True Anomaly

Weird Noises

2012-01-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

What are they? Mysterious unexplained noises now being reported across the globe

There are several videos on this page where people have recorded weird sounds in differnet locations around the world, yet they all sound similar. I haven't heard anything like this, but my sister-in-law claims to have heard weird sounds in the middle of the night down in Dallas.

Wonder what they are hearing?

Why I Support Ron Paul

2012-01-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

Vox Day: 10 Years Later...
Once again, Vox sums it up perfectly.

I'll embed that video here later, that shows how Ron Paul's 2002 predictions have come about in the last ten years. The only one that can arguably said to not have come about is the one about interest rates going higher, but that's only because the Federal Reserve keeps the rates artificially low. If the rates were set by market forces, they would definitely be higher than they are now. I suppose Dr. Paul temporarily forgot that the rates are not set by market forces when he made this five minute speech.

Climate Science Doublespeak

2012-01-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

Sea ice down under: Antarctic ice and climate « Icelights: Your Burning Questions About Ice & Climate

One reason that we hear less about Antarctic sea ice than Arctic sea ice is that it varies more from year to year and season to season than its northern counterpart. And while Arctic ice has declined precipitously over the past thirty years of the satellite record, average Antarctic sea ice extent has stayed the same or even grown slightly.
...
Overall, Antarctic sea ice has grown slightly over the past thirty years of the satellite record, but the trends are very small, and the ice extent varies a lot from year to year. In Southern Hemisphere winter months, ice extent has increased by around one percent per decade. In the summer, ice has increased by two to three percent per decade, but the variation is larger than the trend.
...
Stammerjohn and other scientists say that declining sea ice around the Antarctic Peninsula probably helps destabilize continental ice in that area by allowing the air above the ocean in that region to warm more than before. These continental ice areas are shrinking and therefore contributing to sea level rise. Stammerjohn said, “Though it is true that, on average, Antarctic sea ice is not changing, or even slightly increasing, the overall average hides a very large regional decrease that could have global consequences.”

Um, what?

So the ice in the Antarctic is increasing, and this is indicative of a DECREASE that "could have global consequences"?

What a bunch of hacks. It must be time for putting in the next research grant. I don't really blame the guy, because if I got to be a scientist in Antarctica, I'd want money to stay there too.

Busy Year

2012-01-13T07:41:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the light posting, but I've been really busy since getting back to work after New Year's, and just don't have the time to spend here. I'm only posting right now because I'm fixing to take our little (not so little anymore) puppy to the vets to have his operation. Sure hope that calms him down. He's a great little dog, but he can get really hyper, and we're all tired of him biting and chewing stuff. Just two days ago, he chewed up Mrs. Astro's glasses!

Anyway, hope everyone (Res, WB, who else reads this?) is doing well. Go Ron Paul! I'm planning on going to the caucuses on Feb. 7 to vote for Dr. Paul, so we'll see how that works.

UPDATE: the dog is doing fine; just had to put the Cone of Shame on him before going to bed.

And A Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T10:10:00.003-07:00

Been watching that thing drop on New Year's Eve as long as I can remember. It's still kind of weird to have it happen at 10PM local instead of 11PM local, having grown up in Texas.Is it just me, or all those people absolutely crazy for standing there in Times Square for hours and hours just to be there at midnight? That whole spectacle holds no attraction for me whatsoever.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T14:44:00.001-07:00

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

Thanks for the reminder, Rat

2011-12-22T10:20:00.003-07:00

From Pearls Before Swine.

One Year Left Everybody!

2011-12-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-16T08:57:00.001-07:00

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

2011-12-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-12-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-09T16:45:00.001-07:00

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?

2011-12-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-12-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

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.

Yeah, That Will Work

2011-11-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Medvedev threatens criminal penalties for space officials

Russian President Dmitry Medevedev has suggested officials should be punished for recent failures in the country's space program.

Medvedev told reporters financial, disciplinary, or criminal charges could be used to punish those responsible for a series of rocket crashes and space blunders.

Speaking to Russian journalists Saturday, Medevedev said the failures have dealt a "serious blow to our competitiveness," according to a transcript of the question-and-answer session posted on the Kremlin's website.

Earlier this month, Russia's $165 million Phobos-Grunt Mars probe was stranded in Earth orbit. Russia's workhorse rockets have also suffered four mishaps in the last 12 months, resulting in the loss of satellites and a resupply ship for the International Space Station.

"This is not a fatal blow, but it does mean that we are going to have to make a thorough examination of the situation and punish those responsible," Medvedev said.

Yep, that is a great way to keep your engineers and techs from making mistakes: threaten them with criminal prosecution! And they won't make mistakes, because they will quit working for you.

The beatings WILL continue until morale, and performance, improves.

Sure It Did, Comrade

2011-11-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

Did US climate weapon knock-out Russian probe

It sure couldn't have been that the Russian propulsion system was a piece of crap.

Great Stuff

2011-11-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Ann Barnhardt's Blog
First, read the posts she wrote about why she's closing up shop in her cattle futures trading business.

Then scroll down and keep reading her indictment of Penn State and the Sandusky situation.

