Proved Wrong-Again!

Hmm...perhaps I generalize too much about the South. Stories like this give me a tremendous amount of hope. And, for the second time this week, Colbert made me laugh my ass off!

The Future Is Getting Closer...

A company in New Zealand is getting closer to making a real-life jetpack. The future is almost here!

The Martin Jetpack isn't really a jetpack. It's basically a one-passenger hovercraft. It has no tail rotor, which makes it much safer than helicopters, which often crash when the tail rotor strikes trees and power lines.

The jetpack sounds like a giant weed whip. It's made of carbon fiber and uses a two-liter two-stroke gasoline engine. It has payload capacity of 100 kg, range of 19 miles, maximum speed of 40 knots and a running time of half an hour. It should be able to reach altitudes of more than mile.

Originally targeted at the leisure market, they're trying to sell it for other applications such as firefighting and military reconnaissance (that is, to organizations that have enough money to pay for it). The design incorporates features that make it safer to fly than other VTOL craft like helicopters. It will hover in place if the pilot provides no input. It has a roll cage and a quick-deploying parachute, which you can see in the video of one of their remote-controlled test flights. Even with the parachute, if you lose power at altitudes too low for proper deployment you'll be in for serious hurt.



Martin's goal is to make a recreational jetpack available for about $100K. But if all you're interested in is getting off the ground, there are other options available at a much lower price. Several companies offer jetpacks that are connected by a hose to a jet ski for less than $10K (hardware modification of your jet ski is required):

It ain't rocket science, but it looks like a lot of fun!

The first iteration of the Martin Jetpack is unlikely to be practical for anything other than recreation: unmanned drones will be better for aerial reconnaissance. Air search and rescue in rugged areas that can't afford a full-fledged helicopter and pilot would seem an obvious fit, but range and flight time are extremely limited. It doesn't have enough payload capacity for a pilot, a passenger and equipment. But it could get a paramedic to an injured person on a mountain faster than anything else.

Immediate practicality is beside the point. The Wright brother's first plane was made from bicycle parts and only flew for a few seconds. In just 60 years the X-15 was flying on the edge of space. The engineers at Martin are making this sort of technology cheaper, safer and more accessible to non-pilots.

As long as we keep dreaming and pushing, anything might become possible.

Giving Me Hope

The Times has an amazing piece about John Lewis up this week that everyone should read. It's very refreshing to see how far we have come since he walked across Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. It also gave me a great deal of hope to see that Eric Cantor took the walk across the bridge with Congressmen Lewis this year with his college age son in tow.

These are the kinds of stories we need in this day and age.

Wow, Really?

So Cool!

This story is so fucking cool!

In 2012, the owner finally revealed the site's location after swearing Raines to secrecy. Raines then did his own dive and discovered a primeval Cypress swamp in pristine condition. The forest had become an artificial reef, attracting fish, crustaceans, sea anemones and other underwater life burrowing between the roots of dislodged stumps.

The forest contains trees so well-preserved that when they are cut, they still smell like fresh Cypress sap, Raines said. Imagine what we are going to learn in the coming years of what life was like in this part of the world 50,000 years ago!

Using Democracy to Subvert It

The greatest strength of democracy is also its greatest weakness: leaders derive their power from the will of the people. But if the majority of the people don't believe in democracy, they will elect people who believe likewise, and the institutions of democracy will be used to destroy it.

We can see this playing out in Egypt today. The country is going through violent convulsions now because the two main contestants -- the military and the Muslim Brotherhood -- don't believe in democracy. Though elected democratically, Morsi declared himself above the courts and pushed through a lop-sided constitution. In Egypt the military and the Muslim Brotherhood believe they deserve to rule and will do anything to gain power, and damn the rest of the country, democracy and the rule of law.

