Today, I participated in the annual local SCA group’s cooking competition.
We got there late, and I had nothing to eat until about 5 pm as a result of us rushing to get there.
Then I spent 4 hours cooking historical recipes under camping conditions in 90° heat and high humidity.
I feel like a hard of elephants stampeded over me, so I’m turning in now.
Posted via mobile.
Heh
Here latest brain fart is the suggestion that the federal government place levies on the states, and to allow them to collect the taxes, because the Articles of Confederation were such a good idea.
I’m not being metaphorical here. She literally extolls the virtues of the articles of confederation:
.There will be objections, of course. The first is that states’ collecting the money isn’t our tradition. It is, actually. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states, not individuals, owed payments to the federal government. The modern income tax, where citizens pay the federal government, came into being only a century ago.
Which is not the same thing as saying that the federal government hasn’t had taxing authority for the past 223 years, though she is implying that the failed and rejected Articles of Incorporation is part of the American tradition of governance.
The Magna Carta, and the Marine Insurance Act of 1746 have more to do with the heritage and traditions of the United States than does the Articles of Confederation.
Just remember that she spent decade as a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations,” as well as being an adjunct (temp) prof at NYU’s Stern School of Business, despite making sh%$ up in her so called histories, and despite the fact that she her degree in is in English.
So if a representative from either of the above institutions claims that the sky is blue, find independent verification.
Any organization that hires her has no credibility.
I appreciate the contributions that Wernher von Braun, but the fact that NASA is looking at using the F-1 engine as the core of its future heavy lifter (paid subscription required) makes me wonder what the hell NASA has been doing since the Apollo program:
The powerful rocket engine developed in the 1960s to launch the first men to the Moon could be reprised in the 2020s as the powerplant for strap-on boosters that NASA hopes to use in heavy-lift human missions to Mars. Under a new NASA risk-reduction project, Dynetics Inc., a relative newcomer to space launch, will explore the idea for the U.S. agency in partnership with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.
Rocketdyne built the 1.5-million-lb.-thrust F-1 engine for NASA , which mounted five of the kerosene-fueled behemoths in the Saturn V first stage to propel the massive Saturn/Apollo stack off the launch pad.The F-1—19 ft. tall, with a nozzle 12.5 ft. across—epitomized the scale of the flight hardware and ground infrastructure NASA used to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. If NASA decides to fly it again, it probably will be tested in the same stands built for the F-1 at the agency’s Marshall and Stennis field centers, stacked in the same 40-story Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center used for Apollo and the space shuttle, and launched from one of the pads built for the Moon program.
Dynetics scored big in a $200 million NASA effort to reduce the risk on advanced boosters for the planned Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress ordered as a government-owned deep-space alternative to the commercial vehicles the agency wants to use for transport to the International Space Station. Last week NASA selected the company to negotiate for three of six 30-month study contracts designed to reduce risk on the twin boosters that will be needed to raise the SLS capability from an initial 70 metric tons to the 130 metric tons the agency believes will be needed for human missions beyond low Earth orbit.
………
If the Dynetics proposal to use the F-1 in the boosters is accepted, all of the engines on the SLS will have heritage in earlier human spaceflight missions, and all will already have been used for decades when deep-space human missions begin. The F-1 ran a full 2.5-min. test at Edwards AFB, Calif., in 1960 (see photo), before the A-1 and A-2 test stands at Stennis were built for it. NASA and Rocketdyne are testing the uprated J-2X variant of the Saturn V J-2 engine to power the SLS upper stage . And the main SLS engine will be a throw-away version of the reusable RS-25D space shuttle main engine, also built by Rocketdyne , once the 15 surplus shuttle engines are used up. Developed in the 1970s, it will be the newest basic engine design for what may one day be NASA ‘s newest human launchers.
This is f%$#ing depressing.
The Rolling Stones played their first concert 50 years ago today, July 12, 1962.
50 f%$#ing years.
The former front man for the band Wings, and, if I recall correctly, another band of note before that, Sir Paul McCartney, turns 70 today.
A well executed troll is a thing of beauty.
It appears that someone has found an old vial of Reagan’s blood, and is selling it:
Ronald Reagan’s foundation expressed outrage on Monday at a British company’s auction of what it says is a vial of the late U.S. president’s blood taken at the hospital where he was treated after a 1981 assassination attempt.
PFC Auctions, a company based in Guernsey in the United Kingdom, announced on Sunday that it would sell the vial of blood in an online auction set to end on Thursday.
