October 22, 2010

Discuss...


Update: Urp...HT Wonderduck

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The Extent of Tolerance Amongst the "Tolerant"

All the intertubes, the airwaves and the cablewaves are abuzz with talk about the firing of Juan Williams by NPR. I hadn't planned on commenting on it as pretty much EVERYONE already has, and the notion that NPR is hysterically PC is the definition of dog bites man.

If, by some chance, you are unaware of the Juan Williams story the Anchoress has it pretty much covered with a long post that includes about 60 hyperlinks and asks a question.

Schiller kind of makes me wonder if too many people aren’t in powerful positions these days because of their skills in lockstepping, rather than because of their smarts.


And I think the answer is yes, but more on that in a minute.

One reason this post is here is because of another very similar incident. Today, Elizabeth Moon, was disinvited from a con in Wisconsin. As it happens, it was the same con that was the subject of the post below...clicking on a related hyperlink is how I found out about this.

Like Williams, Moon is a lefty, (in fact she's a full metal Bush hater and she has said some pretty vile things about righties) and like Williams years of doing a pretty good job (she's a superb author) and having, I gather, a  majority of her views in agreement with the left brought no respite when she made a perfectly reasonable but politically incorrect statement , in her case a long thoughtful blog post,  that violated todays unwritten blasphemy laws. That is both made comments that did not sing the praises of Islam, absolve all practitioners of said religion of all responsibility for any unpleasantness and praise merciful Allah.
That is the unforgivable blasphemy.

Greg Gutfield sums this up very well here, pointing out that such obsequious kow-towing to Islamic rabble rousers not only encourages more of the same behavior but is tacitly Islamaphobic in and of itself.

But it gets worse...because neither of these incidents is really about self censorship out of fear, or respect. In fact, I think the defering to Islam issue, while a real issue, is a smokescreen in both these cases.

Both the bureaucrats at NPR and the staff at WisCon are using the Islamaphobia canard (and in both these cases it is truly an idiotic canard)  to mask the fact that they are working very hard to stifle all dissent against their worldview. In NPRs case they were by their own admission upset that Williams appeared on FOX as a ( dissenting ) analyst. The Islamic not phobia is just to cover their asses while they crack the whip and enforce their world view. Williams wasn't even really fired for having double plus ungood thoughts....he was fired for his associations.

Moon got disinvited from the con because the main thrust of her post was that people do not have unlimited entitlement. Even worse, she suggested people have a responsibility to comport themselves well and behave as good citizens. This flies in the face of the total entitlement worldview that I've observed in the upper reaches of fandom over the years. I have long observed that there are few people as tolerant as certain left leaning fans...so long as one is in complete agreement with them.

On their own neither of these incidents will be in any way lasting. Neither Williams nor Moon will suffer from this. Williams will likely go full time at Fox. Judging by this comment thread  Moon will have a weekend free from shrill condescending lectures by bitter, passive aggressive women whose con is an opportunity to lecture, badger and exert control over others and who go all to pieces if someone strays from leftist victim orthodoxy in the slightest.  I hope she enjoys the respite.

The reason these two incidents are worthy of comment is that political correctness is becoming an increasingly accepted bludgeon and cover for ideological purging and power plays. And it is working. It is working in part because, as the Anchoress suggests an increasing number of people are getting advanced in bureaucracies because of ideological purity rather than actual performance. While they may not have the broadest experience or the keenest mind these Parsons Wannabees can, in fact, be quite dangerous to ones career.

"Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended."

 1984 George Orwell
 
more...

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October 21, 2010

I am a Bad Bad Man

...because I laughed at this.

Hey, wait...don't look at me like that.
I also cried...
....'cause it brought back memories.

Like con-food poisoning.


...oh..and back boobs.
I worked on several cons in the 80's and 90's and boy howdy, how things have not changed.

H/T: Ace

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Space: Earthlike Worlds, Rocketry, Balloonery and Amusingly Quidnuncish Bureaucrats

One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes takes a moment from enjoying a lab accident (entirely too much) to bring us news from the final frontier. As she will gleefully tell you, rocketry is all about controlling explosions.

