It was a rainy spring. The result of that is mosquitoes galore, and much to my annoyance they’re finding their way into the house. Anyone have suggestions on devices for dealing with the little horrors, traps or the like?
Jun 252019
Jun 242019
So I’m reading a piece on the economic basketcase that is Venezuela:
The Heiress on the Hill
Since the piece was published by Buzzfeed, it was expected to have a leftist slant. And while it does, I had to laugh out loud at this bit, which goes by without comment or correction by the author, editors or publisher:
According to Aquiles Hopkins, president of the Confederation of Associations of Agricultural Producers of Venezuela, national production currently covers only 15%–20% of the country’s consumption needs. “Socialism is what you have in Norway, in Finland,” said Hopkins during an interview in his office in Caracas. “This is an autocracy.”
No. Wrong. Just… wrong. It is a commonly repeated lie that the Nordic nations have socialism. They don’t. They have welfare states, to be sure, but that’s not socialism. What is socialism? Simple:
socialism
[ soh-shuh-liz-uh m ]
noun
- a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
- procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
- (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
In short: socialism is communal ownership of the means of production. In practice that means the government owns the farms and factories. Does that describe Norway or Finland? Nope. Those countries are (kinda free) market economies with substantial “social safety nets.” Norways government owns substantial stakes in their oil companies, but owning stock, even a lot of stock, is hardly socialistic… hell, that’s as capitalist as it gets. “Socialist” would be for the government of Norway to own, by law, all the stock. Not just in the one company, or the one industry, but *all* the companies across the entire economy. Claiming that they are socialist is a common tactics among *actual* socialists for a simple and obvious reason: if you can convince the voters that “socialism = the clearly successful Nordic model” you can convince people to vote for actual socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Bubbles Cortez, or the likes of historical socialists like Lenin or Mao or Chavez or Castro, all blood-soaked monsters that many on the American far left lionize as Heroes Of The People.
The guy quoted above wants the success of the Nordic countries with the economic model of Castro and Chavez. He complains of the corruption that Venezuela is struggling under. But the thing is… socialism *breeds* corruption. Corruption follows along with the adoption of socialist policies like night follows day; it is a virtually inevitable development. Socialism puts people in charge of things that they don’t actually care about or necessarily even have any expertise in and institutes the tragedy of the commons as official policy. As anyone who has ever seen “the PJs” up close (or who has rented a car) can attest, when people no longer feel any sense of personal ownership they cease to give a damn and the situation declines. The entire environment goes downhill, and the few people with power and authority slip inevitably into corruption as they realize the power that they wield over The Little People. Even if a socialist economy was run by a divinely programmed uncorruptible perfectly wise AI system, things would still turn to crap due to people not taking ownership of where they work.
Jun 242019
Done right, art and science go great together. This is generally in the form of art used to illustrate scientific principles or discoveries, to make them appealing and comprehensible. Done wrong, you get artists using bits and pieces of science to tell or display… well, crap. “They should have sent a poet” only applies to *good* poets, not whatever the frak these are.
Fortunately, I’m pleased to point out a *good* marriage of art & science. Gentlemen, behold:
“An original science illustration blog”
Indeed. Most of the illustrations are bio-medical, but some of the recent ones are astronomical.
More after the break…
Jun 242019
Launch window starts at 11:30 PM Eastern time, lasts for 4 hours. The boosters have previously flown and will attempt recovery back on land; the core, on a barge at sea. Two dozen satellites are on board, including a solar sail for the Planetary Society along with bits of 152 dead people. No cars this time. Though it would be funny if one of the small satellites turned out to be little more than a box filled with the Tesla Roadster & Starman Hot Wheels toys, used to send a cloud of little vehicles into the path of an enemy satellite like a shotgun blast.
UPDATE: The boosters successfully landed on their pads, but the core missed the barge and went kerblooey into the ocean. however, the mission of putting satellites into their correct orbits seems to be proceeding smoothly. This was reportedly the hardest core landing yet attempted, so it’s not too surprising that it wasn’t successful… but the mission as a whole seems to be.
