Detroit is coming back! Google Street View lets you check out the same places over a span of years, and the progress has been remarkable. You can check out a number of these fantastic images of progress HERE.
Now who could argue that the policies of Detroits fine leadership over the past few decades has been anything other than inspired?
There are apparently still a whole lot of regulatory hurdles to jump. But the further VG gets with the FAA, the better, even if VG itself doesn’t quite work out.
Many years ago (early/mid 90’s), I attended the opening of a new war/veterans memorial. It had a number of black granite panels which had been etched (acid? laser? mechanically? dunno) with scenes from various wars… WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, Gulf War. It was all ok, but I had two issues. First was the nature of the etched surfaces: the etching looked cool, but was *really* shallow, and I wondered about how well it would stand up to wind, rain, time… it didn’t seem likely that the basic forces of erosion would do these microscopically thin etchings much good in the decades to come. My second problem was the Gulf War panel: it showed troops, tanks and a helicopter, as you might expect. But instead of an AH-64, it was an Agusta A129 Mangusta. An Italian helicopter that I know the US didn’t use, and I’m reasonably sure that *nobody* used in the Gulf War. I quietly pointed this out, but I don’t know what happened after that.
As appalled as I was by that artistic/historical screwup, that’s nothing compared to this nightmare:
Just… wow. M1 Abrams tanks. Huey helicopters. Troops in Viet Nam era gear. Troops in Gulf War era gear. F-16s in Thunderbirds livery. POW-MIA flags. Plus, the actual production of the monument was outsourced to either Egypt or India (sources seem to differ on that point). Just… wow.
Oy. If you haven’t heard this story, it’s a doozy. The mayor of Peoria, Illinois, went all Stasi on someone who set up a *really* *lame* parody Twitter account, including raiding his home.
Never trust a politician from Illinois. I think a case can be made that nobody should be allowed to hold public office for more than two weeks in that state, and that anyone who holds office of state senator or higher should be immediately investigated by the FBI. And for Odin’s sake, never vote for an Illinois politician for Federal office! No good could possibly come from that.
Turns out that British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt buys into the utter bilge that is homeopathy. If you somehow happen to not know what homeopathic “medicines” are, the idea is quite simple: they’re magic. You take a substance – some chemical that is thought to have healing properties, say – and you dilute a tiny amount of it in water. Call it a drop per liter. Then you take a single drop of that mixture, and dilute it in yet more water. And again, and again, however many times you want. Simple math shows that you could well dilute the mix so much that not a single molecule of the original substance remains within the final water… but that’s ok, because due to the miracle of magical thinking, the water “remembers” the healing property of the substance, and your bucket of H2O can now cure whatever the hell you want it to. It’s magic!
One can be forgiven for wondering why the water molecules “remember” that aspirin cures headaches, but they somehow forget about all the raw sewage and heavy metals they’ve rubbed up against over the years.
Homeopaths should be kept as far from medical policy decision making as Flat Earthers from space program decision making, or Creationists from biology decision making. On these topics at least these cranks have a demonstrated inability to exercise valid judgement.
I am at best unclear just how much power a British “Health Secretary” has on actual government policy, but any at all – no matter how diluted – would be too much in this case.
[youtube cVV3QQ3wjC8]
Americans… don’t get too smug. Obamacare seems to provide for taxpayer funding of utter newage as well.
The Feds seem to be backing off, without actually killing anybody. Of course, they may be backing off just long enough for the militia-types to disperse., then they’l go back in and whack this fellers cows.
It seems the FAA has set up a no-fly zone over the “Bundy Ranch:”
http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_4_1687.html
From what I can tell, both sides here are asshats. But just like Waco, the FedGuv seems to be intentionally trying to turn a simply-resolved issue into an Example.
Interestingness afoot:
[youtube qwkVJnS31E8]
Looking at the wackyside of the internet, there are a lot of people claiming that they are getting armed and heading out to Nevada to stand against the Feds. I’d bet that most of ’em are just blowing smoke… but if even a few follow through, the next few days might prove interesting.
In the video, BLM rangers tase a guy *three* *times*… to no apparent effect. Options:
1) The tasers aren’t really up to scratch
2) The guy is some kind of badass
3) The guy is wearing a metal mesh or metal foil undershirt
Beyond simply shrugging off taser shots, what kinda got me was that after tasering the feller, the rangers didn’t follow through. If you go to the bother of pulling a trigger on someone, whether that trigger is attached to a firearm, a taser or pepper spray, shouldn’t you then actually arrest them? Otherwise… why are you pulling a trigger on someone who isn’t doing something worthy of arrest?
Venezuela’s collectivist economic reforms have been so glitteringly successful that they are introducing fingerprint-based registrations and rationing cards to keep people from stocking up. Because what do you really need a fully automatic steak for? Anyone buying a full bunch of bananas is clearly compensating for something, if you know what I mean.Nobody really needs to buy more than one apple a day. Any more than that and you must be some sort of food-nut.
From Fark.com:
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