This video looks like it took a *lot* of work…
May 082022
May 072022
A literary celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s record-breaking reign
A “panel of experts” selected 70 books, one for each year of God-Empress Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith, Monarch of India, Regina Andor Augustus Iaponius Centarius’s reign from 1952 to the present. In all those seventy titles meant to honor the British monarch… there seem to be twelve English authors, two Welsh, four Scottish, one Northern Irish. Actual Brits are not considered all that literary-worthy by the BBC. JRR Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings” is conspicuous in its absence. The rest is a “Who’s That” list of authors from Sri Lanka and Rwanda and Jamaica, stuff you’ve never read and likely would put down after a page or two to go find something actually interesting to do instead.
And British people *still* have to pay a license to watch the BBC, even though it is freely broadcast through the air.
May 072022
“The King’s choice” is a 2016 Norwegian film about the Nazi invasion of Norway. I watched it a couple years ago; it was pretty good. But there was one scene that stood out for it’s absolute spectacularness: the sinking of the German cruiser Blücher as it sailed into Oslofjord on April 9, 1940. The Blücher was the latest thing in naval technology and power; it was taken down by a pair of ancient 28 cm shore cannon and some torpedoes that had been launched from a torpedo battery that the Germans were unaware of. That they didn’t know about it seems kinda astounding given that the battery was built in 1901… the torpedoes themselves were manufactured in 1900 by a factory in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The fortress was manned largely by fresh recruits, conscripts who had been on the job for just a few days. The torpedo battery was under the command of a guy who had retired 13 years earlier, while the fort itself was commanded by a guy six months from retirement.
If you want to draw any other parallels to a beleaguered set of defenders taking out a more powerful and aggressive invading nations military vessels… well, I ain’t gonna stop ya.
“The King’s Choice” depicted the moment the cannon open up on the Blücher and fire two shots. It is damned spooky, starting off much like a scene from a horror movie (a *good* horror movie). It’s cinematic perfection.
May 072022
Behold the cat:
May 072022
Not *much* of a tornado from the looks of it, but I remain surprised that the balsa wood and fiberglass blades didn’t fold up like a wet newspaper.
This is kinda what I expected:
May 062022
There is a distinct sudden silence here.
May 052022
The headline should come as no surprise, since it follows the events of Star Trek Discovery. However, there was always the possibility that the producers would make some effort to rectify the many, many mistakes and oversights of STD, but… nope. While it is too early to judge whether or not the show is any good, given the people behind it are largely those responsible for STD and STP, skepticism about it emerging as anything but lamentable trash is warranted. That said, several details about the show make it perfectly clear that it is not set in the same continuity as “Star Trek:”
1: The Gorn are discussed. Given that this show is set more than a decade before TOS, and the Gorn weren’t known to the Federation until Kirk & Co. ran into them…
2: Some history of Earth was dropped: the January 6 2021 Capitol hijinks are shown, and described as a prelude to “the second Civil War,” which led to the Eugenics Wars, which led to World War III. Since the Eugenics wars occurred in the 1990s, it would be tricky for events from 2021 to cause them.
3: A star chart lists the planet “Sarpeidon,” a world that won’t be encountered until Kirk & Co. get there more than a decade later. Given that the planet has a fully functional time machine program that winds up sending the *entire* planetary population elsewhen, the existence of Sarpeidon would have been either one of the biggest military centers of the Federation, or one of the biggest secrets; all the time travel monekymotions of STD Season 2 could have been dispensed with.
On more subjective fronts, none of the characters that carry through from TOS seem to be at all the same characters, just people with the same names. Nurse Chapel, in particular, seems a completely different person. Spock and T’Pring are shown together… and T’Pring proposing marriage to Spock is shown, an odd thing given that theirs was a marriage arranged by their families when they were children, and then they didn’t really have much to do with each other. T’Pring seems quite un-Vulcan as well. The Enterprise itself is an entirely different ship, far more generic sci-fi-flashy and far less character-filled than the classic. The bridge is unrecognizable… much bigger, with a *huge* window up front rather than the somewhat dinky viewscreen from the original.
All in all… unsurprising.
May 052022
Boeing *used* to have their headquarters where they actually made stuff. Then they moved to Chicago (far, far away from their manufacturing capabilities), and since then their ability to make stuff has been… kind of a joke.Now they’re moving to the region of D.C. Their ability to make stuff can be assumed to be at an end.
Boeing will move its headquarters to DC area from Chicago
Maybe Elon Musk could buy Boeings factories? It’s not like Boeing will have much further need for them, now that they will be a full-time Lobbying Corporation.
May 052022
The most American vehicles for going to the most American of fast food joints.
Those of you who sneer and mock… we can all see that you’re actually jealous.
May 052022
This area of Illinois is nowhere near as photogenic as Utah. The night sky, for example, is essentially non-existent, and the local mountains are… kinda non-existent. Shrug. Still, there is the occasional shot worth taking.
