Ralph Adams Cram

Rice University Central Plant

From New Notes from a Commonplace Book. Kind of a long story that talks about architecture, religion, civilization and books.

The Rightness of Ralph Adams Cram by Terry Cowan

An excerpt: 

A bit closer to home is his design for the Rice University campus, including Lovett Hall, and the Central Plant, disguised behind an Italianate loggia and a campanile* which hides the smokestack. His small All Saints Church in Peterborough, NH is said by some to be the most beautiful church in America. Indeed, some architectural historians argue that he should be much better known today, suggesting that his eclipse by Frank Lloyd Wright was undeserved.

* Italian bell tower

Rice University is in Houston, Texas.

Note about the image. The image Google served up was a bit fuzzy compared to the original on Facebook. Don't think I've ever run into that before.

Grifterism: The Economic Engine of Democrats

Stolen entire from American Greatness. I was only going to copy the introduction, on account of the story being kind of long, but I clicked on something and some evil advertising campaign took over my browser, so to spare you the pain, I copied the whole thing here. 

Grifterism: The Economic Engine of Democrats by Cynical Publius

Democrats run an economy of 'Grifterism,' where Billionaires, Productives, and Dependents fuel a system designed to keep the ruling class in power while stifling real economic freedom.

March 31, 2025

I am a political junkie and a political conservative. Like so many conservative political junkies, I spend a good portion of my waking hours trying to understand what the words and actions of Democrats actually mean. Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.

It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?

It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)

Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.

(Before I explain these classes, I realize that there are some readers who will jump all over these categories and tell me I am being too absolute in describing them. Yes, Elon Musk is a good Billionaire. Yes, there are bad Productives who exploit the powerless. Yes, there are many entirely productive people in government who are not Grifters. Yes, the nice old blind lady down the street deserves the support given to the Dependent class. Yet, as the saying goes, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

On to the four classes of Grifterism:

1. The Billionaires: The Billionaires are the capital creators upon which much of the system relies. While the top 1% of income earners pay 46% of all federal taxes, estimates suggest the Billionaire portion of that demographic alone pays for somewhere between 5% and 10% of all federal taxes. While this Billionaire class is defined by that 5% to 10%, realize, too, that the Billionaires create the businesses that pay the executive salaries of so much of the rest of the 46%, so in effect, Billionaire-related taxes fund nearly half of the federal government’s gross revenue and are the de facto economic sponsors of the Grifter class. (In addition to the punishing taxes they pay, Billionaires also enjoy the privileged punishment of being endlessly vilified by the “Tax the Rich” likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and their brainwashed acolytes.)

Ah, yes, those poor, poor Billionaires. They are taxed and vilified to an extraordinary degree, seemingly all as punishment for their riches. However, they are actually complicit with the Grifters by funding Grifterism in exchange for their existence being tolerated, and when it comes to economic policies, they are actually on the same side as the Bernies and the AOCs, it’s just not that obvious.

You see, the Grifters rely on a vast regulatory state that makes it very, very difficult to found new, Billionaire-creating businesses—unless you are already a Billionaire. Regulatory regimes like Dodd-Frank, the 1934 Act, the CFPB and a host of other business-harassing federal regulations and agencies mean that the greatest wealth-creating businesses can only exist when they hire legions of white-shoe law firms and high-priced accountants to ensure compliance with the regulatory burden. As such, only Billionaire-owned companies have the wherewithal to fund such compliance measures, effectively creating monopolies that shut out anyone else from ever joining their club.

As an example, Dodd-Frank has done little for America other than ensure that the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer, all by imposing massive regulatory burdens on an ever-dwindling population of small banks. A regulatory scheme that was purportedly designed to help “the little guy” only helped the Billionaires, purposely and deliberately suppressing the ability of the Productives (more on them later) from climbing higher and threatening to join the elite circle of the Billionaires.

The tryst between the Billionaires and the Grifters gets even worse when considering the concept of regulatory capture—i.e., the Billionaires are busy writing the Grifters’ regulations that will govern the Billionaires. Remember when the health insurance industry wrote the Obamacare legislation? THAT is “regulatory capture.”

Between Billionaire-friendly, compliance-driven monopolies and regulatory capture, the symbiotic relationship between the Billionaires and the Grifters becomes clear. Yes, the Billionaires pay far more than their fair share of taxes and face constant verbal abuse from the Grifter class, but they have a wink-wink acceptance of that because they sit secure on their wealth thanks to the Grifters’ penchant for regulatory entropy.

