Jen and I just got back from a cruise to Alaska.  We took the Pearl from Norwegian Cruise Lines from Seattle to Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, Ketchikan, and Victoria.  We had incredibly good weather--not a cloud in the sky the whole trip and temperatures in the 70s and 80s.

We saw Orca (Killa) whales, saw several glaciers, ziplined through the rainforest, and generally had a lot of fun.  Click on the picture to see some pictures.

Here's a fabulous article on the Tiananmen Square massacre.  It does something few of the other articles I've read--it gives perspective.

...

"A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal." --Hillary Clinton, Sec. of State

There is only one proper response to this: Look who’s talking!

Before an American secretary of state gets up on her hind legs and lectures the rest of the world about "the darker events of its past," complaining about the lack of "a public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing," let’s look at the record: in 1993, then-attorney general Janet Reno ordered the murder of 76 people in Waco, Texas, on grounds that didn’t sound all that credible at the time, and, in retrospect, turn out to have been entirely dubious and self-serving. Can it really be that the U.S. government – yes, the same people who ordered this and this – is hectoring China for unlawful detention?

As a great philosopher once said, oh, puh-leeeeeeeze!

No one disputes the fact that the suppression of the Tiananmen Square revolt was a brutal act, one that belied the Chinese government’s claim to enjoy popular support in the face of what it characterized as a "counterrevolutionary" gathering. Yet what, exactly, was being suppressed? This is where the Western-spun narrative veers markedly away from reality.

To begin with, what was the uprising about? What demands were the students – and most of them were indeed students, rather than ordinary workers and peasants – intent on pursuing to the end? The initial protests were over reductions in student subsidies. As an economizing measure, the government decided to drastically cut student allowances, while China’s generous foreign scholarship program, which enabled many students from Africa to study in Chinese universities, was continued, in spite of the cutbacks.

This outraged the fiercely nationalistic Chinese students, who, in the winter of 1988, used it as an excuse to rampage through the living quarters of African students, injuring 13. What began as a lynching miraculously turned into a "human rights" protest, as 3,000 demonstrators showed up in Nanjing, where slogans such as "Kill the black devils!" mingled with demands for "political reform."

Read the rest.

One of the most confusing aspects of choosing a handgun is choosing a trigger action.  The discussion of trigger action can get very confusing very quickly, especially since some of the same words can mean different things when talking about revolvers or semi-automatics.

If you don't care about the definitions and just want to know what to get, here are the Randy Cain recommendations:

1. Revolvers take longer to shoot well.  Most beginners should start with semi-automatics, because they can become proficient quicker.
2. The most important thing in a trigger is that it works the same every time.  (This rules out DA/SA triggers unless they can be carried like SA, cocked and locked).
3. 1911s can have the best triggers if they're worked on by a competent gunsmith.  Glocks and Glock-like guns (e.g., M&P and XDs) are next.

I will just cover the basic definitions and then some thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages. We'll start with revolvers because they are more intuitive to understand.

Well, at the ripe young age of ... I finally made it to Washington, DC.  I went for a nursing technology conference along with two colleagues and Jen.  Jen and I had the first day pretty much free, so we toured the city.  Jen missed the eighth grade trip to DC because of gymnastics.  And me? I was living in La República Oriental del Uruguay.

Anyway, if you think you're up to it, here is the Heyman abbreviated foot tour of Washington.  (I say abbreviated because we only hit a small percentage of the sites.  Still, it's at least six miles, and took us six hours to do.

Heyman Abbreviated Foot Tour of Washington, DC.

1. Start from the Arlington Cemetary Metro Station.
2. Tour the Arlington Cemetary.  Be aware that going to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or Kennedy's gravesite adds at least a mile of walking inside the cemetary.
3. Walk across the Potomac to the Lincoln Memorial.  Hey it doesn't look that far.  From the Parking Lot, it's a little more than a mile.  Notice that the memorial refers to itself as a Temple.  Also notice the fasces standing guard outside and that Lincoln's hands are resting on fasces, leading me to call it the Temple to American Fascism.
   
4. From there, bear left toward the Vietnam Memorial.
5. Continue on to the World War II Memorial.
6. Continue the loop back up to the Lincoln Memorial and stop at the World War Memorial along the way.  It's very peacful.
   
