In Comedy, Veritas
This time, it’s Saturday Night Live, who issue a devastating take-down of last year’s stress tests by the US Department of the Treasury.
H/t Naked Capitalism for pointing me to the video.
Category: Video
Happy Thanksgiving
A turkey singing, “I will survive.”
Some Things are Universal
This is in Japanese, but I don’t need to know the exact words.
This is Cool
You know, I’m generally not a fan of rap, and I generally find the genre of “weird Japanese videos” to be disturbing (see Pr0n, Tentacle), but this is very engaging, and completely work safe.
It is both universally engaging and truly Japanese at the same time.
H/t JR at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
What My Daughter Listens To
My Chemical Romance’s song Welcome to the Black Parade:
It’s the Fracking Juxtaposition of a Contrail and Forced Perspective
Once Again, Jon Stewart Does News Better than the News Networks
You know, the earth is round, and if a jet is passing directly over you as it comes over the horizon, its contrail looks vertical.
Of course, we know what this was. It was a slow speed chase involving a white Ford Bronco.
As Jon Stewart notes, quoting the helicopter pilot who filmed it, this “rocket plume” continued for about 10 f%$#ing minutes, which would put the missile (assuming a 1 G acceleration) would put the missile about 1800 km (100 mi) down range.
<Facepalm>
Rotten to the Core
Happy Veterans Day
Not only is the US military is pressuring our own soldiers to get them to sign documents admitting to a pre-existing “Personality Disorder” when they are injured in combat, so that they are not eligible for disability, now we have testimony that they tortured at least one soldier for the requisite signature.
This is a rather profoundly unsettling 9 minutes and 37 seconds.
What Bill Maher Said
True Dat
there are way too many people who think that reasoned discourse is about equating the two sides.
It’s not. Reasoned discourse is about the truth, and as Bill Maher notes, “Keith Olbermann is right when he says he’s not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts the other one is very close to playing with his poop.”
That is the problem with the Stewart/Colbert March for Sanity/Fear.
At the core of this discussion, there are people who are just lying or delusional, and they should not be considered equivalent to those who are merely partisan.
As the noted tippler Daniel Patrick Moynihan once noted, “People are entitled to their own opinions, not to their own facts.”
And Stewart and Colbert did not make that distinction at the rally, though, ironically enough, Stewart does so regularly on his show.
John McCain, You Need to Go On The Daily Show
Because when you don’t, Jon Stewart tees off on you something fierce:
Well, that will leave the proverbial mark.
Optimism Can Kill You
Barbara Ehrenreich looks at the cult forced optimism in the United States, and how it is both dangerous and prevents people from challenging real problems in society.
I was particularly taken by her observation about just just how much mandatory optimism was a part of the infrastructure of the totalitarian Soviet state as well.
The Last Word on Juan Williams
Of course, it’s Jon Stewart and The Daily Show:
NPR — you just brought a tote bag full of David Sedaris books to a knife fight.
My favorite bit was their entirely accurate characterization of Washington, DC traffic.
A warning: Don’t drink anything while watching this, you will spew!
When Your Opponent Hands You a Club, Use It
Meg Whitman said that she came to California 30 years ago, because then, “anything was possible,” in California.
30 years ago, Jerry Brown was Governor of California.
It’s ready made for this (very good) ad.
Facts are a bitch.
Heh.
PAK-FA’s Air Show Video Pr0n
It’s an air show routine, so hit highlights its low speed/high alpha performance, which does appear to be pretty damn impressive.
H/t The DEW Line
Another Bit of Tech that I Worked With on FCS*
I’ll wait for reports from the field
The army is looking to deploy the XM25 25mm grenade launcher to Afghanistan.
The ‘special sauce” for this system is that the fire control system on the round can set the round to detonate at a specific distance, so you can set it to detonate past the cover an opponent is using for protection.
The example here is to put a round through a window, where it is set to detonate 2m beyond the building facade, which will certainly spoil that guy’s day.
This was intended to be used on the FCS-RMV in the full auto and remote controlled XM307 Advanced Crew Served Weapon where it would take the place of a crew served machine gun.
Truth be told, it strikes me as a little complex to function well in the confusion and grit and grime of battle, we should be hearing reports in the next few months.
*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Unconventional Helicopter Developments
250 kt record breaking flight, complete with Pr0n film* music soundtrack
The EADS X3
And their EADS/Eurocopter video
X2 Raider Mockup
The X-2 Raider, blissfully music free
Graham Warwick gives a survey of new technologies that might find their way into the Joint Multi Role (JMR) rotorcraft program, along with the video of the X-2’s record breaking flight (top)
Meanwhile, EADS is flight testing its X3 (I wonder where they got that name) compound helo, which uses dual wingtip props, and it provides anti-torque by varying the pitch of the thrusters.
It’s far less ambitious than that of the X-2, but their selling point is reduced life cycle cost, which is probably more a shot at the expensive tilt-rotors out there than the X-2 advancing blade concept, which really doesn’t seem particularly different in the amount of bits that move.
One interesting twist is that the X3 will slow its rotor at higher speed, reducing drag, though I could see this added to an advancing blade helicopter as well, particularly if the aircraft has a wing.
My quick look at the demonstrator indicates that it is not a particularly useful helicopter.
