Jumblerant

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Politically neutered

Just in case you were wondering how politically biased I am, here is the result of a recent test i took over at Political Spectrum.

My Political Views
I am a centrist moderate social libertarian
Right: 0.22, Libertarian: 1.32

Political Spectrum Quiz

I guess on next election day I'll just stay home.

kthanxbai!

Cheap and cheerful

The two words 'Cheap' and 'Cheerful' go together in my little head as 'will break soon' and 'wasn't worth what you paid'. Like the Lego pieces that are cheaper and don't quite fit. Or the dodgy remote controlled cars that break within 5 minutes of opening the box.

I was therefore not so surprised to hear that Ryanair had pooped all over a planeload of paying customers:

Ryanair dumps passengers on wrong island - doesn't care

A planeload of passengers on a Ryanair flight from the UK to Lanzarote (one of the Spanish Canary Islands) learned the hard way that low cost carriers carry a hidden price.
Image via Wikipedia

Instead of landing in Lanzarote, the plane landed in Fuerteventura (about 30 miles from their intended destination).

Bad weather had forced the plane to divert, but usually when a plane has to divert, a normal airline takes care of its customers.

Obviously, Ryanair isn't considered to be a normal airline, so the passengers were told to get off the plane, and after refueling, the plane took off, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves.

There were no Ryanair staff at the airport, and with no way to reach anyone from the airline, the passengers had to book hotels for themselves.

The next morning, the passengers were able to grab a ferry to their correct destination, losing a night of their vacation and any hotel nights they had booked.

A Ryanair spokesman confirmed that the flight had indeed been diverted, but was quick to point out that "if flight disruption is outside the control of the airline, no monetary compensation is due."

So there you have it - flying with Ryanair really is a gamble, and you don't even know whether you'll actually arrive at your destination. Perhaps they can make some more money by starting a "will we get to our destination" lottery on their flights.

Original article can be found HERE

What a bunch of silly flying people! I know that I won't be flying Ryaniar ever. And I hope you won't either.

kthanxbai!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

What's All The Fuss II?

After my last post 'What's All The Fuss?' went online I reconsidered my words and thought that maybe I'd gone a bit too far with my dismay at the UK's attitude to a Hamas leader's 'deletion'. It turns out that I wasn't the only chappy on the planet to be upset with the UK's attitude.

Image via Wikipedia

This article appeared in Friday's Daily Express;

WHY CAN'T THIS COUNTRY FOLLOW ISRAEL'S LEAD?

By Chris Roycroft-Davis
EXCUSE me for not sending flowers to the funeral of the terrorist the Israelis bumped off in Dubai. Unlike the bleeding hearts in the liberal media I’m not shedding any tears.

And Chris continues:

Unlike Britain, Israel doesn’t tolerate an enemy within. It doesn’t give those who hate them free housing and welfare handouts. It doesn’t let the right of free speech enable them to preach murder on its streets.
Image via Wikipedia

For the whole article visit here, here and here.

kthanxbai!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Live & learn

As the immutable Lazy Bum that I am, I try to learn from my mistakes, and from others'. Wirecutter at Knuckledragging My Life Away has shared with us a list of what his father imparted to him.

Image by papaija2008 via Flickr

As he states in his blog, his father:

is a retired Army Warrant Officer, came up through the ranks, did 3 tours in Viet Nam, the whole bit. He was raised up poor (the son of a lumberjack) the grandson of a gambler/lawman/outlaw from Arizona. Let's just say Pops is hard. And he raised me the same way.

So what can we learn from him? His language is not the most 'poetic' - you have been warned!!

Here are a few from the 20 on his list:

1) Family comes first. Period. Unless it's your mother's side of the family. Fuck those assholes.

6) Never hit a woman. While it may be permissible to shoot one on occasion, hitting one is not an option. Ever.

9) A good steak should only be turned once.

18) Respect your elders. There's a reason those fuckers are still alive, they're tougher than you.

20) The world does not owe you a living. Either work or die. I'm not supporting your ass forever.

kthanxbai!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Whats all the fuss?

So some Israeli's took out the murdering fool Mahmoud al-Mabhouh whilst vacationing in sunny Dubai. No doubt between meetings to help the elderly and infirm in gaza he was looking to buy playground equipment and exercise books for needy children. (How does that sarcasm icon look again?)

Image via Wikipedia

I have no clue why the Brits and the Irish are so wound up about the use of their passports in this operation. Its a backhanded compliment as to the ability of their citizens to travel the world as they want!!

And why is no-one moaning loudly about the murder of a known terrorist but the use of dodgy passports gets the ambassador called in?

I do appreciate what Neptunus Lex wrote and suggest you go here to read the blog entry and the comments.

After all, what’s the world coming to, when a murderous terrorist operating outside the arm of justice can get snuffed achieve martyrdom while attempting to make more mayhem?

kthanxbai!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Facebook. Just Do It

I used to live on Facebook (or FB as I call it). I find out what people I went to nursery with are doing, I find out how my old schoolmates' divorces are coming along and I see just how limp and pathetic some of my closer chums and pals can be when it comes to presenting themselves to the world on FB.

