One thing that I absolutely cannot stand is the proliferation of stupidity that the internet has enabled. Do I like the fact that the internet gives everyone a voice? Yes. Do I like everyone's voice? Hell no! Most of the comments I read on sites like CNN and *ugh* YouTube are so ignorant, so vapid and inane, that I feel as though I am becoming dumber and dumber each time I read one.
So I have taken the step of banning myself from reading these comments. I do not read comments on YouTube or any other site unless I feel that site has a high enough threshold of intelligent commentors to justify my time. A cursory glance will ususally determine this, and after that glance I will either continue to read the comments, or never read them again. Most comments on CNN or other news sites seem to be written by troglodytes, and YouTube comments don't even make sense half the time.
I had half-thought of banning comments from this blog altogether, but then I realized that 1)I don't yet know if I can even do that, and 2) I am currently hoping this blog doesn't attract the kind of Internet detritus that seems to be clogging teh tubez as of the last 8 years or so. My own stupidity is annoying enough to deal with. I certainly don't want to have to deal with the stupidity of other people.
And remember kids, as a great meme once said:
"Arguing on the internet is like participating in the Special Olympics: Even if you win, you're still retarded."
One of the things I've always had a kind of morbid fascination with is the concept of nuclear warfare, and more specifically, the delivery systems, weapons, and effects of said weapons. It is the most horrible thing that man can inflict on his fellow beings, along with chemical and biological warfare. However, I find the purely technical aspects of it fascinating. I don't really know why, but I suppose it goes in line with my fascination with all manner of extremes.
I like giant, unstable Wolf-Rayett stars - some 150 times more massive than our own sun - that burn for only a few million years and then explode with such titanic, incomprehensible force that they annihilate all around them for billions of miles. I like the world's hottest pepper, the Naga Viper, because it can reduce even a strapping specemin of masculinity such as myself to a quivering pile of blubbering, weepy pain. I like giant animals because they have evolved to make good use of proportions that dwarf people several times over. I like subatomic particles because they're so damn small and hard to understand, and yet we're made of them - everything is. From very big to very small, very fast to very slow, I like all manner of extremes. And going off on tangents. Ahem.
One of the more interesting nuclear weapons ever developed was made by the US in the late 1950s: the Davy Crockett weapons system. It got its name after one of the great folk heroes of American history. It consisted of a big, but still man-portable bazooka tube, a stabilizing tripod, and a single, large self-propelled round. The main thing setting this device apart from other bazookas was the nuclear warhead it packed in its bulbous frame.
"Vaporizer of the wild frontier!"
The bomb itself was extremely low-yield for a nuke. No city would be completely annihilated if it was used. It was, however still a nuke, and thus extremely powerful by conventional standards. It could level 2 city blocks easily with one shot. The total yield was selectable from the equivalent of 10 to 20 tons of TNT. That's like taking an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer, stuffing the whole damn trailer completely full of TNT, and setting it off. For comparison, the recent suicide bombing at the Moscow Domodedovo airport a few days ago killed 35 people, and the device the bomber employed used the equivalent of only 15 pounds of TNT.
The Davy Crockett was a pretty damn powerful device for something that didn't need to be schlepped around via a bomber or carrier or ballistic missile. It could be packed in the back of a truck with little trouble, and set up by just a few people. However, the device had poor accuracy, which was probably one of the reasons it was eventually scrapped. But unlike a traditional bomb, the fact that this device was nuclear meant it had an unseen advantage: massive irradiation of whatever it hit. The idea was to have soldiers stationed with a bunch of these in western Europe, and if the Soviets ever invaded, these devices could be used to kill advancing troops and render certain strategic choke-points uninhabitable for up to 48 hours via radiation. This would allow enough time to mobilize NATO forces and mount a counterattack.