With two props about a yard from where the entrance to the passenger/cargo area is, both loading and unload, as well as the use of a winch for a rescue mission, would appear to me to be highly problematic.
Of course, the X3 is a demonstrator cobbled together with bits of various existing helicopters, so an operational version would likely address these shortcomings.
Sikorsky is also pitching a replacement for the OH-58D, theS-97 X2 Raider, which is rather similar to the MI-24 Hind or the Augusta/Westland Lynx concepts for an attack helicopter which retains transport capabilities or the ability to carry its own reloads.
*Not that I’d know what pr0n movies’ sound tracks actually sound like.†
†Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Always Proof Read Your Classified Ads
And if you phone it in, for Pete’s sake, proof what they wrote down!
H/t Tiempo at the Shortskoolbus BBS.
Good Riddance…………
National Public Radio has fired Juan Williams over his statements that he is scared by Muslims in public places on Bill O’Reilly’s show:
I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.
It’s actually more than that, because while this seems to be an admission that is an admission that he will sometimes judge people by color of their skin rather than by the content of their character, it actually followed a bigoted rant by Long Island Klansman Bill O’Reilly about the “Muslim dilemma”.*
So it was not just an admission of personal weakness, it is an active endorsement of O’Reilly’s bigoted screed.
His explicit endorsement of bigotry is not surprising. He is Fox News’ “House Slave,” to quote Harry Belafonte, and he has his tongue so far up Billo’s ass that he is tasting tonsils.
He was on the Long Island Klansman’s (O’Reilly), and Billo had been launching into his bigoted screeds. and his seemingly mild statement validated those screeds.
I think that context and venue matter. This was not Nightline, or Jon Stewart. This was Bill O’Reilly, and fellow hater Mary Katherine Ham, in a full blown hate-fest, and they Williams basically said that it was OK.
As to the effect on NPR, I think that his leaving will be good for the network.
Williams has always been a hack, and a stupid one at that, as his truly pitiful tenure as Talk of the Nation host showed.
He has been coasting on his work writing the companion book to the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize for decades.
I’m with Matthew Yglesias’s take on this, which was that he should have been fired long ago, “on the grounds of general lameness and lack of valuable contribution to their programming.”
Additionally, he has always been ethically challenged. During the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, he was a vociferous defender of Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court nomination hearings, but he neglected to disclose that he himself was the subject of credible allegations of sexual harassment of a subordinate the Washington Post.
I do find the fact that we now have two echos of Clarence Thomas’s sexual harassment and perjury in the same week rather odd. Synchronicity, neh?
I’m so glad that I won’t have to listen to him any more. Hopefully they can send Cokie Roberts away too.
* Which has eerie echos of people 70 years ago talking about the “Jewish Problem.”
I’m Not a Fan of Jerry Brown, But This is a Good Ad
It’s draws a very good line between Meg Whitman and the Governator.
This Election is Getting Weird
First, Joe Miller says that the Berlin Wall is a good thing, and now he has his own merry band of Brownshirts
So, it appears that Alaska Republican Senate nominee has hired hired goons to harass the press in order to prevent them from asking him questions, and they just assaulted and handcuffed a journalist:
The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.
Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.
I keep expecting this crowd to burst into Tomorrow Belongs to Me.
Christine O’Donnell may be the sane one of this lot.
Our political culture is broken in some very profound ways, and I have no clue as to how to fix it.
Wasp
Here is the windup
And here is the unforced error
For those of you who don’t know, Wasp is a book by Eric Frank Russell. It’s conceit is that a man is sent to infiltrate and subvert a planet held by the enemy.
Rather than conventional methods of espionage, like sabotage, the goal of the agents is to engender over-reactions from the authorities which would have them weakening themselves, much like a driver distracted by a wasp can kill himself and his passengers by driving into a bridge abutment.
Well, in the Kentucky Senate Race, Democrat Jack Conway ran an ad against Randroid nut job Republican Rand Paul bringing up his involvement in an anti-religious group at Baylor, and his frat hazing style “kidnapping” of a coed who he made to bow down to the “Aqua Buddha.”
I cannot claim to have a deep understanding of the politics, or the religiosity, of Kentucky, so I cannot speak to the direct effects of the advertisement (1st video), but I can speak to the secondary effects of the ad (2nd video) and it ain’t pretty.
Rand Paul is acting like a complete bitch, and his bit at the end where he huffily declares that he won’t shake hands at the end of the debate.
I’m with Theda Skocpol on the nervous Nellies who are wringing their hands over this:
One reason that Dems do not seem to be able to play hardball — in a viciously hardball political world — is that Dems often lack conviction or the will to be eloquently honest (for example, on taxes). But an equal problem is that when someone does play hardball, the rest of the prissy liberal Mugwumps tut-tut them about it.
The professional losing class can go Cheney themselves.
Honestly, I don’t care about Rand Paul’s religion. My guess is that his protestations of religion are a less than honest, since his idol Ayn Rand loathed religion, but politically, the important bit of electoral politics here here is that Rand Paul seriously lost his sh%$ on camera, and that was the real success of this ad.
BTW, if you wanted to use a cinematic reference rather than a literary reference, I would suggest that Jack Conway just Gaslighted Rand Paul.