Here are some clues on how not to look like a complete and utter muppet on Facebook:

Just sayin'!!

kthanxbai!

Birds and helicopters

I like helicopters.

I like birds.

So I'm guessing that this motivational poster has a reason to be on the blog.

Any answers to the question?

kthanxbai!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Modern Evolution

Wearing my 'pedantic hat' I guess that there can be no such thing as 'modern evolution'. However, below you can see the evolution of an idea from TV ad to digitized cartoon to, cartoonified* video, to TV ad.

And then to a few new versions that are basically copies (at last count YouTube had over 400 'Boom De Ah Dah' videos posted).

I guess its more a Revolution than an Evolution

The Original TV ad

xkcd's cartoon remake

XKCD's cartoon made into a video

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

xkcd's cartoon video turned into a real video

Hat Tip

kthanxbai!

*copyright Jumblerant

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Scalped - by Meat in the Seat

If you are looking for an interesting blog to read, may I suggest Meat in the Seat's latest bloggage? It really made me think twice about EMS and also about the difference between the mundane and the extraordinary.

Image by simplerich via Flickr

Scalped

And who can't fail to love a blogger who has a tasty raw steak as his ID picture. Brilliant!!

kthanxbai!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Jake Wood (Team Rubicon) Interview

Hugh Hewitt talks with Team Rubicon co-creator Jake Wood about their recent mission to Haiti, and what their plans are for the future.

http://blog.teamrubiconhaiti.org/2010/02/jake-wood-interview.html

A good interview with Jake's explanation of what he and the team did down in Haiti. Well worth listening to.

kthanxbai!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Sully's Plane's Emergence

Remember Captain Sullenberger landing his plane in the Hudson River after a goose strike? Well here is the video of the raising of the plane.

Image via Wikipedia

Quite a feat of boat maneuvering, crane-work and engineering.

The time lapse photographs of the raising of Flight 1549.

Posted on Kontain.com - [Flight 1549] from David Martin on Vimeo.

kthanxbai!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Organic piffle and tosh

I lived on different farms at different stages of my life. I've milked cows, picked eggs up from the hen house and done the more unpleasant jobs around the ol' homestead too. I won't go into detail as I have just eaten, and assume that you are not too far from a meal yourself.

Image by iLoveButter via Flickr

Sufficed to say, I have seen animals, from chicks to horses, from calves to bulls, being treated in many different ways.

The only time I have ever bought organic farm produce was when I misread the label and thought it said 'orgasmic'.

I am proud that Frank W James, he of 'Corn, beans, spent brass and a deadline', agrees with me;

I've said it thousand times before and I'll say it again, the 'Organic' food movement is the greatest scam since someone invented a 'pyramid' scheme and if you think I'm full of it, then answer me this simple question: WHO HAS GONE TO PRISON ON LENGTHY SENTENCES FOR FALSE LABELING OF FOOD AS 'ORGANIC' AFTER IT WAS PROVEN IN A COURT OF LAW THAT IT WASN'T?
Image via Wikipedia

Is how he answers one critic, finishing with:

And in closing just to be clear, I believe People who believe Organic Food are, in fact, 100% 'Organic', 100% of the time, are FOOLS, COMPLETE AND UTTER FOOLS.

This guy is my hero!!

Go over to his blog and read the full tirade.

kthanxbai!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Just got this from a friend

I just got this from a friend of a friend who helped out in Haiti, and it wasn't Team Rubicon.

Its doing the rounds of the blogiverse but I've not seen anyone jump up and correct it.

from Haiti – the other side — Let everybody know about this crap………

From A Retired Special Forces Sgt Major:

To All,

I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

Port o Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house.
The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money. The ones I ran into were either incompetents or outright anti American. Most are French or french speakers, worthless every damn one of them. While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID
( another organization full of little OBamites and communists that openly speak against Americana) These two organizations exemplified their parochialism by:

- USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.

- Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.

- Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it while we dehydrated and wouldn’t release a drop of it to the rescuers.

- No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day, except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and decon equipment, as well as air conditioned tents.

- No latrine facilities, less digging a hole if you set up a shitter everyone was trying to use it.

I watched a 25 year old Obamite with the USAID shrieking hysterically, berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. ” You don’t know what your president wants! The military isn’t in charge here we are!”

If any of you are thinking of giving money to the Haitian relief, or to the UN don’t waste your money. It will only go to further the goals of the French and the Liberal left.

If we are a fair and even society, why is it that only white couples are adopting Haitian orphans. Where the hell is that vocal minority that is always screaming about the injustice of American society.

Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action. New Orleans magnified a thousand times. Haiti doesn’t need democracy, what Haiti needs is Papa Doc. That’s not just my opinion , that is what virtually every Haitian we talked with said. “the French run, the UN treat us the same as when we were a colony”, at least Papa Doc ran the country.

