Another One

09. May 2007 · Comments Off on Another One · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

…of those e-mailed lists going the rounds:

Number 10: Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9: Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8: Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. f you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.

Number 7: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.

Number 6: Some people are like a slinky … Not really good for anything, but you still can’t help
but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

Number 5:Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Number 4: All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Number 3: Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you 30.00?

Number 2: In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take prozac to make it normal.

And the number 1 thought for 2007: We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven’t got a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.

And finally, this little warning: “Life is like a jar of jalepenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow”.

Eject! Eject! Eject!

08. May 2007 · Comments Off on Eject! Eject! Eject! · Categories: General

Bill Whittle, one of my all time favorite writers on the web, has done some refurbing of his site and has even MORE new content.

No Bill, you’re not alone.  Lot’s of us just can’t say it as well as you do.

If you’ve never read his stuff, go make yourself a pot of coffee or a quart of milk, get a bag o’ cookies and just start somewhere and keep going. 

Carnival of Space reminder

08. May 2007 · Comments Off on Carnival of Space reminder · Categories: General

Reminder from Henry Cate

I am feeling better and plan to put together the second Carnival of Space this Thursday. Entries are due Wednesday evening, at 6:00 PM PST. Go here for instructions on how to send in your submission.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

08. May 2007 · Comments Off on Apollo Lunar Surface Journal · Categories: General

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal is a record of the lunar surface operations conducted by the six pairs of astronauts who landed on the Moon from 1969 through 1972. The Journal is intended as a resource for anyone wanting to know what happened during the missions and why. It includes a corrected transcript of all recorded conversations between the lunar surface crews and Houston. The Journal also contains extensive, interwoven commentary by the Editor and by ten of the twelve moonwalking astronauts.

Interesting? Heck yes. Important? Quite.

By the time anyone else walks on the moon anybody who was involved is going to be pushing their century mark or dead, and long retired certainly. They won’t be around to tell us about the hard lessons learned – we damned well better write as much of it down while we can.

Ask anyone who gets and does something for a living – be it welding or flying airplanes or leading a patrol in Juwayba – book learning is all well and good but learning from people that have learned the hard way is vital.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Why Is Duct Tape Like the Force?

06. May 2007 · Comments Off on Why Is Duct Tape Like the Force? · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General

Because it has a light side , and a dark side, and it binds the Universe together!

And also does a pretty good job on ducts, too. Which is why I remembered that joke: I’ve been up in the attic crawlspace, possibly my least-favorite place in my house, although flat on my back with an adjustable wrench in my hand trying to remedy a persistent malevolent leak under a bathroom sink is in neck-and-neck competition.

Did Martha Stewart ever do a show, or a magazine article about replacing lengths of AC duct? I seriously doubt she ever has; it has all the charm and appeal of a DIY septic tank pumping. About all that can be said in favor is that replacing lengths of ducting yourself is significantly cheaper than paying someone, even an illegal alien to do it for you. I was actually briefed on how to do it, by a client six or seven jobs ago, who did HVAC as a side-line. Being that my house is fairly new, and everything about it is standard and bought by the contractor truck-load, swapping out any elements, from door-knobs to the kitchen sink is a pretty straightforward one-for-one exchange with stuff on the shelf at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

See, this came up because I had the yearly maintenance inspection done a couple of weeks ago, and the technician said the AC unit is fine and functioning as well as could be expected… but that the ducts were well beyond anything but last rites… there were in fact, gaping holes in the inner layer of the largest ducts, where the plastic outer layer had disintegrated, and the fiberglass insulation layer had also dissolved. This must have developed late last summer, or perhaps over the winter… as I said, the attic crawlspace is not my most favorite place in the house. It does explain why the air emerging from the vents in some rooms was coming out as a less-than-frigid blast, even when the thermostat was set really, really low.

And this is South Texas, where air conditioning in the summer is absolutely positively essential. I don’t even live in one of those old-fashioned houses, which they used to build in the days before routine installation of AC… you know, the sort of houses with deep verandahs, thick walls and a good cross-breeze through tall windows on all sides? We flirted with the thought of patching the broken places by wrapping them with layers of heavy plastic trash bags and a lot of duct tape… but how would we know if there were other breaks, in places we couldn’t see them? It was just easier and probably cheaper in the long run to buy three boxes of different-sized ducting, two packages of plastic ties… and lots of duct tape, and spend a lot of uncomfortable time scrambling around in the rafters.

