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Apr 282016
 

This seems like it was a blast:

UMass Amherst students throw temper tantrum at free speech event

In short… this last Monday a few people dared say something politically incorrect, and the social justice warriors melted down. For example, behold this clip:

 

Take special note of the fine young lady who tries to make the whole thing all about her. You know, I try to avoid making fun of people based on their appearance, but sometimes some people behave like *such* jackholes that you cannot help at least cranking out the jokes at their expense in your own head. And, man, this person is so far on one side of the bell curve in terms of both behavior and appearance that it’s hard to not point and laugh. One is left to wonder if she will look back on her performance in shame, recognizing that she pretty much single-handedly proved the speakers right in suggesting that political correctness on campus has gone to far; or is she so messed up that she is beyond recovery and will spend the rest of her life in a  haze of misery, false victimhood and unreasoning hate?


Some other vids from the event:

And a long one:

 Posted by at 6:25 pm
Apr 282016
 

That’s not how any of this works.

Athol man sues state employee citing “Law of Moses”

Because Mosaic Law says nothing about needing a drivers license or license plates, this feller believes he doesn’t need ’em and that US/Idaho laws are a “fiction.” And so he has decided to sue for $5.6 million the Idaho Transportation Department employee who sent him the letter explaining that since he didn’t have a license he didn’t have the right to drive a car on public roads. It seems, though, he’s suing in a state court, so figure *that* out.

So… sure thing, dude.

Now, I’m all in favor of people who don’t want to live under the laws of the land being allowed to do so. You don’t like it here, go live somewhere else… the universe is vast and appears to be almost entirely empty. Or use the system in place to change the laws you don’t like. But like the “Sovereign Citizen” movements (there are two… a “rural, white” version, and an “urban, black” version), just deciding that the laws don’t apply to you because you’ve got some crackpot paperwork you worked up yourself? Not gonna work.

Image not related.

 Posted by at 10:42 am
Apr 272016
 

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX is planning on using a Falcon 9 Heavy to launch a modified and unmanned Dragon 2 space capsule to Mars. In 2018.

 

 

 

Seems the Dragon 2 has been designed to be an all-round planetary lander, supposedly good for “anywhere in the solar system” (oh, yeah, smart guy? Like, the sun? Jupiter? Detroit?). That’s certainly handy, but they’ll need an ascent vehicle if they want to send (and recover) humans.

 Posted by at 5:02 pm
Apr 262016
 

Just when you think that the war between Socialism and Capitalism, or collectivism and individualism, has covered every battlefield, you find out about one you hadn’t considered:

Why is it illegal to walk freely in most of the US?

In short:

“Oh boo hoo, in the US there’s this terrible concept called ‘property rights,’ and landowners are allowed to keep out trespassers.”

The argument is made in the article that if you want to cross someone elses property you should be allowed to because, you know, because. The writer of the article uses European precedent as an excuse.

If you can convince  a nation that private property is available for public use, then you have successfully eroded the basic *idea* of “private property.” And to many people, that would be a good thing.

 Posted by at 9:38 am
Apr 252016
 

Gas blasts from black holes show surprising alignment

It seems a statistically significant number of supermassive black holes  (12 out of 64) way off across the universe are shooting out incredibly powerful gas jets in more or less the same direction. These jets are sent out from the poles of the holes, perpendicular to the plane of the accretion disks. If the jets are aligned, that means the black holes are aligned. While this could be due to random chance, the authors of a scientific paper suggest that the alignment may be due to some unknown influence from the “filaments” that are visible on 3D maps of the universe. The “filaments” are formed by strings of galaxies, hundreds of millions of lightyears long.

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 Posted by at 5:26 pm
Apr 252016
 

So Raedthinn and Fingers were sleeping together, minding their own business. When in comes Bruce… young, full of energy, and just really not that smart.

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Fortunately for Bruce, he grew bored of the game before Raedthinn could whop him upside the head (Raedthinn can *punch*).

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 Posted by at 2:54 pm
Apr 252016
 

China plans fleet of floating nuclear power plants to provide energy to South China Sea islands

On the face of it, this is an idea I approve of: not only more nuclear reactors, but mobile, floating nuclear reactors. Something I would love to see the US do, and something at on a certain level I approve of China or virtually anybody else doing.

The problem I foresee is that I expect that the Chinese  contractors will half-ass this like they seem to do everything. Components that are supposed to be made of cadmium will instead be made out of cat food. Emergency coolant systems fabricated from papier mache. Nuclear engineers replaced with slave laborers.

The end result I’m afraid of is one or more of these floating reactors blowing its top, melting down, or getting zapped by an Exocet, trashing a substantial region. The usal pack of baying anti-nuclear zealots will then dutifully take this as an example of why nukes are Teh Ebil, and the American/Western nuclear programs will take another hit. While at the same time the Chinese will probably just shrug, write off the lost reactor, nonchalantly shoot a couple dozen stooges, and crank out a bagrillion more reactors and coal burning powerplants.

 

I have a potential solution. So long as we allow political correctness on federally funded universities, including  blocking certain otherwise protected political speech, then I propose that if the Chinese manage to make themselves a crappy reactor and cause trouble, anyone who proposes to use that incident to tar the *American* nuclear program will be deported to China. America is thus a “safe space” for honest discussion of nuclear power, and blaming American nukes for the dumbass decisions of Russian or Chinese collectivist stooges, or Japanese dumbasses who thought it would be a neato-keen idea to locate a reactor in a tsunami zone is hereby banned.

 Posted by at 2:30 pm