Author: photog

ZMan’s Farewell Tribute to Baltimore

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In ZMan’s parlance Baltimore is Lagos on the Chesapeake.  And today he wrote his swan song to residency in that troubled urban hell.  He moved to the country.

Missing Lagos

Now he jokingly titled it “Missing Lagos.”  But in a real way, he is feeling a loss.  Obviously the overwhelming emotion you feel when you escape a hellhole like Baltimore is relief.  All of the large and small problems and even existential dangers are essentially gone.  And with them goes the tension and stress that takes a continuous toll on your body and mind.

But you can’t live somewhere for decades without it becoming a part of you.  Leaving it produces something like that “phantom limb” experience that amputees experience.  There’s a feeling that something isn’t right.  Of course that eventually subsides but never entirely disappears.  I remember when I moved out of New York City.  It took me months to get used to the sound of frogs and crickets.  It took me a couple of years to stop locking all the car doors.

But reading his account which was mostly disparagement of the dysfunctional residents of his former residence, I could still detect a certain pride in being a member of a club.  The pride is that he has proven that he can survive and even thrive in a war zone.  It’s an odd kind of a badge but a real one none the less.

Congratulations on your escape ZMan.  Enjoy the crickets.  They’re very soothing.

Macron Panics the French Military with Talk of Boots on the Ground

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Emmanuel Macron has as much as declared that France would be putting troops into Ukraine.  This provoked a firestorm in the French defense establishment.

“What happened to the president when he considered sending troops to Ukraine? Several confidential defense reports explain the “panic” at the Élysée, where party leaders are invited this Thursday, March 7, to discuss the issue. On the front, the Russians are in a position of strength. However, was it necessary, in the face of Putin, to brandish an untenable threat?”

Now whether this threat was with or without American support is less clear.

“By not ruling out sending troops to Ukraine , Emmanuel Macron caused an outcry in Europe and received American disavowal. Several French soldiers, interviewed by Marianne, say they “fell out of the closet” . “We must make no mistake, facing the Russians, we are an army of cheerleaders!, mocks a senior officer, convinced that “sending French troops” to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable””

It sounds like the West is trying to convince Ukraine that they can frighten Russia into some kind of deal or at least a cease-fire while the hope for more American aid is on hold in Congress.  The only problem is that talk of sending American troops into Ukraine would finish off Joe Biden’s hopes of re-election even with the assistance of massive voter fraud.  The Millennials and Zoomers would not like the army.  Too many micro-aggressions during a shooting war.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 13MAR2024 – Astrophysics Reconsidered

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

Thought you’d like this quote from: https://www.yahoo.com/news/may-misunderstood-universe-nobel-prize-213014590.html

For a long time, scientists believed they understood how fast the universe is growing — but the more they learn, those theories seem to be expanding as fast as the universe itself.
Basically, the “Hubble constant” measures the speed at which the universe is expanding. The only problem? Different instruments keep providing different values for it, giving rise to what’s known as the “Hubble tension.”
It raises an interesting possibility: that, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Adam Riess explains in a NASA blog, much of what we thought we knew about the universe may have been wrong.

No fooling!

What is This Quintessence of Dust

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Back when all I knew of Mel Gibson was Mad Max, the Road Warrior, if you had told me that he would play Hamlet I would have laughed and said, “Sure, and Sylvester Stallone will be playing King Lear and Macbeth too!”

But who knew?  Gibson is good.

I like this speech because it seems to cover the fact that depending on the events of the day each of us can view the world and all in it as either a lovely frame or a sterile promontory.  Humanity can be either like an angel or the quintessence of dust.

Gibson is a good actor and I don’t think he loses by comparison to Olivier or Branagh when performing Hamlet.

Signifying Something

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Macbeth has a speech late in the play.  His wife has suicided and his enemies are gathering for the kill.  And all his actions and all his hopes have been swallowed up into a nightmare.  He says,

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Macbeth: Act 5, Scene 5

And sometimes our plight summons a similar feeling in me.  Our enemies call all the shots.  They control the heights of all the power structures.  They’ve even done a thorough job of brain-washing the younger generation into thinking that all the destruction of our way of life was the inevitable working of capitalism.  So that a decline into an impoverished welfare state is the reasonable and just future for themselves.  That life is but a walking shadow.  And that resisting this fate is a hopeless effort, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.  And controlling the youth, they determine the future.

I don’t deny that is probably where the smart money is currently bet.

But for whatever reason I disagree.  Maybe it’s just personal prejudice.  But, when I look at both sides, I find that our side has the more interesting characters; a more compelling plot.  We have a better story to tell.

The Left is selling despair.  Their message is: give up and die.

They say trade your life for a cash card and a smart phone and a grimy cell in a youth hostel and gender assignment surgery and the promise that you won’t have to think or try.

And I’m sure that there is a good-sized audience that will walk down that dead end.  Millions.  But I refuse to believe that everyone will follow it.  There will be a good-sized audience; millions, that will say, “That’s all you’re selling?”

And some of them will hear what our side has to say.  And I think that may be enough to decide things in the long run.  An army of zombies, even an army of millions, is still mostly nothing.  And it’s an aging army.  Zombies don’t have children.  They get older and weaker every day.

Our side has the advantage that what we say not only has the ring of truth, it is the truth.  Calling nonsense, nonsense and basing your actions on logic and reality even in the short run is the winning strategy.

The fact that they’ve rigged so many parts of the system we live under doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.  It just means you have to use your head to avoid the snares and pitfalls they’ve set for us.  With the Left in authority in many roles it’s obviously not going to be easy to flourish.  There is a lot of pain and frustration involved.  But as long as this country is still the best option for living a somewhat free existence then it’s worth our while to work around their traps.

And even just looking at the messaging that seems to be moving around in the media, even in the mainstream media, it seems that our version of the story is resonating with all kinds of different people.  I think that Biden and his band of weirdos have so thoroughly botched their transformation of America that they’ve even alienated a lot of the coalition of the oppressed.  If you watch the interviews even the zombies are semi-awake and complaining that their free stuff is too expensive.

The Democrats can steal elections and run roughshod over the Constitution but eventually they’ll end up like the Soviets.  Their system will degenerate into a Potemkin Village and one day the cardboard will collapse and there won’t be anything left but angry peasants with pitchforks.

So, for whatever reason I don’t feel like just giving up.  And anyone else who has something to say other than, “let’s give up,” can say it here.