I am not going to discuss the legality of pulling down flags from the grave of Stepan Bandera, or the wisdom of such an action, but his sign was the truth.
Stepan Bandera was a Nazi sympathizer, and he was directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands Poles and Jews.
That he is considered a national icon in the new Ukraine is a blot on history and decency.
A Soyuz capsule carrying a U.S. astronaut and Russian cosmonaut completed an emergency landing in Russia on Oct. 11 about 40 min. after the first ballistic abort in the history of the International Space Station (ISS) program. First reports indicate astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are in “good condition” and in contact with search-and-rescue teams sent to recover them, NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said. The booster anomaly was identified about 3 min., 15 sec. after liftoff at 4:40 a.m. Eastern time, triggering a ballistic re-entry of the capsule and subjecting the crew to higher-than-normal G forces. “It is a known mode of descent that crewmembers have gone through before,” Dean said. The booster anomaly has not been identified or described. ……… Soyuz used its launch abort system for the first time in September 1983 after a Soyuz T rocket caught fire on the launch pad seconds before liftoff. The capsule’s launch escape system pulled the crew away from the rocket seconds before the vehicle exploded.
The narration in the video below is not completely accurate. It’s someone (probably) in Houston reading from a script.
What is notable is that the “Koralev Cross” which occurs on booster separation, seemed rather odd, so the problem might be something to do with booster separation.
It appears that the escape tower had been jettisoned before the failure, and so the propulsion system for the capsule was used to separate from the booster.
In a week consumed by a fraught Supreme Court confirmation battle, you could probably use a little levity. To that end, on Thursday, a video of Trump boarding Air Force One with toilet paper apparently stuck to his shoe surfaced. And it’s everything you imagined. The clip first shows the president getting out of a limousine. It’s parked directly in front of a staircase that leads up to the open door of Air Force One. Secret Service agents are milling around the car as Trump climbs the stairs … with a little white scrap trailing off his left shoe. He stops to wave at the top of the stairs, then enters the plane, leaving the scrap outside the entrance. There’s no way to know it was in fact toilet paper — or even how it got there — but Twitter users seemed convinced. As if this entire presidency couldn’t be more bizarre…
When the father of a school shooting victim held out his hand to Donald Trump’s nominee for the supreme court on Tuesday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh looked at him, then turned without saying a word and walked out.
“I put out my hand and I said: ‘My name is Fred Guttenberg, father of Jaime Guttenberg, who was murdered in Parkland,’ and he walked away,” Guttenberg said in an interview with the Guardian.
The moment was captured in dramatic photographs, as well as on video from several different angles. In a statement after the incident, a White House spokesman said that “an unidentified individual” had approached Kavanaugh as he was preparing to leave for the confirmation hearing’s lunch break and that “before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened”.
“If you watch the video, you see that’s not the case, ” Guttenberg said. “What the White House said was not true.”
Kavanaugh made eye contact with him “long enough for me to say who I was”, Guttenberg said. “He could have absolutely shook my hand and said: ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ I mean – if nothing else.”
He’s a miserably excuse for a human being completely lacking in decency.
In other words, the very modern model of the modern Republican judicial nominee.
I actually saw this live, and was completely clueless
When she tore up a picture of John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in protest of church abuse, some of which she was the personal target of, she got a LOT of grief.
It caused a massive worldwide reaction when she tore up a picture of the then Pope on Saturday Night Live in October 1992 and declared, “Fight the real enemy.”
We now know that the pedophile scandals were rampant during the era of Pope John Paul, who chose to turn a blind eye. O’Connor was calling out the right person.
Before Spotlight, before the worst of the American and Irish church scandals, O’Connor called it right and only got abuse in return.
The enemy has become very obvious since then. The revelation that a Pennsylvania grand jury found that more than 1,000 children in six dioceses there had been molested by 300 Catholic priests over the past 70 years while successive church officials covered it up is truly shocking.
The scandal, which has been going on for decades, and the coverup, which was particularly ferocious under John Paul II, has proven her right.