And best post (so far) is the "We the Whipped". I can't help but think that she's talking to me in this one. We don't only have the example of Thomas Jefferson to follow here, but I have a Revolutionary War ancestor who was murdered (executed for 'treason') by the British in 1781. He had a family, he had wealth, but he put it all on the line to fight against the Brits.

I Think I Hate These Guys

2011-11-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar Series

I've been listening to these podcasts for a while now. There's a class at Stanford in entrepreneurship, and once a week during the session, they invite different entrepreneurs to come in and talk to the class about their experiences and stuff. It's very interesting, and if you are at all interested in the entrepreneurial world, you can pick up a lot of good background from these lectures. I have to give Stanford a lot of credit here, because they make this sort of stuff available to anyone over the internet.

But...

I have come to realize that these people live in a completely different world. They give the impression that everyone at Stanford has some little business going on the side while they are going to class and working on their degree. Now, most of these little businesses they try to build fail, yet they don't seem too concerned about it. They just learn from it, pick themselves up and move on.

What the heck are these people doing to eat and pay their bills? Are they all from wealthy families such that daddy's paying their way through Stanford, and they can afford to fail at a few little business ventures while they're there? I mean, the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to live in the whole country, yet these guys are there and aren't worried about money.

This attitude is so foreign to me. Money is one of the foremost things on my mind. I work so that I can feed my family and pay my bills. If they didn't pay me, I wouldn't be here, I'd be somewhere else that would pay me. I can't afford to not worry about money enough to go off and try to create some business, have it fail, start over, and repeat that cycle until I have a success. How can these people do this?

Global Warming: Not the Real Concern

2011-11-17T08:42:00.001-07:00

Vostok Station Ice Core Data

What does that chart look like to you? Are we due for more warming, or are we about to enter another of those 100,000 year ice age periods? Look at the red line; that's the temperature.

Here's what I think about this: we don't understand the Sun's behavior over long term cycles, because we've only been looking at it through modern eyes for ~500 years, and we only have tons of data about it for a few decades now. The Sun is the primary driving factor behind temperatures on Earth. The data above tells me that there is some sort of regular cycle going on and we are about to enter a low temperature period, and there is nothing we can do about it.

We also don't understand the impact of the solar system's position in the galaxy, and how that affects the amount of cosmic rays that hit our atmosphere as we move into and out of areas that are more or less dense.

In fact, there are so many things about the Earth's climate that we don't understand yet that I believe it to be the height of hubris to blame global temperatures on one minor element of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide. And the only way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide is to stop all modern industrial activity. The world operates on energy, and that energy leads to carbon emissions. Why cut back on them when they aren't the cause of anything? In fact, if they did lead to increased greenhouse effect (and I don't believe that it does), that's probably a GOOD thing, in that it might stave off the cooling trend indicated by the data above.

UPDATE:
Green Pillage and Plunder

Carbon dioxide plays no role whatever in “heating up” the Earth. In terms of the Earth’s atmosphere, it is a miniscule 0.038%. The rest is mostly water vapor. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is equivalent to one penny out of $100.00.
Volcanic eruptions produce more CO2 than human-related activity and there are at least twenty such eruptions from active volcanoes occurring as you read this.
If you shut down all the power plants, all the factories, all the bakeries, all commerce, the only result would be the destruction of the economy. Similarly, if you thwarted all coal, natural gas, and oil production, the agenda of the current administration, the only effect would be to render millions without jobs and without the capacity to turn on the lights or heat their homes.
Carbon dioxide is vital to all life on Earth because no vegetation can exist without it.

What did I post earlier today?

Dilemma of an Honest Man

2011-11-17T07:02:00.001-07:00

We had to take Mrs. Astro's truck in to get the fuel pump replaced after our trip to Montana in October. While we were up there, the truck started having trouble starting. We made it back home fine, but I was worried every time I had to stop the engine that it wouldn't come back on.

It's under warranty, so I took it to the dealer and they fixed it. It was covered, and they said I had to pay a $100 deductible. OK, sounds fine to me; that's better than paying for the whole thing.

Then 3 weeks later I get a $100 refund check in the mail from them, since, as it turns out, there was no deductible on the warranty coverage. Cool.

Well, this week, I get ANOTHER check for $100 from them. So I called them up and said, "I think you sent this check to me in error. Could you look up my account and see if I was supposed to get it or not?" And the girl says, "Well, I know you're trying to be super-honest and all, but if it was me, I would just cash the check." I asked her still to look it up and get back to me. This was Monday afternoon, and I haven't heard back.

So what would you do? I do not believe that $100 should be mine, I believe they made a mistake. Should I deposit the money? Should I call the dealer management to suggest that their accounting folks might be more careful with the company's money?

UPDATE:
Got a call from the dealer, it turns out that a lady in accounting made a mistake, in that she put TWO checks to me in the system instead of one, and this mistake was made before she left to be out for a few days. She was glad that this one mistake was noticed by me and reported to them, and asked that I shred the check and they would stop payment on their side.

So, I'm not $100 richer, but I certainly feel better about it.

Grinch Goes Too Far

2011-11-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

Cancer center's Santa gets boot

This is just sad. A guy can't dress up as Santa to go visit a bunch of kids with cancer in the hospital so that NO ONE GETS OFFENDED?!?!?!? Who in the heck is going to be offended by SANTA CLAUS for crying out loud!