It’s pretty good to be a Billionaire—but not so much our next two classes.

2. The Productives:  The Productives are the most important class of Grifterism, and its most abused class. The Productives are the people who do and make the services and things upon which we all depend. They are doctors; they are farmers; they are the guys running the oil rig; they are long-haul truck drivers; they are your green grocer; they are your lawn guy; they are your dry cleaners; they are your plumber; they are basically the people who serve as the engine of a productive society. They create, and they rarely take. They are small business owners, but they are also the W-2 employees who work for those small businesses. Not only do the Productives serve as the essential lubricant for a functioning society, they also mostly pay that 56% of federal taxes not paid by the top 1%. America cannot survive without the Productives.

Many Productives are wealthy small business owners, while other Productives are hourly wage earners. But everyone in the Productive class knows this—it could all crash down at any moment. Productives live a life of insecurity—their business could fail, a recession could rob them of everything they ever worked for, and “at will” employees know that every day on the job could be their last. Being a Productive is stressful.

But the most stressful thing about being a Productive is that you lead your economic life at the mercy of the Grifters. If you are a Productive farmer, a Grifter might shut you down by forbidding you to grow crops or by making sure you cannot irrigate your land. If you invest your company’s worth in oil exploration equipment, a Grifter might bankrupt you with new regulations. Even that Productive dry cleaner you go to weekly has to worry about a Grifter destroying their business because they accepted a shirt with a bloodstain.

Examples like what I cite above are seemingly infinite and often totally opaque to a Productive, until such time as a Grifter arbitrarily decides to enforce one of the millions of regulatory laws few even are aware of and shuts the Productive down.

Thus, while Productives are the class that society cannot live without, all Productives live an economic life of uncertainty, constantly teetering on the razor’s edge of failure, knowing that they exist only because of the largesse of Grifters, and those same Grifters can destroy them at any time with the click of a pen.

It ain’t easy being a Productive.

3. The Dependents: This is a tricky one. It’s kind of self-explanatory—Dependents are people that depend on government handouts to live. In many ways, this is just fine—an important function of any decent government is to ensure that people who are wholly incapable of taking care of themselves enjoy a social safety net. The nice widow lady up the block with crippling rheumatoid arthritis deserves our help. Alternatively, some Dependents are temporary—the Productive who lost his job deserves a safety net for several weeks until he finds a new place to be productive. These types of people are not what make Dependents worthy of shame.

It’s the able-bodied Dependent who would rather live on the dole than become a Productive that is shameful. It’s the young man on disability who really isn’t disabled. It’s the mother who has more children because her government pay-out goes up with each kid she births. These are the shameful Dependents. Dependents pay no taxes, live on the fruits of the Billionaires and the Productives, and give only one thing back—their loyal votes for the Grifters. Dependents are actually part of the Grifters’ big con, and the Grifter class has a symbiotic relationship with Dependents, just as it has with the Billionaires.

However, it is actually no fun being a Dependent. It’s too easy to become addicted to an idle life just above the poverty line, and in that regard, Dependents are not doing any exploiting; they are being exploited—by the Grifters.

4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)

But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.

The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.

The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.

It’s good to be a Grifter.

Grifterism exists by, for, and because of the Grifters. The Grifter class allows the Billionaires, the Productives, and the Dependents to exist, but only so long as they provide the resources necessary for the Grifters to thrive. Understanding this system—and the fact that the system is almost exclusively the province of Democrats—perfectly explains why Elon Musk and DOGE are treated as existential threats by Democrats. That is because Elon Musk and DOGE are, in fact, existential threats to Democrats. If Grifterism unravels, so do the lifestyle, beliefs, and lifelong motivations of most Democrats. Democrats treat DOGE as a life-or-death matter. Patriotic Americans should do the same. Unraveling Grifterism is the essential act in making America great again, and vocal, robust support for DOGE is a task all patriotic Americans should embrace. Grifterism must end if we are ever to be truly free, and if we are ever to have small, non-intrusive government and genuine economic opportunity, Grifterism must be extinguished as the metastasizing cancer that it is.

WW3?

Vladimir Zelensky and Joe Biden. ©  Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Brothers in Grifterism

Stolen entire from RT.

Here’s why the West has so far failed to start World War III by Tarik Cyril Amar

The New York Times “exposé” on the US-Ukraine partnership contains no surprises, but the underlying revelation is stunning.

