Anyone at the State Department who didn’t pay attention to the advice given here should be stripped of their security clearances and barred from holding sensitive positions in the federal government in the future.
Oct 212016
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Oct 212016
The ESA’s Schiaparelli Mars lander failed to land on Mars yesterday. That’s not to say it didn’t make it to Mars… it just made it there a little faster than it should’ve. Ten parachutes were cut loose too soon and the braking rockets didn’t burn long enough, so it fell out of the sky with an Earth-shattering kaboom. Well… Mars craft have had a pretty unfortunate record.
What’s impressive is that there are enough satellites orbiting Mar that the crash site has already been spotted:
Camera on Mars Orbiter Shows Signs of Latest Mars Lander
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted both the parachute and the scorch mark using its low-rez “Context Camera.” The high-rez “HiRISE” camera will be trained on the site in the near future.
Oct 202016
Well, this is just super. On January 1, 2019, the New Horizons probe will pass remarkably close to Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, a chunk of something about 19 to 28 miles across. Telescopic examination has shown it to be reddish, redder than the splotches on Pluto and Charon. The scienticians will tell you that the redness is due to the presence of tholins, reddish-brown chemicals produced when simple organic molecules like methane are exposed to ultraviolet light. But come on, we all know the score… this is a chunk of frozen blood left out in deep space by the fungi from Yuggoth or Yog Sothoth or the Ogdru Jahad or Scientologists. The only question is, what’s the blood *from?* Will New Horizons provide the answer… and will that forbidden knowledge drive everyone *insane?* Personally, I suspect not. The flyby won’t occur until 2019… by which time I expect that the Earth will be a smoking radioactive ruin. Nobody will be manning the radio receivers to hear what New Horizons has to say. Those few who survive will be too busy trying to scratch a living out of the blasted Earth under a smoke and ash filled sky, daily battling hordes of mutated social justice zombies and Kardashidemons.
Oct 192016
You can stop looking. Here is is… “Let It Snow” on trumpet with a Glock accompaniment.
There are many more Gun Grams available on Charlie Cooks YouTube site:
Oct 192016
Students told term ‘be a man’ represents toxic masculinity
The dumbth continues…
According to the trailer of the film, it teaches that the “three most destructive words” a boy can hear growing up is “be a man.” Experts quoted therein also suggest that violent outbursts are prompted by masculinity pressures because “respect is linked to violence.”
Oy.
OK, so telling a male to “be a man” is bad. Since a man is what the male would normally be or become, what they’re basically saying is that being normal is bad.
You gotta give these people props for having done a *magnificent* job on tearing down boys and men in the US. By working to eliminate the role of fathers in the education and maturation of whole populations of boys, they have eliminated proper role models for boys, leaving them with either no guide on how to become civilized men, or guides like the anti-male “feminists” that have become so prominent in recent decades. Is it any wonder, then, that so many boys and men have emotional and/or psychological issues?
If full knowledge on the source of all this was ever found, I wonder if it might turn out that a good chunk of this originated as a plan by the KGB to destroy the US from within. This would not surprise me. It would also mean that the people who support this nonsense are actually committing treason.
Oct 182016
A few years ago, Jamie XX’s song “Gosh” had an official video released. And then a few days ago, it had another completely different official video released. The music is pretty much the same, some very slight alterations, but the videos are entirely different.
The first video shows what STEM could theoretically achieve. The second video… I dunno what the hell is going on there, if there’s some sort of message, or what. Take a look at the both of them… and see if, like me, the one focusing on the power of science and engineering doesn’t come across as by far the most appealing and inspiring of the two.
Even in the context of art like music videos… what’s more inspiring? A STEM vision, or an Art vision?
Earlier video:
New video:
Now… which one presents a world you’d like to see made real, that you’d like to be a part of? That makes the least bit of any sort of sense?
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For those anti-science trolls out there, this post is not saying that art should be done away with. But it *is* saying that an understanding of science and engineering allows you to dream dreams not only vaster and more beautiful that you would be able to without science… but those dreams could be made *real.* Without science and engineering and math, nothing you dream will likely be possible or meaningful.