Santa Claus isn't even technically "Christian" any more, he's become part of the generally accepted American holiday culture. The Christian Saint Nicholas maybe the foundation of the American Santa Claus myth, but decades of commercialization and stop motion animated TV shows have turned him into an icon.

When are people going to stand up to and stop this crap?

We are losing our American culture to a bunch of nanny statists who want to replace it with NOTHING! It's time to start offending them, and stop kowtowing to them.

Odd Lefty Attack on Ron Paul

2011-11-14T21:02:00.004-07:00

You Might Be A Ron Paul Supporter If...
Well this is surprising. Some crazy leftist website has bothered to compile a bunch of points that they use against Dr. Paul, I suppose to try to dissuade people on the left from thinking about supporting him. Dr. Paul should have some appeal to those who are left of center, as his libertarian ideals are shared by them. But I doubt it's enough to swing the results either way.

Anyway, here's my response to the 21 points in this article:

1. You’ve never researched Ron Paul’s voting record.
Paul's voting record can be found here or here or here. As for the parts of his voting record that I am familiar with, I'm pretty happy with it. It's going to be impossible to agree with 100% of any politician's voting record. But I know that Dr. Paul tries to make his votes based on his understanding of the Constitution. He doesn't just vote one way because the GOP or some donor wants him to vote that way. You could count on one hand the congressmen that take this sort of approach.

2. You think it’s OK for businesses to discriminate against people based on their race, since Ron Paul thinks the Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional.
The Civil Rights Act is many things, both good and bad, and part of it would arguably be unconstitutional. Now, as for businesses being able to discriminate or not based on anything: what gives the government the right to dictate that sort of thing? What about the right of free association? I imagine that Dr. Paul would say that the marketplace would take care of such things. If discriminating based on race is bad for business, then a business that did not discriminate would win out over one that did. Also...think for a moment. Why did the states pass laws that put discrimination in place, if there weren't people who were willing to NOT discriminate?

In all honesty, Dr. Paul talks about freedom and liberty, for ALL people, regardless of race or whatever. Trying to call him racist because he believes that the CRA is partially unconstitutional is unfair without examining why.

Well, we can go to his own writing: The Trouble with the '64 Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.
Sounds about right to me.

3. You’re a supporter of the white supremacist organization StormFront.org, which has repeatedly endorsed and stated their support for Ron Paul.
Seriously? Just because a bunch of stupid skinheads support a particular politician, it doesn't automatically mean that the politician is a skinhead. I'm sure that Hitler liked puppies, does that mean that I can't like puppies?

4. You don’t care that Ron Paul was the ONLY congressman who voted against granting subpoena power to the independent panel responsible for investigating the BP oil spill.
Let's see what he says about that vote: Why I Voted Against Giving Subpoena Power to Obama’s BP Commission
Are you sure those commissions were set up by executive order, or could they have been set up by the Congress? Usually these commissions are set up by the Congress. My objection is to the process. I am very concerned about giving the executive branch too much power. If the Congress had set up the commission, that would have been a different story. But this was done by executive order and it is a blank check, and I just do not think that is the process. We should be very, very cautious of giving subpoena power to Congress or to a commission.
Again, sounds good to me.

5. You don’t like clean air and water, since Ron Paul wants to eliminate the EPA.
To want to eliminate the EPA is not to be against clean air and water. This accusation is completely ridiculous, because we all have to breathe air and drink water, and no one in their right minds wants pollution. The problem with the EPA, like all federal agencies, is that it has become a behemoth of bureaucracy and serves to kill jobs and prevent economic development and growth. We can't build coal power plants because coal is dirty, we can't use natural gas, we can't use wind because the windmills kill birds and bats, we can't use nuclear because we're scared of it, etc etc etc. The EPA is regulating the amount of dust that farmers can kick up when they work their land. The EPA is putting people in jail for moving soil around on their own land. The EPA is strangling our economy!

Ron Paul's energy positions are here: Ron Paul 2012 Energy

6. You don’t want to have a safety net in place, in case your house is destroyed by a tornado, hurricane, or some other natural disaster, since Ron Paul wants to eliminate FEMA.
FEMA is another out of control, worthless agency that leads to malinvestment. Buy your own insurance. If you can't afford it, move somewhere that you can afford it. Don't build your house in a floodplain. Don't live in a city that is below sea level and gets hurricanes.

Seriously, do people want government to blow their noses and wipe their bottoms for them?

7. You think all schools should be private, and that you should have to pay for your children to get an education, since Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education.
The Dept of Education doesn't do a damn thing to teach kids a single thing. It is a sinkhole for tax revenue to be used to work against the best interests of the American people by indoctrinating their children to be good little workers and consumers. It traps kids in ever increasing student loan debt by giving lenders federal backing for loans, which has led to the continual increases in college costs.

Education should be returned to the local level, with parents involved and in control of their local school boards, using their local tax revenues to fund the public schools without all the federal mandates.

8. You think corporations should be allowed to do whatever they want, because Ron Paul wants to eliminate all regulations on corporations.
This is just crap, because he doesn't want to "eliminate all regulations", just those that don't make sense, are unconstitutional, and/or stifle economic development by causing malinvestments.