Sadly, the same dynamic is playing out here in the United States in states controlled by the Republican Party. In response to a lawsuit over their 2011 redistricting plan Republicans responded:

DOJ's accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party's electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats. . . . The redistricting decisions of which DOJ complains were motivated by partisan rather than racial considerations, and the plaintiffs and DOJ have zero evidence to prove the contrary.

In other words, they think it's fine to subvert democracy as long as the motivation is partisan political gain and not racism. But the main reason Republicans are so desperate to make these changes is to solidify their political position ahead of the upcoming demographic shift: the number of white voters in these states is in decline, and without this sort of trickery Republicans will be out of power because they'll soon be in the racial minority.

And it's just not true that the Department of Justice has "zero evidence" that the motivations behind the passage of these laws is racist. Republicans have screwed up and publicly admitted that they don't want blacks to vote because they won't vote Republican:

“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats,” Ken Emanuelson said.

Republicans are treading on thin ice. In many states, such as Ohio, they have gerrymandered large Congressional and legislative majorities by packing all Democrats (and often blacks and Hispanics) into a few overwhelmingly Democratic districts and given themselves small majorities in the rest of the state.

When the voters in the middle grow tired of this naked power grab even a small shift among swing voters could result in Republican being completely locked out of power. Natural growth and migration patterns could result in Texas becoming Democratic in the next four to eight years, just in time for the next redistricting after the 2020 census.

This may already be happening in some states: after Republicans gained control of both houses in Minnesota in 2010 they circumvented the normal legislative process and pushed controversial voter ID and anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments. This caused a severe backlash and Democrats swept to large majorities in the House and Senate in 2012. A few months later gay marriage was made law.

With their complete contempt for fairness, democracy, compromise and cooperation all these Republican machinations may ultimately backfire on them. And then they'll be the ones demanding protections for minorities.

Just Imagine

Imagine for a just a moment that the president took a vacation to a foreign land with a Hollywood type. Add in high unemployment and a taxpayer cost of 3.5 million dollars. What would the Right say?

Well, they said nothing when Ronald Reagan did it.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So they probably would say nothing now if Barack Obama did it, right?

Take note of how admirably the media portrayed Reagan as well.

York Channels Moi

Byron York has a piece up that could have well been written by me. When a Fox News contributor and author of the The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy writes something like this...

Behind the scenes — in whispered asides, not for public consumption — some Republicans are now worried that keeping the House is not such a done deal after all. They look back to two elections, 1998 and 2006, in which Republicans seriously underperformed expectations, and they wonder if 2014 might be a little like those two unhappy years.

...it's time to for the Right to start shitting themselves. Why?

GOP strategists look at the president’s job approval rating on the economy and see an opportunity. A recent Quinnipiac poll, for example, found that 54 percent of those surveyed do not approve of Obama’s handling of the economy. Yet when the pollsters asked who respondents trusted to do a better job with economic issues — Obama or Republicans in Congress — respondents chose Obama, 45 percent to 39 percent. Lots of other polls have shown similar results. Voters don’t approve of the way Obama is handling the economy. Yet they prefer him over Republicans.

Even with lower ratings these days, the American people like the Republicans even less. That's because their party is made up of far right paranoids who have no plan to improve the country and would rather behave like juveniles. One need only read the comments section of this blog to see exactly what I am talking about.

So what should the Right do?

What that should tell the GOP is that Republican candidates don’t need to tell voters what a bad job the president is doing. They already know that, and besides, Obama won’t be on the ballot in 2014. What GOP candidates need to do is convince voters that they would do a better job than Democrats.

And if they don't?

If they don’t — if Republicans stick to being an opposition party on the attack rather than the alternative party offering an agenda — then Obama’s much-discussed dream of retaking the House in 2014 might come true, despite all the odds. And that would be a nightmare for Republicans.

What I like about this scenario is that it is a win-win for Democrats. If the Republicans continue with their adolescent behavior, they lose more seats in the House, if not the chamber itself all together. You can pretty much kiss any hopes of retaking the Senate either. If they actually change and compromise on issues like immigration and the budget, then our country is better off for it. They will likely win more elections but it will be because they came to their senses.