Jun 242019
If you like a post I put on the blog, you can now “upvote” it. To do so you need to be signed in to Disqus, though you don’t need to actually post a comment. Click on the title of the post so that you pull up just that specific post, then, below the post, and below the horrible cheesy ads that Disqus sticks below the post, you should see a series of six emoji-things… “upvote,” “funny,” “love,” “surprised,” “angry,” “sad.” These are the options the system provides. I was hoping for a “this post sucks/thumbs down” option, but that’s not available.
So… I guess if a post is of particular appeal, go ahead and “upvote” it. If there are enough of those, I suppose I’ll do like a “like”-obsessed millenial and try to post more of that sort of thing.
Jun 232019
Today (Sunday) had two things of note:
CNN ran their “Apollo 11” documentary. This originally showed in Imax theaters, and as I reported back in March, on Imax it’s freakin’ spectacular. On my TV, which is probably pretty unimpressive by current average standards, the imagery is just ok. And yet… I still lost my composure at about T Minus One Minute, and became This Guy right about T Minus Zero. The launch of Apolo 11 ranks up there with Old Yeller and Jurassic Bark and Sleeping In Light as one of those moments when it is perfectly cromulent for even the toughest and most stoic of men to shed a tear.
Also, as I mentioned back in May, “Apollo 11” has been released on DVD and Blu Ray, but bizarrely *not* in 4K. This was a confounding decision in my view; even though I don’t have a 4K player or TV, I woulda bought one in a heartbeat and put it right on my 4K shelf alongside my other 4K disks (currently: “2001” and “Fifth Element” and nothing else). But… in the first commercial break, I noticed the first ad was for Samsung *8K.* This makes me wonder if they’re planning on just skipping right past 4K and only releasing it on 8K (not releasing it on 4K means people who want it in ultra high def will *have* to get it in 8K). Now, I have no doubt that Apollo 11 in 8K on a 100 inch 8K screen would be utterly fantastic…but, dayum, I ain’t never gonna be able to afford me one of them.
Secondly: Today was the thirtieth anniversary of Tm Burton’s “Batman.” Holy Crap, Batman, I’m old.
I suppose “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” are technically superior movies in pretty much every way… but in 1989, Burton made a movie that was just plain astounding. It made more than a quarter billion dollars domestically, which, adjusting for inflation, is more than a half billion in 2019 dollars. That would put it only slightly behind “The Dark Knight” in terms of gross. And it did that *without* being a sequel, or existing in a world where superhero movies regularly made money hand over fist. It was a comic book movie that wasn’t a joke, that took its source material seriously, that adults could watch with interest and without shame. I don’t recall if I saw it on opening day, but if not I saw it within a few days of opening; I recall being impressed right off the bat with the opening sequence with Danny Elfman’s score. And the Batmobile: sure, the “Tumbler” might have been a more realistic vehicles… but, man, I still want me that ’89 Batmobile to go tearing up and down the streets in.
Jun 232019
From time to time over the eleven years I’ve had The Unwanted Blog, I’ve posted landscape/nature/sky panoramic photosI’vetaken. But as time has gone on, interest, as expressed by comments and such, seems to have waned. Maybe because they’re the same-old, same-old. Maybe because they’re meh. Maybe because tastes change. Maybe because I should really be posting photos of nekkid women. Whatever the reason, people seem to have lost interest in that aspect of the blog (see the long string of “Panorama” posts back in April and May that went by without a single response; the most recent “pano” post to see any interaction was in November).
I should probably just pack that aspect of the blog in, send it riding off into the sunset. And so…
Jun 222019
A lot of Americans think it should be illegal to burn the US flag; many believe that it already is illegal to do so. Both beliefs are wrong. It’s not illegal, nor should it be, for someone to burn their own property, assuming that there aren’t air quality or safety issues. Now if some steals *your* property and burns it, then, yes, by all means the cops should come along and lay baton to noggin until they pay restitution. But if the burner is the lawful owner? It’s theirs to do with as they please.