Oct 172016
Ah, anti-science/anti-STEM moronity. Is there no limit to how monumentally idiotic it can get? Apparently not:
Watch Leftist Students Say Science Is Racist and Should Be Abolished
University of Cape Town movement says witchcraft is no less valid than Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity.
Just… wow. Behold:
Sure, one can argue that this is just a handful of idiots in a university far, far away. What are the chances that the thinking of clearly crazy people in Capetown, South Africa, will be adopted here in the Enlightened World? Well… consider. The idiots in the video use the same terminology as modern western Social Justice Warriors. They use the same *tactics* as western SJW’s. “Safe space.” “Progressive space.” Demanding apologies from dissenters. “Decolonization.” Feels before reals. Unearned arrogance.
The fact that these anti-science monsters have so successfully adopted the SJW mantras and worldview means that it is quite possible that their particular anti-science goals and objectives could well filter up through the rest of the SJW hive-mind. After all, if you argue with them and tell them that they are wrong… you’re a racist.
Thunderf00t did a good job of explaining why this thinking is teh dumm:
Now, here’s a thought experiment. Let’s say you were ethnically *not* a sub-Saharan African. You are, instead, let’s say, a white guy. And you *despise* sub-Saharan Africans. You don’t want them to progress; you don’t want to see them flying jetliners or colonizing Mars or building new computers or powerplants or cars that will compete with *you.* You don’t want to see them taking advantage of modern medicine and agriculture. You want to see their numbers decrease, their standard of living fall, their hopes and horizons shrink. You want to see a whole continent of people reduced to the level of savage that you think that they are. So, how would you go about making sure that happened? One way would be to launch a genocidal war of conquest and oppression. But, dayum, that’s expensive. On the other hand… if you can convince them to believe *exactly* as the “Fallists” in the video believe, you can get them to replace science with superstition. And once they’ve done that… they will do what you, in your racism and hatred, what to have done to them.
Oct 172016
The History Channel has a new series, “Doomsday: 10 Ways he World will End.” Each episode describes some scientifically possible doomsday scenario… the first episode had a dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, the second had the Earth swallowed by a supermassive black hole. (One of these is more likely than the other…). The third episode, aired just a few days ago, has a rogue planet with the mass of Neptune plow into the Earth.
At the end of the last episode, discussion was made of the possibility of mankind surviving Earth getting steamrolled by an interstellar interloper by sending an emergency colonization mission to Mars. It was only a couple of minutes, mostly illustrated with stock footage of modern launch vehicles being assembled. But one of the talking heads suggested that the means of getting to mars would be via Orion nuclear pulse vehicle. A *very* brief shot of the Orion vehicle zipping past was included. The Orion CG model was obviously rather quickly slapped together. It was pretty generic, but on the whole looked reasonable enough. But for some reason the craft was given an unnecessary and impossible to justify rocket nozzle smack in the middle of the pusher plate. I took a few snapshots of the TV screen with my cameraphone… seemed good enough under the circumstances.
Oct 172016
On the one hand, this seems like it might be kinda neat: a double barreled .380 Derringer that folds up and looks like a smart phone. Great defensive weapon for concealability. What’s not to like?
On the other hand, there have been numerous cases of people getting plugged by the police because they pulled out wallets or cell phones and the cops involved thought they were actually small pistols. Imagine if the police got wind of there being *actual* “cell phone guns.”
I have no idea how real this is… is it just computer imagery, or have they built and tested practical, functional firearms. Are they a vaporware company, or are they good to go. The “Ideal Conceal” website is not terribly informative on these points.
And on the gripping hand… if concealability, practicality and, let’s face it, the ability to actually function outside of the movie-physics-realm are not major priorities, you could always go with this:
Oct 162016
We’ve undoubtedly all heard stories of someone who’s getting by financially, then they win the lottery, go absolutely bugnuts on buying way more stuff than their winning can justify, and end up in worse shape than before they won. But this article details another type of person who goes broke due to the lottery: the neighbors of the winners.
