Interesting… but not surprising. After all, not all lives matter in the eyes of the national news media.
Will there be “peaceful protests?”
Aug 132020
Aug 132020
And it is undeniable.
I swear, in broad daylight, the driver of the red truck had a red cap on with white letters. Conspiracy? Outright attempt at stealing the election by denying the access of the @USPS ? Let’s not let it happen! @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/gG765Caldm
— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) August 11, 2020
Aug 122020
If you want Blammo, it’s hard to beat an H-Bomb.
Aug 122020
Russia steps up in a bid to challenge Beirut in the Splosion Spectacular, but falls quite a bit short.
Huge blast rips through gas station in Russian city of Volgograd, injuring at least 13
Sure this was a few days ago, but what are ya gonna do…
Aug 122020
Biden – or at least the people marionetting him around – selected Kamala Harris as his VP yesterday. I suppose that’s news…. but with everything going on,both locally and in the wider world, I just can’t get my give-a-ᛋᚻᛁᛏ-generator running. Which, for all I know, might be what Biden’s folks kinda hoped. So I’ll just leave this here:
Aug 112020
A report I scored off ebay some time back had a number of conceptual Douglas designs for supersonic tanker aircraft. Gotta scan this in at some point…
Aug 112020
The surrounding area is still filled with blacked-out neighborhoods with no power or not internet or both, but somehow I’m back… at least for the moment. Huzzah.
Aug 102020
The weather came through today and really did a number on the local power grid. I’m typing this on my phone, and will probably be otherwise offline for however many days it takes to get things up and running again. Emails, especially orders, will probably be spotty at best.
Aug 102020
Guh. Netflix’s “Away” is about the first manned mission to Mars. This *should* be all about the thrill of exploration and discovery, right? Right???? Nope. It all about how this Benetton ad full of Incredibly Diverse international astronauts are all emotional wrecks, how leaving home for three years will lead to tragedy and regret.
Hollywood… y’all suck.
Who the frak is this series even *for?* Science fiction fans? Doesn’t really look like it. Space exploration aficionados? Not from the looks of it. People who love weepy emotional barf? Maybe, but how many of those people will want to watch rockets?
Based on this trailer, there’s one way this series could be salvaged. Through the first season run, as we see our Politically Selected and Politically Correct crew being prepared by their UN-approved government program, you see distant background references to some private program. Make sure that whenever it is referenced, anybody responding to it does so with scoff and scorn. But in the last few minutes of the season finale, as our Diverse Heroes approach Mars, they detect radio signals from *ahead.* While nobody was looking, SpaceX got there ahead of them… landing at the US Space Force base that got there ahead of *them*. Season two starts with our Quotanauts landing at the USSF base and being welcomed to a hotel being assembled by the SpaceX crew. The Season One cast all look crushed and defeated, and then the camera pans over to the Season Two cast of American USSF and SpaceX explorers setting out to not only explore Mars but to begin mining operations. Season Two goes in an uplifting direction, with the idiots from the first season being bypassed and forgotten.
Aug 102020
For decades it has been the vogue to complain about the dropping of two atom bombs on the Empire of Japan. This has been argued ad nauseum, but I think a good summary of the better position is found in:
“Thank God for the Atom Bomb”
Written by Paul Fussel in 1981. He was an infantryman in Europe during WWII, and likely would have been killed – along with perhaps a million other American soldiers, sailors and airmen – had the A-bombs not been dropped.
The future scholar-critic who writes The History of Canting in the Twentieth Century will find much to study and interpret in the utterances of those who dilate on the special wickedness of the A-bomb-droppers. He will realize that such utterance can perform for the speaker a valuable double function. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. And second, by implication it can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone else’s. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. When the young soldier with the wild eyes comes at you, firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping he’ll be hurt badly enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which he’s going to kill you, or do you shoot him in the chest (or, if you’re a prime shot, in the head) and make certain that you and not he will be the survivor of that mortal moment?
It’s very definitely worth reading.