Merry Christmas!

Ho Ho Ho! All the best to one and all.

Thanks for the reminder, Rat

From Pearls Before Swine.

One Year Left Everybody!

Wikipedia: 2012 phenomenon

Yep, one year from today, the world will end. This is the time I've been anticipating my whole life, ever since I heard about this stuff from my mom when I was a kid. She let me read her copy of "Chariots of the Gods", and knew all sorts of stuff about the Mayans, and inspired me to read more about it. (Dang, wish I knew where that book was now; I don't have it)

Now, what do I REALLY think will happen next year? Nothing out of the ordinary. The sun will rise, the sun with set, and the earth will keep flying through space just as it has for billions of years. Although, hopefully, there's some small chance that Ron Paul would be President-Elect at the time.

This is Not Good

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer

After reading through this article, I think I believe the Iranians. I don't know everything about how the GPS spoofing problem works, but the sort of vulnerability that the Iranians claim they took advantage of makes sense. And, they have the drone, intact. What doesn't make sense is how our guys knew about this but did not design around it.

The Iranians are not idiots. Neither are any of the other peoples around the world. Yeah, their countries suck, smell bad, and aren't as nice and pretty as the U.S. or Europe, but that doesn't mean they are stupid. "White Man's Burden" led us to think we're smarter than the rest of the world. That is not true, we (Europeans) just got to the modern level before everyone else, thanks to the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. We forget that the Romans and the Greeks were not the only advanced ancient civilizations either, and that much of European advancement came after exposure to the Chinese thanks to Marco Polo. Given that, it should not surprise us that the yellow, brown, and black men of the world are able to catch up.

So is Ron Paul naive to think that we should deal with Iran and not "pre-emptively" strike them to "prevent" them from nuking up? Or do we want to start World War III?

A WW3 in which our GPS guided munitions are redirected to fall on our own heads...

Here Come the Ron Paul Attacks

The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : The Ron Paul Newsletters
Reason.com: Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters? (from 2008)

There were some newsletters written by Lew Rockwell for a Ron Paul newsletter in the late 80s and early 90s which are arguably racist. Dr. Paul claims to have not written these things, but no, I don't think a full and satisfactory explanation has been made of this issue, or at least one that will stand up to presidential-campaign-media scrutiny. I don't believe he is racist. I've been listening to his speeches on podcasts, and he doesn't even get into race. But it will be instructive to see how he responds to this.

Pot, Meet Kettle

Vladimir Putin lashes out at America for killing Gaddafi and backing protests - Telegraph
Is it just me, or did Pooty-Poot have some plastic surgery?

In a ferocious verbal tirade broadcast on state TV that lasted more than four and a half hours, the Russian prime minister made it clear he was determined to return to the Russian presidency next year, scornfully dismissing recent demonstrations against him.

"I know that students were paid some money - well, that's good if they could earn something," he said, referring to the biggest protest of its kind since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union last Saturday.

Facing down the biggest challenge of his almost twelve years in power, the Russian strong man insisted that the disputed parliamentary election which triggered the protests was not flawed, rejecting calls for a re-run outright.

"It properly reflected the real balance of power in the country," he said during a live televised question and answer session that has become an annual tradition. "As for the fairness or unfairness: the opposition will always say the elections were not fair. Always. This happens everywhere, in all countries." Repeatedly accusing his domestic critics and opponents of taking money from the West to do him down, he claimed there was a plot to destabilise Russia by effecting a velvet revolution there.

"There is a well-tested scheme to destabilise society," he said.

Well tested by your very own KGB!!!

It's well known that the many of the protests and protest groups in the U.S. during the 1960s were funded by the Soviets, with the express purpose to destabilize our society and weaken us from within! And now we have those very same protestors running our government!

Turnabout is fair play, Vlad.

I Am Doing Something Wrong

Another year, another average rating at work. This year, I agree with the rating. I moved to a new program and have been working a lot of tasks that I haven't done before. Given my inexperience with some of these things, I didn't do a wonderful outstanding job on them, but I did pretty good. I think I'm getting better.

But dadgummit, what do I have to do?

And why do I stay where I am?

The second answer is that I want the chance to work on the kind of projects that aerospace engineers work on. It's still exciting to me to know that what I work on will be launched into space and work up there for years doing whatever, and to know that I helped build it. So that's the biggest reason I put up with all the crap that goes along with working for my employer.

Also, there's the pension. Now, will that pension be there in 25 years for me to collect on it?

The first answer? I have no f-ing idea. No matter what I've done, how I've been recognized by the customer, how many people I've replaced in doing a job, or how vital my work was to getting the thing (whatever it was) to work, all I ever am is a "Successful Contributor".

They say they want "results". I give them results. They say they want this, they say they want that. I give them those things. They give me a crap sandwich and send me back to my cubicle.

I take it because they pay me every Friday and thanks to the tropical storm ten years ago and some medical expenses since then, I'm in debt and trying to get out. We're making progress but I'm not there yet. And, "AT LEAST I HAVE A JOB".

Screw it. I have got to figure out something else to do.

Stupid Anti-Christian Attack

Run by Tebow, Broncos gets harder to explain

OK, first, Tim Tebow is awesome. Go Broncos!