The device was only tested once, in 1962, at the Nevada Proving Grounds. (video auto-starts at 8:22)
So, not an Earth-shattering kaboom, but if you were part of an advancing troop formation you would be pretty much fucked, even if you were inside a tank. If the heat and blast didn't kill or cripple you outright, the radiation would take care of the job in short order. The device was obviously never used in actual combat, thank goodness. Things probably would have escalated quickly into full-blown nuclear war if they were used en masse. Then again, it was only designed to be used tactically, so a war bad enough to warrant its deployment would probably already be well on the way to WWIII by that time.
I am fascinated with this weapon because it represents a unique duality of extremes. On the one hand, it is close to the lower limit in terms of the size at which a functioning nuclear weapon can exist. On the other hand, despite its small size it was capable of massive devastation, eclipsed only in recent years by non-nuclear ordinance in the form of huge thermobaric gravity-propelled bombs such as the MOAB and its Russian equivalent. Despite this morbid fascination, I am very glad this device was never used in actual combat.
Rico takes a soothing drive through the countryside.
It's really, really addictive, since you can wreak all manner of havoc upon the huge island archipelago that is the setting for the game. I happen to own a wired Xbox 360 controller specifically for use with PC games, since some games are just easier to play on a computer with a gamepad versus a mouse and keyboard. Not many, but games like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Super Meat Boy are much more fun with a gamepad. Anyway, I've been playing the daylights out of JC2 (Not to be confused with Jesus Christ 2: the Jesusening) and something happened as a result. I have been playing games for almost 2 decades, but for the first time, one of my thumbs actually got a blister.
I know, stop the presses. Call CNN and get Oprah on the line. Big fucking deal, right? Well, no. But still, I actually played a game so much that I injured my hand, which is different than my usual hand injuries that result from days-long marathons of furious masturbation to bestiality midget hobo porn (hand cramps, hairy palms, etc).
The thumb casualty was a result of 2 things. I freaking love Just Cause 2 and am playing it way, way too much for my own good, and the people who designed the Xbox 360 controller are sadists. I say this because the buttons on the controller rise up into little hemispherical nubs of pain that can literally wear through layers of skin after a few hours of sweaty-palmed gaming madness. The PS3 controller is much easier on the hands, and even the ergonomically-impaired Wiimote doesn't suck as much. Granted, the thumbsticks are fine. The shoulder triggers are fine. But those damn A,B,X, and, like vowels, sometimes Y buttons absolutely murder my right thumb.
Pictured: slayer of my phalangeal epidermis.
I guess I can always mitigate things like thumb blisters by not playing so many damn videogames, but what's the fun in that? None fun, that's what's in that! Also, I need to take English classes, but that's another story. What's the moral of this story, you ask? Oh, you didn't ask? Well fuck you then! The moral is don't play so much of a game that your thumbs become red and tattered from relentless button pressing. Or something.
So, I just made this blog. I've been toying with the idea for years, but now I think I finally have the personal discipline to keep up with it. I will post whatever I damn well feel like, which may include thoughts on anime, the world economy, why I hate fire ants, or any other assortment of things that spring to (and desperately try to get out of) my mind.
Some people think that blogs are passe. They are correct. However, nobody has ever called me trendy, so here I am making one now. Take that, Internet hipsters! I will post things here at least once a week. I tried that before, in college, but I never had the wherewithal to stick to a regular update schedule. Hopefully this time will be different.
Oh, by the way, here is a pangolin:
(photo courtesy of* the San Diego Zoo website and Google Image Search)
*stolen from
Apparently he is trying to make fun of me. We'll see who gets the last laugh, you lovable, scaly bastard! (Spoilers: the pangolin can't laugh. I win!)
I will try not to fall into the usual trap that many bloggers fall into. That is, basically blowing your load when it comes to content and ideas, posting shit-tons of stuff to start with, then not updating for months on end only to finally end your hiatus by putting up some mediocre garbage that nobody wants to read. I've seen it happen before, and so I'm going to pace myself. By publishing this blog, I will be joining the ranks of hundreds of millions of other people whose inane (but in my case, totally awesome) personal ramblings will be forever stored on random hard drives in windowless datacenters across the globe. Huzzah!