With luck, I will manage to replace all the segments running from the central unit to the various registers without putting a foot through the ceiling. I can’t spend too long up there at a stretch; either… it gets too hot, now that I have stopped up most of the cool-air leaks!

The Doctor is In

05. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Doctor is In · Categories: General, That's Entertainment!

When I was in college, Sunday nights were the best television nights. Forget Hill Street Blues, Taxi, Night Court and the rest. On Sunday night, I would join my friends in front of the big-screen TV at the Student Union, and we wouldn’t budge for the next three hours.

Sunday night was British TV night on the Chicago area PBS channel. It would start with Monty Python, followed by Benny Hill, The Two Ronnies, and Dave Allen at Large. There was probably another show, but it escapes me. It was over 25 years ago, after all. But the highlight of the evening, the show that kept us in the Union after they were officially closed, was Doctor Who. Doctor Who was the longest-running sci-fi show on British television, with some of the worst FX you could ever hope to see. We all said that it proved the reality that if you have a good story, FX don’t matter as much. You could see the zippers on the monsters, for crying out loud. The Doctor was a Time Lord, the last of his species, who traveled the universe in a shape-changing time-machine called the TARDIS, which due to some unexplained glitch, was forever stuck in the shape of an old London Police Call Box.

Tom Baker was my favorite Doctor. The Doctor of my young adulthood. The first Doctor I’d ever seen. In my mind, he was perfect. The previous Doctor, Jon Pertwee, was OK, but Tom was the best. Wearing a battered fedora, draped in the longest scarf I’d ever seen, he was quirky and adorable all at once.

When his character metamorphosed into Peter Davison (Time Lords don’t die, they metamorphose into a new, younger body), I stopped watching. It wasn’t just because Tom was gone – I was in a different state, and couldn’t find the Doctor on the local PBS station. This was long before the days of 500-channel television, and PBS was the only place one could find the British TV shows.

Fast forward 20+ years. Last fall, I was watching PBS in a hotel room somewhere, and stumbled across a TV show that showed someone fighting some type of space aliens in some type of school in Britain. It was called “School Reunion,” and there was just something about it that made me think “Doctor Who.” And it was. A new, younger Doctor, with a young, modern assistant (or companion). But the “Reunion” title was appropriate – the Doctor was reunited with Sarah Jane Smith, who was one of Tom Baker’s assistants.

As I sat there, drinking in the new doctor, Sarah Jane led him to her car, opened the trunk, and uncovered K-9, the Doctor’s mechanical dog that had been Tom Baker’s other constant companion. I had totally forgotten about K-9, and was delighted to see him again.

So now I had a mission. Obviously, a new Doctor Who was being made, and I knew nothing about it. House-sitting for a friend over Christmas, I was ready to pack up my car and head home when her TIVO announced it was changing the channel I was watching so it could tape Doctor Who. I got home much later than I had planned, because I had to watch the show.

But still nothing in my hometown, and I have just enough cable TV to give me decent TV reception, so I had no way of finding it, other than channel-surfing in hotel rooms during my business trips.

But a few weeks ago, as I was settling in to watch my weekly episode of Red Dwarf on the local PBS channel, it wasn’t Red Dwarf. It was Doctor Who, the new one. David Tennant is the new Doctor, who operates at such a frenetic pace that he makes Tom Baker look sedate. But it works. And I’m in hog heaven, because not only do they air the Doctor on Saturday nights, but they air a new episode on Sunday evenings. The Saturday show is a repeat of the Sunday show, so I get two chances to make sure I catch the show.
UPDATE: I just found out that the Doctor I’m enjoying right now is Chris Eccleston, not David Tennant. David Tennant is the current (10th) Doctor, but the series is on Doctor #9, just now.

This new Doctor Who is set in current times, and has cell phones, the internet, and better FX than the original. In other words, I’ve not yet seen the zippers on the monsters. And next week, the Daleks will be back. “EXTERMINATE.” “EXTERMINATE.”

