This could be the dictionary definition of “a rough day at work”

Next time you’re having a rough day at work, thank God that you aren’t having as bad day as those who were on-site at the Nedelin catastrophe in the Soviet Union in 1960:

People near the rocket were instantly incinerated; those farther away were burned to death or poisoned with the resulting toxic gases. Andrei Sakharov described many details—as soon as the engines were fired, most of the personnel there ran to the perimeter but were trapped in it by the security fence and then engulfed in the fireball of burning fuel.

Incinerated, burned to death, poisoned by toxic gases, or engulfed in a fireball of burning fuel.

Nice set of choices, for a rough day at work. Hmmm. I guess I’ll take incinerated, please. If you’re going to end up dead anyway, might as well get it over with.

On the other hand, some of us are all, like, “I broke a shoelace and I had to walk around all day like that!”. Or, “Sat in traffic for an hour and forty minutes and I really REALLY had to go to the potty!”. Poor dears.

There is also the “Some toolbox stole my lunch out of the fridge!”. Or even, on particularly horrifying days, “Starbucks was too crowded and I had to start work without my mocha latte!”. To quote Joseph Conrad from Heart of Darkness: “the horror”.

At least 90 were killed. The catastrophe is named after Mitrofan Nedelin, the commander of the Soviet R-16 rocket development program.

This was kept secret until the 1990s, by the way. You can do that when you control the media.

Torture? That’s not torture. THIS is torture.

Remember.

Whistling Past Ancient Memories?

This can’t be good.

Every time I get one of these emails announcing somebody from my high school class has joined classmates.com, I don’t remember who it is.

We only had about 500 kids in my class. Obviously, I didn’t know every single one, or even most of them. But I thought I knew at least the names of nearly all of them.

Hey … maybe the folks who’ve been joining recently are those exact same people I didn’t really know at all!

Yes. That must be it.

Oh, shut up.

Like a Giant IQ Test … That Much of the World is Failing

Thomas Sowell, discussing Angelo Codevilla’s new book “The Character of Nations”:

While nations differ, particular kinds of behavior produce particular kinds of results in country after country. Moreover, American society in recent years has been imitating behavior patterns that have produced negative— and sometimes catastrophic— consequences in many other countries around the world.

Among these patterns have been a concentration of decision-making power in government officials, an undermining of the role of the family, a “non-judgmental” attitude toward behavior and a dissolution of the common bonds that hold a society together, leading to atomistic self-indulgences and group-identity politics that increasingly pits different segments of society against each other.

It would appear that stupid ideas have bad consequences. Who knew?

A little more awesome news for those of who think that those patterns are the wrong way to go:

Those among the intelligentsia who say that we should “learn from other countries” almost invariably mean that we should imitate what other countries have done. Angelo Codevilla argues that we should learn from other countries’ mistakes, especially when those same mistakes have repeatedly produced bad results in many countries and among many very different peoples, living under very different political systems.

Putting ever more economic decisions in the hands of those with political power is just one of those mistakes with a track record of painful repercussions in many countries around the world. These repercussions have included not only serious economic losses but, even more important, a loss of personal freedom and self-respect, as ever wider segments of the population become supplicants and sycophants of those with the power to dispense largess or to make one’s life miserable with legalistic or bureaucratic harassment.

Other than all that bad stuff, though? Puppies and rainbows for everyone!

That bolded text above, in a nutshell, explains why I don’t pay much attention to the “news” any more: it’s because the “news” actively pushes back from the other side on every one of those points in bold above by Mr. Sowell and Mr. Codevilla. It isn’t “news” at all, it’s activism. And it’s on the wrong side of history.

Re-Open TWA800?

Jack Cashill says “Reopen the TWA Flight 800 Case”.

Pretty good idea. Not going to happen.

I’ve always been fascinated by this case, and never bought the TWA 800 explanation about a spark in the fuel tank.

