Monthly Archives: March 2019

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NASA loses keys

Imagine you’re taking two dogs to the mountains for the weekend.  It might snow, and you want your dogs to have a jacket in case they duel a grizzly bear and need to keep warm.  Both your dogs need medium sized jackets.  Do you:

a) Make sure you have two medium jackets, and if not, buy one or two

b) Not bother to check at all and hope it somehow all works out

c) Panic

d) Ask your dogs for money

e) Skip your mountain trip and sit on your floor playing with your dogs as you drink beer

Most normal people would choose option (a).  But apparently not NASA, you know, those people who are geniuses and make things go into space.  Last week NASA announced that it would have it’s first all female spacewalk.  Because apparently these diversity things matter to NASA when it currently doesn’t have a functional space vehicle with which to get it’s astronauts into orbit so we rely on the Russians.

But as it turns out they cannot conduct this two female spacewalk because, wait for it, they don’t have two medium sized spacesuits.  This is not a joke.  This is legitimately happening.  Apparently NASA planned a complex dangerous spacewalk but didn’t bother to make sure they had two appropriate spacesuits.  I mean how hard is this?  One of the flight engineers could have asked her five year old to look at an inventory list and see the word ‘medium’ next to ‘spacesuit’ and make sure the number said at least two.

In related news, Boeing (that company that has problems lately), has now burned through north of $5B, yes billion, to produce a rocket that hasn’t flown once (and will probably never fly) and will take longer to produce than it took NASA to get to the Moon.

Man, this organization used to be the pinnacle of technology and awesome.  But that was five decades ago.  Now these folks probably lose their keys on their way to the parking lot.

Just disestablish NASA and give its entire budget to help fund STEM scholarships for poor kids.  Let the commercial sector have a go at space awesomeness.  They’ll do a cheaper, probably safer, and at least remember to look at an inventory list before planning a mission.

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Have fun!  Make sure you remember your airlock keys to get back into the station!

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Jacques and eggs

Eggs are back in the hater aisle.  Once again some study by somebody says they’re bad for you, way more dangerous to you than driving, drugs, drinking, dragons, or druids.  I don’t pay attention to these things.  It always seems like a study that says something about [insert anything here] is made up.  Probably because it’s made up.

Never fear, Jacques is here to demolish such nonsense with facts, wit, and plain happiness.  Definitely worth the read.

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“Fortunately, for the sane cook, butter and eggs will never be passe, even if some moderation proves to be wise. The egg is just too perfect.”

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I always try and have eggs around.  I needed a short meal before my hike today.  So all I did is scramble some eggs with harissa.  Nothing else, just eggs and harissa in some butter.  Then I toasted some wheat bread and melted some French morbier cheese on it.  Simple, easy, win.

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“Until then, if you don’t like my defense of eggs, go ahead: Throw some my way.”

Oh don’t worry, Jacques, no problems over here.  I’m sure I’ve written it too many times on the blog by now, but man do I ever love Pepin.

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why does the planet always have amnesia?

I’ll not be seeing Captain Marvel, I just don’t care.  I can’t remember the last Marvel movie I saw.  I think it was Guardians 2?  Was that the one where Kurt Russell dressed as a cult leader?  I barely remember.  I’m so over faceless superhero movies.

What’s the big deal with Captain Marvel?  That we finally get a big sci-fi movie with a female lead?  Why does the planet always have amnesia?  It must be a biproduct of only knowing what a tweet tells you to think.

Hey remember Weaver in Aliens and Hamilton in Terminator?  If you don’t, go watch these movies again.  If you haven’t seen these movies, shame on you.  These actresses and these movies are awesome.  These movies are like decades old by now.

Having not seen Captain Marvel (a movie written by a faceless boardroom of suits), I know Aliens and Terminator are superior.  And that Weaver and Hamilton are better actresses.  So, whatever Disney, who cares.

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Damn I love those movies.  Maybe I’ll watch them again and review them for this degenerate blog?  Nobody wants this, so we’ll probably do it.

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the spin cycle continues

Kindly observe (again) another act of senseless evil by human scum.

Kindly observe (again) how said human scum will now be given a platform by the shameless media to become famous and get their message out.

Kindly observe (again) how the political, business, entertainment, and/or educational elite express the same pointless platitudes without ever proposing any concrete solutions whatsoever thus ensuring its continuation for the next few decades at least.

Kindly observe (again) as the usual rhetorical bomb throwers use this event to justify whatever proconceived notions they have on religion, terrorism, guns, culture, and/or whatever and compete to see who can shout the loudest.

Kindly observe (again) as this spin cycle continues.

Kindly observe (again) that it will happen (again).

We recommend you do as I do, which is to not pay attention.  For the average person on the street, it’s not even worth it anymore.  You can’t change it, and you’ve got problems of your own to deal with each and every day as you live your life.  This sort of thing is now as common as the changing of the seasons, and it’s not going to stop, so why bother expending your very valuable mental energy on it?

