Feb 222022
 

The one where it is claimed that Sonequa Martin-Green’s character of Michael Burnham is loudly touted as the first black female captain in the Star Trek franchise…

And yet…

Star Trek IV gave us the Captain of the Yorktown:

Star Trek: the Next Generation gave us Captain Tryla Scott:

Star Trek: The Next Generation gave us Captain Silva La Forge:

Star Trek: The Next generation gave us Fleet Admiral Taela Shanthi. OK, not a Captain, but I imagine “Captain” is in her bio somewhere unless she skipped a few steps:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine gave us Kassidy Yates. Sure, she wasn’t a Starfleet Captain… but she OWNED HER OWN SHIP:

 

I guess it should not be surprising that major figures in the worst of the Star Trek series cannot be bothered to remember Star Trek canon and precedent… the writers of STD cannot remember their *own* continuity.

 Posted by at 8:53 am
Feb 202022
 

Rocky Top Goes Woke

University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK) is instituting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, with the goal of making staff and students “diverse.”  The usual bunkum is described, but the bit likely of greatest interest hereabouts is this:

UTK’s diversity plans put many academic disciplines in a bind. The physics and astronomy department, the faculty of which is entirely white and mostly male, had to invent a “diversity plan” knowing that 80 percent of physics Ph.D.s nationwide are men and that the discipline produced only 22 black Ph.D.s out of nearly 2,000 awarded in 2017, the last year for which we have reliable data. In light of this difficulty, the department promised to “provide a clear set of guidelines” about “expected behaviors” with respect to “diversity and inclusion” and to develop an anti-bias reporting mechanism. The department’s plan envisions no curricular or partnership changes; it aims merely to reflect the racial and sexual makeup of the “American physics community and, eventually, our nation.” Something has to give: either the school will stop devoting resources to a department that cannot deliver “diversity” for the foreseeable future, or the department will sacrifice professional standards in the name of those goals. Similar dilemmas confront the biological and engineering sciences.

It’s long past time that this sort of nonsense was not only dispensed with, but investigated. *Nobody* in the US benefits from this sort of thing apart from grifters. Foreign adversaries, however, must look upon this with glee. Do they also look upon this as the culmination of plans? The FBI *really* should be looking into it.

 Posted by at 9:49 pm
Feb 202022
 

The Ottawa cops trampling people with horses story just got a bit more interesting:

Woman trampled by Trudeau’s forces during freedom protest identified as Indigenous elder

As those who recall Smirkageddon a few years ago, the media loves them an “Indigenous Elder,” at least when they are on the right side of the narrative. But since she’s on the side that the political class has decided are racist terrorists… huh. I suspect she’s going to get a *lot* less coverage than Nathan Phillips got. Because getting trampled by a horse is less of a newsworthy big deal than having a kid smirk at you.

 Posted by at 8:22 pm
Feb 202022
 

Yer got-dayum right, whoa.

Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Also, someone has some ‘splainin’ to do about this truly *quality* journalism on the topic:

At one moment, a massive wave smashes through the front windows of the boat, demolishing one passenger and flooding the entire cabin.

The wave was so powerful, you can hear the window break under its G-force.

Not clear the passenger was “demolished,” especially since the same article points out a lack of reported injuries. And I really kinda doubt that the wave broke the window through the gravitational field produced by the mass wave rather than, you know, the momentum of the wave.

 Posted by at 1:52 pm
Feb 192022
 

Race to salvage fire-ravaged US-bound cargo ship drifting in the Atlantic with thousands of supercars on board including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis with blaze fueled by batteries in electric vehicles

The cargo vessel “Felicity Ace” is burning, and will likely be destroyed along with its $120 million in cargo, due to a fire that may have begun in the batteries in the electric cars its carrying. There are 4,000 cars including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis.

When you ship a car, you ship it with the fuel tanks empty. Saves weight and makes things less flammable. But an electric vehicle ships with the batteries. And whether the batteries are charged or not they weight he same; and charged or not, the lithium in those batteries remains insanely flammable. So you pack a bunch of those cars together in a ship with no way to separate them, and no good way to put out a lithium metal fire… well, there ya go.