First of all, how many billions of air miles have been flown in the last 80 years? And this happens exactly once? Sorry, not buying that. Even an exceedingly rare occurrence, requiring many variables to be just so, happens more often than that.

Second, aerospace engineers go to great lengths to 100% guarantee that a spark could never occur anywhere near a fuel source. If they screwed up, well, once again, we are back to the “just once?” argument. Design failures occur more than once every hundreds of millions of trials.

Third, there is credible eyewtiness testimony from 270 people who say they saw something else happen, and evidence that some witness testimony was doctored or completely made up to support the conclusion that it was due to a spark.

Well, that’s when I say hold the phone.

Two hundred and seventy people. Not just one person, or three, or seven. And not all in one place. They didn’t even know each other. But they all looked into the night sky and saw something bright flying UP from the horizon, turn at an angle, and fly into something else and cause an explosion.

Two hundred seventy examples of this kind of independent eyewitness testimony is awfully tough to explain away. And when you read the way their testimony is twisted into something else, well, what does that tell you?

I don’t claim to know what happened, but I have heard the theories, and all are frightening.

1. Shoulder-fired SAM from terrorists in a small boat in the ocean
2. U.S. Military training accident
3. Submarine-fired missile

None would shock me, and all make more sense to me than a spark in a fuel tank.  

But I do know this: there was more than enough means, motive, and opportunity for shadowy government influence on both the investigation and the official conclusions.

I’m not going to go into tons of detail here. Read the above (including the comments, some very interesting), read Cashill’s book “First Strike”, read the twa800.com site. Examine it yourself. Make up your own mind. Remain open to theories that fit facts. That’s what I do.

Remember, though, that investigations are not perfect. They are subject to meddling, malfeasence, and ineptitude. This is the government we’re talking about. The same goverment that can’t decide if eggs are good for you or not. The same government that included corrupt and overtly political leadership at DOJ, which controls the FBI, and which used that FBI to investigate political enemies of the Clintons.

To pre-suppose that Truth often results from any investigation by that group into an “accident” with a distinct terrorist flavor is to live in fantasy land.

Governments have every motivation to cover up military accidents or terrorist operations run by other nations. Because they are not just embarrassing, they reflect potential national security flaws. And in the face of admitting “yes, some losers dressed in rags sat in a boat a few miles off our shores, and used arms we sold them to shoot down a defenseless civilian airliner”, a government may well try to steer the investigation to a more comfortable conclusion. To the extent that information can be controlled and manipulated, it may well be. None of that should shock us. 

Powerful interests intersect here. Covering up truth, rather than revealing it, is often the whole point.

Again, I don’t have the answer here. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a spark in a fuel tank.

Comedy Genius Turned Up to “11″

Has it really been 25 years since This is Spinal Tap was released?

Yes. Yes it has.

But it’s still funny, and true.

Quote of the Day

Ann Coulter:

Start with the fact that the average Gitmo detainee has gained 20 pounds in captivity. There’s even a medical term for it now: “the Gitmo gut.” Some prisoners have been heard whispering, “If you think Allah is great, you should try these dinner rolls.”

From her humanevents.com column “Watching MSNBC is Torture”, May 6, 2009.

In that column, she makes vicious fun of clowns on MSNBC who—get this—actually thought they could compare Japanese conduct re: American prisoners of war in WWII with American conduct re: enemy combatants in the War on Terror, and come out ahead on that deal.

Q: If ignorant yahoos in the media ignore established historical facts, and run around with their hair on fire screaming at me about things I know are stupid and untrue, not to mention anti-American … do they make a sound?

A: Yes. They sound a little bit like little girls in pretty pink dresses playing hopscotch. But not as cute, and not nearly as bright.

Out-STANDING

This is the kind of trouble we get ourselves into when we let Congress out of it’s cage.

The case revolves around Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which requires that job candidates and employees be treated equally without regard to race or ethnicity.

