that sense of distrustful unease we've always felt when confronted with zOMG WORLD CATASTROPHE statistics or the usual claptrap coming out of the left about this or that crisis--Health Care, Global Warm^W^WClimate Change, etc. Remember the Population Bomb? We were all supposed to be starving to death with 10 billion people in 2010. Oh, and we were also supposed to run out of petrol, and paper, and all be painfully dead now. Sowell attacks the fundamental assumptions of the American Left and, while we don't always agree with him (it would be nice if, for instance, he would apply his talents for logic and reason to Religion, but he's firmly in the "Space Daddy is disappointed with you" camp), he does nicely and calmly explain their playbook. It's something you need to familiarize yourself with because we'll bludgeon you if you don't.

- * January * -

We've all seen that big ol' Ike book at the bookstore. Well, apart from being an escellent induction path for blunt force trauma, it serves as a pretty decent exploration of what made General (and later President) Eisenhower such a great man. Although it seems, at times, to feel like it's heaping praise on a desk-bound bureaucrat, and at other times is lacking a certain amount of detail, it is something you damn well read, if for no other reason than to fully understand the brilliance of his military-industrial complex speech.

More, indeed, in the BotM archives

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