A Couple of Old Monkeys

Me and me girlfriend Inji at the Oregon Zoo.

BeBop Volta

Bebop Drone - LAUNCH VIDEO - Actual footage 1080p 1
Music Paralized by John and the Volta. Parrot web site here. Looks pretty cool. $500 for the drone and it appears that you can control it with a tablet, or you can spend another $400 for a controller, and you may still need a tablet. Via Posthip Scott.

Update October 2021 replaced missing video.

Girls with Guns

The American Woman Shooter Julie McQueen

Claims to be "an exciting magazine for women". I know I am excited. Via Iaman.

Bug

In software development there are sometimes debates about whether the way a program works is incorrect, and is therefor a symptom of a bug, or whether that is the way it is supposed to work and is therefor a feature. Via Byron the Glider Man.

Death

The Guardian now is now keeping track of people killed by the police in the USA. Commercial news media thrives on this sort of thing, especially when there is any doubt about whether it was justified or not, and of course, there is always some doubt in someone's mind. For instance, if they killed me I would be absolutely certain it wasn't justified.
    A fair number of the people killed by police can be classified as 'suicide by cop'. It might be a sin to commit suicide, but a significant number of people find life unbearable for one reason or another and choose to leave. Some of them want to die without having to actually kill themselves, and suicide by cop is one alternative. All you need is a gun, most any sort will do, and the ability to act determined. The cops will take care of the rest.
    From the table above you can see that gun deaths are way down on the list. Homicide isn't even on the CDC's list of leading causes, I added it so we could compare. Note that almost half of the suicides are done with guns.
    And then there is 'Other', which kills more people than any other cause, and what are we doing about that?

Guardian link via Detroit Steve. Gun death numbers are from the Wikipedia page and are probably not for the same year as the CDC numbers. All other numbers are from the CDC, except 'Other', which was calculated.
 

Scary Coincidence?

The World Most Expensive Table $50,000 Expanding Table
A few days ago I was mentally idling along and I remembered this table. I didn't remember it exactly, I remember seeing this video or one very similar to it, and I'm trying to remember how the pieces of the top fit together. I pick up a pen and start sketching to see if I can figure out how it was done. I don't make much progress, and after a few minutes I put it aside.
    Today I open up the Numbrix puzzle page and there's an ad from Whole Mom with a thumbnail view of this video. Now I know Google is tracking everything I do, and the ads are tailored to my 'interests', but I am pretty sure I didn't look on the internet for this anytime in the last few days. So is Google now so far in cahoots with the NSA that they are reading my mind?

John Wick

A very silly, vary action-y movie starring Keeno Reeves in the title role. Yes, I know that's not how he spells his name, and yes, I know that's not how it's pronounced, but I can never remember the correct pronunciation, and besides, I kinda like saying 'keen-o'.
    The best part was spotting all the character actors we had seen in other shows, like . . .

Lance Reddick as The Continental hotel manager Charon, from The Wire.

Clarke Peters as Harry, also from The Wire. He only shows up briefly, most memorably in the hotel corridor in his underwear carrying a gun, you know, just in case.

Michael Nyqvist (right) as Viggo Tarasov and Alfie Allen as his son Iosef Tarasov. Michael Nyqvist we saw in the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. We've been watching Alfie Allen playing the horribly tortured victim Reek on Game of Thrones.

Here we have Adrianne Palicki as the assassin Perkins. I don't actually remember seeing her before, but she has a memorable fight seen with Keeno in this movie. Plus she carries a gun, though she doesn't manage to hit anything with it. Bad quality in an assassin. Her expression here more than makes up for not holding a gun at the moment.

I don't know where they got the story for this movie, but I suspect a graphic novel. Or maybe they skipped that step. Our hero drives a succession of high performance cars. He starts with an old high-performance Mustang, similar to Eleanor from the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds. When that gets stolen he gets an early 1970's Chevelle Super Sport. I think that one gets trashed, so now he gets a new Dodge Charger. I think the Chrysler product placement team is working overtime these days. Chrysler products seem to be the choice of bad guys across the board in movieland.
    I understand how some people are still mentally locked into those aging muscle cars, but for me they are more like dinosaurs. Big, heavy, cumbersome and crude, that can be beaten six ways from Sunday by any number of modern cars. Probably not by a Civic, but certainly by a some versions of a Cadillac.