But it is frequently difficult to prove that an employer is engaged in intentional discrimination. For this reason, Congress has also empowered victims of discrimination to sue in instances when an employment practice results in a disparate impact against members of a protected minority group.

So you aren’t allowed to focus on race. Except when you have to, to avoid even the appearance of discrimination.

And you’d better follow these contradictory rules, or you’ll get your ass sued!

Memo to geniuses in Congress: you’ve implemented ideas from the wrong revolution. The American Revolution was inspired by liberty for all; it was the French Revolution that used equal outcomes as the guiding principle.

We don’t live in France.

Sometimes I’m not sure where we live, frankly.

Especially when the President of the United States chooses not to visit Normandy to honor the sacrifices of our WWII war dead … because it might offend Germany.

That giant sucking sound? Son, that’s what we used to call ‘The Economist’.

Too bad.

Used to be a nice magazine. As in, “intelligent”, “well-informed”, “fairly centrist”, “not as loony as Newsweek”. I’ve bought it a few times, and subscribed for a while.

Seems to have turned into just another in a long line of “Big Government is Good For You” media shills.  Soon lining a bird-cage near you!

Statism. It even sounds ugly, and the meaning is uglier:

stat-ism [stey-tiz-uh m] -
1. the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty.

Because that’s always worked so well before!

I’ve got a crazy idea. How about another magazine that advocates for—hold on, this is pretty revolutionary—more individual liberty!

Not less Liberty. More Liberty. M-O-R-E.

More Liberty, both economic and personal.

Free markets and free people. I’ve heard it works pretty well.

Honoring Jackie Robinson, Ignoring Branch Rickey and Josh Gibson

From the Cubs website:

The players on both teams will honor Jackie Robinson Wednesday, with all uniformed personnel wearing No. 42.

Really? Again?

Nothing against Jackie Robinson, but how many times does baseball need to bow down to him?

No Way!

Um, Way

Next time you hear anybody — say, a man on the street, your neighbor, the President of the United States — trying to blame the current financial mess on the Bush administration, tell them to look at this post at the great Doug Ross @ Journal:  Meltdown.

In fact, maybe you should read it too.

“Facts:  We R Stubborn.”

And from reading Doug’s post, you’d almost think Congress was corrupt or something!  Srsly!  Crazy, huh?

Content Has Been De-Valued by the Internets®

And that is a major reason why the advertising model isn’t working any more for “the media”, whether it be newspapers, TV, movies, the music industry, book publishers, etc.

There. I’ve figured all this out now. You can all thank me by sending a check for $50 to … oh, wait, too late, I’ve published this on the damn Internets®! For free! What a moron.

Of course, I’m far from the first to dig deeply into all this, but I’ve been thinking about it alot the last few months. And as one who is trying to build a freelance writing career, I have to think about, and understand at a basic level, the concept of content and how it is delivered. What is the value of content in a market where “information wants to be free”?

And here’s what I’ve come up with. Content-producers like newspapers and TV networks are suppliers in an economic market, governed by the rules of economic markets. That content used to be more controlled, and therefore precious and rare, and so by definition, more valuable. Newspapers controlled what we read, and how much they allowed us to read. TV controlled the news that we saw, and how much of it we were allowed to see, and all the TV shows, and the stars that were on them, and the writers that wrote for them; and since there were only 3 networks, the supply was extremely limited compared to today’s 300 or more channels on satellite, cable, etc. Same for movies, music, books, etc.

All of these industries were in the business, whether they realized it or not, of restricting the availability of the content they provided, in order to prop up its value. And this is because rather than charging the end consumer for that content, they used ratings to drive ad revenue to fund the whole thing. And ratings depend on having just a few delivery channels, so that the audience doesn’t get too fragmented. Once you add hundreds more delivery channels, (or millions, in the case of the Internet), the whole model won’t work any more.

Suddenly, they had to compete with content providers who weren’t protecting revenue streams, all driven by the Internets®, and the audience became fragmented, and the bottom fell out.

