Category: Guest Contributors

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 04FEB2025 – Reasons for Hope

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Points of optimism for you:
You say the Left controls most of the institutions; the schools, the universities, the Media, Hollywood, the book publishers and most of Silicon Valley.
Our schools are failing and school choice is getting bigger every day. Trump may well end the Dept of Education.
The Universities are losing students and power – that means influence as well.
The old media is dying. The new media (Twitter, podcasts, etc) is ascendant.
Hollywood is burning and will probably disperse into other states as CA is too expensive.
The legacy book publishers are becoming more irrelevant every day and will probably go through a period of consolidation and reduction. New publishers are emerging every day and self publishing is a viable option for eBooks.
The Tech Bros of silicon valley are coming over to our side.

Sometimes, all it takes is a leader. Like Trump.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 03FEB2025 – The Dreaded White Stuff

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IMG_20250122_1139589052

Good luck with the snow. I grew up on the MA North Shore and then 40 years on the Northern Tier with the Air Force and Army. Heartily agree about freezing rain. We lost power for 27 days in Plattsburgh NY due to an ice storm back in ’98 (Thank Ghu for wood stoves and oil lamps), and saw a lot of VERY slick road and dead-stopped traffic due to iced pavement. Major reason for moving to South Carolina in 2014. And what happens in 2015? The first snow in 40 years, followed by more of the cussed stuff 10 years later! I tell ya I don’t get no respect!

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 28JAN2025 – You Can’t Go Home

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war pig

You really can’t go home again. The memories remain but the scene has changed.

Virginia Beach in the late 60s and early 70s was fun. A boardwalk, a pally where they had rollerskating one night and a dance another night. On the boardwalk were carnival games. I was banned from the rifle arcade shoot for winning too many prizes. South of town along the coast were beaches and especially dunes. We’d go down at night, dig a pit in the sand, gather driftwood and cook hot dogs and brats over the fire, followed by roasting marshmallows and some made s’mores. We drank beer and wine and watched the lights of the ships out on Chesapeake Bay. We’d skinny dip in the surf and make love among the dunes. A few were in committed relationships but most were lovers of convenience. The gals chose their partners for the night. Sort of like Kid Rock’s song “All Summer Long”. There was one girl who favored me but after she went back to college I never saw her again.

Now the dunes are replaced by cookie cutter condos. There had to be a law passed to mandate public access to the beach and now there are bar steel armored tunnels every so many buildings to allow the public to use the beach. Where there once was the boardwalk, arcade and pally, are hotels so tall that you have to look between them to see the beach from the strip.

The memories are still alive in my mind, but the X, Y, and Z are gone. Just the T remains.

Tom’s World – 28JAN2025 – The Ravages of Time

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

The place where I grew up, at least from age 5, doesn’t exist any more. The name, Sandy Springs, exists as does the geographical location, north Atlanta metro, both exist. But the reality is long gone, torn down and the replacement torn down and the replacement of the replacement—- You get the idea.

Nothing, absolutely nothing physical from my childhood survives. Dust and dead. The neighborhood BBQ parties where everyone’s Dad was a WWII vet. The neighborhood gone, the street gone. Highrise buildings where the woods with the abandoned POW camp were. An 8 lane road where the old rock quarry was where we used to shoot snakes in the lake at the bottom.

I’m the only one left and I’m not going to be around that much longer either.

And the replacements are far from what I imagined as I read my Sci-Fi. Nobody then wrote anything sufficiently dystopian to include this reality.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 25JAN2025 – Wheels

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war pig

When I returned from Vietnam I was without wheels. Six of us pooled our cash and bought a military surplus lot of ten Harley scout bikes still in crates. Took us six months to put them together. 1955 panheads, probably leftover from the Korean War. Rubber was dry rotted as was some of the leather. They were OD green with the white star, etc., markings. Those old beasts had 3 sets of points and suicide shifters with the clutch pedal on the left. Throttle on the right handlebar and spark advance on the left. Took a while to get used to. We had enough spare parts from the excess 4 bikes that we sold them and made our money back plus a little. I wish I’d left it in the original colors, but we had to chop them, put long ape hangers on them and all of the rest. Easy Rider was all the rage. I rode mine from Camp Legune to Norfolk. To say my butt was numb would be an understatement. Those old things sure did shake, rattle and roll. Also, no electric start. Kick it over. And if it backfired at the bottom of the stroke it would catapult you about two feet into the air and your knee hurt. But, put a little gal on the back and ride her around for a bit and the vibrations got good to her. Then you were in like Flynn.