Under the title 'The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine', The New York Times has published a long expose that has made a splash. It is a long article advertised – with a lumbering clunkiness that betrays cramping politics – as the “untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.”

And it clearly aspires to be sensational: a revelation with a whiff of the famous Pentagon Papers that, when leaked to that same New York Times and the Washington Post in 1971, revealed what a mass-murderous fiasco America’s Vietnam War really was.

Yet, in reality, this time the New York Times is offering something less impressive by magnitudes. And the issue is not that the Pentagon Papers were longer. What really makes “The Partnership” so underwhelming are two features: It is embarrassingly conformist, reading like a long exercise in rooting for the home team, the US, by access journalism: Based on hundreds of interviews with movers and shakers, this is really the kind of “investigation” that boils down to giving everyone interviewed a platform for justifying themselves as good as they can and as much as they like.

With important exceptions. For the key strategy of exculpation is simple. Once you see through the rather silly group-therapy jargon of a tragic erosion of “trust” and sad misunderstandings, it is the Ukrainians that get the blame for the US not winning its war against Russia, in their country and over their dead bodies.

Because one fundamental conceit of “The Partnership” is that the war could have been won by the West, through Ukraine. What seems to never even have entered the author’s mind is the simple fact that this was always an absurd undertaking. Accordingly, the other thing that hardly makes it onto his radar screen is the crucial importance of Russia’s political and military actions and reactions.


This, hence, is an article that, in effect, explains losing a war against Russia without ever noticing that this may have happened because the Russians were winning it. In that sense, it stands in a long tradition: Regarding Napoleon’s failed campaign of 1812 and Hitler’s crash between 1941 and 1945, all too many contemporary and later Western observers have made the same mistake: For them it’s always the weather, the roads (or their absence), the timing, and the mistakes of Russia’s opponents. Yet it’s never – the Russians. This reflects old, persistent, and massive prejudices about Russia that the West cannot let go of. And, in the end, it is always the West which ends up suffering from them the most.

In the case of the Ukraine War, the main scapegoats, in the version of “The Partnership,” are now Vladimir Zelensky and his protégé and commander-in-chief General Aleksandr Syrsky, but there is room for devastating side swipes at Syrsky’s old rival Valery Zaluzhny and a few lesser lights as well.

Perhaps the only Ukrainian officer who looks consistently good in “The Partnership” is Mikhail Zabrodsky, that is, the one – surprise, surprise – who worked most closely with the Americans and even had a knack of flatteringly imitating their Civil War maneuvers. Another, less prominent recipient of condescending praise is General Yury Sodol. He is singled out as an “eager consumer” of American advice who, of course, ends up succeeding where less compliant pupils fail.

Zabrodsky and Sodol may very well be decent officers who do not deserve this offensively patronizing praise. Zelensky, Syrsky, and Zaluzhny certainly deserve plenty of very harsh criticism. Indeed, they deserve being tried. But constructing a stab-in-the-back legend around them, in which Ukrainians get blamed the most for making the US lose a war that the West provoked is perverse. As perverse as the latest attempts by Washington to turn Ukraine into a raw materials colony, as a reward for being such an obedient proxy.

With all its fundamental flaws, there are intriguing details in “The Partnership.” They include, for instance, a European intelligence chief openly acknowledging – as early as spring 2022 – that NATO officers had become “part of the kill chain,” that is, of killing Russians who they were not, actually, officially at war with.

Or that, contrary to what some believe, Westerners did not overestimate but underestimate Russian abilities from the beginning of the war: In the spring of 2022, Russia rapidly surged “additional forces east and south” in less than three weeks, while American officers had assumed they would need months. In a similar spirit of blinding arrogance, General Christopher Cavoli – in essence, Washington’s military viceroy in Europe and a key figure in boosting the war against Russia – felt that Ukrainian troops did not have to be as good as the British and Americans, just better than Russians. Those daft, self-damaging prejudices again.

The New York Times’s “untold story” is also extremely predictable. Despite all the detail, nothing in “The Partnership” is surprising, at least nothing important. What this sensationally unsensational investigation really does is confirm what everyone not fully sedated by Western information warfare already knew: In the Ukraine War, Russia has not merely – if that is the word – been fighting Ukraine supported by the West but Ukraine and the West.

Some may think the above is a distinction that doesn’t make a difference. But that would be a mistake. Indeed, it’s the kind of distinction that can make a to-be-or-not-to-be difference, even on a planetary scale.