My Saturday nights are complete – Britcoms followed by the Doctor, just like it was on Sunday nights 25+ years ago. Now, if they would only re-broadcast Dave Allen, or Monty Python, I could pretend I was 19 again.

Woof

05. May 2007 · Comments Off on Woof · Categories: General

So .. what’s new with working dogs and the modern military?

I wonder if the spotter gets any trigger time …

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Jerry Pournelle at Space Access ’07

05. May 2007 · Comments Off on Jerry Pournelle at Space Access ’07 · Categories: General

I’m certain that a small but significant portion of the viewing audience will a) get this and b) smile.

You want me to name ..

But I found it amusing.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

CARPE DIEM PART II

05. May 2007 · Comments Off on CARPE DIEM PART II · Categories: General

Well, it’s after 1:00 am, and we just completed the three hour drive home from Scholastic Bowl with the third place trophy. The team that won (the only one to beat us all night) had one girl who answered virtually every question – the consensus is that she’s an MIT grad ringer. They actually shut out two teams completely – an unheard of feat. Red Haired Girl is happy that she personally scored more points against that team than two other teams combined.

It was kind of neat being around a couple hundred of some of the brightest middle school kids in the state – it reinforces my confidence in the upcoming generation.

Signing off from Geeksville…

CARPE DIEM

04. May 2007 · Comments Off on CARPE DIEM · Categories: General

I live in a typical Midwestern rural community that has long taken pride in the accomplishments of the school athletic teams – to an extreme. Today though, we hope for grey matter to seize the day. Our middle schoolers are sending their Scholastic Bowl team (including Red Haired Girl) to the Illinois state class A championship. On Monday we traveled to Brimfield, near Peoria, and smoked the competition to win the sectional championship. That in and of itself was a milestone – the first hardware in the trophy case and banner in the gym for brain power. Also for a first, the school held a pep rally this morning for the kids.

Real Wife and I leave shortly on the three hour jaunt to Bloomington-Normal for the Big Dance. Competition will be tough – these are the über geeks coming from many Catholic and other private schools. Odds are good though; our kids are a diverse bunch who complement each other well. The questions are equally tough (how many Loyal Readers knew that John Jakes was the first Supreme Court justice, or that the transmission electron microscope was invented before the scanning electron microscope?).

We should arrive home by around midnight. Unbeknownst to the kids, the local fire and police departments will meet the bus at the edge of town for an escort home. No matter the outcome, they are winners.

Small town life is good (and geeks rule!!!).

p.s., in re. the title of this post – it is the slogan on the team’s shirts, and we do not have fish in our blue jeans

Wally Schirra

04. May 2007 · Comments Off on Wally Schirra · Categories: General

James Lileks has, I think, the best obit I’ve seen today.

Think of it: we shot two rockets into orbit, and one of them – guided by men and an onboard computer that probably had less computational power than your cellphone – found the other, drew alongside, and flew in formation for a while. When I was a kid I was space-crazy (still am, really) but I always thought the Lunar Excursion Model was somewhat unlovable – those black empty eyes, those insect legs. The Gemini capsule was iconic, though, and Shirra was one of the men who drove it up and drove it down.

One by one they go, and we’re the lesser for their loss. There’s courage. And then there’s this.

When you can’t beat em, blockquote ’em. You’ll be missed, Wally Schirra.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Minor League Baseball

04. May 2007 · Comments Off on Minor League Baseball · Categories: General

We took the boys to see a baseball game tonight; The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers and the Dayton Dragons. It was C’s first baseball game and at seven he’s just old enough to make it through a full game without a lethal case of the fidgets. A is twelve and it’s been too long since we’ve been.

Minor league baseball – what a deal! The tickets are inexpensive, Fox Cities Stadium only has 5,000 seats so there really aren’t any bad seats in the house. My little guy leaned around the corner of the dugout, said ‘hi’ to Leury Bonilla who grinned a big ‘hi’ back and tossed him a baseball. A few innings later a perky usher asked him if was having a good time, found out this was his ‘first ever’ game and dug up a game ball with someone’s initials.