Ron Paul 2012: Economy

9. You are anti-choice, since Ron Paul believes that states should have the right to take away a woman’s choice over what she does with her body.
News flash: the baby's body is not the woman's body. However, ending Roe v Wade would return the issue to the states, where it should be, and where states can decide for themselves what their policy would be.

Ron Paul 2012: Abortion

10. You support segregation, since Ron Paul doesn’t think schools should be forced to allow attendance based on race or ethnic background.
See #2 above. Desegregation was not all that wonderful for those who had to live through it. My personal experience has to do with Texas, which had forced desegregation.

11. You support guns on airplanes, since Ron Paul thinks that 9/11 could have been prevented, if citizens were allowed to carry guns on airplanes.
I didn't know that Ron Paul was Archie Bunker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRWqaYdxI_I

12. You oppose equality for LGBT people, since Ron Paul doesn’t think the federal government should guarantee equal protection under the law for our LGBT brothers and sisters.
Ron Paul has some complicated stands on LGBT stuff. Wikipedia has a good summary of them here: Political positions of Ron Paul, sexual orientation legislation

He's for equal protection under the law, but not special protection under the law. He's not for gay marriage, but believes the states should be able to decide such things. He's for DADT, but he wouldn't kick gay service members out of the service just for being gay.

A personal aside from me, though: I'm freaking sick and tired of hearing all the gay stuff all the time from the left. They seem to think that if you don't support every single gay thing that the gays come up with, that you hate them or something. I don't hate them, but I'm sick of all their gay bullcrap all the time. You want to be gay? Fine, be gay. I don't want to hear about it, and I don't want to see you parading around naked or whatever.

13. You don’t have a problem with people carrying guns near schools, since Ron Paul want to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act.
Criminals don't care about gun-free zones.

14. You oppose same-sex marriage, since Ron Paul was an original co-sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act in the House of Representatives, in 2004.
See #12 above. He personally opposes gay marriage, but believes that the issue should be left to the states.

Personally, I think they should be happy with civil unions. There should be a way for two gays to join together in a marriage-like arrangement, without calling it marriage.

15. You don’t like having a good relationship with other countries around the world, since Ron Paul wants the United States to pull out of the United Nations.
The United Nations. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Ron Paul wants to harbor good relationships with other countries on an individual basis, and would move away from the UN and all other forms of global government.

16. You think the middle-class should have a higher tax burden than the wealthy, since Ron Paul’s tax plan would disproportionately favor the rich.
Whatever. You're the 99%, right. Ever get a job from a poor guy? Ever try to get a job? Loser.

17. You want a President who would make more unilateral decisions and undo more progress in this country than George W. Bush could have ever hoped to accomplish.
HA! Dr. Paul would be the best President since Washington when it would come to abiding by the Constitutional limits on his power.

18. You think that poor students shouldn’t be allowed to go to college, since Ron Paul wants to eliminate federal student loans.
Bullcrap. He wants to end federal student loans because they have led to serious malinvestment, a student loan bubble, and ever increasing college costs which are only possible because of all the credit that has been extended thanks to the federal backing and the no-bankruptcy laws!

19. You believe crazy conspiracy theories about globalization, and that the Zionists are trying to take over the world.
See #3 above. Ron Paul is not a crazy CT.

20. You think the 10th Amendment is the most important part of the Bill of Rights, even though it’s last on the list.
They didn't put it in there for nothing, idiot.

21. You’re mad at Obama because you believed him when he said he would end the war immediately, and he didn’t because he didn’t have the support of congress, but you believe Ron Paul could get it done immediately.
Ron Paul would do his best to do what he could within the limits on his power. Obama is just as bought and paid for as anyone ever thought Bush was.

Of course, this doesn't matter because there's no way Dr. Paul is going to be allowed to win the nomination.

Secret History of Western Education

2011-11-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of videos made recently by Alex Jones where he and his crew interviewed Charlotte Iserbyt.

A Funny Thing Happens On the Way to DC

2011-11-11T11:39:00.002-07:00

Ron Paul 2012 Official Campaign Website

Ron Paul "Plan to Restore America"

As mentioned below in the post about Rick Perry being an incompetent fool who should finally be laughed off the GOP presidential candidate stage, Dr. Paul is the ONLY candidate for president who actually means it when he says he wants to cut government. Rick Perry couldn't name the three he wanted to mention, and the other candidates pick a few of their own, but they are all parroting Dr. Paul on this point. There are five Cabinet departments that he wants to cut out completely, and that's just for starters: The Departments of Energy, Commerce, Education, Interior, and HUD. Why? Because they are wasting money that could be better utilized by the private sector and they ALL distort the marketplace leading to serious malinvestments.

This approach is, in my not so humble opinion, the ONLY way to get the federal government budget under control and restore liberty to the American people and to lead to a return to prosperity.

However, it's not like this hasn't been tried before, and it is not highly likely that ANY of Dr. Paul's desired cuts would actually be made. There are two main reasons for this.

