Argghhh!

I get around enough so that I've noticed the homogenization of America has made the cores of most newer towns and cities all pretty much look alike -- the same building styles, the same Big Name stores, the same clothing styles on the kids. But Main Street in each of the older towns (pre-WWII for you chilluns) in each part of the country is unique enough to enable me to confirm where I am.F'rinstance, drive through the older parts of Memphis and you'll pass gas station, Baptist church...

In Spain, their Legionaries use their goats to mark the pace of the troops. Thus, the fast double time cadence of their march. Watch by clicking on the goat BOQ

U.S. 5TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (Nov. 11, 2012) An Army AH-64D Apache helicopter prepares to land aboard the Afloat Forward Staging Base (Interim) USS Ponce (AFSB(I) 15), during an exercise. Ponce, formerly designated as an amphibious transport dock ship, was converted and reclassified to fulfill a long-standing U.S. Central Command request for an AFSB to be located in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jon Rasmussen)

That would be a great Clue answer to play...

What do these two things have in common? Hmmm, lessee. They're both artillery, of a sort. They're both made of metal. They're both in the Holdings of Castle Argghhh! And they were both made by the same company in the same factory. The Bing Werke, in Nuremburg, Germany. Founded by brother Ignaz and Adolf Bing in 1863, working out of their home, Bing was, by the time WWI started, the biggest toy company in the world. They are best known for their toy trains and live steam-powered toys,...

...but we get *paid* to do this! 11/26/2012 - U.S. Army Spc. Richard Burton leans out the door of a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter to get a better view of the ground during a flight mission over Afghanistan's Kandahar province on Nov. 26, 2012. Burton is a crew chief with the 25th Infantry Division's 2nd Battalion, 25th Combat Aviation Brigade. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Brendan Mackie, U.S. Army. (Released)

And I like it of course, because it reinforces what I was on about yesterday... Full text of Clayton Cramer's piece is available at the Federalist Society. For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, one of the most shocking aspects of the last three decades was the rise of mass public shootings: people who went into public places and murdered complete strangers. Such crimes had taken place before, such as the Texas Tower murders by Charles Whitman in 1966,1 but their rarity meant that they...