That’s because Moscow fighting Ukraine, while the latter is receiving Western support, means Russia having to overcome a Western attempt to defeat it by proxy war. But fighting Ukraine and the West means Russia has been at war with an international coalition, whose members have all attacked it directly. And the logical and legitimate response to that would have been to attack them all in return. That scenario would have been called World War Three.

“The Partnership” shows in detail that the West did not merely support Ukraine indirectly. Instead, again and again, it helped not only with intelligence Ukraine could not have gathered on its own but with direct involvement in not only supplying arms but planning campaigns and firing weapons that produced massive Russian casualties. Again, Moscow has said this was the case for a long time. And Moscow was right.

This is why, by the way, the British Telegraph has definitely gotten one thing very wrong in its coverage of “The Partnership”: The details of American involvement now revealed are not, actually, “likely to anger the Kremlin.” At least, they are not going to make it angrier than before, because Russia is certain to have long known about just how much the US and others – first of all Britain, France, Poland, and the Baltics – have contributed, directly and hands-on, to killing Russians.

Indeed, if there is one most important take-away point from the New York Times proud expose of the extremely unsurprising, then it is that the term “proxy war” is both fundamentally correct and insufficient. On one side, it perfectly fits the relationship between Ukraine and its Western “supporters”: The Zelensky regime has sold the country as a whole and hundreds of thousands, if not more, Ukrainian lives to the West. The West has used them to wage war on Russia in pursuit of one overarching geopolitical aim of its own: to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, that is, a permanent demotion to second-rate, de facto non-sovereign status.

The above is not news, except perhaps for the many brainwashed by Western information warriors from historian-turned-war-apostle Tim Snyder to lowlier X agitators with Ukrainian flags and sunflowers in their profiles.

What is also less than stunning but a little more interesting is that, on the other side, the term “proxy war” is still misleadingly benign. The key criterion for a war being by proxy – and not its opposite, which is, of course, direct – is, after all, that major powers using proxies limit themselves to indirect support. It is true that in theory and historical practice that does not entirely rule out adding some limited direct action as well.

And yet: In the case of the ongoing Ukraine War, the US and other Western nations – and don’t overlook that “The Partnership” hardly addresses all the black ops also conducted by them and their mercenaries – have clearly, blatantly gone beyond proxy war. In reality, the West has been waging war on Russia for years now.

That means that two things are true: The West has almost started World War III. And the reason it has not – not yet, at least – is Moscow’s unusual restraint, which, believe it or not, has actually saved the world.

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine the US fighting Canada and Mexico (and maybe Greenland) and learning that Russian officers are crucial in firing devastating mass-casualty strikes at its troops. What do you think would happen? Exactly. And that it has not happened during the Ukraine War is due to Moscow being the adult in the room. This should make you think.

I've linked to several other stories by Tarik Cyril Amar. Today I thought I'd just steal the whole thing.

Convergence Calling by James Howard Kunstler is another well written post that talks about The New York Times story.

Crazy Cat Ladies

Crazy Cat Lady

From The Scratching Post:

Death By Crazy Cat Lady

It occurred to me the other day that all of the folks who are hell-bent on "diversity" and "migrants" aren't much different from crazy cat ladies.

Progressive: I found this (kitty, migrant) and it was sad, so I brought it home!

Me: You already have (23, 20,000,000) (kitties, illegals). You can't take care of the ones you have.

Progressive: But it was sad!

And that's how we ended up with 20,000,001 illegals in the country. Well, that and the Democrats' desire to change America's demographics so they never lost another election. That and certain businesses short-term interests in quasi-slave labor. Still, the psychopaths in politics and business couldn't have gotten it done without the crazy cat ladies.

We're being destroyed by pathological empathy.

Read the whole thing here.

Greenland

Old Nuuk, Greenland

Just because Mr. Trump is making noises about annexing Greenland, and also because we don't get many pictures of Greenland. Old Nuuk is on the southwest coast of the island.

Old Nuuk, Greenland

The town shown at the top is in all in the flat area in the foreground of this Google Maps image. Since the hillside in top photo has been rendered flat in the satellite view, that might give you some idea of how big those hills are in back of the town.

Map of Greenland overlaid on a map of the continental United States

Greenland  is not nearly as big as it appears on flat maps, but it's still pretty good size, as this comparison shows.