First, in 1981, President Reagan moved into the White House and his team was elected on very similar promises. But instead of cutting out five Cabinet departments, there was one in particular that they set out to eliminate: the Dept of Education. This bureaucracy had only been created in 1979, and they thought that it wouldn't be so entrenched yet that they could not root it out. If you ever listen to Mark Levin on the radio, you may have heard his story about what happened when he, as part of the Reagan team sent to Education to kill it, tried to do it. They could not root it out. There were too many interests already involved in maintaining and growing the Dept of Education that they fought every effort to kill it. Before long, the effort of the Reagan administration was no longer to kill it, but to use it to "conservative" ends and "make good use of it". Well, that's fine as long as you have conservatives in charge, but as we all know, most educators at the higher echelons of power are cultural marxists who want to use their power to their own ends. (** See Update note **)

So do we really think that the powers that be that are in control of Dr. Paul's targeted bureaucracies are going to just sit by and let him eliminate them? Heck no. Which brings me to my second point:

Second, imagine Dr. Paul becomes President Paul on January 20, 2013. This would be a great day for America. However, Dr. Paul would be PRESIDENT, not KING or GOD or DICTATOR. He (of all politicians) is keenly aware of the Constitutional limits placed on his power as President and I fully believe that if he were in the office, he would abide by those limits.

So he would be limited to writing his budget which eliminated those departments, and submitting it to Congress. Congress would then make a lot of noise about how his cuts are draconian and terrible and whatever, and ultimately, NO DEPARTMENTS WOULD BE CUT AT ALL. The President is proscribed by law to follow the budgets passed by the Congress, and if Congress says to spend umpteen trillion dollars on whatever, then the President has to spend it.

The BEST we could hope for would be that Dr. Paul would be able to expose the fraud of baseline budgeting and get the Congress to FREEZE spending at 2012 levels for five years. That by itself would get us most of the way to a balanced budget.

The thing I'm worried about though, in reality?

If Dr. Paul ever did make it to the White House, he would end up like John Kennedy. Shoot, he might end up like Bobby Kennedy.

Please pray for Dr. Paul and his family.

UPDATE:
I just remembered who else I have heard speak about what happened in the Reagan Education department: Charlotte Iserbyt, author of "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America". She is a very interesting person and I don't doubt she's telling the truth.

Rick Perry Flubs Again

2011-11-09T21:11:00.003-07:00

Good grief. First, he sounds like he's drunk, and he has sounded that way in all of these debates. Second, he looks over at Dr. Paul as if he's going to out-promise-to-cut-the-government the only man up there who really means it!

I can't believe how crappy the Republican field is this year, except for Dr. Paul. And the media and the political establishment are doing all they can to ignore him and marginalize him.

Obama would be so beatable next year! But not with that bunch of bozos.

Daylight Lost

2011-11-09T16:58:00.001-07:00

I really hate when the Sun has already set when I am leaving work. That means that I spent all the daylight hours inside, and it will be like this for the next four months. Of course, I also hate Daylight Savings Time, but I'd really rather just keep it all year long.

Silly Russians, Mars is for Americans

2011-11-09T11:57:00.001-07:00

Russian Mars mission halted by glitch in low Earth orbit

Whoops. I hope they figure out what went wrong and get Phobos Grunt on its way to Mars. That mission has lots of potential for great conspiracy theory stuff. The thing is supposed to go to the Martian moon Phobos, land on it, and return a sample back to Earth. That would be cool in and of itself. What makes this even better CT fodder is this:

Phobos is said by some to be hollow, including Apollo astronaut and Second Man on the Moon Buzz Aldrin. First do a search for the Phobos Monolith. WTH is that? Then, refer to such science fiction classics as Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama or Bear's Eon. Then put your tinfoil hat on and pay a visit to Mr. Hoagland's site, where he thinks that the Solar System is littered with Death-Star like artifacts of advanced alien civilizations like Mimas, Iapetus, or (the latest) Vesta.

Of course, now if Phobos Grunt doesn't break the surly bonds of Earth, then we'll get the CT's going on about how the Masonic powers that be didn't want the mission to succeed or some crap like that. That's always good for laughs, but it doesn't compare to having flight data to go batty over.

Oh Cruel Irony

2011-11-07T12:52:00.001-07:00

Spaceflight can damage vision permanently, says NASA
When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by NASA and the space program. I learned all I could about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and watched the Shuttle program start from the beginning. I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world, and I told everybody that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.

In second grade, my eyesight started going bad, and from then until the end of high school, my nearsightedness continued to get worse. As a result, I would get comments from family members along the lines of, "You'll never be an astronaut, because your eyesight is bad." So, I decided then to become an aerospace engineer instead. (Much to my chagrin now, as I wish I had fixated on someone like Warren Buffett instead and had decided to pursue a more lucrative career path.)

Well, if extended time in microgravity screws up your vision anyway, then why the hell not let people be astronauts who have to wear glasses? It's not like they don't make glasses straps or sports glasses that stay firmly fixed to your head. It may not be a good idea to wear glasses inside a spacesuit helmet, but then you could put contacts on for an EVA.

So to my family members (some now deceased) who discouraged me as a kid, have a raspberry: "PBBBBBBBBBT".

Sounds Familiar

2011-11-02T09:28:00.000-06:00

From Pearls Before Swine.

The Real Reason Space is Expensive

2011-10-27T09:58:00.000-06:00

SpaceX: We Need NASA to Change Crew Contracts

As Popular Mechanics reported last week, this early version of the contract allows NASA to exert more control over the hardware design than many in the industry are comfortable with. It installs NASA staff into the companies’ facilities and leaves open the question of how many changes the agency can force companies to make.

