May 092019
 

The lightsaber duel between Obi Wan and Darth Vader in Star Wars is, by the standards of the later movies, pretty damn tame. The reasons for this are obvious: it was a small movie, not overloaded with martial arts training and certiainly no CGI, and Alec Guiness was certainly no spring chicken at the time. But it does stand out.

And so, leave it to talented fans to correct that. The below short film expands upon the short, stilted fight, making it much more in line with the sort of combat seen in later movies. It would have blown my tiny little mind had this been in the original Star Wars back int he day. Watch it fast and download if possible… wouldn’t surprise me if Disney decides to shut this down because it its few short minutes it has substantially more awesome than all the sequel movies put together.

 Posted by at 3:00 pm
May 082019
 

So yesterday there was a school shooting in Highland Ranch, Colorado, not far from Columbine High School. The fact that there were two shooter should make this Big News, with every last detail about the shooters splashed all over the headlines, with political hay being made left and right. Were these guys white supremacists? Were they republicans? Alt right? Clearly this was due to their toxic masculinity and misogyny. The wage gap probably fits in there somewhere.

But a few things have come out that should make the discussion more interesting than usual:

On social media, Devon Erickson, a registered Democrat, expressed hatred for some Christians, and shared posts criticizing Donald Trump and praising Barack Obama…

The Denver Channel wrote that multiple sources say “the second suspect, who is a minor, is a transgender male who was in the midst of transitioning from female to male.”

Huh. This should prove an endless source of amusement. Unless, of course, it gets stuffed into the news media memory hole.

Equally likely: this gets used as a way to excuse the event. “Boo hoo they were bullied by the mean normies.”

 

 Posted by at 7:44 am
May 072019
 

Yes, anti-Semitism does seem to be on the rise. But it seems to be coming from the left, not from the Nazi boogeymen we’re forever being hysterically warned about.

Rep. Ilhan Omar Supports Group That Produced Child Beheading Skit

There’s a lot to be irked about here. Seems to me that the video below produces a lot of opportunities for deportations. The kids may not be at fault, but their parents and the people who run this “society,” cranking out violent backwards propaganda and teaching these kids in an alien and unhelpful language, certainly seem like they would be a lot happier in Syria.

 Posted by at 10:10 pm
May 062019
 

Cory Booker wants to require federal license for gun owners

Because of course he does.

Booker argued that just as a driver’s license demonstrates a person’s eligibility and proficiency to drive a car, “a gun license demonstrates that a person is eligible and can meet certain safety and training standards necessary to own a gun.”

Even though there is no such thing as a requirement to have a drivers license to own a car, or even operate a car on private property. You only need a drivers license if you plan on operating a car on government property (i.e. public roads).

And because of course:

Booker’s plan also includes… universal background checks for gun buyers; the reinstitution of a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity firearm magazines

In other words, criminalizing millions of currently law-abiding citizens by making them felons for owning bits of plastic.

 

 Posted by at 12:48 pm
May 062019
 

And again.

Two coming over the hill coming back from Logan, looking towards Tremonton.

Two from my back yard, looking south.

 

 Posted by at 12:32 pm
May 052019
 

The Fight for the Right to Drive

Important quote:

political philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew B. Crawford argues that manual competence—our ability to repair the machines and devices in our lives—is a kind of ethical practice. Knowing how to fix things ourselves creates opportunities for meaningful work and individual agency; it allows us to grasp more deeply the built world around us.

The article is about people concerned about the future of autonomous cars. Not just cars that can drive themselves, but cars with no ability to be driven. You can’t drive them because there are no manual controls. I fully expect that if western civilization doesn’t come crashing down in the next decade or two, the roads will inevitably be littered with self-driving autoboxes. These will be vehicles that the occupants only control insofar as that they tell them where to go; cars that the occupants have no idea how to repair or maintain; cars that very likely aren’t owned by the occupants. I will not be the slightest bit surprised if at some point some cities – London, say, or San Francisco or Manhattan – ban anything manually driven and quite likely anything privately owned, with the possible exception of private autoboxes that require massively expensive permits. This will result in terribly efficient transit systems… as long as everything runs normally. But as soon as New Yorkers gets word that they have seven hours to evacuate the city because La Palma has collapsed and a tsunami is on the way, some people will evacuate in their Uber autoboxes… and everyone else, not having access to cars of their own, will be left to walk. Or some enthusiastic and especially ambitious little hacker taps into the system and has all the autoboxes crash into each other or drive at full speed into the East River.

Fully autonomous cars may well be inevitable. Laws mandating that driving be done solely by computer may be inevitable… but may be unnecessary. If autonomous cars prove themselves to be safer than manually driven cars, and if ridesharing them is far more convenient, then the natural course of events could well result in people simply giving up the ability to drive in favor of the perceived convenience of being driven. We have, as previously mentioned hereabouts, largely given up all pretense to privacy; not only do many people happily install devices like Alexa into their homes that they *know* listen to every word they say and transmit that information elsewhere, we’ve also pretty much all decided to willingly carry small hand-held supercomputers designed for the specific function of communications. These supercomputers have microphones and GPS trackers and surprisingly high quality video cameras; who among us would be truly shocked to discover that our phones are, 24/7, listening to, watching and tracking us? If autonomous cars come creeping in to our consciousness as smart phones did, then it’s entirely possible that people will *easily* give up the ability to drive themselves.

It’s clear to see that a simple autobox would be massively convenient for a lot of people in many situations. If you live in some urban hellhole and you need to get from A to B, or you need to cross hundreds of miles from C to D… these things would be awesome. But what if you wanted to just go Thataway, to explore at random? What if you wanted to chase a balloon or a UFO or another car? What if you wanted to sightsee, with many, many sudden stops? Do donuts in the K Mart parking lot? Autoboxes might serve well the function of keeping people stuck within major metropolitan ares by sucking the joy out of driving and turning cars into simply and merely mechanisms of conveyance.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine if it would be better if people who decide that learning to drive is too much of  bother would be best kept from flyover country.

 Posted by at 6:48 pm
May 042019
 

An Alabama “ISIS Bride” Wants To Come Home. Can We Forgive Her Horrifying Social Media Posts?

I see no good reason to let this person back into the US. She left to give aid and comfort to the enemy; she burned her passport and called for the death of American civilians. I say she has two options:

1) Get comfortable in ISIS-land

2) Go to Mecca and loudly proclaim on live television that her political and religious beliefs were all wrong and to beg Ahura Mazda for forgiveness. She may then seek provisional asylum in the US… assuming she makes it here.

 Posted by at 5:57 pm