Google Map Anomaly

Painting of Tonopah Test Range by Sebastian Gladstone

The above painting was made (copied?) from a satellite image. Does it reveal any government secrets? Who knows? But the story behind this image is intriguing, if you are interested in bureaucratic fumblings that go on behind bringing satellite images of the Earth to your desktop.

Politics

The immigrants vanished last night, but they left a gift

Those who don't remember their history are doomed.

Pipe Organ Desk

Pipe Organ Desk

Kagen Sound built this desk for Darren Aronofsky, the film director. There is a small pipe organ built into this desk, but it is not there to make music, it is part of a complex mechanism to unlock a secret compartment. It's really quite spectacular. The entire desk is riddled with complex puzzles. There are several videos on YouTube that show how some of it works. I didn't find them particularly engaging.

Via older son.

The Julie Principle

Chic - Le Freak
Every time Trump opens his mouth, liberals freak out, hence the above tune. Jack Marshall has something to say about this:

When a characteristic or a behavior pattern appears to be hard-wired into someone, it makes no sense to keep complaining about it. You either resolve to tolerate it ( and accept responsibility for the consequences of doing so), or decide that it is too much to endure, meaning that the relationship has to end.  “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…” [ Note: this is the most famous lyric in the second most famous song in “Showboat,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man o’ Mine,” sung by the tragic, abused mulatto Julie.]
. . .
Yesterday, many, not several but many, of my Angry Left Facebook friends posted links to stories attacking Trump’s silly tweet about him really winning the popular vote and there being millions of fraudulent votes for Hillary Clinton. “Is he going to do this sort of thing his entire administration?” one friend asked.
YES! YES HE IS! OF COURSE HE IS! DON’T YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY? ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO FLIP OUT AT EVERY SINGLE  INSTANCE WHEN TRUMP SAYS OR TWEETS SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THIS?

  Via Windy Pundit

Update June 2019 replaced missing video.

The Sheik of Araby

(1922) The Sheik of Araby - Frederick Granger
Duncan Automatic Stop
Regarding the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who went into the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, last week and never came out, California Bob has written some new lyrics for the tune The Sheik of Araby.

I'm the sheikh of Araby,

I'm prickly as can be.

To my immense surprise, he

Dared to criticize me.

To change a man's perspective,

A bone saw proves effective.

I'll start below the knee,

I'm the sheikh of Araby!

Rumor has it that Jamal was horrifically murdered when he went to pick up an innocuous document from the consulate.

I wonder what is driving this investigation. Erdogan (the Turkish President) is no friend of the free press, so without some kind of outside pressure, he might have let this get swept under the rug. Could it be that he is actually offended by this murder? One could hope that is the case.

What made MBS think he could get away with this? The New York Times offers this insight:

The answer, I think, is that dictatorships are inherently obtuse. Dictators live in their own self-created bubble of adulation and impunity, which leads them to huge misjudgments when they are forced to act outside of the bubble.

Update September 2020 replaced missing video.

Gearhead Video of the Day

America's Iron Giants - The World's Most Powerful Metalworkers
Another crack in my American Dream. We didn't have the best technology in WW2? How can that be! Must be faux news.

We didn't the have the best technology, but we knew how to organize and motivate a huge number of people and in the end it was that constant hammering of zillion little hammers that defeated mighty German war machine. Gawd, that sounds like something a Chinese philosopher might say.

But how in the world was Germany able to develop this powerful war machine if there were so devastated by WWI and the onerous terms of their surrender? Maybe the terms weren't that onerous, maybe they just irritated the Germans enough that they decided to do something about it, and that something was wage war. But jammed up as they were (well, were they or weren't they? Only the know-it-alls know for sure), they had to figure a smarter way of forging their swords, so they did.

Here is the ancient Chinese method.
Here is a variant.
Space variant.

New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro

New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro, Talent, Oregon

Friends of ours recently returned from a trip to Ashland (famed for their Shakespeare Festival). While there, they had dinner at New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro. The place has been operating in Talent for a number of years. In a previous life, the owners had run The Boonville Hotel in California which was famous for it's food and notable for its collapse.

     In retrospect it’s easy to see the restaurant’s failure as the natural outcome of various forces – a sort of epicurean perfect storm. Begin with some inexperienced investors with a worshipful attitude toward the nascent California Cuisine movement and its practitioners – “food gods and goddesses,” as the star-struck investor Stanford calls them. Introduce them to a cultured and charming bon vivant with dreams of a French-style country inn in California. Add a hostile local populace and season with a profound lack of business acumen – or even common sense – and voila! A recipe for disaster. - Sean Elder