That is a big deal, considering the contract is fixed-price. That means the company does not get more money if the design changes—other contracts, called cost-plus, compensate for these increases.

"Some of the contract seemed cut-and-pasted from Constellation," Musk says, referring to the contracts behind the program that was to carry astronauts into orbit before the Obama administration canceled it. "It’s important that if the price is fixed, the terms must also be fixed."

Well, NASA as currently constituted is not going to allow anyone to fly their astronauts on anything that wasn't built to NASA standards. Unless you're the Russians, who have a long history of successful Soyuz flights and their own standards. And THIS is the problem: NASA drives up costs, and this prevents anyone from developing a private manned space industry.

This is also why Lockheed Martin is accused of being "expensive" on the Orion program: they have to build to NASA standards because they are on contract with NASA. Boeing says they could build a cheaper capsule, SpaceX says they can build a cheaper capsule, Orbital Sciences says they could build a cheaper capsule. Well, heck, LM could too, if they didn't have NASA requiring all this extra cost stuff!

Musk should just contract with Bigelow and build their own space station hotel serviced by Dragon capsules. They are || this close to not needing NASA; all they need to do is figure out a way to make a profit without NASA as a primary customer.

The Real 9/11 Coverup!

2011-10-25T20:48:00.000-06:00

Found on XKCD

Blueprint for Serfdom

2011-10-19T16:30:00.000-06:00

Gen 47:13-26 NIV - Joseph and the Famine

Very interesting. In the past, I had read this passage that seems to teach that 20% would be a good tax rate, and in fact an optimal tax burden seems to be about 20% of GDP. But recently I heard this passage discussed in light of Joseph and Pharoah manipulating the money supply so that the people ended up selling themselves into slavery. Why would they have done this? Because the money supply had been confiscated by Pharoah, and they had nothing else left.

Algore is Anthony Watts' B*tch

2011-10-19T14:44:00.000-06:00

Replicating Al Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment shows that his “high school physics” could never work as advertised

Beautiful! I should do this experiment with my kids. We're doing Chemistry this year with them anyway, and it illustrates several important scientific concepts. Namely, that Algore is full of crap.

Faked in the USA

2011-10-19T10:23:00.000-06:00

Team Obama sells Birth Certificate Mugs

Well, this isn't just screaming for parodies to be made of it, is it? Honestly, the whole birth certificate thing just amazes me. It is so obvious that it is faked, and so obvious that there has been a huge cover-up of the entire issue. Yet it's even more obvious that nobody cares.

So, defeat him at the ballot box next November, or he'll be President until Jan 20, 2017. God help us.

Of course, he's just a puppet like they all are, except for Ron Paul. I'm not 100% certain about Dr. Paul but given his consistency for 40 years and his anti establishment views, I'm fairly certain that he controls his own strings.

Family Courts and CPS Legal Defense

2011-10-14T11:13:00.000-06:00

Links for future study:
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/
http://www.glennsacks.com/blog/
http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/

Those are sites that help fathers after divorces deal with custody issues and the like.

Is anyone aware of any group that helps families defend themselves against Child Protective Services?

How did the family courts end up being the way they are, where you are guilty until proven innocent?

Why am I worried about this? I might write a post about it soon.

Why Christians Tick People Off

2011-10-05T21:47:00.002-06:00

Steve Jobs passed away today. His passing is a great loss, as he was a very creative man and left a huge mark on the world through his contributions to computers, animation and story telling, business management, industrial design, and many other things. He will be missed.

So, I post a nice "RIP Steve Jobs" post on Facebook, and one of my friends leaves the comment that they hope he found Jesus before he died.

Well, I do too. However, Mr. Jobs was a Buddhist, so I seriously doubt that he had any sudden conversion on his death bed or anything. Personally, I hope he found nirvana or whatever the heck Buddhists believe in, even though he's likely to be burning in hell next to Carl Sagan or whoever. But I'll leave that sort of judgement to the only Judge that matters, and that ain't me.

Is the day of the man's death the time to bring religious arguments into his obituary? Seriously. This is just another reason why Christians tend to tick people off. Harping on Mr. Jobs' lack of salvation and implying or stating that he's burning in hell isn't going to bring ANYONE to the church, it's just going to drive them further away. Why don't Christians get this? Most of the ones I know just think they are so RIGHT about EVERYTHING because of their own interpretation of this or that scripture or what their pastor said or what Rick Warren or Max Lucado or Beth Moore wrote in a book. Get over it already!

"For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

Get that? ALL. You are not special just because you are saved. "For you are saved by grace through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

Most gracious heavenly Father, please forgive them, for they know not what they do. And if there's any way that your grace might be shared with such as the late Steve Jobs, or Carl Sagan, or whoever else, I pray that you are merciful in your judgement of these people. And help your people to win others to your Church by showing them your love and grace. Amen.

UPDATE:

Casinos? Seriously?

2011-10-03T12:51:00.001-06:00

We got back from our trip yesterday, and are now the proud owners of a new puppy. He's really cute and did really well on the trip back, and we're looking forward to having a dog again.

