Why not. Two very wide panoramas shot early one morning on the road in Wyoming a while back. Remember there’s that “upvote” button now.
Jun 252019
Jun 252019
And behold what a well-spoken dignified future it is:
G😳😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Why This Lil Boy Treat This Lady Like That😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/tdJmOmyRyQ
— BEAT THE ODDS💎🐍❤️.® (@SollyBandz_) June 18, 2019
Jun 252019
Google has, of course, an “autocomplete” function. You type a portion of a phrase to search for and it produces a series of possible responses. Google’s ideas are… a little bit interesting. Behold:
How much of this is just because that’s what people look up, and how much of it is because of Google’d official positions on political matters filtering down to search suggestions, I dunno. But how many people actually look up “Women can do anything” or “boys can be bugs” or “men can have periods?”
Jun 252019
And if you say otherwise, you’re a terrible human being.
Five killed in Mozambique ‘for being bald’
A new superstitious belief has emerged in some areas of Mozambique – that bald men have gold in their head.
However, the head has to be taken to a witchdoctor who will use magical powers to extract the gold – and make them rich.
If your immediate response is that the belief that bald men have magically extractable gold in their heads is stupid idiocy, it’s because you need to decolonize your mind. Witchcraft is no less valid than Newtonian physics.
Repeat after me: Other Ways Of Knowing.
Jun 252019
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 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.