May 132019
 

Still more.

Three views of Thatcher, Utah. Two show what is essentially my front yard, looking north. Anybody interested in this sort of thing?

 

 

 

 Posted by at 5:40 pm
May 132019
 

Most of human history has featured sloooooow progress. Occasional fast jumps forward, occasional shocking drops backwards, but overall a slow progression towards higher technology and better outlooks. The last two or so centuries, though, have been a virtual rocket launch upwards in terms of standards of living, life expectancy, the power available to individuals, the distance a person could travel, etc.

It’s always fashionable to wonder if we are in End Times.  Stories like this tend to make me thing that we might actually be:

California Could Go Dark This Summer to Prevent Wildfires

Short form: California has a had a problem in recent years with wind blowing down power lines into trees, sparking massive wildfires. So the idea is, during windy periods shut down electricity to some cities that had the poor manners to be out in the wilderness. One might wonder “wouldn’t it be better and safer to simply cut down the trees near power lines? To make sure that there is a low risk of fire in lanes around the lines?” That way cities wouldn’t need to go dark, cutting off not only economic activity, but also shutting down air conditioners and refrigerators. Cutting off cities will shorten lives.

Ah, but this is California. Cutting down trees might upset some spotted owls or giant garter snakes or some such. Someone might cut down a tree and make a buck by selling it to a lumber mill or, GASP, burning it for heat.

Better to just tell people to get used to a New Normal of standards of living revising *downwards.* Sure, the article says that people are planning on setting up solar panels and banks of batteries to take up the slack when the power goes down, but let’s face it: if people start living *better* on alternative power, regulators will simply come along and tack on enough red tape and taxes to make it nightmarish. Witness Illinois plan to make owning electric vehicles prohibitively expensive. This will hit supposedly life-improving technologies like self-driving autos, which will doubtless have either corporate sponsorship (the windows will display ads rather than letting you look outside), or the government will add onerous new fees… or, quite likely, both. And in any event, making cars self-driving will mean that fewer and fewer people will actually pay attention to what’s going by outside, and will pay more attention to their pads and phones, meaning that smaller “sights” will go by unseen, and will fall into disuse and decay.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and California and Illinois will lead America into a prosperous new era of freedom and expanded options and increased-yet-cheaper power available per person. I’ll get right on looking forward to that.

 Posted by at 5:34 pm
May 132019
 

But it’s a missile with fookin’ swords.

Secret U.S. missile kills terrorists with knives instead of explosives

The R9X is a modified version of the Hellfire. The warhead is removed and replaced with six deployable sword-sized blades. It kills the target not with an explosion, but with a hundred pounds of missile moving at the speed of sound slamming into the guys head, the blades just making sure that the target is super-dead.

 

The purpose of this is to limit collateral damage so that individuals can be targeted in urban areas without too much risk to surrounding civilians. Perhaps Representative Swalwell will consider using these rather than nuclear weapons when he fantasizes about murdering American citizens who dare exercise their constitutional rights.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 10:53 am
May 122019
 

… is about to go up in Illinois if the Legitimate Businessmen’s Social Club that runs the state government get their way:

Illinois residents could be charged $1,000 a year to own an electric vehicle under new legislation

The current annual fee to register an electric car in Illinois is $17.50. The claim is that dastardly electric car drivers are not paying into the gas tax base, and thus not holding up their end of the deal in paying for road repair.

Bonus round: Illinois gas tax is proposed to go up from $0.19 to $0.44 per gallon.

I have an alternate approach: Illinois should secede from Cook County. Let Chicago run things their way, let the rest of the state look to Iowa or Wisconsin for how to run things. Build a wall around Cook County and charge  fees for products going in and extremely large fees for residents who wish to emigrate. Probably unconstitutional… but this is Chicago. That’s how things are done there.

 Posted by at 8:00 pm
May 112019
 

Well, it’s about time:

‘The Orville’ Renewed For Season 3 By Fox

My first thought was that “at least it will last as long as the original Star Trek.” but then I remembered that Star Trek was shot in the days when a season had more than 20 episodes, rather than the dozen or so that seem to be the standard today. The Orville has had 26 episodes total in the first two seasons, while Star Trek had 80. To get to 80 episodes, The Orville will need to be around for more than six seasons… or Fox will have to start bumping up the number of episodes per season. Preferably, both.

 Posted by at 9:53 pm
May 102019
 

This article makes fun of a company that is flacking makeup for men. But while the company and its products are mockworthy, the critical article is itself also mockworthy. Because the article mocks the advertising strategy of the company, but never asks the most important question: “Dude, why the frak are you wearing makeup? You’re a guy. Knock that crap off.”

A brand called War Paint is using toxic masculinity to sell makeup to men

The purpose of actual war paint is to intimidate the enemy, but that’s not what they’re selling. They are selling makeup for men. The purpose of makeup is to make you pretty (or prettier). And that’s not a man’s function. Men aren’t meant to be pretty. Men are meant to be *functional.*

That’s why the phrase “chicks dig scars” is well known. Not, necessarily, because chicks truly dig scars, but because chicks dig the *stories* behind scars, they dig that you’ve Done Some Stuff. “Foundation”and “concealer” and all that goop does not aid in this. It just makes a guy look like a weirdo.

A man wearing makeup is like a back hoe with a nice floral pattern or an oil rig with eyelash extensions.

What kind of man wears makeup? The kind of man who colors his hair purple:

Don’t be that guy.

 Posted by at 1:02 pm
May 102019
 

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Blue Origin and Drax Industries describes the Blue Moon lunar lander his company has been working on for three years (at a sufficient state of development that he thinks they can return humans to the moon by 2024), as well as showing  somewhat longer-term goal for space development: O’Neill colonies.

 

Dreaming of space colonies measured in kilometers when you haven’t even orbited a golf ball yet? Perhaps rather a whole lot of hubris there. And yet…

 

 Posted by at 8:01 am