I'm hoping it's the latter. We have very serious problems in this country and really no time for temper tantrums from little boys.

Laughed So Hard I think I Broke Something!

Makes Perfect Sense To Me

After this story, I'm pretty embarrassed by the state in which I was born.

Perry Beam, who was among the spectators and has called attention to the act, told the Associated Press that "everybody screamed" and "just went wild” over the rodeo show. "It was at that point I began to feel a sense of fear. It was that level of enthusiasm," said Beam, a Higginsville resident.

Ah, the dark heart of American populism. My buddy Reverend Jim remarked this was "just as bad as when the bloody Bushitler posters went up." Really? I don't recall clowns play hitting the big lips of W as they did with the Obama mask at this rodeo.

Of course, it all makes perfect sense considering that now that it's town hall season (see: old white people yellin' and all afeared of blackie!) the birth certificate had to come up again.

Farenthold’s declaration came after a woman, who cannot be seen on the video, presents a folder to Farenthold that she says contains proof that Obama’s birth certificate was faked. “I’ll take a look at it,” Farenthold said. “I’ll tell you on the whole birth certificate issue … I think unfortunately the horse is already out of the barn on this.The original Congress when his eligibility came up should have looked into this and it didn’t. I’m not sure how we fix it.” The unidentified woman continued to press, saying “do we allow a president, if he has committed a felony, do we allow him to go unpunished?” 

I wonder if any of these creeps are going to question the fact that Ted Cruz was born in Canada. Nah, he's got an R next to his name so he's alright!

Movie Review: Elysium

Elysium is the latest science fiction action picture from director Neill Blomkamp, the South African director who made his mark in 2009 with District 9. 

The year is 2154, and everyone on earth lives in abject poverty in slums ridden with disease. The wealthiest people live on Elysium, a utopian space habitat that's reminiscent of Larry Niven's Ringworld. The people on Elysium can live forever: medicine has advanced to such a degree that even the worst injury or disease can be cured by a few minutes in a machine that can rebuild broken bones and repair ripped flesh, or rewrite the DNA in your very bones.

Elysium follows Max (played by Matt Damon), a Spanish/English-speaking former car thief who lives in LA working in a factory that manufactures the droids that police the human populace. Max's childhood friend, Frey (played by Alice Braga), goes off to become a nurse but by chance she meets Max again after he mouths off to the wrong droid. When Max is fatally exposed to radiation at work, his only hope is to get medical attention on Elysium.

Jodie Foster plays Delacourt, the French-speaking defense minister of Elysium. She is ruthless, ordering the sleeper agent Kruger (played quite malevolently by Sharlto Copley) to shoot down shuttles carrying sick children illegally into Elysium for medical care. If you think of earth as Mexico (the slum scenes were shot there), space as the Rio Grande and Elysium as the United States you get the picture.

In order to have the strength to fight his way to Elysium Max agrees to have a powered exoskeleton screwed into his spine and skull, and electronics implanted in his brain. In addition to the grit, there's plenty of action in Elysium: spaceships, guns, katana-skewerings, robot dismemberment, hand-to-hand combat, explosions and crashes.

While District 9 was a not-so-subtle comment on the apartheid era in South Africa, Elysium is an equally unsubtle statement on illegal immigration, the wealthiest 1% and the absence of health care for the poorest among us. This is nothing new for the movies: since the very beginning, film has been a medium that caters to the masses, protesting the injustices of inequality that pervade society. From It's a Wonderful Life to Star Wars the triumph of the little guy over entrenched wealth and power has been an ever-present theme.

In the world of Elysium the denial of health care to the masses seems especially heartless because the cure is so cheap and so easy. But we have much the same issue here today: procedures such as knee and hip implants in the United States cost 10 times more than in Belgium, which means many Americans are denied medical care because medical device manufacturers and health care providers artificially jack up prices.

