55F and not quite saturated, if the station can be believed this morning…. [added- sure enough, it’s 55F outside]
Woke up thinking about the hypocrisy of the left, especially as it has to do with culture and art. Someone is offended by male genitalia on display, carved in marble, and they are a religious nutter, and should be mocked and driven from the public sphere. But if someone objects to a word used in a book 150 years ago, they are filled with totally understandable fury on behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed and we must ‘burn all the things!’ And burn anyone who would defend that as art.
Spielberg and Lucas want their movies to be considered art, but they will change and revise them to meet the ever-changing morality of the left (Greedo shoots first.)
2LiveCrew’s obscenity is protected artistic expression, but Mark Twain’s clever words are unacceptable and must be expurgated, lest someone be crushed by the oppressive weight of western culture.
Children are fully formed adults, with ideas worthy of serious consideration, but the long form of a word they use themselves is something they should never see. They can make their own decisions about particular types of surgery, but can’t be exposed to ideas that haven’t been sanitized.
Women can only be free sexually when they are willing to engage freely in the most demeaning acts WITH MEN.
The list goes on and on. The hypocrisy and double standard getting more and more egregious every day. Somewhere there is a breaking point, a point where the whole culture is repudiated, and we’re getting closer…
n
Media bias? what media bias…
“Gut-wrenching photos show General Motors employees comforting each other and protesting as the last Chevrolet Cruze comes off the assembly line at their Ohio plant which is closing after 52 years – leaving 1,700 people without a job
The last compact car has rolled off the line at General Motors’ massive assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio on Wednesday afternoon
There was a somber mood inside the plant as workers watched the final compact car making its way down the assembly line
The Cruze, which as been made at the plant since 2011, will still be made in Mexico for markets outside the U.S
GM is eliminating all 1,700 hourly positions, perhaps for good, at the factory
It is the first of five North American auto plants that it intends to shut down by early next year ”
“Gut wrenching” (nice pun). Sickening level of sympathetic reporting there. Gut wrenching is dead kids, maimed soldiers, not fat union goons working for a company that should have cut out the dead weight 10 years ago. Sales of the Cruze have declined steadily for the last five years from a high of 273K to 142K.
Oooh, 1700 people out of work. Hmm, wonder how many lost their jobs when shale production shut down?
“The plant closings are part of a major restructuring for GM, which plans to shed as many as 14,000 workers and shift its focus to making trucks, SUVs and electric and autonomous vehicles. “
Translation- do what Ford did years ago, and still piss away any shareholder value as it slowly dies by buying into the myth of electric and autonomous vehicles.
“The UAW claimed in a recent federal lawsuit that its existing contract prohibits GM from idling plants.”
— there’s your problem, right there.
BTW, the auto industry isn’t even in the top 10 employers in the US. Most of the top ten are food processors.
Food processors with a history of hiring cheap illegal labor…..
n
UAW: In touch with reality, as always. A company losing money, not allowed to close unprofitable plants or fire ineffective workers. Brilliant, that’s a great long-term strategy for protecting their members. Oh, right. Pournelle’s Iron Law, it’s only about short-term money and power for the UAW bigwigs, screw the rank and file members.
Cynical today, I am. I’m surprised how upset I am at the McSally nonsense, even though I’ve been out for decades.
This article has more info than the first time I saw this story–
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-6780801/McSally-says-superior-officer-raped-Air-Force.html
NC joins 20 other states???
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6780553/NC-teachers-carry-concealed-guns-schools-pay-raises-new-proposed-law.html
BTW, Texas allows armed teachers at the discretion of the school board. Has for some time. Never had an issue that was reported. Some rural schools are 30 minutes from a response, which is at least 28 minutes too long to do any good.
There is even a training program to qualify as a School Marshal.
Utah has allowed armed teachers for 10 yrs iirc without incident.
n
It’s important to remember that schools as Gun Free Zones is a fairly recent thing, although older than most of the kids teaching these days, and it was implemented TO PROTECT TEACHERS from students. Didn’t work particularly well for that either.
While I like Chief Acevedo’s policy of transparency wrt investigating cops that F up, he’s a statist gun grabber at heart.
“”I don’t believe that’s the answer. Before we take that step, we need to find ways to take guns out of schools,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said. “Allowing guns inside of schools creates a dangerous situation. Do we really want to see cases of a teacher’s gun discharging and hitting a student? Even highly trained officers are not (immune) to discharges.””
I wonder where those highly trained officers work? ‘cuz they’re not working for HPD.
n
I love this bit of circular reasoning…. “A 2013 study by the FBI found it is rare for armed citizens who are not law enforcement officers to end an active shooter incident, with five out of 160 analyzed cases ending that way.”
