Month: June 2017

Justified – A TV Series Review – Part 1

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There’s not much left on TV for me to watch anymore.  I remembered hearing over the last few years from several reviewers who were not progressives that “Justified” was pretty good.  Well, last week my Netflix queue was completely empty so I added season one of Justified to my queue. With some trepidation, photog and camera-girl settled in this week and watched the first two disks.  And eight or nine episodes into the season we still haven’t seen a bad show.  It’s actually very good.  Timothy Olyphant is the protagonist playing a US Marshall named Raylan Givens.  He’s been sent back to his home state of Kentucky after shooting a drug lord in Miami under questionable circumstances.  This puts him in contact with his family, friends, associates and enemies.  And the amount of overlap between all of these categories in the episodes I’ve seen is quite remarkable.  And here we run into the expected stereotyping of the Appalachians.  For instance, Ray’s father is married to Aunt Helen.  I’m not far enough into the story yet but it appears she was Aunt Helen before she was married to Ray’s father Arlo.  So, the incest and inbreeding jokes can’t be far off.  Also, one of Ray’s old friends from his time as a coal miner is now a bank robber who dabbles in white supremacy and shoulder launched rockets.

Needless to say, Ray’s personal and professional lives become extremely entangled and pretty early on he finds himself sleeping with a woman he shouldn’t be.  He had been investigating her for shooting and killing her husband.  Subsequently she is his witness in his shooting of her brother in law.  Add into the mix that the brother in law is also that coal miner / bank robber friend of Ray’s and it starts getting extremely complicated and confusing.  Also, Ray’s father is a criminal.  Ray’s ex-wife is married to a man in hock to mobsters and Ray’s boss is starting to think he’s unstable.  Oh, and the investigation into that drug lord he shot is getting complicated by all the other guys Ray’s been shooting since he got to Kentucky.  And finally, the drug lord’s friends really, really want Ray dead.  It’s a really fun show.

I’m only about half way through season one and so it’s hard to say where this will all be by season six but so far this is a crime drama that’s well written, filled with action and includes characters that while far from unconflicted are quite sympathetic for the audience.  Timothy Olyphant is the obvious star but the supporting cast is quite strong and fun to watch and listen to.  I especially enjoy Nick Searcy as Ray’s boss, Art Mullen.  He brings a dry wit and long suffering attitude to the job of overseeing Ray’s overcomplicated work-life balance.

So, that’s my first installment.  I will be watching a bunch more of these in the next few weeks and will give an update on my recommendation.  But so far, I’d have to say watching Justified is definitely justified.

The Real Tomorrow

photog Current Events, Science Fiction / Fantasy ,

The only advantage to getting old is grandkids.  Of course, I’m sure there exist grandkids from hell but as a general concept, grandkids are a great idea.  They allow us to have fun, hang out with young people and then send them back to the people who have the real work of attempting to civilize them.  All plusses.  No minuses.

Every year at about this time the local engineering school, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) sponsors a science exhibition for kids.  The call it “Touch Tomorrow”

( http://wp.wpi.edu/touchtomorrow/the-festival/wpi-research-exhibits/ ).  WPI is affiliated with NASA and provides robotics and other expertise for Mars rovers and robotic components that dig and manipulate objects and sense light and other functions.  So, there are exhibits and presentations on many subjects involving spaceflight, robots and futuristic technology of all sorts.  For my oldest grandson this is like being in heaven.

And it’s pretty good stuff for me too.  Being an engineer and an inveterate fan of science fiction many of the topics are highly interesting and even answer some of my questions about the whichness of what.  So, this event is an annual win-win for me and my descendant.

But, of course, being in New England and the bluest of blue states, the fair has its share of pc virtue signaling and progressive biases.  I won’t go into all of them but suffice it to say that the celebration of women in science and technology is just a little too loud and a little too shrill.  That being said, I noticed a couple of things that gave me some small reason for optimism.

The first was at the forensic medicine exhibit.  A woman who had worked for the coroner had a table full of bones.  She was explaining to the kids how physical parameters of skeletons could allow a coroner to estimate very accurately the age of a child based on evidence from a skull.  This had to do with the stages of dentition.  Then she had a skull of Neanderthal Man.  She was able to relate the difference between Neanderthal and modern humans based on the differences in skull shape and bone thickness.  Finally, she was able to point to the differences in skulls based on sex and also race.  She had skulls for the three major racial families (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid) and for men and women.  I was shocked that a pack of screeching SJWs had not driven her out of the hall for espousing these hate crimes.  That not only were there physical differences between the races but that men and women were divided along anatomical lines.  Such an outrage.

