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Jul 082016
 

Who would have ever thought it?

My Little Free Library war: How our suburban front-yard lending box made me hate books and fear my neighbors

Short form: A writer for Salon has come to realize that when he put one of those “Little Free Library” things out in his front years that what he *wasn’t* doing was setting up a place for people to exchange books, but a place for people to just pick up free stuff. That his neighbors, a bunch of “Progressive” stereotypes by way of “Graying gardeners and aging hippies; Bernie-or-Bust types; millennial parents, tatted and pierced, shepherding toddlers with names like Arya,” have assumed that anything that can be taken is actually free for the taking.

Welcome to adulthood, pal. People will steal anything that ain’t nailed down, and a lot of things that are. *Especially* if they’ve been misraised to believe that private property rights aren’t sacred, that all property is or should be communal, that they are entitled to free stuff. This is a variant of the Tragedy of the Commons. People see no repercussions if they simply permanently abscond with the books, perhaps even sell them on ebay; so what do they care?

As a lover of books and someone who wishes to share knowledge, when the “Little Free Library” things first started popping up a few years back I contemplated setting one up out front. Then it dawned on me that, without some enforcement mechanism, I’d do just as well to simply pile books atop a garbage can.

 Posted by at 6:46 pm
Jul 082016
 

A while ago I was asked by another aerospace historian if I had any artwork of the “Dual Keel” version of the Space Station design from the mid/late 1980s. This was a predecessor to the International Space Station (the “Russians” being the “Soviets” at the time) and was to be used not just as an orbiting shack for some basic research, but also as an assembly area for manned missions to the moon and Mars. Turns out I had a fair amount of Dual Keel art. As is the way of things, a lot of that art is moderately poor… scanned from dusty slides, in many cases. Still, it’s what I had. It dawned on me that others might be interested in it, so I put all the images into the same size and format (standard 8.5X11) and made a PDF out of it, seventy some pages. I have uploaded Part One to the “APR Extras” Dropbox site into the “2016-07 APR Extras” folder. This is accessible to all APR Patreon patrons at the $4 level and above (if you are such a patron and don’t have access, send me a message via Patreon, I’ll get you fixed up).

dualkeelad1

 Posted by at 1:31 pm
Jul 072016
 

Past couple of days have seen some bad PR for police, what with the extremely dubious shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philandro Castile in Minnesota. This has been a joyous time for the causehead movementarians, of course, now they have something to protest again. But then this happens:

Multiple officers killed at Dallas protest over police killings

As of right now, eleven police officers have been shot; four have died. The Dallas PD says that there were at least two shooters, using rifles from behind cover, ambushing cops sniper-style. Reportedly two suspects in custody.

So, time for uninformed rampant speculation about the shooters! As always… Republican white supremacist Christian fundamentalists has got to be first on everyone’s list, right?

 Posted by at 10:56 pm
Jul 062016
 

While FBI Director Comey recommended no charges against Hillary, he did her no favors with the rest of his presentation. In fact, he laid out a pretty good case for why she *should* have been charged. Why wasn’t she? One of life’s great mysteries, I suppose.

Behold:

Compare and contrast what she said *didn’t* happen with what he said *did.*

So, she gets off scot-free, at least from a criminal law sense. But if Trump and his people have *any* sense (I’ll leave my own opinion on that a blank spot for now), they’ll get all kinds of mileage out of this in the coming months.

Yeesh. I just feel sullied and unusual whenever I realize that Donald Trump is the least awful option this election season. In contrast, this trailer I stumbled across for a video game called “Scorn” almost seems like a normal sort of election campaign ad.

Giger-esque body horror? Meh. I’ve seen Hillary Clinton evade a proper prosecution.

 Posted by at 11:21 pm
Jul 062016
 

A Nation Ruled by Science Is a Terrible Idea

Neil deGrasse Tyson sent out a simple tweet:

Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence

And this writer from Slate got all snippy about the idea: “Tyson is a very smart man, but this is a very stupid tweet, and a very stupid idea.”

Because, sure, the best way to runs things is via chaos and superstition. That’s a winning solution.

In short, the author of the piece hearkens back to hacks like the Nazis and the Commies who claimed to have “scientific” forms of government. But they did not. Not in the “no true Scotsman” sense, but in the “complete distortion of what science actually means” sense. What the Nazis and the Commies and the Great Society and New Dealers did was to look at the problems they faced and asked their chosen experts what the solutions were, then said, “Ok, we’ll do that, those are the answers” and then tried to ram those solutions through, regardless. But what might *real* scientific governance be? Something I’ve been wanting for decades:

  1. All new laws must, like a scientific hypothesis, say not only what they are intended to achieve, but to also lay out predictions about what those laws will do. “This law will raise revenues, or lower crime, or fix the ozone hole or…”
  2. All new laws that are passed are then judged on their efficacy in fulfilling their predictions.
  3. Laws that do not live up to the original hypothesis *AUTOMATICALLY* and irrevocably sunset after a specified period. A supermajority vote is required to revive a law that has proven to be a failure.

Real science puts forward a hypothesis… then tests it. And if the facts don’t match the predictions, then the hypothesis is abandoned or adjusted to fit the facts.

But this is Slate, after all. And so the left wing war on science continues.

 Posted by at 9:04 pm
Jul 052016
 

After Bill Clinton’s secret meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the FBI today announced that they’re not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton for her illegal use of a private server.

From FBI Director Comey’s statement:

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

So, yeah. No charges. Figure *that* one out.

Rule of law?

rules

 Posted by at 11:13 am
Jul 052016
 

Every now and then ebay provides some interesting items that are just plain too expensive. One such is a Boeing presentation on using the 747 to carry and air-launch MX ICBMs. The original Buy It Now price was over two grand; consequently, the document remained on ebay for something like a year. However, I negotiated down to $250. Still too expensive, but crowdfunding makes it reasonably affordable.

I currently have about 9 people interested in splitting the cost. Nine plus me means the cost is $25 per person… suddenly not quite so horrible. If more people come on board, the price will fall even more. Twenty people total drops it to $12.50 each. Thirty drops it to $8.33, and so on. Each contributor gets a complete high-rez scan of the document.

If you are interested in getting in on this, it’s open to APR Patreon patrons at all levels. Check out the APR Patreon for this and other rewards. The most recent posting at the APR Patreon has a place to comment and express your interest in getting a copy of this document.

The opportunity will be open until the document arrives in the mail, which should be a few days.

747-mx

 Posted by at 10:36 am