TDS on Display

TDS stands for Trump Derangement Syndrome. It seems to have infected a large portion of the population. People who are so afflicted are convinced that Donald Trump is the devil incarnate and everything he says or does is just more evidence that he is a bad, bad man.

I watched this video short of the Army Chorus performing at the White House. I was curious as to why the poster found this humiliating. It was hard for me to understand the lyrics, but after some rooting around I found them. It's the finale from the Broadway musical Les Miserables.

I looked in the comments to see what people were saying and they all seemed to be suffering from (or enjoying) their TDS.

I'm sorry, I don't see it. I see Trump as the liberator of the oppressed, downtrodden, deplorables from fly-over country. I thought about telling the poster that I disagreed, but you can't argue people out of their religious beliefs. I suspect the only thing that will change their minds will be when the 2 by 4 of reality hits them over the head. That 2 by 4 hasn't hit yet, but it's coming. I hope.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes.

Springtime for Trump

Damaged Military Vehicle

Great summary of what's happening in Washington D. C. and Western Europe:

Convergence Calling by James Howard Kunstler

This excellent paragraph is talking about Ukraine:

And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.

Will SpaceX Starlink Have Too Many Satellites in Orbit?

Will SpaceX Starlink Have Too Many Satellites in Orbit?
Curious Droid

I don't really have anything new to say on the subject, but I have written several posts that touch on it:

• Space Junk
• Big Ideas (Dirigible Spaceship)
• Space Habitat
• Space Elevator
• Stuff In Space
• Space War

Starship Troopers

The US Special Forces Extreme Techniques to Perform Halo Jumps

Reading Starship Troopers (a zillion years ago) and we've got soldiers dropping from orbit. I went looking for pictures of such, but bupkis. Well, how about HALO jumps? They're not from orbit, but they can be jumping from 8 miles up, which has so little air you might as well be in space, and I found this image.

Why am I thinking about Starship Troopers? Because the Air Force is building a new missile base on Johnston Island:

A mockup of the Rocket Cargo Vanguard program. © Air Force art.

Remember back at the beginning, back before the first Starship prototype was even built, when Elon was talking about how the Starship was going to revolutionize international travel? It was kind of a hair-brained scheme, but evidently someone at the Air Force was paying attention, because they realized it could be used to transport cargo as well as people. Any kind of commercial shipping isn't going to use a rocket, they use cargo ships because pound for pound, they are much cheaper. But if you have an emergency somewhere and you need to get a bunch of stuff somewhere quickly, a rocket is just the ticket.

But the Starship is designed to carry people. It's going to be a little tougher on people than an airliner, but soldiers are pretty tough, so it shouldn't be a problem for them.

Landing in remote regions occupied by enemy forces might be a problem though, so we might want to drop our troops in, like paratroopers. We don't have a technique for doing that from orbit, at least not yet, but Starship can manage reentry, and at some point it's velocity will be low enough that troops could safely exit the vehicle, so we would have Starship paratroops, i.e. Starship Troopers.

It's going to be a few years before we get to this point, but it's undoubtedly coming.

Johnston Atoll is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean:

Johnston Atoll

Johnston Island inside Johnston Atoll

Johnston Island

Previous post on the subject here.

Johnny Harris tipped me off.

Trust, But Verify

Came across the phrase 'trust, but verify' in David Warren's column this morning, where in he tells me that in Russian, it rhymes. Does it? So I checked, and it does, sort of (follow the link and click on the loudspeaker icon to hear it). Wikipedia even has a page about it wherein we find:

Suzanne Massie, an American scholar, met with Ronald Reagan many times between 1984 and 1987 while he was President of the United States. She taught him the Russian proverb doveryai, no proveryai meaning 'trust, but verify'. She advised him that "The Russians like to talk in proverbs. It would be nice of you to know a few. You are an actor – you can learn them very quickly." The proverb was adopted as a signature phrase by Reagan, who used it frequently when discussing United States relations with the Soviet Union.

Follow the link to Russian Proverbs and we find:

The Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs and sayings. . . . Vladimir Dal was a famous lexicographer of the Russian Empire whose collection was published in Russian language in the late 19th century as The Sayings and Bywords of the Russian People*, featuring more than 30,000 entries.

Google Doodle for Valdimir Dal

I don't remember ever hearing about this Vladimir Dal before, but it seems Google put up a doodle of him in 2017. 

