guy next door

There's this guy next door who keeps playing his recorder so nicely with the seaview outside my window, I think I'm dreaming.

Once, I started playing (my skills are very rusty, it has been 3 years since I actually played a complete song. So, I improvised the Marine's Hymn (which I heard on midi) and this guy shouted from 1 floor above my room and said "you play too?" I said,"Yeah, do you do it for school or fun?" And he (a bit younger than me, like a Year 9) answered "for school". I said "for fun, haven't touched one for ages".

I ended up not completing my maths homework as a result of this. But hey, at least socialising is much better than sitting in front of a computer killing people in some bloody arcade game...

It's good to socialise with people outside your window. Do you have similar experiences? Feel Free to comment.

Marines being bloodthirsty

A three-star Marine general gave an indication of the homicidal ethos guiding the US occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan when he declared during a military conference in San Diego Tuesday that “It’s fun to shoot some people.”

Responding to a question about fighting the Iraqi resistance, Lieutenant General James N. Mattis—who is in charge of developing Marine war-fighting doctrine and tactics—said, “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up front with you, I like brawling.”

The general, also known as “Mad Dog Mattis,” led the 1st Marine Division during the initial invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and returned to command marines during the occupation of Iraq, where he led the initial attack on Fallujah in April 2004.

He presented the invasion of both countries as a civilizing mission, denounced Muslim men and reveled in killing them. “You go into Afghanistan,” he told his audience, and “you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

This last comment drew loud laughter and enthusiastic applause from the audience attending the panel discussion hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

Despite his yen for killing, Mattis warned that overwhelming military superiority had failed to subdue the popular resistance in Iraq. “Our very dominance of certain forms of warfare have driven the enemy into historic forms of warfare that we have not mastered,” he said. “Don’t patronize this enemy,” he said of the guerillas. “They mean business. They mean every word they say.... They’re killing us now. Their will is not broken.”

Presenting the fight as a twilight struggle between good and evil, Mattis insisted in order to defeat such an enemy the Marines had to recruit and train the “right people”—i.e., those who had no compunction about killing.

..........for full article, click link below...

extracted from

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/gene-f07.shtml

Gun Control???

The thing that pisses me off ever since the Virginia Tech shootings is how much attention people put on gun control and the killer Cho guy.

I think the Cho guy was totally crazy. But who isolated him from the rest of the society? The society. No one seems to have paid him enough positive attention and to befriend him. And yes, you can say he was, according to his relatives, born that way. However, if he was born that way, he shouldn't be held completely responsible for the incident. The society had a part to play.

Next, gun control. I think the pawn shop "industry" should be government controlled from now on, and bills should be passed to force people to have licenses to keep and use guns. There should also be laws on forbidding people with mental illnesses from possessing guns.

However, I will not agree with anything about banning it all together. This is because there are a lot of people who have a fear of guns and weapons - it's just that guns can act "at a distance" which makes things much more scarier. This fear is not exactly justified, because we were never educated to like them and from the time when we were small, violence is discouraged.

Guns should not, but unfortunately is, related to crime and violence. These are the problems, not the guns. Guns are not drugs, they have a purpose other than to kill people. They can be for sport and leisure and many other things. Why do they keep relating it to guns? Won't Cho have killed plenty of people if he lodged molotov cocktails into classrooms and stabbed people with combat knives? Think about it! Guns are innocent, the people who use them for criminal purposes are the ones to blame.

I hope I haven't insulted anyone, but this is what I think should be the rational way to approach the problem of guns falling into the wrong hands.

Please Post your thoughts.

mythbusters gets it wrong

Did you watch yesterday's (12 April, 2007) Thursday Mythbusters?

They got the sniper rifle scope myth wrong!

- Communist/Vietcong sniper scopes during the Vietnam war tended to look like tubes more than the modern ones, which mythbusters chose. If Grant the dummy (or the VC sniper) had the genuine scope, they might have had a better choice. A straighter scope makes it easier to shoot through. Also, VC scopes at the time, I believe, used metal for the scope tube.

- The Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock had used an older sniper rifle as his weapon in vietnam. Mythbusters could have used that.

- Use a Full metal Jacket Armor Piercing round, not those puny regular ammunition. (I don't know what they used, but civilians usually don't use a FMJ bullet.

- Go get professional military snipers to do the job, with their own rifles.

However, I did read off some forums that the Mythbusters will redo the myth.

P.S. - My new neighbour has bought this gas BB gun.

New pen ideas

Ok. The sensor's dead. So what's next?

The invigilator writing tool

- A timer is installed on the writing tool, which counts down to the time limit of the exam. The pen locks itself immediately after the time.
- The pen has a display on it, which shows the time
-

Optional:
- the pen is bugged with a listening microphone.
- All pens have a locator tool, which means the pen cannot be used to write on any surface other than the test paper.

CAS Open Day!

Yesterday was CAS (Civil Aid Service) open day. There were some stuff on show at their base.

Quite cool. They have this really high outdoor climbing wall (higher than anything I've seen! 13-15 storeys high) and a nice abseiling slope for training and a training concrete building. I tried out some of those training areas, abseiling down the slope was scary at first, but I came out doing it nicely. Also, bouldering the 5.10 (rating) wall was scary because I kept having to go a bit higher for better holds.

They use top quality harnesses and helmets from petzel! The harnesses have nice pads on it, makes falls more comfortable!

There was also this nice tunnel maze thing that you can crawl through in the dark. I bumped my head really hard a few times, lucky to have a good helmet. I think the real thing would be 20 times worse - a training officer told us that it could be filled with smoke to simulate a fire rescue for the real test.

Some Pictures comming....just need to find the cable!