The next human epoch

Meet Lilly, a french robotics technician who 3D printed this anthropomorphic robot herself, then fell in love with it(him). They've been "cohabitating" for a year and she intends to marry it when human/robot marriage becomes legal. Apparently she has some mental disorder by which intimate contact with male human flesh makes her skin crawl so this is her refuge.

I'm kind of surprised that this story isn't from those robot-obsessed weirdos in Japan. Still, objectophilic marriages are probably not that far off, especially as A.I. improves to the point that the human/robot line becomes more blurred and reproductive options become more technological and less traditional.

When this happens, I think it'll mark the beginning of a new epoch on the timeline of human experience in our, pardon the expression, brave new world.

F4's to be retired after 50 years of service

Regular reader Dave gave me this heads-up. After 50 years of service, the last McDonnell/Douglas F4-Phantom in the US inventory will be retired in Alamagordo today. It is still in service in allied countries but the US will not be flying it.

It was THE cold-war workhorse aircraft for the AF, even though it started out as a Navy platform.

Shortly after I joined the Georgia Air Guard in 1980, we got a squadron of F-4's at Dobbins.....one of them is pictured here.

As a weapons loader, working under that plane was the worst job in the AF, but it was an honor to work on an airplane that served the US military for so long.

Local news graphics interns are funny

This is a screen-cap from the local B'ham news this morning. Apparently the new forensic term for a body found with the head and other parts removed is "dismantled".

Heh heh, maybe the underqualified graphics intern was thinking of "dismembered".

"Dismantled" will describe Obama's legacy when Trump is through with it.



 

Finally, Blade Runner II

YES, finally! In a Hollywood world where sequels and prequels abound limitlessly, the one sequel I've been waiting for, for 35 years, of the best film noir, sci-fi flick of all time. 

              

British movies have diversity minimums, when will America follow?

The British version of the US's Motion Picture Academy has announced a new policy that prevents any film or TV show from receiving its award unless its cast is sufficiently diverse. With the Oscars in the US being under fire for not nominating any blacks for two years in a row, I wonder when they'll announce their diversity policy.

Not that I pay attention to awards anyway(I never agree with self-appointed "critics" of movies, books, music, food, or whatever) or ever watch the horrible awards shows, but I guess all American movies whose creators aspire to win an Oscar must soon feature at least three actors of the following list.....black, Hispanic, gay, handicapped, female, tranny, senior citizen, vegan, Muslim, atheist, or little person, or it won't be qualified for an award.

They think it's hard getting people out to the movies now, wait until "Saving Private Ryan" includes a female vegan with a peg-leg in the fox hole complaining about the meal rations. 

Learn the difference between rigging and influencing an election

Ok, so in the media and even on Fox News, people are confusing "election rigging" with "election influencing". They're not the same.

There is no way anybody rigged the election. Because not even one voting machine is online, rigging the election would mean a person physically altering the programming of the voting machinery on-site, at many sites, one at a time. Ridiculous.

What definitely happened is that somebody, maybe the Russians, Chinese, or fed-up democrat operative, did hack the DNC emails and hand them over to Wikileaks, who then went public with them. That's not rigging an election, that's influencing an election.

In this case the election was influenced by the truth about democrat-party machinery, casual security, and an e-mail account of guy named Weiner.

Hillary is just pissed that the truth kept her from bamboozling the American electorate into installing her into the presidency. Tell me, how is more truth worse than less truth when it comes to politics?

Putin to Obama, put up or shut up

Hahahaha......through a spokesman yesterday, Vlad Putin basically told whiny American democrats and media who're accusing Russia of the Wiki e-mail hacks that exposed dark truths about Hillary's campaign staff, to prove it or shut up!

Obama responded ominously and laughably by saying that "impacting the integrity of American elections would result in action by the US at a time and place of our choosing".

Really? Russia is prehistorically analog by comparison to our total dependence on the Interwebs. We would lose badly in a digital tit-for-tat with Russia....not a good idea.

It's how the world works, get over it

The hypocrisy of democrats, who faint with the vapors over Putin's supposed meddling against Hillary in our election, is as shameful as it is transparent.

When Israel's Netanyahu was running for re-election, Obama sent a team from his original election staff and a ton of State Dept. money to Israel, specifically to defeat him, as payback for his addressing our Congress against his(Obama) wishes.

No doubt the US meddles, to one degree or another, in every election around the world in which we feel we have a stake. Is there anybody naive enough to not believe that a prime directive of the CIA is to influence foreign elections to get an outcome favorable to the US?

