Thursday, December 31, 2009
Technology
When this high tech stuff works, it's great. When it doesn't, it is a colossal pain in the wuttuzzi. And you know it all breaks down at the same time, and that time is when it is most inconvenient for you. Stupid machines.
Work A Day World
I picked up a temporary job and it looks like it's going to be interfering with my goofing off, so there may not be as many postings for the next few weeks.
Today's Poem
And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury, —
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury, —
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen
From the poem For The New Year by Thomas Hood, sent to me by Ned.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Quote of the Day
"Well, you know what they say - when you haven't any other place to step, it doesn't matter which foot lands in the shit first."Captain Heris Serrano in Sporting Chance by Elizabeth Moon, page 208.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Fire Engine Maximus
Remember all those oil well fires in Kuwait when we kicked out the Iraqi's? Ever wonder how they put out those fires? Well, wonder no more:
Tucker Combat Car
Ross, on his way to Denver, saw a Tucker Torpedo on the road this morning. There aren't too many Tucker automobiles around, so I thought I would poke around on the web and see if someone in Eastern Oregon had managed to latch onto one, and maybe posted some pictures. Well, I found a bunch of pictures of the Tucker Torpedo, but none that seem to be from Eastern Oregon. But while I was looking I found this video of the Tucker Combat Car on AutoBlog:
Quite the gizmo, quite a lot of technology packed into a pretty small package. I'll bet it was expensive, and that's probably why it didn't make it into production. The turret did, though.
And since I think the Tucker is a pretty good looking car, I collected some photos. No credits this time. Some of the web pages I found these on were miles long, took forever to load, and one of them kept trying to play some audio anouncement, all of which I found extremely irritating, so nobody gets any credit this morning.
Update November 2019 replaced dead Picasa slideshow with photo and link to Google Photos album.
Quite the gizmo, quite a lot of technology packed into a pretty small package. I'll bet it was expensive, and that's probably why it didn't make it into production. The turret did, though.
And since I think the Tucker is a pretty good looking car, I collected some photos. No credits this time. Some of the web pages I found these on were miles long, took forever to load, and one of them kept trying to play some audio anouncement, all of which I found extremely irritating, so nobody gets any credit this morning.
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| Tucker Automobile |
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Who are "We"? And what do "We" want?
You hear it time and again in quotes from people in the news. We want this, we want that, we want what's ours, we want what's good and right for everyone, what's good and right for "We".
The American Declaration of Independence starts with "We the people".
Lately I've noticed that sometimes people play fast and loose with "We". Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes not. Sometimes people really believe that everyone thinks as they do, so they use We to refer to everyone. Sometimes there is a specific agenda and they use We to imply that everyone supports this idea/program/concept/whatever, or at least they should.
Sometimes We is used to refer to a specific group, and that's fine. It's when it they are referring to some nebulous, overarching group of everyone that gets my attention.
What do We want? On one hand We say that we should care for the sick and injured, give aid and comfort to the less fortunate, especially children. On the other hand, when these children grow up without any education or training or civilizing and go out into the world and start making trouble, we have no compunction about killing them. Okay, maybe We have some compunction, but we do it anyway.
Near as I can tell, killing other people, especially people from another tribe (a different group of We), has been the number one sport since people first showed up on this planet. Nowadays, it seems that slaughter is "senseless", but killing killers, especially killers from another tribe, is okay.
Daring daughter just got back from three months in Africa. She visited Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Kenya, the bastion of civilization on the East Coast is now off-limits. Uganda, site of innumerable horrors 20 or 30 years ago is now considered mostly safe.
She only spent a couple of days in Rwanda, site of recent genocide (Hutus killing Tutsis, or vice versa, I don't remember which), and she described it as bizarre. They visited the capital, a large modern city, with large, American size prices. How can this be? Everything seemed way too normal. But there were undercurrents of hate and repressed loathing. I suspect if she had been there much longer it would have become more apparent.
The American Declaration of Independence starts with "We the people".
Lately I've noticed that sometimes people play fast and loose with "We". Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes not. Sometimes people really believe that everyone thinks as they do, so they use We to refer to everyone. Sometimes there is a specific agenda and they use We to imply that everyone supports this idea/program/concept/whatever, or at least they should.
Sometimes We is used to refer to a specific group, and that's fine. It's when it they are referring to some nebulous, overarching group of everyone that gets my attention.
What do We want? On one hand We say that we should care for the sick and injured, give aid and comfort to the less fortunate, especially children. On the other hand, when these children grow up without any education or training or civilizing and go out into the world and start making trouble, we have no compunction about killing them. Okay, maybe We have some compunction, but we do it anyway.
Near as I can tell, killing other people, especially people from another tribe (a different group of We), has been the number one sport since people first showed up on this planet. Nowadays, it seems that slaughter is "senseless", but killing killers, especially killers from another tribe, is okay.
Daring daughter just got back from three months in Africa. She visited Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Kenya, the bastion of civilization on the East Coast is now off-limits. Uganda, site of innumerable horrors 20 or 30 years ago is now considered mostly safe.
She only spent a couple of days in Rwanda, site of recent genocide (Hutus killing Tutsis, or vice versa, I don't remember which), and she described it as bizarre. They visited the capital, a large modern city, with large, American size prices. How can this be? Everything seemed way too normal. But there were undercurrents of hate and repressed loathing. I suspect if she had been there much longer it would have become more apparent.
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