Oct 30, 2006

fotD 10


Oct 27, 2006

well, that's that

...there is no longer anything in the material world that isn't available online. If you need me, I'll be in an isolation chamber, wearing my stimulation suit and popping bubble wrap.

Oct 25, 2006

cats and dogs, living together

When you unswervingly agree with a wide-ranging conservative rant (albeit a repentant one), that's one of those moments when you realize things have changed:
All of those signs point to what I hope will be a real bloodbath for the GOP. I hope we get wiped out in the election, and I look forward to the circular firing squad, because I have a lot of ammunition and a flak jacket in the form of my archives (with four years of “I told ya so’s.”).

We need to get rid of the authoritarians, we need to get rid of the big-spenders, the religionists and the gay-bashers, the liars, con-artists, crooks, and thieves, and we need to start over. I really look forward to the day where I have the high ground on tax related issues because my party is not spending us into bankruptcy. I look forward to the day when my party, when faced with difficult scientific questions, turns to the experts (rather than turning on them) instead of Sen. Inhofe and James Dobson and Randall Terry. I look forward to the day when my party once again has enough of a moral standing that we should even be allowed to discuss human rights and torture in foreign regimes. I look forward to the day when we can, with a straight face, argue that we are the party of small government- after, of course, we get rid of the religionists who are trying to dictate who we can love, who we can sleep with, who gets to determine what we watch on tv, and who gets to determine our end of life decisions. I look forward to the day when it is once again the Democrats who look crazy.

But for right now, it is the GOP that is out of touch, out of control, and drowning in its own hubris. It is time to throw them an anchor, and it looks like there are a lot of people lining up on the docks to do just that.

Oct 16, 2006

Sooner or later...

Wow.

I just read the TIME Magazine obit of a reporter named Johnny Apple, Jr., written by John McCain.

McCain met Apple in 1967 on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal after the reporter flew out to cover a horrendous fire that had just been suppressed on the aircraft carrier.

Anyone in the Navy knows the story of the fire. During launch and recovery ops, a missile accidentally fired and struck the external fuel tank of an A-4 (attack jet). The ensuing conflagration set off nine major explosions, punching holes in the deck which allowed burning jet fuel to rain into the ship, causing more fires and eventually killing 132 men (and 2 missing). The pilot of the initial A4 to be hit was McCain, who climbed out of his cockpit and tightroped his way down the nose onto the refueling probe (imagine walking on a metal pipe a few inches wide), from which he jumped to the deck. The plane exploded behind him.

This was, of course, three months before McCain was shot down on an attack mission and taken prisoner for five and a half years.* I hadn't known that he was the 'lucky' pilot on the Forrestal.

All this reminded me of one of my pilots who had a reputation of being extremely unlucky. I didn't put much into that and figured the opposite, as he was still alive after some horrendous mishaps (a split rotating swashplate?! Ju-HEEZUS!). After flying together more or less uneventfully almost three years, our night finally came when an electronics failure turned the aircraft into a bucking bronco a hundred feet above the black water - we dashed for the shore so quick and hard we skimmed over an apartment building and blew a motorcycle into the front end of a truck as we landed in the parking lot, wedged between a van and a water tower.

Sooner or later something happens; it's up to you to decide whether or not it's lucky.

* He was offered early repatriation due to his father being a prominent Admiral, but he refused special treatment denied his fellow prisoners. This is the man who we rejected in favor of a draft-dodger.

who looks out for ya?

Thought you might like this if you need to get anything from eCost:


If I can just get my patented Google-Free Brainwaves Helmet on eCost, you can pick one up at a discount (they only look like aluminum foil that's been wrapped around a basketball). Guaranteed to keep Google's spiders and bots out of your head.

Oct 15, 2006

Pylon

Growing up I read a lot of Ray Bradbury, and occasionally he'd have something about rocket races that were updated (pre-dated?) versions of the air races that were held in the States back in the 50s when he did a lot of his writing. In the real races, guys would race discarded warbirds (at the time only ten years old) around courses delineated with pylons - sometimes they'd have actual ribbons at the finish line that would be cut by their wings. This was all low-altitude, close quarter, high-speed stuff that makes NASCAR look like a golf outing. In Bradbury, the stereotypical lantern-jawed pilots clenched their teeth through similar feats with rockets instead of propellers.

So, if you've got the skills, guts, and movie-quality steely gaze, maybe you could realize Bradbury's dream as early as 2007.

Thanks, TED.

yeah, but, who would read my blog?!

other than that little quandry, this is morbidly interesting:

Thanks to treehugger.

UPDATE:

Along the same lines is this very interesting article about Alan Weisman's new 'thought experiment' about what could happen to the world if we were to suddenly disappear, and when. What struck me were the details he considered, like changing pH levels due to lime infusions into local ecologies due to collapsing buildings. Probably a fun and thought-generating read.

Oct 14, 2006

Let. Them. Die.

Effing dinosaurs.

I've never been one of those yahoos so plentiful in this part of the state that cheers one of the Big 3 over another, but I have been fairly partial to Ford, growing up with them, owning a couple, and just appreciating their history. I hoped that at least one car company wouldn't merge with/get bought by/or otherwise run with tail between legs to a foreign car company for bailing out, and hoped it would be Ford. M and I were even talking about what we may pick next time we have to buy a car, and there were some Fords at the top of the list - I like the Focus 'egg,' the Freestyle, there are probably a couple others.