We even had a chance to boo the umpire …

In the ninth, Timber Rattler frustrations bubbled over. Dayton had runners at second and third with no out. The Wisconsin infielders were playing in on the grass to cut down the run at the plate. Justin Turner hit a grounder right to Bonilla at third base. Bonilla dove for the runner at third and appeared to have tagged him out. Base umpire Alex Diaz ruled the runner safe and Rattler manager Jim Horner sprinted out of the dugout to argue the call. After a brief, but heated argument Horner was ejected. Just before the next pitch was ready to be delivered, Diaz ejected Bonilla.

I have no idea why Bonilla was ejected. From where we were sitting he appeared to be just standing there then … bam he’s outta there.

All in all an excellent night – you almost don’t mind that the good guys lost by three runs.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Power and Control

02. May 2007 · Comments Off on Power and Control · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Military, My Head Hurts, Rant, Stupidity, World

Well, so much for active-duty Army mil-blogging, if the Army Powers-That-Be have their way. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, public affairs-wise… but color me fairly unsurprised by this latest move to constrain active-duty Army bloggers. Frankly, if I am surprised at anything, it’s that milblogs by active-duty troops managed to escape the clammy clutches of the Public Affairs office for as long as they have. For a long while, I thought that someone up in the higher-echelons was actually being rather clever; in taking the hands-off approach. Milblogs got the word out, without being tainted by association with military propaganda; about the war, about the military, provided expert commentary and feedback, under no particular censorship other than that of good sense and op-sec as practiced by the individual.

For surely the military public affairs world must have known about military bloggers, fairly early on (say at least by 2002). I myself made a long slog up to the PA shop at BAMC about that time, offering to pass on any appeals they might have on behalf of injured troops. This was when Blondie was over in Kuwait, and our readers at the time were overwhelmingly generous to her unit… to the point where I wanted to see it shared with other troops. I talked to a civilian PA type, who at least had heard of military blogs, and promised to pass on my e-mail and URL to his superiors, and that was the last I ever heard. I’d have thought, based on my own experience, that as interested as the Public Affairs was in traditional media coverage of the military… I’d have seen a little more interest. Unless they were total boobs about this newfangled internet thingy. That wouldn’t have surprised me… much, but assuming some sort of hands-off policy at least gave credit for intelligence and creative thinking at the highest military PA level.

But… and that is the industrial-sized, multi-purpose, all-wool-and-a-yard-wide but (Hey, who let Rosie O’Donnell in here?). But… the military is an authoritarian institution. Top down and paved wall-to-wall with regulations for most things. As a rough rule of thumb, those in charge are supposed to have an idea about what the lower ranks are up to… yes, even you, General Karpinski. And those in charge prefer that those lower down the chain of command are doing what they have been told to do. Personal initiative is all very nice, and even lauded from those who have proved they can exercise it wisely and responsibly. For everyone else, there are rules. And it is one of those lamentable realities of the military world that almost the first reaction to a new situation or set of conditions is to make a rule or regulation about it. Leopard, spots, can’t change. Reaction, knee-jerk, officers for the use of.

I thought the Army was about the most extreme in this regard; the Air Force generally operated on the initial assumption that their personnel were intelligent and responsible, and only descended like a ton of bricks when an individual decisively proved the contrary. The Army seemed to operate from the opposite set of assumptions…possibly because it either saved time or was just easier. I saw a perfect example of this during my year in Korea, at Yongsan Garrison. Out of the clear blue, the Army Powers-That-Be suddenly forbade uniformed personnel to consume food from street-vendors, unless it was something like a sealed soft-drink can, or something in a package. Probably some poor troop got a tummy-ache from a bite of bad bulgogi at a street stand, but after a great deal of vociferous complaint and requests for clarification (what constituted the sort of food that was forbidden, what exactly was a street vender? Some of the open-air vendors were pretty permanent establishments!) the Powers-That-Be grudgingly clarified their purpose; which was that they didn’t want us to be eating food prepared by unlicensed vendors. Well, asked we at AFN… wouldn’t it be more logical just to tell people to not eat from unlicensed vendors… maybe, perhaps, maybe teach our audience what a Korean Department of Health food-vendor’s license looked like, and how to request it politely?
Certainly not, returned the Army Powers-That-Be, rather grumpily… that was not how the Army did things.

Ah, said we, in resignation… Of course; it was just the easy way. Not the most thoughtful way, or the way that encouraged people’s own sense of self-preservation, or the way that preserved the livelihood of those hard-working and licensed local national food vendors, or the way that might truly protect uniformed personnel from bad food. It was just the easy way. Make a rule.