There was quite a buzz recently about the discovery of a rocky planet orbiting Gliese 581. Now it turns out that this discovery has not been independently confirmed. This does not necessarily mean it isn't there, but given that it's the smallest exosolar planet yet discovered, the readings are necessarily very faint and hard to distinguish from background noise. Thus more study is needed. The star system in question is pretty interesting nonetheless with 5 other planets already confirmed, two of which are theoretically on the outer an inner edges of the so-called "life zone" (where water can exist in the open as a liquid). The presence of even two such planets is remarkable as a Red Dwarf has a very narrow habitable zone. The big news with this planet (if, indeed, it does exist) is that it is pretty much in the middle of the life zone. Even if tidally locked, as is likely, some estimates have the surface temperatures ranging from 160 degrees F. on the hot side to - 29 F. on the cold. This is not far above the highest recorded temperature on Earth (136 degrees Fahrenheit ) and well above the lowest so it could be quite hospitable.


In any event, the discovery of two and possibly three rocky planets in the life zone around a single example of the most common visible type of star vastly increases the likelihood for life bearing planets to exist.

SO LET'S GO!

Well we can't. We can't even get to the moon right now except with very tiny probes and 20 light years away is really close in astronomical terms, but its really really far. Light travels 186,282 miles per second. A light year is the distance it travels in a year, so 20 light years is...( carry the 2...) umm...real far. Voyager 1, and Helios 2, the fastest things we've ever launched, would take thousands of years to get there.

We'd need to start now on figuring out how to even determine the trade-offs and design needs to even begin to design a starship and it doesn't look like....oh wait.
NASA Ames Director Simon “Pete” Worden revealed Saturday that NASA Ames has “just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,” with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA.

It's unclear if this is a design study for a starship with a mission time of a hundred years, or a design study aimed at seeing how we might go about building one a century from now. Still, it's nice to know that some thought is being given to these issues even if we can't afford to spend large ammounts of money on them now.

The above link also mentions new efforts being put into cheap access to orbit, including microwave beam propulsion.

In the nearer term, though not quite getting to orbit, Virgin Galactics suborbital tourist spaceship Enterprise recently made its first free flight and launch from its booster plane. Here is the video.




In other commercial space news. Armadillo aerospace has been doing a lot of tests with their Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing test beds to gain an understanding of how  to control such a vehicle. They've also been competing for the NASA Lunar Lander Challenge and doing various other things with rockets.



Their experiments are less polished but similar to the DC-X program of 20 years ago and they are working ultimately towards the same goal, a VTVL reusable spacecraft of 1 or two stages. However they are getting a good deal more experience with controlling such systems than that program did before it was cut short.


On an even smaller budget  and not quite into what the law defines as outer space space,  a father/ son team from Brooklyn nevertheless has achieved transcendental coolness by sending their iPhone to 100,000 feet and getting pictures of the curvature of the Earth.




Finally, at the opposite end of the social spectrum from the dynamic father son team of space balloonists,  we must take a moment and ponder the sheer silly asshattery of the UN and bureaucrats in general. You see, the UN is now poised to make it a crime to block out the sun. While this may at first blush seem  reasonable if a tad redundant decision, this is in fact potentially troublesome. While we here at BB think the Global warming issue is more than a bit over-hyped,  if the worst case scenarios were to come to pass a sunshade would be a very effective way of dealing with the problem and unlike other, kind of scary, geoengineering schemes, would be quickly reversible if it caused excessive unforeseen consequences. This is the cleanest, least disruptive short term solution to the problem these very people have a monomaniacal focus on, however...