Doesn't matter, though. I don't know if the billboards are covering the nation like they are southeastern Michigan, but the latest grand initiative the B3 are touting is their development of 'blend' engines, engines that can burn gas or E85 ethanol. I seem to remember these sometime before A Flock of Seagulls, so they're not really anything new. What's important is that not much real investment needs to be made, much less R&D is needed, and they still qualify for government tax incentives for fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles whether or not the blend engines ever burn anything but good old gasoline (since about .4% of all fuel pumps in the country pump E85).

Unfortunately, Ford has decided to renege on their pledge to produce 250,000 hybrids annually by 2010 in favor of increased attention on the blends. They give heartfelt reasons about not tying themselves down to just one technology, looking at other avenues, etc., but what it boils down to is avoiding what they're a little behind in (that could actually make a huge impact) and doing the same old schtick but with brand new marketing.

It won't matter a whit to them, but I'll never buy another Ford again, which likely means I'll never buy another American car. These guys have been whippng their dead old horse of a business model for years as Toyota chips away at their market share, like the first little mammals busily adapting as the last dinosaurs sluggishly thudded toward their confused deaths. Toyota can't build hybrids fast enough to meet demand. Ford? They can't collapse fast enough.

Update: Research confirms that if you're not getting faster, better, and more efficient, you will die, even if the others around you do the exact same thing. In other news, water is wet.

Another update, this one an email from doug:
I had to laugh because I wasn’t paying very close attention but I caught a new Ford commercial with a very funky beat and the lyrics "Let’s get it started" and I then realized that the song is actually modified from "Lets get retarded" by the Black Eyed Peas. Somehow very fitting for their current mode of operation.

Oct 13, 2006

We're not descended from fearful men

Watching 'Good Night, and Good Luck' right now. I'd like to have been able to see this firsthand; some would say we're in the same type of situation, but we lack a voice as clear as Murrow's.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends on evidence, and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and or doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak, and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the results. We proclaim ourselves indeed as we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Oct 11, 2006

Clear and present danger

One paranoid, heavily-armed, communist country constantly and flagrantly violates human rights. Its economy will surpass our own to become the world’s largest in about twenty years, and in spite of increased trade and diplomacy, our hopes for democratic reform are naïve at best as their active protectionism and admirably slippery pragmatism suggest that they’ll never relinquish power.

Another ‘communist’ country (actually just a wackjob dictatorship) is vehemently anti-American, has been caught red-handed covertly shipping ground-to-air missiles to a terrorist-harboring country, has nothing at all to lose by nuking their neighbors, and is run by a deluded porn freak with a pompadour that would embarrass Elvis who inherited the position from his father. Oh, and they just tested a nuclear warhead and bragged about it to the world.

A third country is watching very closely what the US does about crazy country number 2’s nuclear test because they probably want to develop their own nuclear arsenal to prop up their Muslim fundamentalist, anti-US theocracy. They stand to reap huge benefits from the growing instability in the Middle East and Iraq in particular and would be more than happy to fill any void left by us if we don’t respond to the requests from area leaders for consistent, overarching direction.

So what do we do in response? Screw with Cuba. It’s as if there was a 300 lb. pedophile on steroids and PCP down on the corner, shooting randomly into the crowd, and the cops screeched up on the lawn at the opposite end of the block, marshaled their forces, and socked a mouthy nine-year-old in the eye.

No wonder the world thinks we’re a bunch of clueless, double-talking morons.

Oct 10, 2006

Good luck with that

James Baker, along with George Will, is one of the smartest guys I’ve never liked all that much, mostly because it seems he’s diametrically opposed to doing what I knee-jerk believe is right, only to later doubt myself and then learn something upon hearing his explanation. Some guys run in the higher circles of power because of their families, their ‘aw, shucks’ populism, their bureaucratic tenure, or their accomplishments in other arenas, but perennial go-to guys like Baker are always sought at the dinner parties and back rooms of Washington because of incredible intellectual cunning and social smarts that would make the popular girl in high-school wither.

How, then, did he stumble into his current crappy job? Over at Balloon Juice, Tim details Baker’s acceptance of the inevitable fact of Iraqi heartache, and his W-sponsored commission’s possible suggestion to split shepherd the country toward dividing itself equitably along the three straining sectarian seams that will likely burst anyway (though the Kurds are moving that way through the magic of marketing). This can’t be a viable option due to the integrated cities that wouldn’t easily go either Shia or Sunni, but that’s about the best anyone can suggest by this point. Tim:
You have to wonder whether Baker’s time would have been better spent discouraging Bush fils from going into Iraq in the first place. At this point his job seems about as useful as junior smashing the family car into an oncoming freight train and then commissioning Baker to figure out how to get it started again.

I have to wonder what Baker thinks deep down about what his old friend’s screw-up son, with all the best resources at hand, has done to the country.

Oct 9, 2006

gotta hand it to him...

...the guy's got brass cojones to pass this off when referring to mountain-top removal, the process of methodically removing a mountain from the top down, filtering through the rock to get the coal, ores, etc., and then dumping the rest (including heavy metals) down what's left of the mountainside, normally into a river:

"To imply that we're flattening Appalachia is so untrue. We're creating level land for Appalachia."
- Bill Caylor, president of the Kentucky Coal Association
Audacious on so many levels. I hope someone scrapes his scalp off and dumps it in his ass. Oh, I'm sorry, I meant levels it into his ass.

Oct 6, 2006

fotD 9

job description: blowin' shit up

Not once before Wednesday do I remember thinking to myself, 'I should start learning about explosives or film directing or special effects.' Watching this and the shooting of some other scenes for Transformers, though, made me wonder why I hadn't. It looked like it'd be a hell of a lot of fun (though not for the extras, who spent all day running in screaming panic from big-ass robots that weren't there).