American Century Mass Cas

01. May 2007 · Comments Off on American Century Mass Cas · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, World

I can pretty well figure out the source of my interest in 19th century American history; some of it can be blamed on the �Little House Books� of Laura Ingalls Wilder. But the larger portion can be laid squarely at the foot of my mother�s subscription to �American Heritage Magazine�. Which she still has, but the magazine is a pale, paltry and advertisement-poxed version of what it was when Mom first began subscribing� shortly after the beginning of the magazine itself. There were only a handful of the very earliest, dawn-of-time-issues which I did not know very, very well. It was a bi-monthly, or quarterly hard-back publication, with no advertisements and articles by serious, well-respected if seemingly obscure historians who managed to be interesting� without being the least bit sensational. I have the impression that most of them were passionately interested in their topic� whatever it might be, and wrote with enthusiasm equal to their knowledge of subject. The articles were well-illustrated with contemporary art or historic photographs, or an appealing mix of modern photographs, drawings and artifacts. I couldn�t have imagined a better introduction to the vagaries of our national history.

These articles and essays ranged over three centuries of American history, events and movements, personalities, triumphs and tragedies great and small, obscure or well known, all mixed together, and I pretty well sucked up every word. In hitting up the library shelves over the last couple of months, though, I�ve been reminded of some events that I first read about, courtesy of American Heritage. These events hit at a most peculiar nexus in our history; just at that point when a certain level of technological development combined with a decided carelessness as to consequences when people were encouraged to move to a part of the country where large numbers of people had not been before. Or in some cases, where too many people happened to gather in a venue where not so many of them could have been accommodated previously. At the same time, communications and travel were made much easier, while the appetite for national news grew ravenous. Did anyone think that �if it bleeds, it leads� was an invention of the present cynical age? Or that breathless coverage of a disaster was something that came along after the invention of radio and television?

Oh, no, my friends. From about 1870, until the beginning of WWI, our nation was rocked pretty regularly by horrific disasters, natural and otherwise. The astonishing thing is that most of them have been forgotten, save by local historians. For every one that is noted in the textbooks and in the memory of popular culture; the Chicago fire, the Johnstown flood, the sinking of the Titanic, there are a half a dozen others.

The Peshtigo fire, for example: a tornado of fire that roared through Wisconsin in 1871 and burned a thriving lumber town on Green Bay. That fire incinerated perhaps 2,000 people. Those who survived took refuge in a river, where they had to keep ducking under water, as the fire burned all around with such intensity that their hair kept catching fire. But that fire happened at the same time as Chicago was burning to the ground, and so a major city in flames grabbed most of the headlines. Twenty-three years later, another huge firestorm swept through another Minnesota lumber-town; Hinckley, where about four hundred saved themselves in a nearby gravel pit and a shallow, muddy lake, while another four hundred suffocated or were burned alive. The heroes of that day were the crews of three trains, who stayed to evacuate residents until their coaches were all but catching fire from the blowtorch flames around them.

Catastrophic weather took a toll in that last bit of the 19th century, accurate forecasting being more of a dream than a reality. On a January day in 1888, the temperatures across a wide swath of the upper Plains abruptly dropped nearly seventy-degrees in a few hours. It was a mild day until early afternoon, until a sudden blizzard swept over Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Kansas. Farmers doing chores were a short way from their homes were suddenly isolated, and children were trapped with their teachers in their tiny schoolhouses. Over two hundred were dead of exposure� many of them children. One of the heroines of the Schoolhouse Blizzard was a young teacher who supposedly tied her 17 pupils together with clothesline and led them all to safety in a house a bare mile away.

Along the Texas Gulf coast, two hurricanes ten years apart destroyed Indianola, the Queen City of the West. At the turn of the century a third hurricane hit like a pile-driver through Galveston; it is thought at the cost of over 8,000 lives. The city fathers of Galveston rebuilt, raising the level of their barely-sea-level island behind a huge sea-wall� and the benefits of accurate weather forecasting and storm watches became clearly evident.

