In 1985, Rockwell International thought there might be a business case for commercialized space solar power systems. This could be akin to a miniaturized version of the Solar Power Satellite… while it looks like the normal approach would be a more or less conventional solar power systems simply attached to a customer payload, the possibility existed of remote systems that beamed energy to customers with microwaves.
“Beforeigners” is a Norwegian-language series about what happens after people from the past (stone age, Viking age, Victorian era) mysteriously start popping up in the present day and have to be integrated into modern civilization.
Doubtless this will be some sort of morality tale about those Poor, Poor Migrant Refugees currently overwhelming Europe. But I can’t help but think that a major influx of Viking culture and bloodlust into modern day Scandinavia might do some interesting things about Scandinavia’s apparently deeply rooted self-hatred. Unleash a tribe of Vikings into Malmo and things will get *interesting.*
A group calling itself Pigeons United To Interfere Now – PUTIN – decided t0 protest the Democratic debate by way of birds.
The subtleties of the messaging evade me.
See, if parents had been on the job for the last fifty or so years, the Democrats wouldn’t be facing the nightmare of having Berni Sanders as their nominee.
Democrats 2020, you seem to have two options if Bernie is your nominee:
1: Losing to Trump, AGAIN.
2. Being personally responsible for bringing communism to the USA, and the famines and pogroms that will inevitably follow.
Dems: do better.
Kinda cool, though the focus throws off what could have been epic.
Snerk.
Osmoses. Heh.
Those pushing the concept of “Medicare for all” or “universal healthcare” or “healthcare is a human right” will have some ‘splainin’ to do:
In Britain, your “right” to healthcare is dependent upon whether you express the correct viewpoints, it seems. This will add to a rule that says doctors don’t have to provide healthcare to a patient who is violent, which certainly make sense, but now they don’t have to provide healthcare to someone who says something “inappropriate.” It should be interesting to see how broadly it’s interpretted. If you’re wheeled into the emergency room and you promptly start hurling racist invective at the staff… well, that ain’t nice of ya, and I would expect that nurses and doctors are grown up enough to just shrug off that sort of thing, but this rule will cover that and allow the medical staff to wheel your right on back out into the street. But will it *also* cover you if you are, say, a well known preacher of some particular religion that says nasty things about womenfolk and/or the local native ethnic types? Hmmm…
As always, Prager U is confounding. Their videos on religion and science are often the worst form of dreck, but their videos on history and politics are usually spot-on. The one below explains what set “The West” apart from the rest of the world. Why, starting about the 16th century, did western Europeans and their descendants begin to pull away from the rest of the planet in terms of standard of living, wealth, power? The people who hate the west and westerners claim it was because of slavery, war and imperialism, conveniently forgetting that slavery, war and imperialism are *universals.* Wherever westerners went, they encountered empires that enslaved and waged war. The Stanford historian Niall Ferguson here comes to much the same conclusion I long ago did, though he breaks it down to six points, where I break it down to three:
1: Science. The scientific method, the most powerful tool to understand the world as it actually is, was developed and perfected in western Europe.
2: Capitalism. If you want wealth generation, nothing comes close to capitalism. After centuries of systems such as mercantilism, actual capitalism broke out in western countries and colonies, and they started getting stinkin’ rich.
3: Democracy. Allowing people a say in how their lives are lived and governed turns out to be a dandy way to let people actually be happy about their lives. Coupled with capitalism, democracy lets people and populations decide to improve their lot; add science into the mix, and now the people have the *tools* to materially improve their lives.
One can argue about *why* western Europeans developed these three systems , and the rest of the world did not (or at least did not develop all three at the same time). But one cannot honestly argue that they weren’t the drivers of Western Civilization Exceptionalism. Science, Capitalism and Democracy are necessary and sufficient for massive progress. This has been proven in the 20th century: civilizations that had lived in feudal muck and mire for millenia without these three either adopted them or had them forced onto them, and shot forward. Those nations that did not adopt these, or outright rejected one or more of them, stayed backwards, surviving – if they did – on pure nastiness.
This time – THIS TIME – it was just two guys pummeling each other. And… why? Let’s find out:
It allegedly shows Tyler, in a jeans jackets, and another man arguing about the man’s shirt. That man with the “Black Guns Matter” shirt also contacted CBS4, although anonymously. He called Tyler the aggressor and said he is African American.
“He had a problem with the shirt I was wearing,” this man said. “I was recording the event, he walks up and calls me a racist. But I thought, ‘What’s he know about black lives, about discrimination, or, for that matter, the representation of the shirt.’”
In short, Bernie Bros are apparently getting violent over the topic of civilian enfeeblement by way of gun confiscation. So white Sandernistas are calling black Sandernistas racist for wanting to retain their ability to defend themselves against the likes of white maxi-government enthusiasts. Go figure.
But the interesting thing is that while Sanders is attracting the most violent and power-hungry of fans, the man himself is about as weak and ineffectual as is possible to be:
Bernie supporter pleads to #LetDairyDie in his rally live stream! Gets in a few sentences before audio is cut, & the banners from the rest of the group are visible for quite a while before the video feed is itself cut. Thank you for such a brave action @priyadxe27 @DxEverywhere!! pic.twitter.com/tyVFsFEUoJ
— AJ Jivdaya (@bunnydad_aj) February 16, 2020
This giant among men, this would-be Commander In Chief who would lead the most powerful nation in the world against all the threats that face us and into a bold and yet unknown future, lets a little girl take his microphone away from him. While she rambles incoherently about the evils of letting people not starve to death and takes her top off, he stumbles away like a confused, broken little old man.
One is left to wonder what would have happened in a similar Trump situation. Firstly, I doubt someone like this would have gotten to Trump past security. That someone is able to get right up to Commissar Bernie indicates that his security *really* doesn’t like him, which certainly makes sense. Secondly, I can’t imagine Trump giving up ground. Heck, I could see Trump smacking her around some.
Just two days ago I posted what I thought was a really good Deepfake. Here’s another, which is both gooder and less gooder… the results look less convincing to me (I believe because the shape of Keanu Reeves and Ron Livingstons heads are quite different), and yet the result is a more entertaining story. because the clip from two days ago was simply a facial replacement in a scene, where this one tells a unique story based on two separate movies. And it blends together *really* well…