Why You May Go Bankrupt if Your Neighbor Wins the Lottery
Before I started reading the article, I figured it would detail the sad possibility of your neighbor winnign the lottery, doing a whole lot of improvements to their property and perhaps buying & improving others in the area, consequently drivign up property values and thus tax rates, screwing over the poor schmoes who weren’t involved but who can now no longer afford their homes. But it’s worse than that.
In the case I’d assumed, the poor schmoe is blameless. Just sheer dumb luck to suddenly get gentrified out of house and home. But what the article actually describes is blame that can be laid entirely at the feet of the neighbors.
In short, the cause is envy. Your neighbor wins the lottery and, for some reason, *doesn’t* promptly move away. But they *do* go out and buy a brand new sports car, or SUV, or in-ground swimming pool, or life-size Hulkbuster. And what do *you* do? If you are a rational, wise and self-aware person, you go next door, congratulate them, then go about your life as if nothing has changed… because for you, it hasn’t. But if you are like a more common human being, you see your neighbors neato new stuff, and you decide, ” Hmmm. I should one-up them.”
Which is fine, and helps keep the economy motoring along, but if you *can’t* afford to one-up your neighbors, you’re rather stupidly setting yourself up for financial disaster.
The abstract for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia working paper that the article is based on has this to say:
We provide new causal evidence that keeping up with the Joneses behavior causes financial distress by examining whether lottery prizes of random dollar magnitudes increase bankruptcy filings of very close neighbors of the winner. We find that a 1% increase in the lottery prize causes a 0.04% rise in subsequent bankruptcies among the winners’ close neighbors. We also provide evidence on conspicuous consumption as a mechanism for this causal relationship. The size of lottery prizes increases the value of visible assets (e.g., houses, cars) but not invisible assets (e.g., cash, financial assets), appearing on the bankruptcy balance sheets of neighboring bankruptcy filers.
So, if your neighbor wins the lottery and as a result you promptly spend yourself into the poorhouse, whose fault is it? It’s not your neighbors; they didn’t force you to spend a dime. It’s not the Lottery’s fault. It’s not the government’s fault, the taxpayers, your other neighbors. It’s not even the fault of the people who sold you stuff (assuming, of course, that they didn’t sell you stuff under false pretenses). It’s *your* fault.
What’s interesting, I think, is that I’d bet that most people would agree. When presented with this as a pure hypothetical about a neighbor buying beyond his means as a result of someone else winning the lottery, they’d agree that it’s the neighbors fault and responsibility. But here’s the thing: change the words a little bit, and instead of the neighbor winning the lottery, it’s the neighbor running a successful business and making a mintload of money. Suddenly we’re talking about “income inequality,” and somehow the neighbor is no longer responsible. Even if the rich guy isn’t at fault exactly for the neighbors plight, many people will still believe it is the role of the government to swoop in and take some of the rich guys money to redistribute it to the neighbor.
The way your neighbor chooses to spend his bags of cash (assuming we’re not talking about buying nightly rock concepts in the back yard or fireworks displays or whatever) has no material effect on you. Heck, let’s say with his new millions he is able to lease time on a time-travelling 100-inch OLED 16K 3D TV and is able to watch in the privacy of his home theater Episodes 8 through 127 of Star Wars, peer into alternate realities and catch up on seasons 2 through 12 of Firefly, and binge-watch “Keeping up with the Scarlett Johansson & Kate Upton Zero-G Naked Fun Time Hour.” Assuming he doesn’t actually spoil those future episodes of Star Wars… how are you harmed by his ability to enjoy things that you cannot? Jealous? You bet. But you not only have no right to what he has, you’re a dumbass if you do self-destructive things you cannot afford, like mortgaging your house to catch a glimpse of the magical TV, or voting for socialist nightmares like Bernie Sanders who promises to take your neighbors stuff because it’s somehow “unfair” that he has what you don’t.
Do what I do when you see someone with something you want but cannot have: grumble, piss and moan, then get on with life. If “getting on with it” means working harder to make more money to earn that which you want, so much the better. Obviously some things that you might want can’t be bought no matter the fatness of your bank account, but destroying yourself over it is just stupid.