They thought they were providing content, but as we’ve seen over the last few years, with the decline in movie viewership, TV ratings, newspaper circulation and ad rates, etc., providing content and relying on advertising to fund it is a suckers game when the market is saturated. So their business model relied on restricting content more than providing it.

“Taking Chance”

“Taking Chance” has been made into a movie.

If you don’t already know about it, please, click that link and set aside 15 minutes to read the amazing, moving, true story, about the journey across the country, back to Wyoming, to deliver the body of PFC Chance Phelps to his family and bury him in his hometown. The original version of this story is a letter written by Lt. Col. Strobl and published at blackfive.net in April 2004. It is, truly, one of the most moving tales I have ever read.

All along the route, every single person that LTC Strobl encounters, from pilots to flight attendants to cargo crew to hearse drivers, go out of their way to pay respect in simple yet moving ways. They do this with no glare of camera lights, and no journalists scribbling notes. LTC Strobl asks for nothing, yet they all do it, because it is so right, and natural; they can’t imagine not doing it.

It’s a story that captures the real America, the one that shows humility, and honor, and respect for the sacrifices of others on its behalf. It’s the America that, sadly, Hollywood prefers to mostly ignore, by not telling any of the reaffirming stories these last few years. Maybe they’ll get this one right. All they have to do is tell a great human story with deferential respect; just get out of the way and let the story tell itself.

Like I wrote in my comment at Dirty Harry’s Place:

I really, really hope the film version of “Taking Chance” tells this story straight without embellishing it in any way. It sure doesn’t need any; the story is powerful and moving exactly as originally posted at blackfive.net, where I read it in 2004.

The fact that Kevin Bacon is in it seems like a good sign to me. I’ve never gotten any kind of anti-military vibe from him, and he played a JAG in “A Few Honest Men”, straight up. He seems like good people.

I think we owe it to the memory of Chance Phelps, and LTC Strobl, to give it a fair shot.

IF this movie is done right — and that’s a big IF — it has a chance to resonate, and maybe even to be a big hit, because there is lots of pent-up demand for movies that do not spit in the face of the military by marginalizing the value of honor, valor, and sacrifice. What a concept!

The movie trailer looks very promising. It airs on HBO in February, and at Sundance later this month.

What Do Frank Zappa, Vaclav Havel, and iTunes Have in Common?

OK, Since You Asked, I’ll Tell You

Frank Zappa was invited to Czechoslovakia in 1990 by President Vaclav Havel:

Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa who had large influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa’s 1968 song “Plastic People”). Zappa enthusiastically agreed and began meeting with corporate officials interested in investing in Czechoslovakia. Within a few weeks, however, the US administration put pressure on the Czech government to withdraw the appointment. Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead. Zappa also planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the Eastern Bloc and Western businesses.

So he wasn’t just a musical genius, prolific composer, and visionary bandleader. Now add freedom fighter to the list!

He was also about 15 years too early on an iTunes concept:

Before CDs came onto the market, Zappa had proposed to replace “phonographic record merchandising” of music by “direct digital-to-digital transfer” through phone or cable TV (with royalty payments and consumer billing automatically built into the accompanying software). In 1989, Zappa considered his idea a “miserable flop”.

The musical legend died 15 years ago this week.

Happy Thanksgiving, 2008

In honor of Thanksgiving, which has been one of my favorite holidays for many years now, I’ll re-post something I wrote a couple of years ago called “Little Known Facts, Thanksgiving Edition”.

I’m also getting quite a few search hits for it lately, and when I did a Google search for it the other day, that post was number 4 on the list.  