Movies with messages can still be effective as art and entertainment as long as the preaching doesn't hit you over the head. Elysium avoids that trap. If Elysium lacks something, it was a sufficiently tight connection between Max and Frey's daughter, Matilda. Damon's performance doesn't convince me -- all the groundwork was laid, but it lacked emotional impact.

As usual, I have quibbles with technical aspects of the film. The computerized McGuffin is bogus: everyone can instantly recognize what the thing can do -- you'd think the bad guys would name their files something other than "Program to Take Over the World." Also, it's too easy for the illegals to enter Elysium: they can simply fly in because the inside of the ring is open to space. Niven's Ringworld was large enough, spun fast enough and had high enough walls to keep the atmosphere in (it was 180 million miles across). Elysium is just too small -- it would have to be completely sealed to keep the air in and cosmic rays out, but that would make it too hard for illegals to fly in and get a quick cure, removing a major plot point.

Blomkamp still has it in for his native South Africa: Kruger and his bloodthirsty thugs are Afrikaners, even sporting a South African flag on their spacecraft if you missed Kruger's accent. His namesake, Paul Kruger, was the face of the Boer Resistance against the British during the Second Boer War, and the Krugerrand was named after him.

Putin's Russia: a Social Conservative's Paradise

Russia has become the new paradise for conservative social issues.

Repression of gays is government policy. Gay marriage is not only illegal: you can go to jail for telling children it's wrong to beat up gay men.

Most abortion is illegal after 12 weeks, and banned after 22 even in cases of rape. There's a two- to seven-day waiting period and women can't even get their tubes tied unless they're 35 or already have two children (articles 56 and 57 of the 2011 Russian health law).

Putin recently signed a law making it a crime to "offend religious sensibilities," punishable by one to three years in prison. Two women from Pussy Riot are still in prison for singing a critical song about Putin in a church.

Do American conservatives really want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with countries like Russia, Uganda and Saudi Arabia?

Republicans keep telling us that we have to defend our freedoms or we'll become like Russia. Yet they're trying to turn us into carbon copies of Russia and Saudi Arabia by letting religious zealots dictate our social and medical policies.

Yes. Yes They Are

Hit the Road!

I'm sure that when Scott Phillips took the job at Prattville East Memorial Christian Academy as athletic director he thought there might be some leeway on which church he decided to attend.

Nope.

The school’s headmaster, Scott Easley, said that it was expected that Phillips attend East Memorial Baptist Church, the church affiliated with the school, even though there was no written agreement that Phillips was to do so.

So much for the freedom to worship freely. And it's not like he was an atheist or anything.

It was only when Phillips took on the additional role of being the school’s athletic director in June 2012 that the church requirement was placed on him. Phillips and his family had been attending Church of the Highlands, which is where he and his family (wife and two children) were “growing spiritually”.

Phillips attending both churches for a year, but felt dishonest about doing so. “We would go to the 9 a.m. service at East Memorial, then head over to Montgomery for the 11 a.m. service at Church of the Highlands,” he said. “It was just not working at all.”

I sense the devil at work here! Everyone knows that there is only one way to worship Jesus and any other way is pure evil!!

It's simply amazing to me that in this day and age, we still have people that think they can tell their employees how they have to worship and where. But this would be the American Taliban at work, folks!

Very Cool

Not The One...EVER!

One concept I truly loathe in our culture is the idea of soul mates. Somewhere out there is "The One" who will complete your perfectly and will be your life long best friend as well as husband/wife. Truly, a pile of garbage and that's why I wholeheartedly agree with this piece recently forwarded to me by a friend.

For those of you who might not dig the overly religious tones, try to look past all that and simply focus on what she's saying. Her husband is not her soul mate and there really is no such animal. My wife is certainly not my soul mate. She's my lover, a great mom, a good friend, and we work well together as leaders of our family. But I've only known her for 17 years. I've been best friends with John Waxey for nearly twice that time. He's more of a soul mate to me than she is because he has known me since the seventh grade.