Oh, and as a last slap in the face the last four of us had to take US AIRWAY’s home from Phoenix. They slapped me with a 590 dollar baggage charge for the four of us. The girl at the counter was almost in tears because she couldn’t give us a discount or she would lose her job. Pass that on to the flying public.

Nick

kthanxbai!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Neptunus Lex blog of Jan 25

I have copied, in it's entirety Neptunus Lex's blog post of January 25th. I think you'll appreciate what he has to say. Personally I enjoyed reading the opinions expressed in the comments on his site:

The British medical periodical “Lancet” was once a beacon of science and reason in a world that badly needed both. Sadly, politically-motivated research led to an utterly rubbished 2004 article claiming that 100k Iraqi citizens had died violently in the year since the US invasion and occupation.

That should have been bad enough. But now they’ve doubled down:

It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal Lancet has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps Lancet is no longer a standard-bearer but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work…

Their study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”—and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.

Read the rest, ponder the plight of women in Araby and mourn the loss of objectivity.

Image via Wikipedia

Oh, for what it’s worth – George Soros provided around half the funding for the Iraqi mortality survey published by the Lancet. The Palestinian domestic violence article?

This study was funded by the Palestinian National Authority as well as by the Core Funding Group at the University of Minnesota. The Palestinian Authority is not a disinterested party. But even worse: The data was collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau. These are the people who told the world that Israeli soldiers shot young Mohammed al-Dura, committed a massacre in Jenin, and purposely attacked Palestinian civilians (who just happened to be jihadists dressed in civilian clothing or hostage-civilians behind whom the jihadists hid).

Once again, the science seems less driven by an objective analysis of the facts so much as the preferences of those holding the purse.

Read the original post here, with all of the links alive and kicking!

kthanxbai!

My iPad tuppence worth

Considering its just another product out there in the marketplace people tend to have some serious opinions about the iPad and Steve Jobs.

(this one is for you JR!)

kthanxbai!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Lady QI Gaga

Just as soon as you thought things were back to normal over here at Jumblerant here is what is going on inside my little head:

The Contestants Turn on Stephen Fry at QI

And of course, Lady Gaga's video to her very popular single Poker Face. With Christopher Walken.

And Cartman from South Park (just in case it started making sense!)

kthanxbai!

Saturday, January 30, 2010

cease, desist, discontinue, halt, terminate

Interesting mini-graffiti against 'The man'.

The full collection can be seen at DamnCoolPics

kthanxbai!

Friday, January 29, 2010

Muslims demand withdrawal of rifle sights with Biblical references

An article last week in The National Post discussed the outrage felt by many Muslims after it was announced that many soldeirs in iraq and Afghanistan have been using telescopic sights with biblical references etched into them.

Muslim groups reacted angrily yesterday after it emerged that the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references. Michigan-based contractor Trijicon has sold up to 800,000 of the sights to the U.S. military that were being used in combat. A statement posted on the Trijicon web-site said: "As part of our faith and our belief in service to our country, Trijicon has put scripture references on our products for more than two decades." According to ABC, one of the citations on the gunsights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament. The passage reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The Muslim Public Affairs Council called on U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to immediately withdraw the sights.

Muslims demand withdrawal of rifle sights with Biblical references, Jan 21

Personally I find it very similar to what support guys used to write on their bombs 'To Hitler with Love' or tankers wrote on their rides in WWII, or even what badges and pins soldiers wore in the field in 'Nam.

What gets me isn't the outrage shown by however many Muslim councils or spokespersons but the fact that some armchair warming committee member has decided what troops, in constant danger for their lives, can have written on their equipment.

You want them to not have biblical references on their person? Provide them with equipment with better motifs - I understand that the American Flag is going down quite well with the troops these days.

kthanxbai!

123456, password & abc123

Yup, they've caught up with your wily ways. Finally they've have been able to work out just what your password is, well, what the average password is anyway:

Amichai Shulman is the chief technology officer at Imperva, which makes software for thwarting hackers. Recently, he undertook a study of 32 million passwords stolen by an unknown hacker from Rockyou!, an online service that makes widgets for social networking sites like Facebook.

The list is depressing testimony to our collective lack of creativity in the arena of personal security.

“I guess it’s just a flaw in human genetics,” Shulman told the New York Times.

Personally I use an amalgam of my age, the year, my phone number, my sister's name (she has 5) and the postcode for my last abode.

Most people aren't so 'cautious' and use some very obvious passwords. Here are the top 20 in order of popularity:

1. 123456

2. 12345

3. 123456789

4. password

5. iloveyou

6. princess

7. rockyou

8. 1234567

9. 12345678

10. abc123

11. nicole

12. daniel

13. babygirl

14. monkey

15. jessica

16. lovely

17. michael

18. ashley

19. 654321

20. qwerty

If your password is in the above, I suggest you change it. Now!!

kthanxbai!