 

Little Known Facts, Thanksgiving Edition

Taking the ‘Thanks’ Out of Thanksgiving

Clearly, those who founded our country recognized the importance of God in the life of our nation. They also understood the rightness of thanking God for his blessings. For example, it was George Washington who, on October 3, 1789, issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation. In Washington’s words, Americans were to set aside “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

All that, and football games. Three of them this year. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Unfortunately, some of the intellectual lightweights running our school systems are not clear on the concept, where some teachers are told they “… cannot even mention the word “Thanksgiving” this year because ‘the pilgrims offended the Indians’ and ‘Thanksgiving was never intended to be thanks to God.’”

And the most well known example is probably this:

Several years ago, it was reported that Maryland public school students were free to thank anyone they wanted while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving. However, they were not allowed to thank God. Instead, Maryland students read stories about the Pilgrims and Native American Indians, simulated Mayflower voyages, held mock feasts and learned about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups. But teachers did not mention that in addition to thanking the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, the Pilgrims repeatedly thanked God.

Look, it’s just historical fact, it isn’t pushing anybody to convert. Learn to distinguish between two unlike things. It’s useful sometimes.

It goes on to make the larger point:

We have allowed ourselves to become controlled by our fears. Rather than risk offending someone, we would sooner toss our rich history and traditions on the pyre of political correctness. But such an approach is destined for failure. Indeed, even if you breathe, you are sure to offend someone. What is the result? We gain nothing. We water down and suck the life out of what once gave meaning and direction to our lives. In the end, our children will be the ones who lose out, left with little clue as to where they came from or where they may be going in life.

We have also lost our sense of reverence. Too many Americans have little, if any, gratitude for the liberty and material comforts we enjoy—both of which were made possible through great sacrifice. Heedless of our many blessings, as a nation, we are tempting fate.

My job as a parent, at least in part, is to fight this anti-American-culture trend. I will educate my kids on the true history of the United States, including the powerful role religion played in guiding the Founding Fathers and the resulting documents that have guided us well for 200+ years, and how the freedoms we enjoy today are unique in the history of mankind, and were earned by leaving the blood of some of our best young people on various battlefields throughout the world.

Because it is true. And we do ourselves a disservice when we ignore it, or purposely pay homage to others instead.

Does that mean I think we are a perfect nation? Of course not. There are lots of things I’d like to see changed here; but just because we aren’t perfect does not imply we aren’t pretty damn good.

We provide the freedoms necessary to any person born in this country, or who legally emigrates here, to do just about anything they like, limited only by their desires and capacities.

For most people, that’s all they really want. But most areas of the world are ruled by corrupt thugs and criminals, who have no interest in providing anything approaching a useful economy or the rule of law or the right to own private property to their subjects.

The least we can do, to honor both those who died to protect us from those horrors, and those who designed the documents that protect us from those horrors, is to frankly and honestly assess their contributions throughout history.

Happy Halloween, Mr. Halas

Today is not just Halloween, it is also the 25th anniversary of the passing of NFL legend George Halas.

Before he became owner/coach of the Bears, he’d already organized and coached teams in the Navy and at Staley Starch Works in Decatur, and earned a civil engineering degree at the University of Illinois, where he starred in 3 sports, football, baseball, and basketball, and was signed by the Yankees to play baseball. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for future Chicago Bears fans, he quit playing baseball, possibly because he couldn’t hit a curveball.

In return for $5,000 given to him by A.E. Staley to move the Decatur Staleys to Chicago, Halas kept the name “Staleys” for one year, and then struck a deal with Cubs owner William Veeck Sr. to share Wrigley Field, and renamed the team the Bears, to honor the Cubs and Veeck.

His signing of Illini legend Red Grange in 1925 — for $100,000, which was crazy crazy money at that time — and then the subsequent barnstorming tour featuring Grange is what really got the NFL started, by drawing huge crowds, game after game. They played 19 games in 67 days.

Halas went on to coach the team in three different stints until 1968, with a few years off here and there, including 3 more years in the Navy during WWII. He was also instrumental in getting a TV contract for the league, which was the final puzzle piece that allowed the league to flourish in the 60s and become what it is today.