If you are one of those delicate snowflakes who believes that the US Constitution means doodly squat and that your feelings are so vital that they should be protected from someone burning a flag, consider this:
Three year prison sentence for people who damage EU flag, German state proposes
Do you *really* want to be just like a European Union bureaucrat? Is that *really* who you want to emulate? If so… step away from the computer and take a year or two off to re-evaluate your life. If you *are* an EU bureaucrat, take a decade or two off to re-evaluate your life.
The article also says that the proposed law will protect the EU anthem, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” How exactly do you burn music? The best I can figure, they want to ban stuff like these:
And one wonders what German EU bureaucrats would make of this:
Jun 222019
On the one hand, it’s just a funny commercial that uses humor to grab interest, though the humor has virtually nothing to do with the product. They could be selling diet soda, late-term abortions, hair care products or yellowcake uranium for all it matters.
But on the other hand… this is a cautionary tale of the importance of proper crew selection not just for Antarctic expeditions, but also for long-term spaceflight. And it’s a tale of cosmic horror, of humans struggling to survive and stay sane in a vast universe that cares nothing for them and which will exterminate them in the blink of an eye, without so much as a glance in their direction. This could be the followup to”The Thing” or “The Terror” or “At The Mountains of Madness.”
This is crew on the edge. Kevin is just the first, and he won’t be the last. Something will have to change and fast or otherwise their habitat will soon be surrounded by corpsicles. The inevitable US Air Force rescue crew will, some months later, approach the night-shrouded hab stealthily, guns drawn; the first thing they will see through their night vision goggles will be a few bodies standing naked in the snow, frozen solid with looks of mixed boredom, madness and relief on their faces. When they finally reach the hab itself, they will notice disturbing red stains painting the interior of the windows. Inside they will find a few more bodies, or at least portions of them; bits and viscera scattered around, lengths of intestine used as Christmas Tree garland. The last cryptic message will be scrawled in blood on the wall: “You made me play second base.”
The rescue team will of course be streaming video from helmet and gun mounted cameras, signals beamed to the C-130 orbiting above, then encrypted and bounced to a communications satellite, then to a facility in a nondescript office in the industrial outskirts of Denver. Grim-faced men will observe in real time and will note sadly that the rescue team themselves are already beginning to display anomalous behavior. An order is given; while the rescue team pokes around the interior of the hab, the C-130 drops a small package, no bigger than an office waste paper can, surprisingly heavy. The object will deploy a parafoil to control and slow descent; the C-130 will promptly go full throttle and head for the horizon. The package will drift downwards in a quick spiral. A few meters directly above the hab, explosive charges compress a hollow sphere of plutonium into a critical mass; the prompt X-rays will bounce off an internal shell of uranium, compressing a billet of lithium deuteride. A small second sun will bloom over the hab, vaporizing it, the rescue team and the frozen corpses… and, hopefully, the eldritch alien force lurking under the hab that those in Denver have seen in action before. Many fast calls will be made to government officials both in the US and in foreign lands; especially in Russia there will be expressions of outrage over the detonation of a hundred-plus kiloton thermonuclear device in the atmosphere. But with the uttering of a few key code words, those officials will blanche white, mutter in agreement, hang up, close their offices for the day and go home, there to either hug their confused and concerned wives and children or sit in the darkness and slowly get drunk, each to their own natural inclinations.
At least, that’s how *I* see this commercial…
Jun 212019
Another missile has been recently unveiled to a degree, the Lockheed AIM-260 air-to-air missile, a replacement for the AIM-120 AMRAAM:
Air Force Developing AMRAAM Replacement to Counter China
Not much known about it as yet, other than it will have a longer range than AMRAAM and will fit in the F-22’s missile bay. Rumors abound, including the possibility that it is two-stage, or that it may be an airbreather of some kind.
It *seems* that the US is starting to crank up new weapons systems. Which, if true… ABOUT DAMN TIME. But the real test will be not just ‘weapons in development,” but “weapons in mass production and put into service.”