Montana is beautiful, and so is Wyoming. If I didn't have to have a job, I would love to move up there. There are basically no people up there. The major "cities" have 50,000 or so people in them. Billings just went over 100,000 in the 2010 census, and that's just because of all the oil and gas work. (By the way, Billings is my least favorite place that we saw.) Oh, and it was striking enough to move from Texas to Colorado where we have about 80% white people, but in WY and MT, there are like 95% white people. Weird.

The striking thing to me about Montana, though, is that there were little tiny casinos everywhere. Even this little gas station in the middle of nowhere had a casino in it. Are there that many stupid people willing to throw their money down a toilet to keep these casinos open? Is there really NOTHING ELSE for people to do? With all that wonderful nature around them? Good grief. Oh yeah, they sell wine at the gas stations, too. Shoot, I should move up there and run a dang casino/gas station/restaurant, I guess.

UPDATE:
Action pics of the new puppy:

Bad Joke Wednesday

2011-09-28T20:52:00.000-06:00

"Hey, we don't serve neutrinos in here," said the bartender. A faster than light neutrino walks up to the bar.

Getting a New Dog

2011-09-27T21:00:00.000-06:00

This summer, we had to put down our dog of five years, an English Springer Spaniel. We got her from a rescue organization when she was eight years old. She was a really good dog, got along great with the kids, and was very loving. The only really naughty thing she did was to grab food when you weren't looking, and sometimes when you were. She had developed canine alzheimer's in the last several months, but we figured she was doing OK even so. But then one day, we came home to find her having a seizure. The vets said it might have cleared up, but obviously she had a tumor pressing on the side of her brain or something. I couldn't afford to keep spending money on her, so as we told the kids, we sent her to heaven for my mother to take care of.

We've all been missing her greatly. Mrs. Astro found a Springer Spaniel puppy from a breeder on the internet, and we're going to go pick him up this weekend. The crazy thing is that this breeder is up in Montana.

Road Trip!

I figure that it's about time we ventured up north a bit. We've lived in Denver for almost 7 years now and we haven't even been as far north as Ft. Collins. Well, we've been to Estes Park a few times, but I'm not sure if it's past Ft. Collins. And finally, we're driving somewhere that isn't Texas.

Politicians Are Like Diapers

2011-09-21T10:13:00.000-06:00

My county is having an election this fall to determine if the term limit for county sheriff should be extended from two terms to three terms. This is an interesting little race, given that it's yet another attack on the many term limits that were voted in by Coloradans in the 90's. The sheriff's big money friends are funding a campaign for this issue to be passed, so the sheriff can stay in office.

There's a small group that has formed in opposition, though, and I absolutely love their signs:

VOTE NO! Politicians are like diapers, they should be changed often and for the same reason!

Now, I am not aware that our sheriff is a bad guy or anything, or that he doesn't do a good job. The only run in I have had with a county sheriff has been positive. But personally, I believe that if there's a term limit in place, then he needs to move on and let someone else execute the job.

One Day Only

2011-09-19T10:53:00.000-06:00

Declassified spysat exhibit reveals rare look at Cold War space program

Cool.

Bathroom Fixtures Cont.

2011-09-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

Here we have the good old standard urinal flush valve, the "ROYAL SLOAN USA". Used extensively in buildings all around the country, and I can only assume, the world, this urinal valve is reliable, simple, and robust. Occasionally, you will find one that has a bit of a leak, and you will have to jiggle the handle to get it to stop the flow of water. I believe in those cases, though, that a simple replacement of a washer would fix the issue.

And here, we have the travesty of the automatic flusher, which is installed over the handle of the ROYAL SLOAN USA urinal valve. The only purpose of this piece of junk is to flush the potty for those men who are too stupid and/or lazy to do it themselves. Their mothers must hang their heads in shame.

Entrepreneurship vs. Education

2011-09-16T22:13:00.000-06:00

The Education of Steve Jobs

I found that article on Instapundit. It's very enlightening. I continue to be frustrated when I consider all the various things I could have done with my life with respect to my career instead of what I have done. I thought that what would be required to succeed in life was to work hard in school, get good grades, and then as an adult I would do very well. Yet the world is full of examples like Jobs and Gates and Dell, people who dropped out of school to pursue something else and made it big. Why did these guys succeed, and I have not?

This is not to say that I think I am as creative as these people, and I definitely am not willing to take the risks that they did. When I was in my teens and twenties, ALL of my focus was on becoming an engineer, an aerospace engineer, and I didn't really think about anything else. All the career advice people say to find "something you love" to be your career. Well, I thought I would love aerospace. I was wrong. And I was sold a complete bill of goods about the whole "get good grades in school and life will be wonderful" thing.

That is not to say that I haven't had some highlights during my career. Shooting rockets at WSMR was pretty cool, but you don't get to shoot rockets every day.

And now? I'm almost 40 and I go to work every day and I want to be doing something else but I do not know what. I do not believe I can take the risk of leaving my current job and doing something else, because I have four kids and bills to pay. How does one break out of the rut? How do I find "something I love" that will let me support my family? The only thing I truly love nowadays is a really good, long, night's sleep. (Sleep apnea will do that to you)

What to do? Beats the hell out of me. May not matter anyway, since we're all fixing to be put in FEMA camps. If we're not, well, we are trying to break the cycle with our homeschooled children.