The second thing I heard was during a presentation by a physics professor on the Universe.  He described the scientific method and very pointedly declared that no scientific fact was ever settled.  He stated categorically that a theory that was refuted by evidence was false.  And he further stated that a true scientist is always hoping that experiments used to prove a theory refute it in some way because these differences from theory are the basis for an increase in knowledge.  He said that when the Higgs Boson was confirmed last year, the disappointment was that it was exactly as calculated.  Even though the discovery was a great triumph of the standard model, the fact that nothing new was learned was a let-down to those hoping for new information.  I was tempted to ask what he thought of global warming data but I didn’t want to get this faithful acolyte of science burned at the stake by adolescents.

After the presentation, I spoke with this physicist and pinned him down about one particular “fact” that he showed during his presentation.  When describing the size of the universe he stated that the universe was potentially 93 billion light years wide.  I asked him whether the universe is currently believed to be bounded or unbounded.  He stated it was believed to be unbounded.  So, I asked him what the physical reality of this edge of the universe at 93 billion light years was.  He said all that it is, is the current guess at how far we’ll be able to observe based on the light after the big bang.  And he continued, “beyond that be dragons.”  Now that’s my kind of scientific answer.

After this presentation, we were finished with the exhibition and headed to a steakhouse for beef and potatoes.  I went with the ribeye and baked potato while this younger fellow heretically opted for sirloin and french fries.  Youth is wasted on the young.

During dinner, we continued our debate of the impossibility of producing a machine to endlessly produce electric energy from a single input of mechanical energy to a dynamo.  He wasn’t having any of it.  To prove my loyalty to the laws of thermodynamics and electromagnetism I agreed to fund his project and purchased a number of components for his machine on (of course) Amazon.com.  In this way, we could provide evidence to confirm or dispute his law of perpetual motion.

When we got to my house, his grandmother provided ice cream and I provided classic horror movies, specifically, “The Bride of Frankenstein” and “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”  Being a purist I strongly disapprove of TCFTBL being included in the Universal canon.  But we live in disordered times and allowances must be made.

After I returned him to his parents it occurred to me that the name Touch Tomorrow could also be a description for older people spending time with their grandchildren.  They literally are tomorrow and by influencing them we make probably the most lasting effect we will have on the future.  Considering all the negative influences on our children from the forces of progressivism I thought about how good it is that we can impact them directly and have fun at the same time.  So, family actually is good for something.  Who knew?

The Streets of the District (of Columbia)

photog Current Events, Humor, Trump , , , ,

(With apologies to Frank Maynard)

 

As I walked out on the streets of the District

As I walked out on the District one night,

I spied a poor halfwit, whose name was James Comey

His name was James Comey and he was a sight

 

“I see by your outfit, that you are a pundit.”

These words he did say as I slowly passed by.

“Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story,

For I’m reamed in the butt, and I feel I must cry.”

 

“‘Twas once in the Bureau I used to go dashing,

‘Twas once in the Bureau I used to go gay.

First under Dubya, and then under ‘bama,

But I messed with the Donald and now I must pay.”

 

“Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,

And play the dead march as you hear my sad song;

Take me to MSNBC, serve me some chai tea,

I squealed to the Senate but it all turned out wrong.”

 

“Get six special agents to pack up my office,

Six young attorneys to tap all my calls.

Put bugs in my auto and bugs in my condo.

Cause I squealed to the Senate and he’ll caught off my balls.”

 

“Then write down this story and make it real gory,

Laugh up your sleeve as you hear my sad song;

My bridges I’m burnin’ and I ain’t returnin’.

Cause if he ever finds me, he’ll cut off my balls.”

My Favorite Iowahawk Posts

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Iowahawk is one of the funniest conservatives on the planet.  During the Iraq War his mockery of Al Qaeda psychopath Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (or as featured in Iowahawk the Zarkman) provided a little bit of dark humor during some of the darkest days of that war.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2006/04/i_hate_email.html

When Zarqawi was finally dispatched with a 500 lb laser guided bomb Iowahawk provided this gem:

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2006/06/paradise_blows.html

During the 2008 election William F Buckley’s son Christopher joined the other Rockefeller Republicans in signing up for the Obama Historic Disaster.  They couldn’t countenance Sarah Palin as part of the ticket.  Iowahawk brilliantly lampoons the Buckley upper-crust horror at Palin and the swooning descriptions of Obama.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/as-a-conservative-i-must-say-i-do-quite-like-the-cut-of-this-obama-fellows-jib.html

During the Obama campaign Iowahawk provides this epic tale of the great Obamacles.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/01/the-idiossey.html

And finally after the election Iowahawk parodied the countless descriptions of the amazing and historic victory of America’s first black president.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/11/election-analysis-america-can-take-pride-in-this-historic-inspirational-disaster.html

Unfortunately in 2014 Iowahawk ceased writing posts to his website and seemed to restrict himself to Twitter (which I’ve never followed).  So, I never had a chance to follow his thoughts during the Trumpocalypse.  Well, all good things must end sometime.  But I figured I’d share this bit of right-wing internet history for any who missed it or were too young.

