| To Bart Sibrel: More people need to punch you in the face. |
[Sep. 24th, 2005|11:41 pm] |
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I saw the most astonishing website today, http://www.moonmovie.com. The premise of the website, arranged by Bart Sibrel, is that NASA's Apollo landings on the moon never happened. He maintains that instead of actually going to the moon all missions that flew to the moon just orbited low in Earth's orbit whist the missions on the moon were elaborate hoaxes. The reason, he states, is that the US needed to fake the Soviets into thinking we had far superior technology as political leverage. He goes on to attempt his case with "Top 10 Reasons Why No Man Has Ever Set Foot On The Moon" http://216.26.168.193/moonmovie/default.asp?ID=7. Keep in mind, these are his best 10 pieces of evidence! I'm no scientist, or even a college graduate, but I think I can handle this numbskull even using his evidence as material. In item #4 (supposedly better evidence than the previous 6 items) he states, "The top portion of the lunar module which landed on the moon supposedly popped up off the moon with two astronauts aboard, entered lunar orbit 60 miles up, and docked with the command module in lunar orbit. To look at its design and think such could have actually occurred is absolutely ludicrous." What's particularly bad about this point is the photograph to the right ON THE SAME FREAKIN' WEB PAGE of "the top portion of the lunar module" is doing exactly that! (Note: module's top in this picture is down and a little to the right) Besides that, I don't get his logic. He's asking the general public to discount the plausibility of the Apollo landings based on the appearance. What the hell do I know about astro-physics? I looked some stuff up though. See how lop-sided the module in the picture is? That's because the heaviest thing in the lunar module is the gas tanks. How it works is 50/50 mix of an oxidizer and propellant and BOOM you've got bona-fide rocket shipping. The fuel tank sticks out more from center because it's only 1/2 as heavy as the oxidizer, so like the see saw game with your big brother, you have to be further out on the teeter-totter or you'll never balance him out. Ugly, yet functional. It's just a coffee can big enough for two guys, two space suits and elbow room to change clothes in (no bathroom, just plastic bags). Strap the gas tanks on the outside of that, an engine underneath and wrap it all up with insulation and you have a lunar module. It's not designed for accuracy, just enough to get the module into the ball park so the far more sophisticated Apollo command module can pick it up for the big trip home. I've seen far more unlikely devices work, consider the Wright flyer of 1903, or Windows XP, even. Sorry Bart, I'm not convinced. I'm not sorry at all to hear that Apollo Astronaut Buzz Aldrin punched your punk lights out, I'm proud of him. If you and I ever meet, I hope I remember to extend the same curtesies Buzz did. |
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| Cranky at "Work" but improving! |
[Sep. 21st, 2005|03:03 pm] |
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Do you ever get the feeling that your professional organization has unwritten but really quirky rules? I do. Unwritten Rule #5 here is, "Unsolicited initiative is dangerous and may disrupt company operations." Rule #6 "'Trying to be helpful' is neighborly but unprofessional." Rule #76R "No LiveJournal at Work!" Well, I have to agree with the last one, so I'm outta here. |
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| Driving Stick: Life Lessons Learned Through Vandalism |
[Sep. 19th, 2005|10:11 pm] |
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Consumer Reports that year suggested I see the Civic so I’m checking them out. I’m preferring automatic, 4 doors and A/C and said so to the Honda Guy. So this dealer is pushing and pushing it hard. “No, man you’re young and single you NEEEEED this one man!” as he points to the Honda Civic “del Sol” w/ V6, lime green, stick shifting Fast & Furious drop-out. No, I say “4 door, A/C, economy, automatic” He says emphatically, “Man the ladies aren’t looking for that Man! You get this one,” thrusts his hips in the direction of the limey car for emphasis, “you’re like Flynn buddy!” Well, maybe he had a point. At that time I was the only one I knew that had bought a box of condoms for a “special” evening that never happened and subsequently had to toss the entire unopened box because it expired, like 4 years later. No, on second thought, he was pissing me off and wasn’t selling professionally so I did what I had to do to get rid of him: I went for a test drive in it. “Oh man you won’t believe how smooth this thing rides SWEET!” He gently valets this moronically small vehicle to the curb. “You’re turn Man!” We switch seats and the fun begins. I rev the engine a few times in neutral and say, “you know I don’t have much experience with stick shift.” He says, “Oh this car makes it a natural for you just go” So I bring it up to about 4000 RPM and dropped the hammer,... in 3rd gear. I must have sheared some the the clutch plates with the torque that engine was putting out because the thing actually started to roll! I push the clutch in to keep it alive for a half second before gassing up again and letting the clutch