A Baltimore cop caught on video brutally beating a man has resigned from the force, and prosecutors are considering assault charges. In the larger scheme of things though, the important development will be what happens to his partner, who largely stood idly by during the beating:
The Baltimore police officer caught on video punching a man repeatedly this past weekend has resigned and prosecutors are considering filing second-degree assault charges against him, interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle said.
The beating of Dashawn McGrier, 26, by the officer Saturday morning in East Baltimore was captured on cellphone video that circulated widely online. The police department suspended the officer with pay later Saturday.
Tuggle called the incident “disturbing” — singling out the officer’s “repeated head strikes” to the man. He said he could not comment further because the matter remains under active criminal investigation.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby’s office has declined to comment since the incident occurred.
The Police Department has not released the name of the officer, but McGrier’s attorney, Warren Brown, identified him as Arthur Williams, who he said has taunted and harassed McGrier for months.
“This was personal; it was not professional,” Brown said. “It was, ‘I’m the police and I have the power.’”
McGrier, who suffered a fractured jaw and ribs, swelling around his eye and ringing in his ears, was not charged in Saturday’s incident.
He was expected to be released from the hospital Monday, Brown said.
Look at the other cop: He’s basically watching this like it was a sporting even, when at the very least, he should be holding back his partner. (He should really be arresting him)
The problems with bad cops will never be fixed until their cow-orkers are held accountable for enabling this sort of behavior, so his partner needs to be crucified over this as well.
My daughter’s rehearsal went long, so I watched the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker on my phone in the parking lot. (She has a thing about us being in one of her plays, she is the stage manager, when the rehearsal is going. She also has a problem with people saying the name of the Scottish Play. Whatever.)
Nowadays, it’s primarily remembered as being the inspiration for shows like The X-Files, but it was very well done television.
I remembered enjoying it as a kid, but it’s a lot more sophisticated and polished than I noticed back then.
Darren McGavin was engaging, the relationship between him and Simon Oakland, who played his ever-annoyed editor Tony Vincenzo showed a lot more depth than I recalled. (you get a sense of mutual the respect that they have for each other)
The supporting actors Jack Grinnage, as Kolchak’s uptight and barely competent cow-orker Ron Updyke, and the guest appearance of Beatrice Colen as the gore and food obsessed competitor Jane Plumm was spot on. (I did not like all the fat jokes about her: It was the one thing that rankles now.)
The action sequences/SFX are amazing in that there really are no special effects, the show was done on a shoe string, but, because of good directing and camera work, you really don’t notice this.
Through inspired use of camera angles, light, and darkness, you believe that there is a superhuman maniac tossing policemen around like they were puppies.
I would also note that its representation of reporting has shaped my view of the trade. It was an entertaining depiction of old fashioned shoe leather journalism.
This show is one reason why I tend to disdain the sort of access journalism favored these days.
The following video is the “Ripper”, the first episode of the series: (run time 51:44)
Not everything is A-OK on Sesame Street today. The creators behind the beloved children’s show are suing STX Entertainment for the use of their brand name in the trailer and other marketing of the R-rated Muppets-inspired movie The Happytime Murders, according to Variety.
Both the trailer and the poster for the risqué project, directed by Jim Henson’s son Ben Henson, carries the tagline “No Sesame. All Street.” As such, the Sesame Street makers claim that this tarnishes their child-friendly brand, and they want all references to it completely Gonzo or else.
The film imagines a world where Muppet-like puppets get up to all manner of no good (the trailer contains drug use, foul language, and a pretty graphic puppet sex scene, watch below) with Melissa McCarthy playing a detective on the hunt for a serial killer who is intent on blowing the loveable creatures to pieces of fluff.
Thomas Homan, the Trump administration’s top immigration enforcement official, announced Monday that he plans to step down from his job, less than six months after Trump nominated him to be director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homan was named ICE’s acting director soon after Trump took office in 2017, and the tough-talking, barrel-chested former Border Patrol agent quickly became an unapologetic enthusiast for the administration’s more aggressive enforcement approach.