The vial was taken at George Washington University Hospital on March 30, 1981, after Reagan was wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., PFC Auctions said on its website. It is said to have come from a person whose late mother had worked at a medical lab.
“If indeed this story is true, it’s a craven act and we will use every legal means to stop its sale or purchase,” John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said in a statement.
The website for PFC Auctions said the latest online bid for the vial stood at 6,270 British pounds ($9,910). A PFC Auctions representative could not be reached for comment.
I guess that this is the Republican equivalent of a piece of the true cross, or Jesus’ foreskin. (Yes, Virginia, one of the medieval scams was his foreskin.)
BTW, here is the kicker:
The seller said he or she had contacted the California-based Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, which is run by the late president’s foundation, months ago and had been told that Reagan’s family would like to have the vial given to them.
“I told him that I didn’t think that was something that I was going to consider … and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that President Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it,” the statement said.
H/t Ed Kilgore. BTW, read the comments on the his post, they are hysterical.
It appears that a bloke has a bunch of late model Spitfires in Myanmar:
This story is not about JSF, or Rafale or Typhoon or Gripen but about one of the world’s legendary planes: the Spitfire, a large number of which – up to 120 – [other reports list it at just 20] were found in almost pristine condition in Burma last February and are now going to be returned to the UK.
Thanks to an English farmer’s dogged determination and willingness to spend a considerable amount of his own money, the Griffon-engined Mark XIVs Spitfires have been located and British Prime Minister David Cameron has secured a deal that will allow them to be dug up and shipped back to Britain almost 67 years after they were hidden more than 40-feet below ground.
The aircraft were discovered in February by English farmer David Cundall, 62, who has spent 15 years, travelled 12 times to Burma and spent more than £130,000 in his quest. Using radar imaging technology Cundall found the aircraft buried at a former Royal Air Force base. They had been shipped to Burma and then travelled by train to the RAF base during the war, but were never used because by the end of the war they were nearing obsolescence. Unwilling to leave high-performance, if out-dated, aircraft in a country with an uncertain future, Britain’s South East Asia command decided to bury them. As many as 120 Spitfires, original cost about £12,000, may have been disposed of in this way.
“They were just buried there in transport crates,” Cundall told the Daily Telegraph which published the story today (May 7). “They were waxed, wrapped in greased paper and their joints tarred. They will be in near perfect condition.”
Let me say that, since he was kicked out of his think thank job at AEI, David Frum has been a source of remarkably honest and thoughtful analysis.
A case in point is his comparison of Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama in reviewing Robert Caro’s bio of Johnson:
It’s hard not to detect in these pages an unspoken critique of Barack Obama. Yes, certainly, Obama shares Lyndon Johnson’s gift for driving opponents crazy, if it is a gift. But the use of power Caro so vividly describes is not something that comes naturally to our current president. The constant searching for opportunities; the shameless love-bombing of opponents; the endless wooing of supporters; the deft deployment of inducements and threats—these are the low arts that led to Johnson’s high success. You can see why a high-minded leader like Barack Obama would recoil from the Johnson style and embrace Kennedyesque rhetorical grandeur instead. Such presidents contribute great phrases to quotation books, but they tend not to add lasting laws to the statute books—or enduring change to the history books.
It appears that there are are no thinking conservatives in America, so we have to export them to Canada.
last ‘graph
So said Karl Marx, who must have had Allen “The Craziest Mother F%$#er in Congress” West in mind:
One of the most ridiculous names — and there will be a lot of them — in the ongoing GOP veepstakes is Florida congressman, tea partier, and crazy person Allen West. Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, and fellow veepstakes participant Nikki Haley have all endorsed West as Romney’s running mate recently. We suspect, though, that none of them sincerely believe West is a viable option, and are simply currying favor with the tea-party wing of the GOP by flattering one of its champions. Because West is, actually, the exact type of person you don’t want as a running mate: A wildly outspoken, unpredictable loose cannon. His appearance at a town hall last night is just the latest example:
The conservative tea party icon also got in shots at Democrats and President Obama, who spoke Tuesday at Florida Atlantic University. West said Obama was “scared” to have a discussion with him. He later said “he’s heard” up to 80 U.S. House Democrats are Communist Party members, but wouldn’t name names.
You know, this is so Joe McCarthy in Wheeling West Virginia on February 9, 1950, and it’s farce, and I’d call Allen West is a f%$#ing clown, but this would be unfair to people who make clown pr0n.
BTW, don’t Google the term “Clown Porn”. Or if you do, don’t let me know. I have way too much that I need to un-know already.