A Short Review of Rod Dreher’s Book, “The Benedict Option” – Part 1

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Two weeks ago I was watching Andrew Klavan’s podcast on the Daily Wire and he had an interview with Rod Dreher who has a book called “The Benedict Option.”  I had heard the title before but thought it had something to do with Pope Benedict abdicating. But the Benedict of the title is Saint Benedict who founded the Benedictine Monastic Order.  The sub-title of the book is “A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.”  The thesis, as he explained it, is that America is no longer a Christian nation and in fact is now a place inimical to Christians trying to live their faith and raise their children in it.  He drew the analogy of Benedict coming from an Italian town to the city of Rome about twenty five years after the last emperor was deposed by a Germanic King.  Benedict found it a hollowed out and corrupt place.  He decided that the only way to live a Christian life was to separate from the dominant culture and set up a separate society.  According to Dreher this was the basis of the survival of Christianity and the remnants of roman culture in the Middle Ages.

Needless to say, I ordered the book.  I’ve only started it but the introduction basically states that the majority of Americans are not Christians and do not support the traditional concepts as illuminated in the Bible.  He believes that there is no chance that the culture will return to where it was even twenty five years ago but will instead continue down the progressive slope to Gomorrah.  And in fact traditionalist beliefs will be criminalized.

Sounds pretty depressing.  But instead, he says it’s an opportunity.  He thinks this will be the start of a revival.  And we should, like Benedict, gather the faithful and build a New Jerusalem.

When I finish the book, I’ll give you my opinion on his idea.  For now, let’s just say I’m intrigued and I think this idea has relevance for even those who are not Christians but feel that all traditional values are disappearing from the Western world.  After all it’s not that hard finding analogies between the present era and the Late Roman Empire.  Perhaps this time instead of Attila the Hun being the Scourge of God it will be Lady Gaga.

Why Do I Care About the Climate Con Job?

photog Current Events, Trump , , , ,

 

Well-meaning people fret about whether humans really are warming the planet and whether Trump is doing harm.  I recognize their rationalization.  What harm could it do to go along with the Paris Accord?  It’s like an insurance policy, right?  And if you’re a guy in your fifties or sixties and your money is already made and you’re getting ready to retire that’s probably an easy way to accept it.  But if you’re twenty or thirty or even forty years old you need steady work and steady growth to make your life work.  You’re starting a career or buying a house or trying to get kids through college.  And trying to do that in a low growth, energy poor economy is pretty ugly.  That’s the Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama model.  Small businesses disappearing, big businesses contracting and squeezing the workers for the privilege of keeping their jobs and government providing more bureaucrats and doling out the food stamps and misery to the serfs.

I saw this in the late seventies when I was coming of age.  Jimmy Carter had an economy so bad that one of the cheapest insurance companies in the world gave its employees a bonus just because inflation made their paychecks so pathetic that even they felt pity for the workers.  Now my kids and grandkids are growing up in this latest nightmare.  The Masters of the Universe have exported all their opportunities to Asia and the Trust Find Kids have outlawed combustion because the planet has a fever.  This was okay for George Bush and Barack Obama and the rest of the Washington gang because their kids all have jobs with the State Department or NBC.  But mine don’t.

Donald Trump’s kids have all the money they’ll ever need and so do his grandkids.  And maybe he really doesn’t care that our kids don’t.  But at the very least he heard the people who are hurting and figured out how to get their votes.  Let’s take this least flattering case.  He’s just taking advantage of the ideological situation of working class white people revolting against progressive policy neglect.  All just naked power politics no human feeling whatsoever.

I’ll still take it.  It’s the best deal we’ve been offered in a generation.  Ronald Reagan was a friendly face and a reassuring voice and a sensible speech.  Donald Trump is an angry face and a hectoring voice and he communicates in staccato sound bites and slogans.  But both of them are on my side.  Whether ideologically or pragmatically they are aligned with me.  And that’s good enough for me.