I don't know why we feel the need as a culture to place the care of our heart and soul into one person. What a load of crap. Life is a chorus, not a duet. There are many people along the way who are integral to how we develop and love. Why some people choose to limit themselves in such a way with this soul mate/the one garbage makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Time to Break the Cycle in Yemen

The United States has closed several embassies across the world in the last week, ostensibly because of a credible threat picked up by the NSA in "chatter."

The mass closures seem to be a smokescreen for the real threat, which appears to be in Yemen. We've had an extremely active program of drone strikes against al-Qaida in Yemen, but the terrorist network there has only gotten stronger. Why?

Gregory Johnsen, a Fulbright scholar and expert on Yemen has some insights:

I think this is one of the really frustrating things for the United States. It's because, as you point out, [the United States has] been carrying out several air and drone strikes. They have killed people like Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric there in Yemen. They killed AQAP's number two.

And yet what we have seen over the past three-and-a-half years is that AQAP has gone from a group of about 200 to 300 people on Christmas Day 2009 to, according to the U.S. State Department, more than a few thousand fighters today.

Yes, despite intense attacks against al-Qaida in Yemen, the problem has only gotten worse. How can that be?

Well, I think one of the things that explains it is that the U.S. -- not all of these strikes that the U.S. carries out are successful. So there are some mistaken strikes. There are strikes that kill civilians. There are strikes that kill women and children.

And when you kill people in Yemen, these are people who have families. They have clans. And they have tribes. And what we're seeing is that the United States might target a particular individual because they see him as a member of al-Qaida. But what's happening on the ground is that he's being defended as a tribesman.

So you have people flowing into al-Qaida, not necessarily because they share the same ideology of al-Qaida, but just so that they can get revenge for their tribesman who has been killed in a drone or airstrike.

That is, the people in Yemen are mad at the United States because we're callously killing innocent bystanders. Many of the people attacking us in Yemen are driven by exactly the same motivations as Americans who want to stamp out al-Qaida in retribution for 9/11. Both sides feel they are completely justified in their actions because they can point to numerous instances of innocent people being killed.

This is the same trap that Arabs and Israelis have been caught in for the last 50-plus years. As long as we react to violent attacks with more violent attacks, we'll never break the cycle of violence.

The only "lesson" our drone strikes appear to teaching al-Qaida in Yemen is how to goad us into more attacks that produce collateral damage (our euphemism for the deaths of innocent people). Our actions only seem to be helping al-Qaida recruit more members. We're making the same mistakes we made in Iraq at the beginning of that war.

Yemen has a lot of problems. According to Johnsen its new president is weak. There's a separate rebellion in the north. There's a push for secession in the south. The economy is collapsing. People are having a hard time getting basic food and water. And then we throw our war on al-Qaida into the mix.

Our current strategy in Yemen is backfiring. It's is a recipe for a cycle of never-ending bloodshed. And that pretty much describes our involvement in all the countries in the Middle East. We've got to find some common cause with the people of Yemen and stop the arbitrary killings, or we're going to be fighting this nonsense forever.

Even More Fucking Awesome!

A Republican Case for Climate Action?

Yeah, you got that right.

There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected.

No longer any credible scientific debate...hey, don't be so sure about that! Everything is credible in the bubble!

Now about those market based solutions...

Acid rain diminishes each year, thanks to a pioneering, market-based emissions-trading system adopted under the first President Bush in 1990. And despite critics’ warnings, our economy has continued to grow.

No, it hasn't! Liars!! Liars!!! Our economy has collapsed and has been constantly failing!!! Pollution is not an externality!!!!

As administrators of the E.P.A under Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held fast to common-sense conservative principles — protecting the health of the American people, working with the best technology available and trusting in the innovation of American business and in the market to find the best solutions for the least cost.

Bunch a fuckin' RINOS!!

The bubble is continuing its collapse...