7. Now continue on to the Korean War Memorial.  I think this was my favorite memorial.  There are three parts to it: statues of soldiers, a granite wall with images etched into it, and a fountain.  The wall is quite striking with its ghostly images.  The pictures show up the etchings much more clearly than they appeared in real life.
8. Now cross the street and go to the Tidal Basin to see some Cherry Blossoms (assuming they're in season--they weren't for us).
9. Walking along the basin, cross the street and go around the Washington Monument, the most phallic structure in DC.  You can get (free) tickets to go up inside the Monument, but they were sold out days in advance of our arriving.  A high school group was playing Big Band Music in the nearby bandshell.
   
10. By this time, about four hours will have passed, and you're probably hungry, so head up 15th street passing the Treasury building on the left where Geitner and his minions are hatching their evil inflationary monetary policy.  On the right is the Old Ebitt Grill, so stop in and have some lunch; you might just rub shoulders with some Whitehouse staffers or media bigwigs.
11. Now walk around the entire Whitehouse, being sure to notice the protesters that no one else is noticing on the north side.  Slightly anti-climactic if you ask me, although they do have some pretty flowers.
12. Now head down to the Smithsonians (plural, because they are plural).  The first one is the Museum of American History, but I suggest skipping it.  It's a madhouse full of kids everywhere.  I thought we were walking into the Superbowl, judging by the roar of the crowd.
13. Then walk over to the Museum of Natural History where Ben Stiller works nights.
14. From here, I'd like to see the Capitol, but Jen says there is no way she's walking another mile down to the Capitol, so instead cross the "Mall" to the Smithsonian Institute (called the "Castle" by some tour guides) and peek inside.
    
15. Along the way stop and take a picture of the Capitol.  Under no circumstances must you ever go into the Capitol lest you offend the sensitive probiscis of Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid.
16. Head to the nearest Metro station and head back home.

I hope you brought some good, broken-in walking shoes, or tomorrow your fee will hurt, and you might just have some blisters.  Oh, and bring sun screen if the sun is out (the great irony of of living in South Florida, driving a convertible to work every day and getting sunburned in DC).

Obama says that for far too long, America has consumed more than its share of resources.  He's right.  But unwittingly so, and not in the way he thinks.  Put simply, America consumes more than its fair share of resources because it borrows money to pay for its consumption.  When we borrow to subsidize our sumptuous lifestyle, someone else has to lend, i.e., not consume.

Individual Americans have contributed to the problem through personal debt, but we are gross amateurs before the American government.  In order to fund its profligate spending, the American government uses a secret weapon--inflation.  The government owns a printing press through the Federal Reserve.  As it borrows, it also prints more money to pay its debts; you could say that the government has a monopoly on counterfeiting.  Printing more money causes existing money to be worth less, which would ordinarily cause massive inflation.

Happily for the American government, the dollar is the world's reserve currency, which means that international trade is priced in dollars.  In order to keep inflation down in America, we exported the inflated dollars by selling government bonds to other governments, primarily China.  Only China isn't buying anymore.

And that brings us back to the opening statement.  We ARE using more than our fair share of resources, because we have conned the world into loaning us the money to buy them.  Loans that we intend to pay back in inflated (counterfeited) dollars (and lately it seems, with no intention of every paying back).  Obama has NO intention whatsoever of actually remedying the situation.  If he meant his "good citizen of the world" rhetoric, he would order the Fed to stop printing money, or better yet dissolve it altogether.  He would stop issuing government bonds.  He would end deficit spending.  He would encourage Americans to stop borrowing to fund their lifestyles.  Unfortunately, Obama is doing the exact opposite.  He sent Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to China to beg them to continue buying our debt.  The Fed has ramped up money printing even more with no end in sight.  Obama's first year budget deficit will be more than twice as large as Bush's last (even including the bailouts).  And he is still encouraging Americans to borrow and consume.

The sad fact is that it did not matter who was elected in November; the underlying cancer in the American economy, the inflationary policy favored by the government and the Fed, was not going to change.  You will notice that McCain campaigned for the bailouts.  Bush said he had to abandon the free market to save it.  And Obama?  Obama is simply following the trail laid out by Bush and all the presidents before him back to 1913 when the Fed was established.

If this has piqued your curiosity, I highly encourage you to read Murray Rothbard's short book What Has Government Done to Our Money.  It can be downloaded for free from www.mises.org.  For those of you with an aversion to books without pictures, search youtube for Irwin Schiff How an Economy Grows. (It's a narrated graphic novel.)