The loss of the White Star liner Titanic, colliding with an ice-berg in the mid-Atlantic is one of those things that practically everyone knows about� but barely ten years before, the steamship General Slocum burned within sight of New York harbor. It was an excursion ship, hired for the day by a large Lutheran church on the lower East side, to take the families of its parishioners for an all-day picnic outing on Long Island. The General Slocum burned while the captain tried to run it aground where the fire wouldn�t endanger anyone else� while his crew discovered that the fire hoses were rotten, the lifeboats couldn�t be dislodged from their places, or lowered away if they could� and the life-vests were filled with rotted cork. Over 1,000 people were lost� like the Schoolhouse Blizzard disaster, many of them children. Another excursion steamship, the Eastland, was hired in 1915 for the employees of Western Electric Company�s annual company picnic. The Eastland was an unstable and top-heavy ship, and while taking on passengers at a Chicago dock rolled over to one side in 20 feet of water. Almost 900 of her passengers died within 20 feet of the dock� but the Eastland has nothing of the enduring grip on the imagination that the Titanic does.

This is only a partial list of these sorts of disasters; I�ve probably missed at least this many and more� but they had an effect, even if the headlines did not last as long. The inquiries into the Slocum and the Eastland disasters resulted on at least as many safety improvements as regards their operations. The train of natural disasters caused by weather likewise resulted in such things as forecasting, and storm tracking being taken more seriously. The loss of whole cities and a good chunk of the countryside to fires became unacceptable, after Chicago and Peshtigo fires� and especially so after the Hinckley fire. It was all cumulatively too much. People got very tired of opening their paper every few years and reading of some horrendous loss of life� and then finding out that it might have been could have been, and should have been prevented. Just blindly trusting to luck, goodwill among men, and a benevolent nature would no longer cut it, now that disaster news could fly beyond a single town, or a neighborhood and touch people half a world away.

Still, it�s curious, how few people have heard of some of these I have listed. Blondie only knew about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and only because it was her freshman history textbook.

(- note: correction on location of Peshtigo fire noted – thanks!)

Fight the tide

01. May 2007 · Comments Off on Fight the tide · Categories: General

The local schools have a good reputation and, by all accounts, are not so bad at the education biz. Why home school? Well ..

Inside the school, I felt the same cold grim feelings I had the last time I’d come here – even empty, the place bristles, somehow. A couple of students walked past, and I silently counted to see how long it would be take before someone deployed the Effenheimer, or the dreaded Mother Effenheimer. Three seconds. I’m not in favor of having nuns patrol with nail-studded two-by-fours, but on the other hand, I am. Or least some authority figure around which the Youts would feel compelled to display a civil tongue. I was talking with one of the neighbors at the bus stop; she’d been to the school last week, and one of the stuecadents hit on her.

My child is not going there.

This is why: because a school that excels academically, where the students are polite and well-mannered is becoming not, perhaps, a rarity but certainly a cause to pause and say “Will you look at that”.

The way it should be is becoming an exception. I can’t fight the tide but I can take my kids to high ground.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Constant Conflict

01. May 2007 · Comments Off on Constant Conflict · Categories: General

Constant Conflict
Ralph Peters

It is fashionable among world intellectual elites to decry “American culture,” with our domestic critics among the loudest in complaint. But traditional intellectual elites are of shrinking relevance, replaced by cognitive-practical elites–figures such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, or our most successful politicians–human beings who can recognize or create popular appetites, recreating themselves as necessary. Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures. While some other cultures, such as those of East Asia, appear strong enough to survive the onslaught by adaptive behaviors, most are not. The genius, the secret weapon, of American culture is the essence that the elites despise: ours is the first genuine people’s culture. It stresses comfort and convenience–ease–and it generates pleasure for the masses. We are Karl Marx’s dream, and his nightmare.

Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can’t wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather “Baywatch.” America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no “peer competitor” in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted–men and women everywhere–clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.

American culture is criticized for its impermanence, its “disposable” products. But therein lies its strength. All previous cultures sought ideal achievement which, once reached, might endure in static perfection. American culture is not about the end, but the means, the dynamic process that creates, destroys, and creates anew. If our works are transient, then so are life’s greatest gifts–passion, beauty, the quality of light on a winter afternoon, even life itself. American culture is alive.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Poor thinking skills

30. April 2007 · Comments Off on Poor thinking skills · Categories: General

Poor thinking – a result of, or cause of heroin addiction?