Had to sell it and get a 1968 Malibu when I got married. Harley was good, but it couldn’t cook.

Tom’s World – 25JAN2025 – I Get Around

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

That Valiant had a 170 CI slant 6 rated at 101 HP, that was the only motor available, and the 3 speed pushbutton transmission. But the time I got the car, it probably made around 50 HP. But the drive train was close to unkillable.

The tires at the time were definitely killable though. A new set could be worn down in less that 10K miles and I couldn’t afford anything like new tires. When the cord started showing, I would buy one used tire for around $5.

At the time, I was dating a girl (whom I later married) whose family had bought her a new VW. That helped a bunch.

My Dad had a 72 Impala with a 454 police interceptor package. That was something.

Below: my Kawasaki 500. This was followed by a Suzuki 1000 GS and later by a Suzuki 1100. Before I gave my last bike away in the early 2000’s I had around 200,000+ total miles riding experience.

A year or two ago, I was within a gnats whisker of buying a Honda 750 triple. The only thing that stopped me is that model was out of stock and nobody knew when they would have more. My wife was freaking out. Look at the picture below and you can see the appeal.

The last time I was active with motorcycles, I was in my 50’s, now I’m in my mid-70’s. I wonder what’s happened to my balance and reflexes since. I still have a motorcycle endorsement on my license though.

My old Kawasaki 500. This thing was a beast, it had about 25 HP at 5000 RPM and around 70 at 5500, with the front tire pointing at the moon. Talk about a hand full.

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Guest Contributor – Chemist – 24JAN2025 – Nuclear Power

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“Now the real problem is managing the wastes and breeding more fuel.”
Interesting choice of words.
If only there were a way of capturing all those extra neutrons and making fuel grade Uranium from more common ore. We could call it a “Breeder reactor”.
Nah. It will probably be decades until we could do that.
Like negative 7 decades.

There is no scientific reason not to use nuclear power. As you pointed out, the French have been doing it for 70 years. (They sell power to Germany.)
And if the French can do it….
The roadblocks are 90% political and 10% engineering.
Nuclear waste can be dealt with if we give American engineers a chance to attack the problem. But with no new activity going on, we can’t solve the problems.

Spending billions on a waste storage project in Nevada and then letting a corrupt politician kill the project was clearly the wrong way to go.
BTW, Nevada, I’d like that money back.

Tom’s World – 23JAN2025 – Rusted Floorboards and All

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

My 1st couple of years in engineering school (1966-1967) were with a slip stick. A number of years followed spent in the military and civilian employment before I paused my hedonistic lifestyle to complete my degree in Civil Engineering in 1975. When I started back in 1973, slip sticks were gone in favor of calculators. I started off with a $240 (in 1973 dollars!) Bowmar, by current standards, the equivalent of a current $12 scientific calculator. But I quickly gravitated to an HP 45. I can’t remember who I had to kill to get the cash for the over $400 price of the HP 45. I was living and paying all of my bills and food and tuition and books from my $275/month GI Bill and my weekend job pumping beer, shelling oysters and making Reubens at Smokeys Bar for a couple of bucks an hour.

My transportation at the time was a Kawasaki 500 until I got so cold one winter that I paid $100 for a 1962 Valiant with a rusted out floorboard that I covered with a stolen real estate sign to keep my feet from falling through.

Sounds tough but that was the absolute best time of my life.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 18JAN2025 – Hollywood Types and Tanks

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war pig

Living on SoCal in the early to late 60s, we ran across several celebs. George Goebel was a blind drunk. Sinatra was a mean drunk, but quite personable and giving when sober. Red Skeleton was a kind man, as was Roy Rogers. Who was just as he appeared on screen. A kind, decent man who, along with Dale, was a straight shooter. Ray Molland was also an alcoholic. Bob Denver could be quite mean in person. Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were friendly. The Beach Boys were finding their sound. Carlos Santana was nice to me when I accidentally bumped into him one time.

As for WWII, my uncle was a tank crewman from Operation Cobra through the wars end. Was the only survivor of his original tank crew and liberated Buchenwald. It haunted him for the rest of his life. I have never seen “Fury”, but it resembled my uncle’s experiences, from the sound of it.