George Will was deploring the barbarians that have replaced his beloved conservative losers.  Those cheerful cultured republicans of yesteryear who happily went down to defeat but kept their dignity and trust funds intact while the rest of us were fed to the progressives.  Somehow, we need to be grateful for the manly effort they expended while adhering to the Marquess of Queensberry rules and gloriously not winning.

Well, sorry no.  I want the narrative where we don’t lose and my descendants aren’t serfs.  So no, no climate scam for me, thanks.  If the temperature does increase by ten degrees F, I’ll move to Canada or Alaska or Siberia.  In fact, that may be a better climate profile since Canada and Russia are the two largest countries on earth and both of them are too cold for much agriculture.  And the idea that New England might be able to support orange trees and bananas doesn’t disturb me overmuch.  Maybe I’ll become an orange rancher like my hero Harold Bisonette.

But anyway, that’s why I don’t have any sympathy for the environmentally sensitive.  If they really are that worried about carbon emissions then let them get Leonardo DeCaprio and Al Gore and Barack Obama and Prince Charles to start taking sail boats when they travel to the latest environmental summit.  Or better yet, let them skype instead.  But either way I’ll keep using gasoline and heating oil as long as they last.  After that I’m hoping hydrogen produced electrolytically from nuclear power plant generated electricity will be the fuel of the future.  But, however we do it I’m certainly not going to worry about global warming.  I’ll leave that to really smart people like Cher and Miley Cyrus.

Let the Joyous News Be Spread, The Imbecile Paris Accord is Dead

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If the deranged Never-Trumpers still deny that Trump has done what none of his competitors would have, then I abandon any hope for their redemption.  Against the virtual firestorm of threats and innuendo from presidents, ministers, prime ministers, dictators, senators, congress critters, popes, pundits, millionaires, billionaires, actors, pop stars, the press and other assorted castrati, Donald Trump did the right thing and freed us from another Barack Obama executive order.  Bravo.  He’s the best president ever.  And I even mean over Reagan.  Now, I’m not claiming that Trump is more conservative or a better man.  Far from it.  But he is the perfect weapon for our time.  He is a vindictive bastard and that’s exactly what we need.  We have lost so much ground that if we don’t gain some ground right now we’ll end up backing right off the cliff.  I supported him generously in the last election but my return on investment is incalculable.  He has delivered over and over again.  And I expect that he will continue to do just that.

I will now prove I’m not a deranged Trumpophile.  Donald Trump is a very strange man.  He is a spoiled rich kid who grew up to be a self-indulgent megalomaniacal philistine.  He’s a serial philanderer who dumps wives like some men trade in cars.  He’s got a comb-over that frightens small children and probably dogs.  He claims to value money as a veritable end unto itself.  And he treats people like garbage.

But through some amazing circumstance he is a bona fide genuine American.  And he picked our side.  So, the same people who hate me, hate him too.  And that makes him my ally.  Trump understands power and he knows how manipulators play the game.  And when they attack him it triggers his super power.  So now he is using that power for good instead of evil.  To troll and torture these losers.  And he provides incredible entertainment value and the prospect of even more winning.

Of course, I should say a few words about the Paris Accord.  This is one of the worst parts of the Obama legacy.  His intention was to bake it so deeply into the economy that energy would become the means of permanently breaking the American people.  Once again, we’d be serfs for the lords of the manor with no hope of living like free men.  We’d be Europeans.  And so, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all our prospective betters have been pushing Trump with every lever they could think of.  And of course, a Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Marco Rubio (and I fear even Ted Cruz) would find some reason why it wasn’t “prudent” right at the moment to get out of the accord.  And over time the president and the congress would each use the other to pass the buck as to why they never escaped this permanent tax on almost every facet of our lives.  And we would be the worse for it.

So, here’s to Donald Trump, that no good deplorable troll who saved all our butts.  I believe he is a case of divine intervention.  God works in mysterious ways and far be it from me to second guess the divine will.

Plug for An Article on the Z-Blog – On Atheism

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The Z-Man has a very interesting article on faith, skepticism and atheism.

On Atheism

That he is a skeptic but sees the hollowness of the militant atheists is I think quite perceptive.   His final statement,  “I do know I’d never want to live in a world ruled by atheists“  resonates for me.  I imagine that almost all reflective religious people wrestle with questions about how to reconcile an omnipotent, benevolent God with the world such as it is.  But the world view of people who feel their highest calling is to mock Christians speaks of individuals nursing an enormous inferiority complex whose egos need to be constantly revalidated.