Weer'd World

More TSA Keeping Us Safe

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Weerd Beard

A worker at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has been charged with stealing shotguns, revolvers and other weapons from the checked luggage of passengers who had connections through the busy Twin Cities airport….A review of footage showed Vang removing items from checked luggage and taking them to an unsecured employee parking ramp where his wife was waiting in a vehicle, the criminal complaint said.

Vang was arrested in October and is no longer working at the airport, Hogan said.

Several boxes containing firearms, a crossbow, iPads, laptops, mobile phones, jewelry and other electronics were removed from Vang’s apartment, the complaint said. Authorities said he had 716 stolen items, valued at more than $84,000.

Fly the friendly skies…just don’t land, for the Keystone Kops run the show!

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

ATF Still Classy

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Weerd Beard

This is just nutty!

Federal authorities are under fire for a botched 10-month undercover storefront operation in the Milwaukee are that used a local man with a low IQ to set up their gun and drug deals and then turned on him, charging him with crimes that could send him to prison for the rest of his life, the Journal Sentinel reported.

The report says agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives convinced Chauncey Wright to help them in their “Fearless Distributing” sting by paying him in cigarettes, merchandise and money to ride his bike around town and hand out fliers recommending the fake storefront to friends, family and strangers.

Wright, 28, thought he was helping promote the store that stocked its shelves with shoes, clothing, drug paraphernalia and auto parts, according to his family. But once authorities shut down the operation, they came after him, charging him with federal gun and drug counts. He’s currently in the Waukesha County Jail. His attorney, Joseph Bugni, declined a request by the newspaper to interview him.

So they set up a fake store, and hired a mentally retarded man (let’s not mince words here) to bait the trap, and when it didn’t work they locked up their own patsy. SUPER CLASSY ATF! Good to see this organization is there to keep us safe!

Posted in Bad Justice, Freedom, Guns | Leave a comment

“Gun Death” Nun Killer

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Weerd Beard

Wow

A man who beat a nun over the head with a flashlight and then strangled her to quiet her moans pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in federal court Friday under a deal that saved him a possible mandatory life sentence….Prosecutors said Carroll, who just turned 21, confessed to breaking into the nun’s trailer home around midnight Nov. 1, 2009, in search of money and items that could be traded for cash or drugs and alcohol. He attacked Bartz with a flashlight her after she hit him with a slipper as he entered a bedroom, hitting her over the head five or six times and kicking her as she lay on the ground, he acknowledged in court on Friday. He then resumed rummaging through the trailer, going back to tie a shirt around her mouth and neck after she began moaning.

Bad justice tag, because this beast will walk free again, and prison is a poor rehabilitation center. Also I have no idea how this order of Nuns stand on self-defense, but a gun is a LOT better than a slipper. But those who use “Gun Death” as a metric have no issue with us being brained by a flashlight in our homes.

Posted in Bad Justice, Gun Death? | 1 Comment

Morning Fish

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Weerd Beard

This guy is cool!

The ocellated icefish (Chionodraco rastrospinosus) has gin-clear blood. And it has no scales. And it lives nowhere but the inky depths down to 3,200 feet (1 kilometer) in the icy waters off Antarctica. Other than that, it’s just an ordinary fish.

The Tokyo Sea Life Park is the only place with ocellated icefish in captivity, Agence France-Presse reports. “Luckily, we have a male and a female, and they spawned in January,” Satoshi Tada, an education specialist at the center, told AFP.

I wonder how difficult it was to get them to breed. Some fish are really easy, others are damned difficult.

Scientists hope the mated pair of icefish and their offspring in Tokyo will help researchers unlock the secrets of how the fish manages to survive without hemoglobin to carry oxygen to its cells.

It’s possible, some scientists speculate, that the icefish’s unusually large heart might help move oxygen through its body using blood plasma instead of hemoglobin.

Also, with no scales to get in the way, the icefish may absorb some oxygen directly through its skin: Cold, polar water is richer in oxygen than warmer waters.

But the mystery surrounding the icefish’s lack of hemoglobin may take years to solve. “More studies are needed on the question,” Tada said.

This fish is a standard talking point of ichthyology 100, the general consensus is that since cold water has a very high saturation for oxygen that the fish uses its whole body as a giant gill to exchange oxygen, still that may be pure speculation.