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Version #13 of 83 – Circa 2019

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3K chickens show humanity a potential path forward

If anybody ever tells you the game isn’t rigged, they are either:

a) Uninformed

b) Stupid

c) A member of the political, business, entertainment, and/or educational elite that rigs said game every day

Get used to it folks, it’s not going to change. For you see, the folks who the bulk of the population think are out to fix the game (usually politicians) are actually all card carrying members of (c) as outlined above. They’re like a plumber who offers to fix your water heater (for $2.3K) after he’s bashed it in with a hammer whilst on meth.

But not to worry, every once and a while the planet provides us a nugget of a potential way forward. In France, a few thousand chickens ganged up and got themselves a fox corpse. I mean it’s not like they downed a wolf or a komodo dragon, but it sure is something.

Do not doubt the power of numbers. We’re not necessarily saying that 3K or 6K or 10K peasants need to rush the mansions of Bezos or Zucky. But even their legions of Stormtrooper guards can’t possibly stand up to those numbers. Just food for thought, in case such tactics become necessary someday.

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“I want my daughter/son to get into Berkeley.”

“Why yes, ma’am, we can arrange that for a tidy application ‘fee’.”

[cluck, cluck, cluck]

“What is, what is that sound?”

[cluck, Cluck, CLUCK]

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Boeing has a lot to answer for

Everybody should withhold final judgement until the Ethiopians and the American investigators have gotten a crack at the boxes.  But eyewitness reports indicating that the aircraft was breaking up in flight are troubling.

I flew yesterday on a 737-800 which looks mostly like a 737 Max and I was glad when I got aboard and realized it was an 800.  I mean I’m not trying to be too dramatic, my rental car drive to the airport was 700 times more dangerous, but I did sleep better on the flight.

It used to be that Airbus built planes that killed people with wacky failures in the electronics and systems.  Airbus hasn’t done that since Air France 447 in 2009.  Has Boeing now assumed that tragic role?  And if so, why and how?

What we do know is that the Lion Air crash in Indonesia was partly a maintenance failure, but also Boeing’s fault.  The pilots had the correct input on the controls, the airplane ignored them.  The plane killed those people.  Again, we’ll see what Ethiopia says on this latest crash.

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the plastic straw ban is futile

We’re back! We have no idea why. We’ll speak no more of it. Did you miss us? Please hold your applause [claps hands in an empty room].

So, what the most consequential recycling (“re-cy-cling”) news of the year? Is it:

a) That science still hasn’t solved replication technology thus forcing us to constantly throw away empty food packages when we want them instantly refilled with their sweet goodness?

b) That members of both American political parties still cannot be melted down to make something more useful, like office building support beams?

c) That beer brewers consistently still use glass even though much of glass isn’t recyclable and cans are 100% so, and still hold the same tasty beer? (more on this later)

d) I would hope nobody said plastic straws. But I’m sure a whole bunch of people would say plastic straws.

For you see, plastic straws were once fine. Now they are evil. For some reason.

We already wrote about this last year, but it’s gotten worse since then.

It’s now gotten to the point where the government (in Washington DC, of course) has to employ their own Brown Shirt goon equivalent to threaten your local neighborhood restaurant.

Here’s the reality check:

1) Plastic straws make up about 0.000004% of discarded non-recyclable plastic waste

2) The vast, vast, vast majority of plastic waste that gets into the ocean or into landfills is due entirely to the extremely poor basic waste collection practices of East Asian countries

3) The major recycling news of the year is not straws, but the Chinese government’s ban on the importation of high error rate recycled waste from aboard. Almost nobody is talking about this, but it’s a big deal folks. Every municipal recycling program in America is impacted, as in, yours. But because standard American news sources are terrible, you have to go bathe in an article written by Gizmodo of all places to get a good story on the issue.

Every aspect of American recycling is currently in flux. But, for some reason, in early 2019 the hate is on plastic straws.

One of the goals (cue laugh track) of this degenerate blog has always been to question the easy answer, or the lunacy of the current fad. The fallacy of being seen, or being felt, to “do good”. Often to the exclusion of larger problems, or more concrete action.

The municipal recycling planner at your local town hall (who probably makes $34K a year) will make major decisions this year that have a greater impact to the planet than any one of the rest of us will do the rest of our lives. These folks at least deserve our attention.

Fixing China’s non-existent recycling program is hard. Getting into the nitty gritty of recycling costs per ton per waste category per overall waste gathered by your local town hall is hard to get around. But banning plastic straws is easy, and refusing to use them is an instant self-check gratification for somebody who has decided (because they were told so by somebody else) that said straws are now a big problem.

But easy answers don’t save the planet. Hard work does.

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Too easy