A piece of artwork attributed to NASA (though I suspect perhaps it comes from Martin or United Tech) showing the Titan IIIc with a Centaur upper stage and a Viking Mars lander payload. Gotta love good old fashioned paintings. Sure a computer rendered version would be more accurate, but actual paintings have a little extra something.
This has been cropped and rotated from the diagonal data-hog original.
I wish NASA/SpaceX/whoever was better at propaganda so that this sort of wonder could be spread to more than just a few:
[youtube Yz_YkBDklvo]
Imagine how much better the country would be if kids were as enthralled with space flight as they were with celebrities.
Here ya go:
Ebola was created in a lab in the US by the Illuminati. Pravda says so.
A nice piece of NASA art, circa 1965.
Success!
Why do they want shoppers fingerprinted? Well, in Venezuela, food is subsidized by the government. This makes it really, really cheap. Much cheaper than in neighboring Colombia. So Venezuelans are snapping up truckloads of cheap food, taking it to Colombia and selling it for a major profit. See? Socialism spurs entrepreneurialiam and a thriving market based economy.
Oh, sure, one other result is bare shelves and poor Venezuelans *still* not being able to eat because the food is simply *gone,* but hey… the government proves that it *cares.*
Well, this sucks. But it was pretty much bound to happen eventually… a three-engine Grasshopper blew itself to flinders today.
I know there are at least a few Mormons who look in on my blog from time to time. I’ve got a question for y’all.
Up front: I’m not a Mormon, but I’ve found them, over the last decade living in distinct Mormon Country, to be decent enough folks. Much of their theology strikes me as downright silly, though (don’t go feeling superior, those of you who believe that small carbohydrate crackers are regularly transformed into meat by means of prayer). Some of the silliness is hard to tell whether it comes from misunderstanding by outsiders, or it is, in fact, silly.
I was reminded of this today in a book store. I wandered past the religion section ( I kinda had to, as it was on the other side of the aisle from History), and for whatever reason one particular kids book caught my eye. It was a large-format illustrated work with the odd title “The Not Even Once Club.” That’s not a title that immediately explains itself. I thought it might be some horribly uncomfortable book about sexual assault, or some lame book about how naughty it is to bully other kids, or some such. But a quick glance at the cover showed that it was actually about a group of kids banded together to never violate any of God’s commandments. Ummm… sure. Why not. That interested me… I wanted to see how the author & illustrated dealt with convincing kids that they really shouldn’t aughtta commit murder, perjure themselves, make sculptures or pick up sticks on Sunday. Never not once ever do any work on Sunday at all, which would be a neat trick since work is defined as force over a distance, which is accomplished by, oh, I dunno, walking your butt to Church. But I digress.
A quick flip through the book made it clear that I still didn’t have the right idea. The kids in the book were shown having a tree/clubhouse that was packed to overflowing with jars of candy and other goodies. A new kid in the neighborhood is brought in and given a test: would he drink alcohol? Not. Even. Once. How about coffee? Not. Even. Once. How about tea? Not. Even. Once. How about lemonade? Sure, that’d be awesome. Since he passed the test, and was given some sort of loyalty oath to sign, he was inducted into the group, and, presumably, lived happily ever after.
Ummm.
The message I got from this was that it’s bad to drink booze. Sure, I get that. And that it’s ok to drink lemonade. Sure, I get that, too. But where I get fuzzy: it’s not only bad to drink coffee, it’s also bad to drink tea. Bwah? And Tea-Drinking-Is-Teh-Evil seemed to be a bit more important for this group of kids than Murder-Be-Bad.
The book, by the way, was published by Deseret Book Company, a Mormon propaganda firm.
So, for all y’all Mormons out there, explain this to me: Coffee? Tea? Bad???
Is this standard doctrine, or is the author on the loopy end of the Mormon bell curve?
I have heard conflicting things about coffee. As goes at least one story, it was Officially Bad because the caffeine serves as a stimulant, and thus that’s downright druggie. But then the LDS church holds, or at least held (I dunno) a whole lot of stock in Coca Cola… which has a lot of caffeine. So then coffee=bad because it’s a hot drink (which didn’t really clear that up for me). But that doesn’t explain tea, as it’s more like served cold than hot. So… WTF.
And I guess the lesson here is that while caffeine is bad, sugar is AWESOME, and kids need to be bribed with as much of it as can be shoved into them, and that giving in to peer pressure is to be encouraged. Or something.
—
And because why not:
…
Now here’s a photo worth seeing:
This version doesn’t do it justice. Check out the NASA link for the full-rez:
ISS040-E-090540 (9 Aug. 2014) — One of the Expedition 40 crew members aboard the International Space Station photographed this nighttime image showing city lights in at least half a dozen southern states from some 225 miles above the home planet. Lights from areas in the Gulf Coast states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, as well as some of the states that border them on the north, are visible.
This claim seems a little odd:
Russian cosmonauts claim to have discovered tiny marine creatures thriving in zero-gravity on the outside of the International Space Station
There is only one explanation for this…
A blast from the past:
January 15, 1986
In short: jihadis kidnapped four Soviet embassy workers in Lebanon in late 1985. They shot one and left his body in the dump. The Soviet response: call the KGB. KGB found a relative of a Hizbollah leader. The KGB castrated him, and sent his severed junk to said Hizbollah guy, then capped their captive. Then informed Mr. Hizbollah that they knew where the rest of his family was. End result: the three remaining Soviet captives were returned.
This tale might be worth remembering. Because the world does not seem to be improving. Consider:
This is an interesting bit of info to keep in mind when you hear the oft-repeated claim that the likes of Al Qaeda or ISIS do not represent their religion, but are in fact the far edge extremists. If that was true, why is that far extremism more popular for, say, British Muslims than joining in the defense of Britain? Where are the massive forces of volunteers of non-extremists who are gathering together to put down ISIS and install a western-style religiously tolerant system that celebrates the Christian, Jewish, Yazidi, Zoroastrian, agnostic, Hindu, Atheist and whatnot minorities there on the ground?
Feh.
When faced with barbarism, such as people who merrily saw innocent peoples heads off, you cannot emerge victorious through negotiation. Negotiating with monsters is like democracy: “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” At some point the lamb had better be ready to put a bullet through a wolf or two.