A very interesting bio of Halas, from which most of this info was taken, can be found here.

20 Years On: Yellowstone Surviving Nicely, Thank You

I’m not sure why this should surprise anybody:

Today, there is new life at Yellowstone National Park, as trees have taken root among the burnt logs that still litter the earth.

The 1988 wildfires were not the ecological disaster many feared at the time. Far from destroying the park, the fires brought new life, cleared out the forest canopies and allowed new plants to bloom.

Fire has been around for a loooonnnnggg time.  Forever, pretty much.

If it had long-term, systemic, catastrophic consequences for the ecosystem, there wouldn’t be anything left, at all. Anywhere.

Which means we also wouldn’t be here today, to worry about it.

From the Shores of Ancient Lake Chicago

If you thought, like I did, that there was only one Continental Divide in North America, you should read this, and this, or just run this search and poke through the results.

As it turns out, there is a historic ridge running through Oak Park, Illinois, and many other towns around the Chicago area, which formed the shoreline around Lake Chicago, which was formed by glacial runoff.

This ridgeline is also a boundary between other Continental Divides that drain water into the St. Laurence River via the Great lakes, or south to the Mississippi River (see map — see more about the Eastern Continental Divide here). It is also so low, compared to the surrounding ground, that when the Des Plaines river would flood, it would spill over this ridge into an entirely different drainage system — ultimately ending up in the St. Laurence River (via something called “Mud Lake”, then to the Chicago River, then to Lake Michigan).

For context, this is all connected to the Chicago portage, and the idea behind reversing the flow of the Chicago River, and the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and later the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, in 1900. More on the latter:

Construction of the Ship and Sanitary Canal was the largest earth-moving operation that had been undertaken in North America up to that time. It was also notable for training a generation of engineers, many of whom later worked on the Panama Canal.

Then click over to the Wiki page for the historical geology of the Great Lakes, and be sure to click on the link for the Niagara Escarpment for some cool pics.

I never knew all this when I lived in Oak Park for 14 years! My oldest son used to play baseball sometimes in Taylor Park, which is shown at Division St. right on the Continental Divide.

It’s funny how much influence water has on our history, isn’t it?

Cubs and West Side Grounds History

A few historical tidbits I’ve uncovered lately …

The phrase “way out in left field” may have originated with the Chicago Cubs and their old West Side Grounds ballpark.

Click here for an interesting graphic showing the superimposed ballpark over the existing buildings today (the UIC medical campus).

The distance to the center field wall at the West Side Grounds? 560 feet. That will give the team ERA a nice boost.

Finally, the Way Out in Left Field Society took up the cause to raise money for a plaque to commemorate the old ballpark. And soon, at or near 912 S. Wood St., where the center field flag pole stood, that plaque will be installed. So, kudos to them for keeping baseball history alive.

Cool New Book

“Playing With The Enemy” by Gary W. Moore

Where baseball, history, military, reading, and fathers all come together … and what could be better than that?

For years, Gary Moore knew little about his father’s unfulfilled would-be baseball career.

That is, until his father, Gene, had a health scare later in life and the younger Moore pushed for details on his father’s invitation from the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1949 to play for them.

The elder Moore never made his date for reasons that if disclosed here, would spoil parts of Gary Moore’s book, “Playing With the Enemy.”

Mr. Moore is a local man who owns a business in the Kankakee area, and the first thing he asks prospective employess is how much they read.

“When you read a book, you are creating a movie in your head.  Reading keeps you going and enhances your imagination. Not reading causes atrophy.”

My kind of guy.  The story:

“Playing With the Enemy” tells the story of Gene, a 15-year-old baseball phenom who played in far downstate Sesser. Headed for stardom with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Gene’s destiny is interrupted by Pearl Harbor. As a Navy man charged with guarding German sailors captured from the U-505 submarine, Gene teaches the enemy the game of baseball so he and his teammates could play while waiting for the war to end.