[ quote ] ...But others, such as the ETC group, an environmental and social advocacy group, fear simply blocking the sun is a bandage, meant to cover up the problem, and allow humans to continue using fossils fuels... [/ quote ]

 ...in other words it could solve the problem they claim to see as a transcendental threat, but does not provide the solution in the way they want (which  tends to involve a lot of misery for us and making their buddies rich through carbon trading). Nothing would seem to be a better demonstration that the people hyping this problem do NOT believe it is a transcendental threat...which is actually NOT to say definitively that it is not...just that either way, these particular people are either liars or idiots.

Note that depending on how it is worded, such a ban could have deleterious effects on Space Based Solar arrays, which, while completely unworkable now, could be a very environmentally favorable solution to power problems in subtropical to tropical areas and cislunar manufacturing and settlement  if launch costs were to drop ( well...drop a whole HELL of a lot).

Oh well....silly season.

  Finally, a reminder. The Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch to the ISS on November 1, at about 16:40 EST. This will be one of the very last opportunities to see one of these.  

Science Babe is Nice Holystone from Baccano! Because "expwosives is all about kemistwy" and chemistry is SCIENCE!

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October 18, 2010

Palate Cleanser

Ubu has thoughts on this show here, and mentions that its ending credits sequence  is above par...



Ubu is right. I'm going to have to track this one down. Also, there is an accordion dance.




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Why I am Not As Optimistic As Some

Those who have visited this blog since those long ago days when it was updated regularly know that  I lean a bit to the "right" on the political spectrum, and so one might think that I'd be absolutely giddy about the current political winds. However, I am actually rather concerned about the long game.

This upcoming election is looking good, but is not in the bag to the extent that some seem to think. For one thing our ground game sucks. This is partly because of the rights more individualist nature and the fact that our GOTV efforts are mostly voluntary, but also because rural and suburban areas pose much more challenging problems to any block captains than the urban areas that are the lefts places of power. 

More thoughts along these lines can be found here.

Still,  the signs bode generally well for November second. My big concern remains what comes after.

The challenges the nation faces are daunting.

The choices available to us are all unpleasant. Some things will have to be cut and most of those things are very near and dear to the people who have allowed themselves to become dependent on them.

The new congress will spend two years trying to set the nations fiscal policy on a sustainable path. That will involve cutting or eliminating a lot of programs, most of which are very popular and have strident and motivated constituencies.

Doing the correct thing fiscally will also involve reducing taxes to the edge of the Laffer Curve in an attempt to boost the economy....this will not punish the rich who invest and create the wealth and jobs, it will support them in these endeavors. Petty or desperate people who resent anyone who has more than them will be enraged by this.

...and the president will veto it all.

He will set himself up as the guardian of your entitlements...whoever you may be. He will be aided in putting forth this narrative by most of the press.

Nothing will get fixed. The nation will go farther into ruinous debt and the new congress will be blamed by the base who elected them for not doing what they promisied....which they will be unable to do if they can't override a veto.

It gets worse.
There is actual spending that needs desperately to be done. Thousands of dams built as public works projects during the depression are now past their design lives and menace untold Americans. Bridges and other infrastructure need to be repaired and replaced.

This was nearly all ignored in the first stimulus in favor of kickbacks, bike paths, blatant corruption and "shovel ready projects". Now the president is talking about a second stimulus to actually deal with these real problems.

Dealing with these issues is part of the legitimate and necessary function of government, so there is a very real possibility that the only thing the congress will get past Obamas veto will be infrastructure projects...that will be very necessary but will just add to the debt even more.

This could cause the Tea Partiers to either become unhinged and form a third party, or sit on their hands out of disgust in 2012, turning the whole thing over to the Dems again, who will then be basically unstopable before the nation turns into a really big version of Greece...but with no one to bail us out.... and then collapses utterly into a huge Hobbsian version of the Balkans after selling all of our mineral rights to the Chinese.

That would be bad....most can agree on this, but avoiding it will require that the tea party folks and the newly chastened Republican establishment work together and keep their eye on the ball.

 

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October 17, 2010

Tamara Encounters Online Mall Ninjas

...and is unimpressed.
Do look at the comments as well.


In this situation....what would you do?