out all the way. The aluminum V6 block twisted in the mounts and shuddered violently to a stop. He laughs pretty nervously, “Easy Easy buddy!” “I’m really not comfortable with this car, I think its just too racey,” I give him an out but he’s desperate to get rid of this lemon-bomb. “It’s cool man just push in the pedal all the way,” he jiggles it into 1st from the passenger side, “now try it.” Oh, this guy is too much. I pull away from the curb in first and keep it there. I am actually impressed with the gearing. I get up to 35 mph in first before the engine whine is unbearable. “Up, dude, shift up!” Oh yeah, straight up to 5th, the car shakes, 3.6 liters of cylinder starved for enough momentum to keep firing, oh crap back to first gear, VROOOOM the engine cranks back up into the red. Back into 3rd: perfect for car and the salesman. “Now yer gettin’ it” he says punching giddily into my shoulder. Oh, he thinks he’s out of the woods, but look out, A Stop Light Left Turn while going up hill! Little bit of gas, little clutch and a whole lot of switching, the car began to rock and jerk back in forth, Bang Crunch, Ba-Bang Crunch While he’s yelling “Gas it, man. Gas it!!” People on the street side think I’ve got hydraulics, Hop, Hop the car goes and done. The engine just gives up with an ominous creak. I pop it into neutral and coast backwards into the curb of the Nissan dealer we just Jerked by, parking splayed out, like paralell but drunker. “Whew, I gotta walk from here man,” I say. “Hey this car is for you!” “No ‘Man’ that’s your car and I’m going to look at that Nissan right there.” He got out with me to protest , “Hey What the-” and then I was safely on the Nissan parking lot like the Road Runner. I thought “Beep-Beep” while he just got back in the 7-Up Can and drove it back to Honda Land. |
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| My job ROCKS! (mostly) |
[Sep. 7th, 2005|07:00 pm] |
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My current task is to prepare a mobile laboratory kit so that audiologists in Latin America can go and make hearing aids and fit them to people far away from any cities. There are several benefactors supporting this cause, including my boss. I like the fact that a lot of what I do as a professional isn't a routine. Much of my projects are prototypes, in that they haven't been done before or quite in the same way we are going to do them. The selfish side of me wants the credit, it is my work, my design etc... But, Boss does pay my salary so his name will be at the top of all the literature. Well, some epoxy has just finished curing, back to work! |
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| Ship full of manly men... |
[Sep. 5th, 2005|10:50 pm] |
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Here's the funny story previously mentioned. Background: I used to be in the United States Navy aboard the ship I will call the "USS Baskin-Robbins." I was using one of four, curtained shower stalls in the "head" or bathroom next to the divisional sleeping quarters (80 bunks). I was cleaning off a day's worth of greasy crud from my fuzzy self when my shoulder lightly tapped the Hot water knob, turning it on full. More background. The showers we used were on the same hot water tank with the Medical Department 4 levels up from us, so the "hot" water has to be 180 degrees for quick sterilization of whatever STD you happen to be getting treatment for. So the water went from "Cozy" to "Diving into the Sun Naked" hot in a fraction of a second. Luckily my killer Navy training took control and every muscle in my Military grade body threw me out of the way of the scalding water, not out of the shower mind you, directly into the other wall of the shower stall. Now I'm cursing, not intelligibly, but quite loudly as my entire right side turns instantly red with 1st degree burns. If the shower was just 6" wider I would have been in the clear, but no, the stall was too small to get out of the way of the hellish water. Still not quite in conscious control of my faculties, my less burnt hand was trying to slap the hot water knob off but my Ninja reflexes took over once again with a mighty leap through the volcanic pumice storm of a shower and through the curtain to the safety of anywhere but the shower. All this while swearing in what probably was the Klingon tongue, "Q'uer Bach, Blurgh!!" which is translated, "I'll eviscerate the entire family of the person who dared designed this blasted ship's damn bathroom!" (imperitive-reflexive tense). Well, I had misjudged the required speed to clear the shower and my feet hit the wet and highly polished deck of the bathroom with a lot of inertia still. Like a surfing, plucked sunburned and cussing chicken I sailed right across the bathroom into the stall across from mine. Background of the other stall's occupant: I'll call him Larry. Larry was a broad and muscular lad with a penchant for chewing tobacco and almost pathological homophobia. Put yourself in his shoes! You are absolutely, positively not gay, and you say so quite frequently. You wake up in a cold sweat some nights screaming, "But I'm not GAAAYY!" OK, last part is an exaggeration, but not far off. And then, Naked yelling person JUMPS YOU while you are most vulnerable, and most UN-GAY, while he's wearing YOUR translucent shower curtain. I have never heard