Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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Comrade Bronstein, I presume?
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Tomboy by day, girly girl by night
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Domestication as an evolutionary success?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Domesticated animals have been around for tends of millions of years. Many ant species look after aphids in exchange for sugary secretions from their six-legged flocks. Human domestication of selected species certainly assured their survival to a far greater degree than remaining in the wild would have.
Even species that are raised for meat and hides rather than for companionship benefit in the evolutionary sense: most of the females live to reproduce and the overall populations are considerable. The down side is their complete dependency on humans. A toy poodle seldom survives long in the wild, neither does a farm-raised hen. Moreover, other species and humans as well often find feral lifeforms to be a nuisance. Forced to create a new biological niche for themselves, they have no choice but to intrude on the established populations.
Humans have long tried to domesticate other humans. Sometimes the control is almost total (North Korea), at other times bread and circuses or dole/welfare payments were provided in exchange for votes. Individuals from a single dependent generation could transition back into independence, but after several generations of welfare culture, the results appear to resemble feral rather than wild (independent) specimens. Completely dependent people lose the ability to think or to show initiative for lack of need. The inefficiency of the welfare bureaucracy may have been a saving factor that required some ability just to navigate the system. A more perfect system of distributing resources for nothing will likely produce even less capable and more perpetually dependent clients. Would increasing numbers in themselves indicate evolutionary success of those people who succeed in becoming domesticated by others? They are generally safe from the cannibal pot, and even from such tasks as conscription as their labor becomes closer to worthless.
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Quick demo of Faxon upper in action
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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Video playback sound problem.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
In the last week, I noticed that about 10% of Youtube videos play without audio in all three browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome). For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic4PQ-tnwJw plays fine but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhQNRsH3uc has no sound. I am not sure how to fix that. Vimeo plays music and sound effects but not voices (http://digg.com/video/the-history-of-aspect-ratio— I can’t hear any of the narration but music and SFX play just fine).
I re-installed Flash. Update: now it’s worse, and almost none of the videos have sound. Under IE, volume controls disappeared. In a lot of videos, music plays but voices either play extremely faintly (with volume at 100% in video controls, PC playback and on the speakers, I can barely hear them). Almost as if the playback depends on specific codec used by the video authors.
Stranger yet, known good tracks have functional instrumental music but the vocals are completely scrambled (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1qc_zg2od0)
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Video playback problem solved.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Turns out that the 3.5mm mini plug was partially pulled out of the computer, so only one of the two stereo channels would come through. Simple!
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More portraits from liberal Austin, TX
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Aunt and niece
Нас мало, но моя сестрёнка в тельняшке
Dry firing only, else eye protection would have been used
A very stylish hat
Snapshots from my visit with TWS.
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Gianni Rodari in English?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Does anyone know if “The Blue Arrow” or “Jasmine in the Country of Liars” have ever been translated into English?
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Season’s greetings!
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
“And save us some dead critter bits off your plate, will ‘ya?”
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The main reason for Sub2000 carbine
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
The main reason behind Sub2000 is the extended aimed range it offers while retaining compatibility with common carry pistols and compact enough storage dimensions to fit most briefcases. Effective aimed range with most pistols is under 15m, while a pistol caliber carbine with iron sights is good out to about 50, and further with a low-power optic.
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Recent portrait of me
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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From a recent range trip
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
My friend and his two nieces, 15 and 22.
As people mentioned before, the other side doesn’t have nearly as much fun.
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Force multiplier
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
A 52 year old woman, no matter now well trained, would be hard pressed to keep up with young men who make up the majority of violent criminals. Add a Glock to her hip and a .308 rifle to her hands, and the balance shifts in favor of the well trained — in this instance, the lady in the photo. Gun is Civilization.
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Ever wondered why Japan has no gun rights movement?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Consider that the ready access to explosives has been only restricted in the US for less than one lifetime. How many civil rights RKBA activists even try to get access to explosives and various tools containing them (grenades, mines, detcord, satchel charges, RPGs) less restricted? Now consider that non-government Japanese have been denied all arms for at least five hundred years, and you can see why few would bring up the topic in polite company.
And yet, this is a topic that has to be brought up. As the world-wide experience with modern warfare shows, civilians with only small arms can’t take on even light armor, dooming them to retreat after retreat until there’s no place to run. Just as the 1570s samurai learned that bows may be useful but cannot replace muskets, we should understand that even accurate rifles with decent rate of fire cannot do the job of Claymores, RPGs and mortars. And US gun owners are as far behind the power curve as the Plains Indians were in the 1880s. Denied not only the more potent weapons but also the training and maintenance know-how, the Indians couldn’t have made much use of a Gatling even had they captured one, and American civilians by and large cannot use a mortar, an personnel carrier or even a Claymore safely and effectively.
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Casting call from an excellent model (Minnesota)
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
I’d like to amplify a casting call from Stephania, an exceptional Duluth model who is coming to Minneapolis/St.Paul next weekend. Working with her could be of interest to Twin Cities based photographers.
| Nude Model Shoot (Posted on: Dec 28, 2013) | |||||||||||||
Posted by: S Nia</p> |
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| View: 27 | |||||||||||||
| Details: I will be in the cities available for shoots – if I get at least 3 requests! It is quite the drive and I just want to make it worth it. E-mail, or message me through MM for mobile number if you’d prefer to discuss it over the phone! Thank you.</p>
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Peaceful uses of explosives
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
In response to my recent post, everyone focused on combat uses of explosives. While that is an important use, it is relatively uncommon. Just as firearms are used for recreation, hunting and other non-defensive uses far, far more often than for self-defense or war, so are explosives are more often used for construction, field clearing and other peaceful purposes. Yes, just as it may be hard for a gunless people to imagine a peaceful gun culture, it is hard for us — long denied access to most explosives and means of controlling them — to imagine their positive uses.
Those uses are all around me as I drive on most Tennessee roads: the vertical hashes in the rock faces on both sides of many roadways are where gelignite or something similar was place into pre-drilled holes and exploded to remove obstructions to travel. ANFO is still popular for removing tree stumps and boulders from fields. Detcord is used for falling trees quickly and safely by those who have access to it.
Explosives of various kinds are heat engines. They convert rapid exothermic reactions into kinetic or brisant action. Safe ways of working with them have been worked out ages ago, and yet we have multiple generations of people world-wide who have no access to these useful tool and often no idea of their utility. Because all these would-be common peaceful uses are denied, explosives get the stigma of the association with terrorism and war, same as guns do in disarmed societies. With good people denied these tools, only bad actors get the publicity and the problem becomes self-reinforcing.
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Security measures merely move terrorist events…
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
…to the check-in site: Volgograd, Russia gets an explosion right in the crowd at the metal detector. In short, even if successful, security measures save trains or aircraft from damage, not passengers.
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Any Canon 70D users in Nashville?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
I am considering adding a 70D to my 5Dmk2 as a more video and action oriented body. However, I’d like to try it for a day before buying.
I just tried a friend’s Nikon D700 and the user interface improvement (and apparent build quality) over Canon bodies is considerable. But I can’t justify the massive expense of switching brands — too many specialized lenses to replace.
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Studio or another indoor space for photos in Minneapolis
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
I am looking for a space that I could use for portrait, gun poster and figure work this coming Saturday, January 3, near Hopkins, Edina or Minneapolis. Does anyone have suggestions or leads? Outdoors is just too cold this time of year.
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Bright-eyed and pensive
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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