Morgan laughed in bitter agreement with that. He’s 42 and looks 72 – gaunt and toothless after a lifetime of heroin addiction. “They think you can take it or leave it, but it’s just the opposite. It takes you,” he said.

“It’s the biggest mistake in my life,” he went on. “If I got three wishes, I wouldn’t wish for a million dollars. It would be that I never tried heroin that first time.”

Not to belabor the obvious, Morgan, but you’ve got three wishes.

One for a million dollars.
Two that you’d never tried heroin the first time.
Three to wish for a tree house.

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

He walked away

30. April 2007 · Comments Off on He walked away · Categories: General

Ka-BOOM.

A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday, creating such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed.

Flames shot 200 feet in the air, but the truck’s driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns.

I predict with some confidence that when they say ‘walked away’ they mean ‘ran like the dickens’.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Additional Rites of Spring

29. April 2007 · Comments Off on Additional Rites of Spring · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General

Wherever the globe is warming, it isn’t around here. Spring has been mild, and rainy. Some days the temperature climbs up into the eighties, but not for long, and the nights are cool. A storm-front went through this week, threatening high winds, and several hours of thunder-and-lightening starting around midnight that sounded like a WWI artillery barrage and kept the sky fairly continuously lit up. You’d have thought that would have made sleep impossible, but I must have managed it. Local newscasts that evening were breathless with anticipation, repeating the tornado watch warning all the evening beforehand. Blondie says there was a shelter-roof by one of the gates to Ft. Sam that looked like it was trashed, but otherwise we came through OK… no hail, at least. And lots of rain. The trees are well out in leaf, and so is everything else.

We added some plants: a friend had a roommate move out, leaving behind a lot of potted plants. We took a lot of them, as my friend has zilch interest in gardening, and so my place looks even more lush than usual at this time of year. The nice part about working at home is that Lesser Weevil does not get so destructively bored. It’s been almost a year since she killed any plants, or tried digging a tunnel back into the house via the perennial border. Blondie has hit some of the neighborhood yard sales. She returned yesterday with a pair of tall ornamental pillars and a replica of the Venus d’Milo, which will look better once they’ve been brushed with a concoction of watered-yoghurt. This is supposed to encourage moss and mildew and other natural things to grow on them, although I won’t go to the ornamental extreme of one of the neighbors, who has so many statues in their front yard that the place looks like a hobbit graveyard.

The two of us are watching way too much of the Home & Garden Channel…

Another rite of spring: Spike the toy shi-tzu had her summer clip. I’m sorry; life is just too short to maintain her in the style which apparently that breed has become accustomed, with twice-weekly baths and constant brushing of her long, long fur. Off to the groomers she went, for what Blondie described as a “shaved puppy”. (Which sounds uncommonly like some of the p0*n spam I empty out daily). Everything between the plume on her tail and the topknot on her head is clipped down to the skin. I think she feels cooler and more comfortable, especially on the daily morning walk.

Or as one of the neighbors calls it “the daily drag around the block”. The Weevil and Spike tear out ahead of me, lunging at the end of their leashes. I must have become more accustomed to this; it’s been ages since either one of them managed to trip me up or knock me down. The Weevil is especially exuberant during the first few blocks: she leaps clear of the ground, over and over again. “You can tell she’s had her Wheaties!” observed the same neighbor, upon observing this performance. There is also speculation afoot that she might be part jack-rabbit. Taking them both out is not just “walkies”, it’s an upper-body workout too.

Rites of spring, indeed.

What was television, grandpa?

28. April 2007 · Comments Off on What was television, grandpa? · Categories: General

Google brings authors to Google Worldwide Headquarters for informal talks. Are they sharing? Is the Pope German?

We invite you to check out all the extraordinary people who’ve taken part in the Authors@Google program so far, and enjoy one of our videos today.

John Scalzi

Strobe Talbott

More.

