George Takei: TED Talk

 awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., politics, wisdom, youtube  3 Responses »
Jul 112014
 

George Takei recently gave a speech in Kyoto Japan where he described his history of being locked up by FDR during WWII for the crime of being of Japanese ancestry. It’s a really good presentation:

[youtube LeBKBFAPwNc]

He ends it with pointing out that, after all that happened, he’s a proud American.

Many people, American and otherwise, often point to Americas failures and flaws, the times when we did not or do not live up to our ideals, and say that that shows that America is bad. But this is where they are wrong. The only way you can fall short of your ideals is if you *have* ideals in the first place.

The US is fairly unique in human history in that it was a nation founded more or less out of whole cloth, based on ideals. France, Germany, Romania, Japan, China, India… these are nations formed from *tribes,* with borders defined by what they could conquer and hold. Can a Frenchman move to Japan and *be* Japanese? Well, not really. Can a Japanese move to the US and *be* an American? You bet. Anyone can. Doesn’t depend on ethnicity or religion, just so you see what the American ideals are and decide “that’s for me.”

Americans have traditionally seen the US as a place of destiny, a place with a role in the world. Not to conquer it; we went through our imperial phase more than a century ago, snapping up the Philippines, Cuba and so on… then we cut them loose.  We have often seen it as our role to spread the ideals of Americas founding principles to the world at large. Those principles are easily looked up in the Declaration and the Constitution. What are the founding principles of Sweden or Belgium, though?

 Posted by at 5:14 pm

Harder to argue against nuking the site from orbit

 AARRRGH, art, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, news, ಠ_ಠ  14 Responses »
Jul 112014
 

One of the best reasons to not reduce much of certain regions to softly glowing green glass is because of all the neat historical and archeological sites and artifacts. But if those sites and artifacts don’t exist anymore… that reason goes away, and were left with “ummm… something about looking bad, or something?”

How Syria’s ancient treasures are being smashed

statue

 

 Posted by at 4:08 pm

Is there a feline psychiatrist in the building??

 blather, cats  7 Responses »
Jul 102014
 

Something disturbing has emerged in the last couple of weeks. Buttons has always been a happy cat, even when he sleeps; he’s been known to sleep-purr for hours on end. But recently he’s started having nightmares, complete with twitching, facial expressions that look terrified, and some fairly loud vocalizations that sound like fear or pain. Worse: he’s difficult to wake. Today he started having a nightmare and he didn’t even wake up when I picked him up; he kept crying for another dozen seconds or so as I tried to wake him up. When he does wake, it’s usually pretty much instantly with a jerk. When he sees me, he fires up the purr motor full blast and becomes very, very affectionate (makes me think that maybe in those first moments after waking, he’s still remembering whatever monster it was, seeing me, realizes there’s no more  monster, and assumes I dealt with it).

The not-waking-up-thing has me a bit on edge. A friend suggests that this sounds like seizures more than nightmares.

Does this sort of thing sound familiar to anyone?

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 Posted by at 11:11 pm

A spot of good news

 blather, Hmm..., news  13 Responses »
Jul 102014
 

Law Schools Peer Into The Abyss But The American Bar Association Blocks Serious Change

According to the Law School Admissions Council, in 2004, more than 100,000 students applied for law school, but in 2013, just 59,000 did. Some law schools have had to lay off faculty members and administrators.

good

Now, the article goes the odd route of trying to come up with ways to arrest and reverse this drop in law school enrollment. To me, its a lot like an article trying to come up with ways to arrest and reverse the twenty-year decline in the murder rate. Rather, we should be examining ways to accelerate the decline. 59,000 students per year lost to productivity is still far too many.

As with abortion, lawyers should be legal… but rare.  Perhaps we can look forward to the day when the War On Some Drugs is finally abandoned, thus negating the need not only for vast armies of prosecutors but their defense attorney equivalents. And one can always dream of a day when  tort lawyering is finally nationalized; no longer will scumbags get rich suing people, but instead they’ll draw down a cool $9.75/hour, win or lose. Perhaps then we can finally put the scourge of shystering in its place.

 Posted by at 11:21 am

Patreon rewards for July are out now

 aircraft, APR, drawings, history, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Jul 102014
 

The first month of my Patreon thingie is up and running now. Available – until next month, when they’ll be replaced by the next set of stuff – are the following:

1) A large format diagram of the B/J-58, a Convair concept for a two-engine tactical B-58

2) A PDF document, “Manned Space Stations and Alternatives” which covers Gemini and Dyna Soar-based small MOL-like station concepts, and includes info on the Gemini satellite inspector/interceptor

3) Two CAD diagrams, one of the McDonnell-Douglas Model 192 ISINGLASS hypersonic rocket-powered recon platform, the other comparing the Titan IIIC with the Titan IIIC/Dyna Soar and the Titan IIIM/MOL.

If you’d be interested in helping me dig up and release this sort of obscure aerospace historical material, or if you want to get in on the rewards, please consider joining my Patreon.

patreon

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 Posted by at 12:14 am

Britain: Screw it, let’s just commit cultural suicide

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., history, Hmm..., I'm from the government, Meh., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Jul 092014
 

At some point, “silly” turns into “sad” which turns into “tragic.”

British Film Institute tells filmmakers to tick new diversity targets or miss funding

In order to score funding from the BFI (honestly, I don’t know how important that is for the British film industry), it is proposed that new Britfilms must have two of the following three features:

at least one lead character must be “positively reflecting diversity”, with the story more likely to receive funding if it “explicitly and predominantly explores issues of identity relating to ethnicity or national origins, a specific focus on women, people with disabilities, sexual identity, age and people from a socially disadvantaged background”. … It will ask filmmakers to ensure that at least 30 per cent of supporting and non-speaking characters are also “diverse”.

Off-screen, at least two heads of department must be from diverse backgrounds, as well as a range of “key creatives” including the director, screenwriter, composer and cinematographer.

The third category requires companies to offer paid internships and jobs to “new entrants from diverse backgrounds” and to help them progress.

One wonders what exactly is meant by “diverse. Does this mean that a film about, say, King Henry the 8th  can get away with having an Irish character? or must it be a blind black lesbian single mother who has courageously struggled against domestic abuse and alcoholism?

On this same page there is a link to a piece about a new BBC series:

BBC goes for Game of Thrones audience with new Saxon vs Viking drama

Now how the hell are they going to shoehorn 30% “diverse” actors into a story about Scandinavian white people fighting Germanic white people in a world populated almost exclusively with white people? Or are they going to make a third of these dark-age warriors gay cowboys eating pudding?

assholeebf

‘Mocking accents should be a crime’ says linguist, Dr Baratta

I’ve no idea who this goober is. Likely a nobody, apart from being a professor of Something Or Other at Manchester U. But making speech a crime? How does this merit anything other than mockery and derision? Anybody know what exact accent he has, so that it can be mocked? Really, there’s only one reply to this sort of idiocy.

 Posted by at 5:56 pm
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