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October 14, 2010

Genre Identification FAIL

Was it false advertising or just a dishonest narrator?

Steven Den Beste posts on Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girl. He has his usual thoughtful and in depth analysis but these two passages seemed to be the money quote.

" ....it's clear that we're not looking at a show about political intrigue....

.....It's a harem show that includes a magical girl."


That would be...jarring.

Do read the whole thing.

I'm not busting on Steven here. This actually reminds me of the time I thought that This Ugly Yet Beautiful World was going to be a superhero show, but it soon became obvious that that was wrong and it seemed to be a magical girlfriend show with increasingly creepy undertones. Of course both these early notions were incorrect. After watching the whole thing (I HAD paid for it after all) it became apparent to me that this was a show intended to take six hours out of the tapestry of ones life and stitch in its place a foetid, soiled knot of, contempt, disgust, and buyers remorse. 


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Conspicuous Consumption

In the past I've had to rely on used cars, discarded computers and furniture out of dumpsters.
However, this week, when I managed to acquire a case of monia  it wasn't used it was pneu!


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October 07, 2010

Banality

Two term papers and scads of homework are keeping me from the pile of Anime in the "TO WATCH" que.
The heating pipe broke in the car, and did so in a completely inaccessible place so I had to call a tow truck. Do to the fact that I was actually way early ( I planed to use the gym at school) I didn't miss but 10 minutes of class.

That night however, I blew all my monies on the slot machines...Well, OK that last thing actually happened in game...



Third season...I'm gonna get that job at the pizza joint, when I'm not defeating obscure cultural references with various flavors of Ninja-Fu.

Click on the above image...you know you want to. First hit is free..(actually all hits are free). 

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Economic indicators

I don't blog about work much.
Anything that gets specific about the operation  is likely proprietary and the ins and out of moving packages are almost as interesting as watching  grass grow.

A few observations are germane to the current economy however.
I'm a part timer at a major shipping company.
I'm working just over three hours a day now. This is less than in July.
We still have laid off special service drivers.
 Talking  to those scurrilous infidels from Fed-Ex ( as I am sometimes want to do ) I have heard similar stories.

It is October.

Christmas may be....austere.


sad girl in snow by Go-To-P
Related.

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October 04, 2010

Hopefully a Pheidippides...and not a Cassandra

The Other McCain links to this speech by Daniel Hannan   which Hannan gave to the Cato Institute recently.



Just watch it. Especially if you don't "get" the tea parties...this Brit articulates the whole idea rather well.  

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Free Carrots

This is how to get them.



I find it telling that the real weirdos in the video are the videographers.

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October 03, 2010

The Mask Slips for A Moment.

Watermelons are not to be trusted.

 
This keeps getting taken down so there is an Eyeblast link (which I'm not set up to imbed yet) here where Ed Morrisey is shocked that the creators have removed themselves so fully from the main stream of human thought.
I'm not surprised. The green movement is at a convergence of  several worrisome characteristics, big government coersion, cultish, and supremely assured of their virtue. Historically any two of these have tended towards very dark places.

Cdr Salamander has thoughts on how he environmental movement got here.

More thoughts here, here, and here.

Final thoughts from Iowahawk....who does get to the heart of the matter.


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Wet

It rained solid here in Southeastern Virginia for three days. The temperature has ranged from the low 60's to the 90s. The bloated wet corpse of TS Nicole arrived Thursday with yet more rain  but added gale force winds and a tornado. The trees, which were by then sitting in soup, began to fall and take powerlines with them.

We were lucky.  We retained power except for a few very brief flickers , though internet has been twitchy.

Yesterday was a glorious respite from the rain and I drove out to Rushmere to check on my brother. This soybean field gives some idea of how much water is still about.



(This was the only place on route 10 that I could pull off and take a picture)
Last night the rains returned.
And I swear thought we had a  very slight earthquake yesterday, although a quick check indicated that the closest one yesterday was in Doswell. Perhaps the house settled.



It's nice to be loved.

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