-we don’t allow armed citizens in areas where mass shootings take place, and then use the lack of armed citizens in those places as evidence that armed citizens aren’t effective. DESPITE the FIVE of 160 cases where they WERE IN FACT EFFECTIVE.
Spielberg and Lucas want their movies to be considered art, but they will change and revise them to meet the ever-changing morality of the left (Greedo shoots first.)
I don’t think “Greedo shoots first” was done out of political correctness. Lucas lives on another planet mentally, and “Star Wars” wasn’t even out a year before he edited out the Biggs storyline.
Cynical today, I am. I’m surprised how upset I am at the McSally nonsense, even though I’ve been out for decades.
I’ve written before about my neighbors outside Tampa, alcoholic perverted REMFs who worked at MacDill as contractors in the freak show commands based there.
This is the poster child, one of the military’s leading Korea consultants. The local Sheriff tried to arrest him for aggravated stalking one night, but the Pentagon snuck him out of the country. His arrest happened when the brass tried to sneak him back into the US via what they thought would be a sufficiently remote airport in Kentucky.
https://kentucky.arrests.org/Arrests/Glen_Nagy_9635843/
The Pentagon had the case records and arrest records sealed. Thank God for free enterprise.
Subbing again today, last minute call. Band teacher. First two periods at the middle school. Sat in the gym with gym teacher and did nothing. Basically did nothing. 3rd period is completely clear. 4th period students are in the gym along with the gym class loading books. Again doing nothing. 5th period will be with the band in the band room. Motivated and good kids. I will sit and do nothing while they do their music.
Loading all those books seems like such a waste. Current history books still have obuttwad as a senator. Thus over 10 years old.
It would seem to be that with all the students having Chromebooks why are physical text books even being bought and issued? Instead the students should be issued a thumb drive at the beginning of the where the books for each class could be loaded. Then the thumb drive could be locked from future changes. Surely that technology exists.
Along with the reduced cost of printing and the tremendous waste of resources, students would not be toting heavy backpacks, no issues with damage books, no issue with lost books, books would be current, and no hassles for school distributing books at the beginning of the year and collecting at the end of the year. The students just keep the thumb drive. Surely the needed information could be completely stored on a 4 gig thumb drive that in quantity can be purchased for about a dollar. I would wager that the books for every class in the school could fit on that one thumb drive.
The Amazon Boeing 767 crash in the Houston area a couple of weeks ago is still a mystery. It does look like a mechanical failure of the aircraft though. I would stay off 30 year old 767s for now. They actually have a video of the crash.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Final-remains-positively-identified-in-deadly-13661456.php
Questionable Content: AIs will be no better than us !
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3954
OK, if future AIs will have conspiracy theories then they will be no better than us crazy humans.
@Ray, but it would be hard for the publishers to charge an average of $250 per student to US public schools. That number is from 2013 and is probably $500/student today if the trend line continued.
No one would pay $500/thumbdrive, no matter what it had on it. But $500 for 50 pounds of books, oh sure, now were getting something for our money.
If my kids use textbooks at school, I haven’t seen it yet. I was talking about it the other day in the context of ‘how can I even know what they’re being taught if I can’t see the books?”
n
@lynn:”I would stay off 30 year old 767s for now.”
And stay off of brand new KC-46A’s (767 derived):
https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-warfare-symposium/2019/03/01/air-force-suspends-kc-46-tanker-deliveries/
Yes, too early to know. However, when analyses are complete. The majority are pilot or ground crew error.
Currently, the 767 design has been modified for USAF tankers and the new tankers replacing 50 – 60 year old B52. Without Wikipedia, I don’t have knowledge of B52s breaking up in flight.
Admittedly, I never participated in aircraft failure investigations. OTOH, rocket anomalies………..
Does this advice apply to others than USAF personnel?
Can swampers take it for personal trips at taxpayer expense?
“And stay off of brand new KC-46A’s (767 derived):”
Does this advice apply to others than USAF personnel?
Can swampers take it for personal trips at taxpayer expense?
During her previous term as Speaker, Stretch Pelosi requested regular use of a big Air Force jet, either a 757 or 767 IIRC.
Speakers generally flew commercial prior to 9/11, but, after the attack, the Air Force gave Hastert a Gulfstream of some kind as a security precaution. Of course, an executive jet wasn’t going to satisfy Stretch, not with Bush flying around in a 747.
The tanker deal/boondoggle was hashed out here a few years ago. As an update, instead of tankers, Airbus currently cranks out four A320s a month in Mobile and is gearing up to produce the A220. What an awesome decision Boeing made to get the contract reopened (sarcasm).