We have numerous sayings / phrases we use in American English, but I don't know that any of them rise to the level of 'proverbs'. But all this reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Captain Picard ends up in personal combat with a man-sized dinosaur because nobody in their crew recognizes that the aliens speak in proverbs.

* the book, in Russian, is available from Amazon.

ATACMS Attack on Sevastopol June 2024

Cleaning out my bookmarks this morning (a futile endeavor, it will never be complete), I came across this old post that I never published, probably because I had more to say, but I got distracted, so it fell in the bit bucket. Anyway it was originally written back in June 2024 and since it seems to be complete enough as it is, I'm posting it now.

Pleasant Beach Scene

I clipped these from an RT video. I had to watch it twice before I realized what I was looking at. I was expecting death, destruction and explosions, but there is none of that.

A few seconds later

Just that these water spouts suddenly appear. There is a smoke cloud in the lower left, but whatever caused it didn't appear to injure anyone. Unfortunately there wasn't any sound in the video, or maybe there wasn't any sound to hear. Things falling through the air don't make a lot of sound, do they?

Ukraine fired several American ATACMS missiles at a target in Crimea. They may have been aiming at the naval base in Sevastopol or a nearby communications facility. Russia claims to have intercepted most of the missiles with their own anti-missile missiles. So these water spouts might be from the debris from the destroyed missiles falling out of the sky, and not from the bomblets that the ATACMS missiles can carry.

Hercules in Lithuania

M88 Hercules

Three days ago four US soldiers went missing in Lithuania. They were operating an M88 Hercules  recovery vehicle (i.e. a tow truck). The vehicle was found sunk in a swamp, but no sign of the soldiers. 

In this image provided by the U.S. Army, Lithuanian Army and emergency services personnel during recovery efforts for a U.S. Army M88 Hercules submerged in a swamp near a training area near Pabadre, Lithuania, Thursday, March 27, 2025. (Christopher Saunders/U.S. Army via AP)

Also from CT :

The soldiers' armored vehicle was discovered submerged in 15 feet of water and so far teams have been unable to get inside or pull it out.

Recovery of the recovery vehicle is underway, but it looks to be a long, hard slog to pull it out of the swamp. Hopefully the soldiers will soon be found alive and well. Right now it's anybody's guess as to where they have got to.

Pabadre, Lithuania

Pabadre is about three miles from the border with Belarus.

Prestige

 JMSmith talks about how prestige colors our perceptions:

The Halo of Prestige, Where Did It Go?

Very few people know that the word prestige first indicated a conjuror’s trick. The word was rarely used in English before 1800, but when it was used it had a meaning identical to the Latin præstigum, a magical illusion. A writer in 1777 for instance speaks of “expert jugglers and prestige-practicing impostors,” and the word prestige long continued to mean merit that was apparent and not real.

The modern sense of prestige is said to have begun with Napoleon Bonaparte because the first Emperor of the French was in the minds of his countrymen and others so much larger than life. No one doubts that Napoleon was an extraordinarily talented man; but it is equally doubtless that Napoleon’s talents were greatly magnified by the magical illusion of prestige. Such magnification is the essence of prestige. It is the magnification of prestige that makes a great general appear invincible in the public eye.

Prestige magnifies a good man into a saint, a good scientist into a genius, a good athlete into the greatest athlete of all time.

You can read the whole thing here.

The were a couple of movies about magicians that came out in 2006. One was The Prestige and the other was The Illusionist. The Prestige gave us an explanation of the term, but at the time, because I had never heard of it used that way before, it sounded like nonsense.

And then there is the word prestidigitation, which refers to sleight of hand or legerdemain, meaning the quick, skillful manipulation of objects, often used in magic tricks or illusions.

The Residence - Netflix Series

The Residence | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Very entertaining, murder mystery, very Agatha-Christie like. Every character gets their turn on the screen to demonstrate their brand of lunacy and they make the most of it. One episode is named Knives Out, the same name as another Agatha-Christie like murder mystery starring Daniel Craig (yeah, James Bond).

The story is set in the White House and it gives us an in-depth look at the operation of the house: staff, rooms, layout, including some very fancy models of the place. It's a lot bigger than it looks.

Ark of the Covenant

Laura Loomer with Ark of the Covenant replica

Rumor has it that Trump has a replica of the Ark of the Covenant at his home in Florida. Near as I can make out, it is copy of the prop from the Harrison Ford movie Raiders of The Lost Ark. I dunno, maybe it is the original prop. Another rumor says the replica was on tour and one of the stops it made was at Mar-E-Largo.