 Posted by at 6:22 am
Feb 182022
 

So a bunch of gullible saps donated to an organization that just used their money to bail a racist terrorist and would-be assassin out of jail. The best possible result of this would be for the terrorist in question to attempt to run, get caught just across state lines, and that bail money to go *poof.* If that happens, my response would be almost *exactly* the same as the first 16 seconds of this video:

 

 Posted by at 7:10 pm
Feb 162022
 

In March of 1961, “Space World” magazine published a few articles about what the future would look like thanks to the onrushing new technologies of the space age. It is… well, it’s wrong.

The article is jam-packed with predictions of a glorious technological and economic future to be brought about by the Space Age. And from the standpoint of 1961, it probably made sense: technology was advancing by leaps and bounds, the budget for NASA was beginning to explode, overall space and related science spending by both government and industry were shooting upwards. It *should* have been a glorious new age. But the experts did not count on a few things. Viet Nam, for example and, worse, LBJs “Great Society” economic and social suppression/dystopia promotion programs.

Some of the predictions for 1971:

1) The “Space Industry” would be the biggest industry in America

2) The “middle class” would be working high-paying skilled jobs and would make up 80% of the population

3) Skyscrapers would dwarf the Empire State Building, using girders made from beryllium, tantalum and niobium

4) Tape recorders would be the size of a cigarette

5) You could easily send a fax from, say, New York to Australia. You’d scan the page, beam it up to a satellite passing overhead, the satellite would store the scan and, when it some time later passed over Australia, the fax would be beamed down. That’s… not how international satellite communications works, but OK.

6) There’d be cities in Antarctica

7) There’d be regular, routine and affordable suborbital rocket passenger transport. Such as from Antarctica to New York, several flights a day.

Amusingly, these predictions are considered likely to be too conservative; people would look back to the predictions and “wonder why the prophets of 1961 were so shortsighted.”

“Today it is rocket time, and the coming decade will carry us all into the Age of Astronautics.”

 

They could not have known that their glorious future would only last a small handful of years. By 1968, the Apollo program was already terminated, with no follow-on. And the maximum spending for NASA occurred only in 65-66 or so, peaking at about 4% of the federal budget. Imagine if the upward trend had continued to, say, 1970. Perhaps 6, maybe 8% of the federal budget. What a world it could have been.

Awww. I gave myself a sad.

Sigh.

The full-rez scan of the article has been uploaded to the 2022-02 APR Extras folder on Dropbox. This is available to all $4 and up Patrons and Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.




 

 Posted by at 11:51 pm
Feb 162022
 

It seems that the Freedom Convoy/Protest in Canada is so successful tha tthe Canadian government is workign overtime to prove the protestors point:

Banks are moving to freeze accounts linked to convoy protests. Here’s what you need to know

In short, the Canadian government can freeze your bank account based on… well, not a whole lot.

The order says that banks and other financial entities (like credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts and cryptocurrency platforms) must stop “providing any financial or related services” to people associated with the protests — a move that will result in frozen accounts, stranded money and cancelled credit cards. … There are questions about how widely this policy will be applied — whether, for example, the thousands of donors to the GoFundMe and GiveSendGo fundraising campaigns in support of this anti-mandate movement are also considered “designated persons” under the law.

The regulation’s definition of a “designated person” also includes people who “provide property to facilitate or participate in any assembly.” In other words, under these regulations, anyone sending funds to support these protests could be facing a shaky financial future.

Say, that’s neat. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have done far less violence than your average Mostly Peaceful Protestors could find their life savings, businesses, homes all wiped out at the stroke of a bureaucrats pen. If you suspect that you might be net on the financial chopping block, what would your next action be? Hmmm…

Trudeau inadvertently caused a bank run in Canada

Ayup, people are trying to get their money out now while they can, and of course they’re finding that banks are instituting strict withdrawal limits. Seems to me what this might end up doing is driving more and more people to “alternative economics” like crypto.

While these measures might help to bust up a protest that has severely disrupted the nation’s capital, Davis said they could also further “radicalize” a group that is already concerned about government overreach.

Gee, ya think??? Every *actually* peaceful protestor who finds his ability to bank or even be employed *ever* *again* ruined will almost certainly be radicalized. What the hell else are they going to do? Especially when they see violent rioters *not* getting de-banked.

 Posted by at 6:53 pm