Some scientist simulated the bite of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and determined that it had one of the strongest ever:
The tyrant lizard, also known as Tyrannosaurus rex, had the strongest bite of any known land animal, new research suggests.
“Our results show that the T. rex had an extremely powerful bite, making it one of the most dangerous predators to have roamed our planet,” study researcher Karl Bates, of the University of Liverpool, said in a statement.
………
The new estimate of bite force is higher than past estimates that relied on indent measures in which they pressed down the skull and teeth onto a bone until they got the imprints that matched those on fossils. In the new study, the researchers created a computer model of the dinosaur’s jaw by first digitally scanning skulls from an adult and juvenile T. rex, an allosaurus, an alligator and an adult human. They used these scans to model each animal’s bite.
“We took what we knew about T. rex from its skeleton and built a computer model,” Bates said. “We then asked the computer model to produce a bite so that we could measure the speed and force of it directly.”
The force exerted at one of T. rex’s back teeth would have been between 7,868 and 12,814 pounds-force (35,000 and 57,000 newtons). This force would be akin to having a medium-size elephant sit on you.
There has always been a debate about T. Rex, and whether they were primarily predators or scavengers.
The interesting thing is that, at least amongst today’s mammals, scavengers have stronger jaws, the hyena, for example, despite being less than half the size of a lion, has a stronger bite.
Basically, when you come late to the party, you need jaws that can pulverize bone to get the table scraps.*
So, I’m thinking that this extreme jaw strength, and the associated costs of maintaining that capability to the species, imply that the king of the dinosaurs was frequently dining on someone else’s left-overs.
*Yes, I am aware that the Hyena is actually a highly successful predator, and frequently, when you see them circling when the lions are eating, the hyenas have made the kill, and the lions have taken it over. It still means that they are going to eat what the lions leave after they have had their fill.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not Thomas Friedman who wrote this, it was David Graeber, in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.
I have to admit that I have not actually read this book, (and now, I never will) I am relying on a review from LizardBreath at Unfogged, and this is what she finds:
But then he starts talking about how democratic methods of structuring organizations are often more efficient than rigid hierarchies, and so will often arise spontaneously when people really need to be get things done. And he uses Apple Computers as an example:
Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages.
I don’t know all that much about the history of Apple or of the computer business generally, but I’m pretty sure that’s as wrong as it could possibly be. Apple was founded by two guys, neither of whom (AFAIK) worked for IBM (maybe for a very short time? But certainly not extendedly). It was notoriously a rigid, top-down hierarchy, it was founded in the ’70s, not the ’80s, and who had a laptop until the very end of the ’80s? That’s a whole lot of wrong for one sentence.
It’s so stupid, that I am amazed that this wasn’t written by Tom Friedman.
I present to you what must be the best former slave snark ever:
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
For a man of his background, this is impressively fierce eloquence.
H/t Americablog.
The irony here is so strong that light cannot escape it, because this is an irony singularity is cloaked by a back hole.
Stephen Hawking could write a physics paper on this level of irony.
H/t DC on the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
The French have passed a law making it illegal to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide.
I don’t approve laws forbidding speech, but I DO approve of pushing back on the Turkish aggressive policy of denial and disinformation regarding historical fact.
The cynic in me thinks that Nicolas Sarkosy was motivated by the political calculus that bashing Turks would sell with the Neanderthal set in the upcoming election though.
One final note: Serdar Argic, eat my shorts.
You can make fun of Rick Santorum without having to resort to making ass juice/frothy mixture/Google jokes.
There’s simply way too much insanity even without Dan Savages bit of literary genius.
Case in point, he just said that the “American left” “hates Christendom”, because, among other things, they think that the Crusades were an aggression against the Arab world.
Because, the mass slaughter in Jerusalem, and the pogroms and murders that swept through Europe was all hunky dory.
On behalf of my ancestors, who were doubtless murdered and raped by your ancestors, go Cheney yourself.
H/t The Reality-Based Community, who asks the obvious question, “Is he going to endorse the Inquisition next, and expose Voltaire as an undercover jihadist and proto-Marxist?”
Seriously, I’m not sure if Santorum is simply bat-sh%$ insane, if he’s just used to saying this crap because it’s what College Republicans do to tweak people in order to get their juvenile jollies.
Truth be told, it doesn’t matter. The end result is the same.
You can find the answer here.
While she is not a great beauty of her time, this is a rather surprising portrait, because it’s someone known for not being either passionate or attractive.