I got onto this from a story in Modernity News about a CIA Cold War project to use 'remote viewing' to locate the the original. Criminently, 'remote viewing'? Well, I guess, if you are locked in a life or death struggle with godless commies, and you've got money to burn, sure, go ahead and try some crackpot schemes, see if anything pans out. I mean, how many valuable innovations in weapons and tactics started as a crackpot scheme?

Construction of this replica consumed 2700 hours of labor and six pounds of gold. Gold is currently around $3,000 an ounce. Figuring $100 an hour for labor, means this replica cost around $500 thousand.

I didn't not find any solid information on this, it's all just rumor.

Building a Religion

Cake - Comfort Eagle (Late World with Zach)
SgtRlee

I imagine you have heard about people vandalizing Tesla cars and Tesla dealerships. 'Vandalizing' is putting it mildly. You may have also seen this meme:

Voltaire Quote

How many people will believe whatever you tell them? I suspect it's a fairly large share of the population. You can increase that share with relentless propaganda, which is what the Democratic Party has been doing since, I dunno, forever? The Republicans have their own propaganda, but until recently they have not been as organized or pervasive as the Democrat's stuff.

How many people think for themselves? Of course you need to allow for the fact that many people don't waste anytime thinking about politics. So, not many.

Then you look at Moslem suicide bombers. Is there anything atrocious than killing yourself in order to kill a bunch of infidels? Why do they do it? Because they believe, in something, I'm not sure what. The Ayatollah built a religion, taught a bunch of people to believe in absurdities and then sent them out to commit atrocities.

That basically sums up American politics in the 21st Century. See Brave New World for a more in depth analysis.

Lawn Mower

Troy-Bilt 21 inch Lawn Mower

Bought a new lawn mower last week. I have a small lawn in front of the house and another small lawn in the back of the house. The house is built on a hill, so the backyard is one story lower than the front. Once upon a time there was a path going down the side of the hill so a lawn mower could be wheeled up or down the hill, but a while back we put in some fancy stone stairs right over this path, so no more wheeling the lawn mower up and done the hill. Lawn man didn't care, he had a partner, so the two of them could easily carry the lawn mower up and down the stairs.

But now Rob's partner is moving on, Rob is cutting back, and so carrying the mower is no longer viable. For a long time I've been trying to think of a solution, like replacing the wooden steps on the other side so they incorporated a ramp, or making some kind of removable ramp that could be laid over the stone steps, but all these seemed like a lot of work (which meant expensive, like a couple of thousand dollars), so nothing ever came of it. But now push has come to shove and I realized simply buying a lawn mower and keeping it in backyard would solve the problem.

About a month ago I dialed up Craigslist and saw several ads for used mowers that looked like a good deal. I fiddle farted around and didn't do anything about it, and the next week when I went back all the good deals were gone. So I go to Home Depot and Amazon and found several mowers for under $400. Then I remembered Home Depot had sent me a coupon for 10% off, so I went with them.

There are cheaper mowers available, but I've found that the cheapest item is not always a good deal. Spend a little more and you are likely to get much better quality.

I thought about an electric mower, but the electronics and the battery scare me. Electronic circuits are generally very reliable these days, but if they fail there is usually no recourse than to replace the whole circuit, and it will likely cost as much as the mower. Same deal with the battery, except that it will almost certainly die before you want it to, which means buying an expensive replacement battery. Probably cost near as much as the mower in the first place. After all, tool companies practically give away the tools in order to sell you a battery.

Anyway, this mower with a cover and the discount was less than $350. It only took me nine years to arrive at this solution. Very sad.

Language, Donald, language

EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/IMtMFNRf6h

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) March 25, 2025

You can say that again.

 

Wind Changes Direction in Gaza

Anti-Hamas protests in Gaza (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

I was beginning to think that this was never going to happen.

Rare Anti-Hamas Protests Erupt In Gaza As Residents Call For Peace by Kassy Akiva

Of course, you can't tell if this protest is 'organic' or paid for by some freedom loving psychopath, but I'm encouraged.

Whale Song

We FINALLY Understand How To Speak Whale
Dr Ben Miles

He breaks down human language and compares its structure to the patterns found in whale songs. Pretty cool.