Check out the video, the guy is all kinds of cute!

H/t Alan

Posted in Biology | 2 Comments

The Beard Gives Them POWER!

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Weerd Beard

In POLITICS!!!

A Political Action Committee (PAC) launched this week to support bearded candidates, according to paperwork filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy (BEARD) was founded by 30-year-old Jonathan Sessions, who sits on the Columbia, Mo., Board of Education, according to his website.

“With the resurgence of beards in popular culture and among today’s younger generation, we believe the time is now to bring facial hair back into politics,” Sessions said in a statement.

“We haven’t had a bearded major party candidate run for president since Charles Evans Hughes ran and lost in 1916, and there has been a recent wave of retirements amongst bearded Congressmen, including David Obey and Steve LaTourette. Our hope is that we can start to reverse this disturbing trend.”

The BEARD PAC will support candidates from across the political spectrum as long as they have sufficient facial hair.

I also support their non-partisan approach! We need more beards in public office!!! Hell the last bearded President was Benjamen Harrison! Man that was in the 1890s! Time for that to end!

H/T Mike W

Posted in Politics, Random | 2 Comments

Police Officers on Gun Control

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Weerd Beard

This is some really powerful data

The survey, which was conducted in early March 2013, received 15,000 responses from law enforcement professionals. It found that the overall attitude of law enforcement is strongly anti-gun legislation and pro-gun rights, with the belief that an armed citizenry is effective in stopping crime. Response percentages varied only slightly when analyzed by rank and department size. Among the results:

86 percent feel the currently proposed legislation would have no effect or a negative effect on improving officer safety
Similarly, 92 percent feel that banning semi-automatic firearms, or “assault weapons,” would have no effect or a negative effect on reducing violent crime
Demonstrating the opinion that the best way to combat gun crime is through harsher punishment, 91 percent said the use of a firearm while perpetrating a crime should lead to a stiff, mandatory sentence with no plea bargains. Likewise, 59 percent believe increasing punishment severity for unlicensed dealers would reduce crime

The list goes on. This says a lot for those who are in charge of protecting and serving the public, and those who are in harm’s way and are the ones who will see the end-result of violence when it happens.

Posted in Freedom, Guns, Safety, Self Defense | 3 Comments

RINO to New Hampshire

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Weerd Beard

New Hampshire, don’t make the same mistake Massachusetts did:

Saying “I don’t think I’m done with politics,” former Senator Scott Brown stressed his ties to New Hampshire following a speech in Nashua on Thursday and refused to rule out a run for elective office in the Granite State.

Brown, speaking to reporters after delivering the keynote speech at a dinner to mark the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, noted that he owns a home in New Hampshire, has “been a taxpayer” there for 20 years, and has relatives who live in the state.

So it looks like “RINO”, and “Turncoat” are big enough feathers in Scott Brown’s hat, he’s thinking of adding “Carpet Bagger” to his resume. Hopefully the people of New Hampshire were watching.

I suspect Brown would behave more conservative in New Hampshire than here, but that’s only because of his lack of convictions. New Hampshire has far better options.

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

“Gun Death” Safety

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Weerd Beard

Sometimes Safety doesn’t work out how it was planned:

A safety drill gone wrong on a cruise ship resulted in the death of five crew members in Spain’s Canary Islands, Thomson Cruises said.

Three other workers were injured, the cruise line said. The accident happened just before noon Sunday on board the Thomson Majesty while it was docked in La Palma, one of the Canary Islands.

As part of the drill, a lifeboat was lowered into the water to test the evacuation procedure for passengers.

“Unfortunately, when the boat was being raised back up, one of the wires snapped, resulting in the boat falling back into the water,” a Thomson representative said via e-mail Monday.

I think this is a prime example of the “If it saves just one life” argument from those who use “Gun Death”. The “Common Sense” solution for this would be to simply never train ship crews how to use safety equipment, and therefore prevent such accidents…but leaving them totally ignorant in the event of an emergency, putting vastly more in danger in the event of an accident.

“If it saves one life” can frequently come at the loss of HUNDREDS, but just like these deaths don’t count in their books, the lives saved from guns don’t count either!

h/t Wallphone

Posted in Gun Death? | Leave a comment