Second,

I believe we have evolved from apes. I believe in dinosaurs. I also believe the earth was created from debris surrounding the sun that clumped together into a spherical shape. And I believe it all happened in more than seven days.

But I also believe in Tim Tebow because there is no scientific explanation for what is happening to the Denver Broncos. There is no other plausible way to make sense of these games and the amazing, miraculous way with which they win week after week. Not the victory at Miami or the last-second beating of the New York Jets and certainly not Sunday afternoon when the Denver Broncos and Tebow were wretched for more than 55 minutes and somehow won a game that can’t rationally be analyzed.

It just happened.

See what you have done, all you "Young Earth Creationists" out there? You have turned the belief in the literal Genesis account of creation into such a doctrinal issue that people reject the Bible and the Gospels based on that alone! So now, all Christians are seen as stupid because they are assumed to all be YEC'ers.

Well, Mr. Carpenter of Yahoo! Sports, you don't have to reject all those things in the first paragraph to be a Christian. Well, you have to reject the first sentence, but then again science has NO PROOF of human evolution from apes, all they have are skeletons of humans and apes that look sort of kind of like they may have "evolved" from each other. Then they make up stories about all of this to make it fit into their desired narrative.

Instead of just prattling on about this here myself, I'll point the interested reader to:
God and Science.org: Old Earth Creationism Science and Theology

Fun with Alpha Game

For a few months now, Vox Day has been writing about his socio-sexual hierarchy theories at Alpha Game. It's very interesting and I truly believe that what he writes about is pretty much spot on. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but I am learning a lot.

In the Vox hierarchy, I believe that I am a Delta, and that when I was a kid, I was a Gamma. The change came in high school, when I got contact lenses and started slimming down a bit, and also went to a different high school than most of my classmates in middle school did. As Vox would put it, I starting displaying higher value (DHV) without even realizing it. But, I was far from Alpha.

I actually managed to catch Mrs. Astro by unknowingly using some PUA techniques, but that's another story.

Today, we took the family down to get haircuts. We have a friend who's a hairdresser, and it's easy to take the whole crew every 1.5-2 months to her to get our hair cut at the same time. And when the conversation came around to hair length while she was cutting my older daughter's hair, I mentioned the following from Alpha Game: Scientifically Sexy and The Hair Equivalent of Obese. All I said was that a study had shown that short hair on a woman was the equivalent in loss of attractiveness to thirty extra pounds of weight.

Ha! It was like a minor bomb went off in there. I didn't really mean for the other women to overhear me, but they did. A (heavier) lady getting her hair cut almost shoulder length was all like, "Is my hair OK?" Oh man.

Maintaining what I hoped was an alpha composure, I assured the lady that she looked great and her hair wasn't what I would consider short. Mrs. Astro was embarrassed a bit ("only -my- husband would say such a thing in a hair salon"), but I didn't even think of offering an apology for the comment. I got to watch as the ladies all considered the truth of the statement for a bit.

Later, I told Mrs. Astro that those women might think I was a jerk, but they will remember me, and perhaps they will either grow their hair out or lose a few pounds, all to the benefit of their husbands and boyfriends. You're welcome, guys.

Now, as for whether or not it's "alpha" to get your hair cut in a hair salon, I don't really care what y'all think. I'm a delta anyways.

Yes, They Are Going Through With It!

NASA clears SpaceX for trial run to space station | Reuters

Best of luck and Godspeed to the SpaceX guys!

Many years ago (20 or so), I tried my hand briefly at writing opinion pieces for the Daily Texan, the student newspaper at UT. I didn't last long, because my writing wasn't that great and I wasn't as interested in it as others were. But I did write one piece about how I believed that space exploration needed private enterprises to take over to get things done. I recall being in a class with Hans Mark and him making some dismissive remark about the concept. If you know who Dr. Mark is, you will know that he is firmly in the "only government can do space" camp.

Well, Dr. Mark, I hope you're watching when SpaceX docks their privately developed space capsule at the Space Station. All while NASA's Orion program is still in development tests. Yes, Orion will work wonderfully, when it finally flies in the next few years. But Dragon will work as well. It depends on if you want a Chevy or a Lamborghini. Both will get you where you're going, but one is a heck of a lot cheaper.

Ha!

I was looking through Dr. Mark's wikipedia page and found this quote: "You know you're old when things that you were a part of, end up in a museum." I used that one recently and thought that I came up with it, but perhaps I did not.

Asteroids

Waterboy, I saw your comment at Vox's about a possible asteroid impact being kept quiet. Do you have any links or other data?

FEMA Camps For Real?

This is the banned episode of Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory TV show, where he talks about FEMA Camps, government information centers, and a few other things. It was only aired once, before the U.S. government persuaded the TruTV network to take it off the air. It can still be found online, though.

Now, why was it banned? I thought that perhaps it was banned because they embarrassed the Tennessee congressman who is interviewed by Governor Ventura in the show. But yesterday, supposedly it has come out that there are contracts being put out to hire people to run the "FEMA Camps" all over the country.

Interesting.

Whoops

TV Stunt Goes Awry, Sends Cannonball Rocketing Through Homes

Wow, talk about luck. Adam and Jamie and the rest of the Mythbusters team should count their lucky stars that nobody was injured or killed by this screwup. I would say that they should thank God as well, but they don't believe in God.