Firstly, Boeing had it until Sen. Rino got it cancelled so it could be awarded to AB. Recall Rino’s #1 campaign finance scrounger was also AB’s top WDC swamp lobbyist. Then AB got cancelled as their tanker proposal was found to be a total scam.
Today’s Google Doodle should be right up Lynn’s alley. The woman in question is well worth a Google Doodle and has an interesting life story.
I just paid the “installation fee” for a new ISP. Hyper Vision. The neighbor says they are great. I don’t know what plan she has, I’m going with the basic 25mb plan.. $65/month including taxes. Upgrading or downgrading is suppose to be simple.
$250 for installation including sales tax. They’ll have to let the pole down, replace the radio (and hopefully the Ethernet wire), and shove that 40 foot pole up.
I currently paying $56.85 with taxes and “Carrier Recovery Fee” for a 5mb plan that once ran at 5mb but has not for a few months.
I’m done messing with them. I’ve spent hours on the phone and when they finally decided to send a crew, the crew looked and said it was working fine. I suppose so if “working fine” means an occasional top speed of 4mb that fades like a FLASHLIGHT with old batteries down to 2mb and less.
Five times the speed for an extra $10 a month. Sounds good.
Added: They were down yesterday from at least 7 am to almost 9 am. Today they went down at 8:05 am and back up at about 11:45. No increase in speed. My lack of speed has been blamed on “the previous manager over-sold the tower”. Ah, I really don’t like having smoke blown up my a$$.
The majority are pilot or ground crew error.
+1 Or they have “non contributing factors” to the crash. Like blowing each other in the cockpit.
Today’s Google Doodle should be right up Lynn’s alley. The woman in question is well worth a Google Doodle and has an interesting life story.
Yup.
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-doodle-celebrates-mathematician-olga-ladyzhenskaya/
Partial Diff eqs are the reason I decided that I didn’t like engineering. For some reason, 22-year-old me thought that, if an equation didn’t have a definite answer, it wasn’t worth the time.
By the time I was 30, I understood the error of my ways but was too stubborn to change tracks, as I already had that BS.
Now I just look at them and wonder at what God has wrought.
Added: They were down yesterday from at least 7 am to almost 9 am. Today they went down at 8:05 am and back up at about 11:45. No increase in speed. My lack of speed has been blamed on “the previous manager over-sold the tower”. Ah, I really don’t like having smoke blown up my a$$.
If it ain’t reliable, it ain’t worth much in today’s market.
“Extreme Railbiking Part 1, Life is Like a Mountain Railway, Rail Bikes on Abandoned Railroads.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viSJsOUCGu4
Ok, this looks like my kind of extreme sport ! Except for the washouts, boulders, trees in the middle of the tracks, etc, etc, etc. The bridges do look to be unnerving.
“2019 Predictions #2 and #3 — A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) shakeout and legal trouble for AWS”
https://www.cringely.com/2019/03/07/2019-predictions-2-and-3-a-virtual-private-cloud-vpc-shakeout-and-legal-trouble-for-aws/
“Google does not understand customers whose IQs are sub-200. As such, Google doesn’t have (and likely won’t) have a history of winning outside of search advertising.”
I have noticed this.
2019 Predictions #2 and #3 — A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) shakeout and legal trouble for AWS
I still believe a “black swan” event is coming for The Cloud, a security breach so ugly that corporations will scurry back to running their own servers. Everyone’s GMail going online would be an example of something sufficiently awful, but I’m not placing a bet on that specific breach taking place.
I have been on the Virginia Creeper trail. It was built on an old railroad track that used to be used by some sort of mine. First half is completely downhill, no pedaling, fairly gentle grade. Tracks were gone, no washouts, bridges have railings, regular bicycles used. The last half is flat. Really an enjoyable trip.
“Extreme Railbiking Part 1, Life is Like a Mountain Railway, Rail Bikes on Abandoned Railroads.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viSJsOUCGu4
Wow. I’ve only seen railroad trestles like those in the video in photos in books about the American Civil War.
Cringely has some interesting takes. Are competitors annoyed at AWS? I could well believe it. I’ve only used AWS as a very small customer, but they have an incredibly complete and incredibly easy to use service. If I were a competitor, I would be annoyed too.
On the other hand, outside the US people are a bit nervous about AWS. Amazon is a US company, and is legally required to respond to US warrants – even if the data requested is non-US, and stored in a non-US data center. Given the secret warrants and secret courts, plus the fact that the US government is pretty lax about rights of people outside the US…well, I wouldn’t want anything sensitive on one of their servers.
I just wish there were an alternative half as good. Which there isn’t.
I think that the cops in Tijuana are aware of this.