How arrogant of us to believe that we are so morally superior that it's OK for us to influence the elections in other countries but feign outrage when it happens to us.

Besides, Russia hacking DNC e-mails only exposed the truth about democrats that we've long known or suspected. The democrats are just embarrassed that they got caught and are deflecting their outrage onto the hackers. Heh heh, who cares?

The US used to be a manufacturing juggernaut, Trump's bringing that back

By trying to get companies not to relocate production to Mexico, China, or elsewhere, Trump isn't "picking winners and losers" in an otherwise free market, as he is being criticized for.

The US doesn't compete in a free market, through heavy taxation and ridiculous regulations, US companies cannot compete at all with companies in other nations with virtually no regulations and very low tax and wage burdens.

I think Trump is merely saying, "don't leave until I can make the business environment here in the US competitive with other countries in the global, open-border economy."
 

And if the threat of tarrifs gets their attention, good. When the taxes are reduced, right-to-work laws are passed in each state, onerous regulations are rolled back, the domestic energy industry is revived, and trade deals are entered into such that there is actually the semblance of a free global market, THEN and only then will US companies be competing on a level playing field.

As a free-market guy who left the GOP because of the bailouts and the notion of "too big to fail", I don't have a problem with that.

Trump and I are A-OK with his plans to repatriate US businesses.

 

Hollywood still doesn't get it

Sally Field whined to Chelsea Handler about the outcome of the election saying she wants to know what Trump voters are thinking. Among the things Sally doesn't understand are.......

-“I want to know why they voted for this man who does not stand for anything.”

-“I don’t understand why they call this a democracy and yet the people are not getting the representation that they voted for.”

Doesn't stand for anything? He stands for lowering personal and business taxes, halting illegal immigration, making better trade deals with our partners, streamlining the tax code, destroying ISIS, improving national infrastructure, building up the military, not cowing to our enemies, etc, etc, etc.

As for this being a democracy, take a 4th-grade civics class, Sally. We are a representative, constitutional republic, not a democracy. You're an adult and should understand the difference. 

You're a terrific actress Sally, try sticking to that instead of politics.....oh, and get used to that perplexed expression, if you don't get by now why regular Americans voted for Trump, you probably never will.

Trump thumbs his nose once again at the establishment

Can anybody name the president of Taiwan?

Me neither.

Meet Tsai Ing-wen, the current president of the independent state of Taiwan. The reason nobody knows her, or any Taiwanese president for that matter, is that the US officially only recognizes the one-China paradigm in which Taiwan is a province and will eventually, through hostile military action, be reabsorbed into the Chinese collective, despite Taiwan having functioned as a free republic since at least 1971.

I don't understand why we are kissing China's butt regarding Taiwan. Taiwan ranks 10th on the list of US trading partners. They buy billions in military hardware from us, specifically to resist the Chinese threat to their sovereignty. Additionally, [Taiwan is the 21st-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, and human development.]-Wiki. All of which are incompatible with the Chinese communists.

Establishment types are upset today that Trump accepted a congratulatory call from President Ing-wen. No US president has had official communication with the Taiwanese president to keep from hurting China's feelings on the matter.

What is China going to do, increase the price of rubber dog crap sold in the US? We should officially recognize Taiwan, I've always assumed we had, as a nation state, independent from China.....and Trump is the president to do it.

There's a revolutionary right here in Hoover

I just learned that there's an actual revolutionary living right here in Hoover, and I've bought nails and screws from him.

Meet Gustavo Diaz, a 60 year old former colonel in the Venezuelan army. He was part of the failed coup attempt in 2002 of Hugo Chavez. For that crime, he and his familly fled Venezuela, requested political asylum, and are now citizens right here in Hoover, Alabama where he works at the Home Depot where I shop every week.

Mr Diaz operates in his spare time, DollarToday.com, a web site that essentially sets the real daily exchange rates on the street in Venezuela between bolivars and US dollars, not only allowing the real-time exchange of black-market US dollars, but defining the daily prices for virtually everything in the crumbling Venezuela. By letting people get around strict government currency controls, this web site creates a tremendous instability in the socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro, making Gustavo public enemy numero uno to the regime of Maduro.

Diaz is as surprised as anybody that he's able to do far more to topple the regime of Maduro and his corrupt government with a computer here in Hoover, than he could as part of a revolutionary coup d'etat.

I think that's pretty cool. Kids should be wearing Gustavo Diaz on their T-shirts instead of Che Guevera