Sentence Structure

I'm looking at Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox by Lina Khan and I come across this sentence:

"Second, because online platforms serve as critical intermediaries, integrating across business lines positions these platforms to control the essential infrastructure on which their rivals depend."

and I can't make sense of it, especially this phrase:

"integrating across business lines positions these platforms to control the essential infrastructure"

Eventually I realize that "integrating across business lines" is a noun. The sentence might have more easily made sense if those words were hyphenated, like this:

"Second, because online platforms serve as critical intermediaries, integrating-across-business-lines positions these platforms to control the essential infrastructure on which their rivals depend."

Once I finally deciphered it, I can no longer see what was so confusing about it.

Nuclear Power for Deep Space Missions

NASA'S Plutonium Problem
Real Engineering

He mentions the nuclear processing facility the Hague, which I thought was kind of weird. A little Googling turned up La Hague in France. 

La Hague, France (left) & The Hague, Netherlands (right)

The nuclear processing facility is at La Hague in France. It's in the middle of a bunch of farmland.

La Hague Nuclear Recycling and Reprocessing Plant

This facility is run by Orano. Wikipedia page.

Black Bag - Regal Movie

BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14
Focus Features

Wonderful psychological thriller.

Someone inside the UK's national security apparatus is selling secrets to the enemy and George (Michael Fassbender) is tasked with finding them. To this end he employs a man who comes up with a list of five people all of whom are co-workers, and one of whom is George's wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). George is the polygraph (lie detector) man and normally he would call each of these people in for a session with his machine, but this time he decides to try something different and instead invites them all for dinner at his home.

Nothing comes of this first dinner, but now his wife is off on Black Bag mission, 'Black Bag' meaning secret and she can't tell him anything about it other than she will be back in couple of days. George's professional curiosity is aroused, so he swaps his keycard for hers (a black plastic card with no identifying marks), uses it to sneak into her office, checks up on her and finds she is going to Zurich. Hmm.

He finds an old theater ticket in a trash can by her dresser, memorizes the date and time, and replaces it. He asks her if she has seen this film (Dark Windows) and she denies it. We see them in the theater when something shocking appears on the screen, everyone in the theater reacts except her. Then there is a second shocker and this time she reacts. So, was that ticket hers, or not? If not, how did it get there? I am puzzled.

Meanwhile, a Russian dissident who is under surveillance by this UK spy outfit manages to elude his watchers. They are watching the house where is using some kind of thermal camera that shows there are a number of people in the house. There is an interruption in the camera feed for a couple minutes and now the number of people is reduced by half. The conclusion is that he has slipped away and that he had advance knowledge of the glitch that he must have gotten from someone in this spy outfit.

Now George gets Clarrisa, the IT girl (Marisa Abela), to 'borrow' a surveillance satellite during a three minute period that occurs during a 'handoff', presumably while the satellite is changing its focus. They zoom in on the coordinates George stole from his wife's computer, and what do you know, we see his wife walk into the scene and sit down on a park bench in Zurich. A man comes in and sits down with her. IT girl uses a facial recognition program to identify this guy. Turns out he is in cahoots with the Russian dissident who slipped away. 

Kathryn meets with a CIA guy and tells him that these two Russians are driving across Poland. The CIA sends a big fat drone and blows up their truck, putting a stop to their plan to cause a meltdown of a Russian nuclear reactor. They expect such a disaster would bring down Putin.

George hosts a second get together at the same table in his house, but this time there is no food. He starts the meeting by throwing a handgun into the middle of the table. He explains the situation and waits for the culprit to reveal himself. He explains that the ticket in the trash was a very poor ploy to implicate his wife. She is an experienced spy and would not leave anything so obviously incriminating where George could find it. The culprit reveals themself by picking up the gun and firing a couple of rounds, but they are blanks. Kathryn reaches into her purse, pulls out a gun and shoots the culprit dead.

There were a couple of interesting little snippets. While George is preparing dinner, wearing a white  long sleeve dress shirt and an apron, he splashes a little bit of red sauce on the cuff of his shirt. It is barely noticeable, but he goes off to change it. Just reinforcing George's image as fastidious.

In another we have Arthur, the head of this department (Pierce Brosnan looking like an old man, well duh, he is an old man. Very disconcerting because James Bond never ages.), sitting down for dinner at the counter of a tiny restaurant. He is served a fish on a plate. We are treated to a close up of the fish's head and the fish is still alive. Never mind that people eat all kinds of weird food, Arthur is apparently a weirdo because eating live animals is pretty much verboten in Western Culture.

Funnies