Under Homan, immigration arrests surged 40 percent after agents scrapped an Obama administration policy of targeting serious or violent criminal offenders in favor of casting a wider net. Homan said those living illegally in the United States “should be afraid” that his agents could be coming for them.
The article engages in some Kremlinology to try and explain this, suggesting that he had fallen out of Trump’s favor, but I think that it is more likely that there was something in his background that would have prevented his confirmation by the Senate:
Thomas Homan, President Trump’s pick to permanently lead the nation’s immigration enforcement agency, has been in limbo since his nomination last November — and Democratic senators want to know why. In a letter released Friday, nearly 20 Senate Democrats said they want the Department of Homeland Security to hand over documents shedding more light on Homan and his formal nomination to become the next director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The nomination of Homan, who has been leading the immigration agency in an acting capacity since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, has stalled since it was officially submitted to the Senate on Nov. 14, 2017, with no confirmation hearing nor movement in the chamber. ……… Democratic senators said DHS needs to give more information to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee before the nomination can proceed, but the department has yet to do so. The fact that it took Trump nearly 10 months to officially nominate an ICE director was also “striking,” Democrats wrote, “given the priority this Administration claims to place on immigration enforcement.” “We understand that the Trump Administration may be concerned about Mr. Homan answering questions under oath about his leadership of ICE, as well as the possibility that Mr. Homan’s nomination could be defeated in the Senate,” the Democrats wrote in the letter. “However, the Senate is an independent branch of government and has a responsibility under the Constitution to provide its advice and consent on this nomination.
The fact that DHS has been unwilling to provide full documentation, and that this is juxtaposed with the spectacular flame out of Doctor Feelgood Ronny Jackson is ……… Curious ……… to say the least.
I gotta figure that there is something truly embarrassing in Homan’s background, and that senior White House staff, along with senior Republicans in the Senate, know what it is.
Seven years ago, Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs criticized Obama for calling for regime change in Syria.
He makes the point that most of the bad things that have happened as a result of actions by the US and the Persian Gulf, and it has destabilized the region, and the refugee crisis has destabilized Europe.
Regime change has been a disaster, and it has been a predictable, and predicted one:
The aviation engine manufacturer Safran is looking at an open rotor engine, which was looked at, and largely abandoned in the 1980s because of issues with noise and airframe integration issues:
Safran Aircraft Engines now has clearly plotted the technological trajectory a counter-rotating open-rotor (CROR) engine can be part of, somewhere between an ultra-high-bypass-ratio (UHBR) turbofan and a boundary-layer-ingestion (BLI) configuration. Despite wavering interest from the rest of the industry, the France-based company believes its ground demonstrator here in Istres is proving the architecture is certifiable in terms of both safety and noise. It says it would be an efficient powerplant for the 2030-35 generation of narrowbody aircraft.
The CROR concept has to be evaluated long before a commercial program is launched. It would be a greater breakthrough than the UHBR, a geared turbofan with a bypass ratio of 15. The latter could be ready in the 2025-30 time frame and is Airbus’ priority. In Safran’s view, the CROR, with its bypass ratio of 30, would be next. That would proceed an engine designed for BLI, in 2040-45.
Compared to the CFM Leap’s fuel burn, the UHBR and the CROR would be 5-10% and 15% better, respectively. Being unducted, a CROR can have a greater bypass ratio, and therefore a lower fuel burn. At Mach 0.75, the CROR would require a minor concession in speed.
………
A major challenge for an unducted engine can be found in acoustics. A witness to GE36 testing in the 1980s remembers its “dreadful” noise. And, since May, no journalist has been allowed to see and listen to an actual CROR run in Istres.
Nevertheless, Safran says the problem has been solved. The pair of propellers has been aerodynamically optimized, with thin blade profiles and complex shapes. They meet the current Chapter 14 standard, according to wind tunnel-trial results. The noise level is well below that of a turboprop, Bonini adds.
The engine is in generally form remarkably similar to the GE/Snecma engine from 30 years ago.
Both are using a fighter engine in the 20,000 lb thrust class as gas generators, and in both cases the props are being driven by counter rotating free turbines without a transmission.
It’s a bit of 80s technology that never seemed to find its way into production.
