Five stupid movie deaths that should have been really easy to avoid.

Five stupid movie deaths that should have been really easy to avoid.

These examples are why I find most modern movies either boring, annoying, or stupid. They too often follow the same predictable action formula developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they too often require their main characters to act stupid, and they too often are based on ridiculous concepts that are so silly that even after typing randomly for one million years one million monkeys would find them unworthy.

Of thee I sigh: Baby boomers bust.

P.J. O’Rourke: “Of thee I sigh: Baby boomers bust.”

My sad generation of baby boomers can be blamed. We were born into an America where material needs were fulfilled to a degree unprecedented in history. We were a demographic benison, cherished and taught to be self-cherishing. We were cosseted by a lush economy and spoiled by a society grown permissive in its fatigue with the strictures of depression and war. The child being father to the man, and necessity being the mother of invention, we wound up as the orphans of effort and ingenuity. And pleased to be so. Sixty-six years of us would be enough to take the starch out of any nation.

The baby boom was skeptical about America’s inventive triumphalism. We took a lot of it for granted: light bulb, telephone, television, telegraph, phonograph, photographic film, skyscraper, airplane, air conditioning, movies. Many of our country’s creations seemed boring and square: cotton gin, combine harvester, cash register, electric stove, dishwasher, can opener, clothes hanger, paper bag, toilet paper roll, ear muffs, mass-produced automobiles. Some we regarded as sinister: revolver, repeating rifle, machine gun, atomic bomb, electric chair, assembly line. And, ouch, those Salk vaccine polio shots hurt.

The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik caused a blip in chauvinistic tech enthusiasm among those of us who were in grade school at the time. But then we learned that the math and science excellence being urged upon us meant more long division and multiplying fractions.

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs were cool, but not as cool as the sex, drugs, and rock and roll we’d discovered in the meantime. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969, many of us had already been out in space for years, visiting all sorts of galaxies—in our own heads. And in our own heads was where my generation spent most of its time.

Read the whole thing. O’Rourke, in his witty style, captures the failure of my baby boom generation perfectly.

The disappearance of the old-fashioned chemistry set.

The disappearance of the old-fashioned chemistry set.

Here’s what it used to be like, when we lived in a free society:

By the 1920s and 30s children had access to substances which would raise eyebrows in today’s more safety-conscious times. There were toxic ingredients in pesticides, as well as chemicals now used in bombs or considered likely to increase the risk of cancer. And most parents will not need to be told of the dangers of the sodium cyanide found in the interwar kits or the uranium dust present in the “nuclear” kits of the 1950s.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are both considering hiring the Russia aerospace company Energia to build components for the CST-100 and Orion manned capsules.

It appears that both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are considering hiring the Russia aerospace company Energia to build components for the CST-100 and Orion manned capsules.

What is going on here is that both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are looking for a subcontractor who can build these components for less money. Since labor costs in Russia are much lower than the U.S., both companies are considering Energia for this work.

This quote, however, encapsulates the cultural war that still goes on sometimes between Russia and the U.S.:

“[Russian] achievements in docking sites and [thermal protection equipment] production are quite competitive, but I am not sure that the Americans will accept our offer because they not only have the task of building a spaceship but also of gaining competence in this matter,” Dmitry Payson, director of the space and telecommunication technology department in Russia’s Skolkovo hi-tech hub, told Izvestia.

In interviewing many Russian and American space engineers over the years I have found an amazing amount of contempt from each for the work of the other, often without justification. Just as the Russians above seem to falsely think that Boeing and Lockheed Martin know nothing about docking equipment or thermal protection, American engineers repeatedly have expressed to me unjustified disdain for the space station technology developed by the Russians for Mir. The result: both countries often don’t take advantage of the other’s skills.

A failed public works project — from the year 1350 AD

Casa Grande

Yesterday my wife Diane and I took my 94-year-old mother on a sightseeing trip to see the Casa Grande ruins southeast of Phoenix, “the largest known structure left of the Ancestral People of the Sonoran Desert.”

This four story high structure was built around 1350 AD from bricks made of concrete-like caliche mud, with the floors and roofs supported by beams of pine, fir, and juniper brought from as far away as fifty miles. (The rooflike structure above the ruins was built by the National Park Service in order to protect it from rain.)

Though impressive, I must admit I’ve seen far more impressive American Indian ruins elsewhere. Casa Grande, which means “Great House” in Spanish, suffered as a tourist attraction from two faults:
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A breathtaking view of the Apollo 15 landing site

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team has released a wide angle side view image of the Apollo 15 landing site, showing the lunar module and the areas around Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountain range that the astronauts explored using their lunar jeep. Below is a cropped close-up, showing the landing site near the top of the image with Hadley Rille near the bottom. Below the fold is a second image showing a wider view that includes the Apennine mountain slope that the astronauts drove their rover up.

Close up of Hadley Rille and Apollo 15 landing site

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The Alarming Significance of Culture

The alarming significance of culture.

During a recent conversation with a close Jewish friend I asked him what he thought separated Jews from most other ethnic groups. I was expecting him to talk about how a shared history of oppression had strengthened Jews and brought them closer together. But his answer was both surprising and controversial. “Unlike gentiles, especially Christians,” he said, “Jews do not believe in an after life as such. There is no God up there dictating your lot in life. We don’t believe the meek shall inherit the earth. We truly believe in the power of an individual’s free will, guided of course by right principles.” [emphasis mine]

It’s the coverup, not the crime

A new Rasmussen poll finds that 69% of the public now believe that climate scientists falsified data to support their own theories about global warming. Moreover, these numbers are up ten points since December 2009, which happens to be just after the climategate emails were released.

These terrible numbers are further evidence that the willingness of the scientific community to whitewash their investigations of the climategate scientists, what I consider to be the equivalent of a community-wide cover-up, has done serious harm to science and its reputation.
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