someone say "What the F__K!" so loudly in my life. I'm a sailor, that's saying something! His instincts came into play at this point pushing me, burned and wearing his shower curtain out of his heterosexual ego-boundary out and onto the floor. Yes, I did get AIR on this one, 'least a foot's worth. In any other circumstance I would have taken offense at being dropped thusly, but at this time I noticed how wonderfully COOL and REFRESHING the sticky, slightly muddy floor of our shower room was after being burned over 90% of my body. Yes it smelt of the balls of a thousand men, but Oh MY Goooodnesss was it sooo luxuriously not scalding! Though I had about five people looking down at the floor at this fetally positioned moron in the floor expecting an explanation I was content just to lay there. Later on I was medically treated for burns, some of them second degree, but at that moment the best place to be was curled up and happy: on the nastiest but coolest floor you could luxuriate upon. Every time I remember this I just crack up. |
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| What can be done? |
[Sep. 4th, 2005|12:00 pm] |
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I worry about my neighborhood. Since I've moved here my car's been broken into twice, I've been mugged and threatened on other occasions. Every couple of months some kind of violence gets played out in front of my apartment. Gunfire is rare, but shouldn't ever happen on our street. If nothing changes, it is inevitable that my wife or my daughter is the one who will be victimized. My parents taught me to not get involved in other people's problems because you will only get hurt. Besides, "Its better them than you." I'm starting to believe that my parents are wrong on this matter. What I wrestle with is answering, "What can be done?" Calling the cops is just a formality. What happens outside my window will be long over by the time the police arrive. Should I have a baseball bat by my door and go outside swinging every timesomebody gets into trouble? That's what I feel I should do in the moment but I'm just standing there, not doing anything about it. Guns are out for defence in our location because any gunfire has people downrange, this ain't Montana. Is there something that we can do as a neighborhood that would make this nonsense stop, once and for all? |
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| What's so damn funny? |
[Sep. 1st, 2005|09:02 pm] |
The most innocuous thing on my mind right now is "What's Funny" to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) namesnotbruce. If you recognize my screen name you'll know one thing I think is funny: Monty Python's Flying Circus. The "Star Trek" movies have some comical moments in them that always get a chuckle even though the overall quality can be quite low. The Mike Judge film "Office Space" got me going pretty good the last time I saw it. When I feel like I'm a character that is the butt of dramatic irony, that's funny. I find that mechanical devices that blow up dramatically without hurting anyone to be pretty funny (face it, I've not grown out of that prepubescnet facination). Prepubescent-that's a funny word. "The Simpsons," pretty much the whole darn series. Every time I see/hear a prarie dog yipping, that cracks me up. Also funny: parrots that talk, dogs that skateboard, babies that try breastfeed when their mom is trying to do something completely unrelated to breastfeeding (natural sadism?). Getting tickled (natural masochism). Sex can be funny, especially when trying to play off like a bout flatulance didn't occur, but that breaks down wonderfully when you know eachother so well that its obvious that you both are trying to ignore it. Though I recognize the beauty and power of its simple design, the iPod MP3 player strikes me as funny, especially when I see that every other person in a row of hundreds of Hip City Folk are wearing them. Hot-Air hand dryers that don't work, 'cause you know everyone leaving the restroom is trying to dry their hands on their pants (as a man, I'll let any women reading that only about 1 out of 3 guys leaving public restrooms actually wash their hands-not funny). Laughing at one's self is hilarious. I think I'll tell a true story next time that I think is hilarious. It involves 2 soapy guys, hot water, and a pretty unfortunate misunderstanding. |
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| Introduction: |
[Aug. 30th, 2005|04:46 pm] |
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When I begin any project, no matter how small, I get the feeling I'll never finish it. That comes in part from historical precedent, part from my own insecurities. With a 'blog I don't see myself sitting down every day and making an entry like clockwork. I am impressed with some of the archives compiled by Live Journal members stretching back all the way to 2001. By starting this blog I've decided to not concern myself with regular entries. If it turns out that way, cool. If not, cool. I don't even have a purpose for it at all. Maybe I'll express some undiscovered exhibitionism, or maybe something else. I think the primary purpose today is fairness. I've read other blogs today without contributing one of my own. Something about that is just too unbalanced. |
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