I’ve still got a television but more and more I wonder when I’ll wake up and realize it’s been weeks .. or months .. since I’ve turned it on.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

You Know It’s Time to Retire When (070427)

27. April 2007 · Comments Off on You Know It’s Time to Retire When (070427) · Categories: General

When the Air Force’s NCO Professional Development Guide (previously known as the Professional Fitness Examination Manual) has space porn on it’s cover.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been involved with space in one way or another for the past 6 years. I know how cool and how important satellites are. They’re one of the reasons we can kill people and break things as accurately as we do. However,  the thought of the joystick jockies at Shriever whacking off on the cover of their study material just makes me feel like I need a shower in Lysol Simple Green.  Although, I’ve always assumed that’s what the whole joystick thing was about anyway.  Did I mention they wear blue jammies?  They wear blue jammies.

Yes, space is cool.  Space is hip.  Space is now.  But for the cover of our study guide?  I want atmospheric aircraft dammit!

Pi to 1,000 Places: Piano Solo

27. April 2007 · Comments Off on Pi to 1,000 Places: Piano Solo · Categories: General

Assign piano keys values 0-9, start hard at PI to 1000 places and play. It’s got no rhythm by definition and you can’t dance to it but it is still pretty darn interesting.

Via
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

My Current Project

26. April 2007 · Comments Off on My Current Project · Categories: Domestic, General, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine...

Without further ado, may I present the project that I have been working on, all this week, courtesy of my friend, Dave the Computer Guy; the website to market my books.

Well, the one that I did a couple of years ago, the one that I finished and which will be published (one way or another!) by September… and the three-part saga which I am currently working on. I am doing all this under the pen name that I began with… just to keep things tidy, and maintain my families’ assorted and respective privacy.

www.celiahayes.com

I am still working on some of the bits… like closing each page when you go to another one. And the “interview” page is still under construction… and my brother has promised some original art for some of the elements, rather than the bits supplied with the template.

This site is currently piggy-backed on Dave the Computer Guy’s site, so my next expense will be paying for a year of hosting, and for Dave to do some additional marketing. Feedback and suggestions are invited.

So are donations- (Paypal button over on the left, under the link for the first book.)

Zero-G

26. April 2007 · Comments Off on Zero-G · Categories: General

Stephen Hawking is going .. well not to orbit but he’s going to experience zero-g.

What a marvelous experience for a guy bound by gravity and circumstance to a chair. He may get to orbit yet – Sir Richard Branson is going to give him a seat on VirginGalactic.

I’m humbled that other people have framed this in a far more entertaining manner than I can manage – I won’t even try.

Space is to humans what Beethoven is to dogs. I don’t think we have the slightest idea what we don’t yet understand.

Just thought of something: What holds the paraplegic in their chairs? What keeps them from shooting around the room, stopping their progress with a finger, floating from desk to desk?

Gravity.

And gravity isn’t a big issue . . . where?

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Driving Down Our Old Street

26. April 2007 · Comments Off on Driving Down Our Old Street · Categories: General

Hey, Sgt Mom, Blondie, look!

Someone’s moved into our old joint.

Hope it takes good care of him.

Carnival of Space

26. April 2007 · Comments Off on Carnival of Space · Categories: General

The first Carnival of Space is up. Huzzah!

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Who I am .. What I’m doing here

26. April 2007 · Comments Off on Who I am .. What I’m doing here · Categories: General

Hi. I’ve been reading this blog for a few years now. Lost track for a while, came back. Life happens.

When I read Timmer’s call this morning

Tired of there not being enough fresh content here every day? Can you write? Drop a line to Sgt Mom. She’ll hook you up.

I thought “why not“. So I did and she did and here we are. I am not so very sure that I can, in fact, write but we’ll give it the old college try.

I’m a husband, father, dog and cat owner. I live in Wisconsin, raised in Oklahoma. I spent eight years in the Marines but was a Lance Corporal for most of my time in service. I spent four years in the infantry but was only shot at once. I didn’t see the Fleet until I lateral moved to Data Processing.

I work for pay and health insurance for a mid-sized electronics manufacturer, about whom I won’t speak much. I work for pleasure and fun in the evenings for LiftPort about which I’ll go on at great length if you don’t shut me up. We want to build a space elevator. Yes it’s a long shot – it beats the snot out of not doing anything about the cost of getting to space.

So that’s me and thanks for reading. Y’all have no idea how tempting it was to go all 2004 on you, paste a picture of John Kerry saluting, title this ‘Reporting for Duty’ and call this introduction done.

« Older articles
Newer articles »