FEMA Camps Coverup?

2011-09-16T13:22:00.001-06:00

About a year ago, I happened to catch Jesse Ventura's show "Conspiracy Theory" on the TruTV network. It's a pretty good show; basically it involves the good Governor going around the country trying to track down information about various conspiracy theories like Mike Rowe tracks down various dirty jobs. The first one I saw involved Ventura taking his crew to Alaska to investigate the HAARP array. Best part of that episode was the whole segment they spent talking to the one guy in the nearby town that would talk to them. "I hear they fried a guy under one of them antennas," he told Ventura. Yeah, sure they did, buddy.

Anyway, Mrs. Astro and I were watching this other episode called "The Police State and FEMA Camps". You can watch the first part of this episode here:
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura FEMA CAMP , POLICE STATE, PART 1 of 3

And that is the only place you will find this episode, on the Internet. After it aired, the network was threatened by "the government" and this episode went down the memory hole. TruTV never aired it again, even though they replayed all the other episodes, and Gov. Ventura told Alex Jones that "TPTB" were calling the network guys to make sure that the episode disappeared. The DVR services like Tivo and the cable companies even went into people's DVRs that recorded the episide and deleted it! Fortunately, we have the Internet and people recorded this episode and keep reposting it online.

So, what is it about this episode that was so worrisome to the government?

They cover three main things in this episode: the "Threat Fusion Centers", the "FEMA Concentration Camps", and a place in Georgia that makes plastic "mass grave liners". They also have a scene where Gov. Ventura confronts a congressman about his sponsorship of a bill that paid for the FEMA camps. The congressman denies everything on camera, treats Ventura with disrespect by implying that he believes in "little green men", etc., and supposedly it is that same congressman behind the move to delete the show.

So, I don't know what to think, are the FEMA camps real or not? Well, Ventura and Jones went to one such facility, I don't remember where it was. The outside of the facility had a lot of fences, arranged in a similar fashion to cattle chutes, for moving people around. There was a big building, with no sign naming what it was, and from around the side and far away, the camera crews caught several children playing on a playground. Anyway, they went up to the door and knocked until someone came to the door. That person wouldn't tell them anything except that they needed to leave. That's the wrong thing to tell these guys! Eventually more people came out and just told them that if they didn't leave, they would be forced to leave.

Here's what Mrs. Astro and I thought that facility might be: a highly classified "witness protection program". This would be for people who can't just be relocated and given new names, but need to be housed in a completely secure facility. So of course, the government is not going to tell Jesse Ventura about it in front of a TV camera! Now, this is just a complete guess on my part; I could be completely wrong. But the government has very good reasons to keep stuff classified, and we do not need to know everything.

So, has the government, under the DHS, been setting up the police state grid to round up American citizens who are political dissidents, identified by the DHS Threat Fusion Center, send them to FEMA concentration camps, and do all sorts of 1984 boot-stamping-into-faces stuff on them? I don't know. I honestly can't totally discount this theory. They have turned airport security into prisoner-style searches, security theater meant to make people THINK that the government is serious. There are lots of other things going on along these lines as well.

And again: why delete Gov. Ventura's show if there's nothing to it?

Automatic Bathroom Fixtures Suck

2011-09-10T07:47:00.001-06:00

Y'all remember my pet peeve about the automatic bathroom fixtures? Well, today I saw this at Instapundit:

SAN DIEGO BLACKOUT LESSONS: A reader emails:
You called it.

I can’t find the post at the moment, but I believe that you raised this issue recently. I was on the UCSD campus when we lost power yesterday along with the rest of San Diego County. The electric eye-activated toilets and urinals in the new buildings were all nonfunctional, whereas the older models (with actual handles) in place in the older buildings worked fine. Exclusively installing toilets that don’t function without electricity in new buildings just seems like a bad idea.
Yes.

Totally ridiculous. Why mess up something that wasn't broken in the first place? Because some people don't flush, we have to put these auto flushers in to make them flush? Works fine as well as you have power. How about we try to get everyone to remember to flush the potty? Didn't your mother cover that when you were TWO?

Update at work though: they are now replacing the auto paper towel dispensers with the non-powered ones. This is good, because the automatic ones used SIX D-cell batteries and one AA just to work. Those D-cells wouldn't last very long. We still have the auto flushers. Fortunately, there's a creek out front of my building should we ever need to use it.

UPDATE: I got a small measure of revenge on the automatic urinal flusher. Someone, not me, broke one of them in the bathroom at work. Actually, I think it broke itself. Anyway, basically it had split apart so that the actuator that is supposed to push the flush handle couldn't push it enough. So, I wiggled the thing a bit and it came right off. Turns out, it is a simple motor and electric eye that is wrapped around the regular handle. Stupid, cheap piece of crap. They'll probably replace it with a new one.

GE Stole My Idea!

2011-09-09T12:45:00.000-06:00

GE invests in eSolar for combined solar, gas plants

Dadgummit. Of course, I'm not a power plant guy nor do I have the sort of money it would take to start something like this. I'm just an engineer who daydreams about stuff like this while he's doing his real job. Check out eSolar; they have a very interesting design.

What is the idea? Building a hybrid solar and natural gas power plant. This would enable you to use the Sun during the day, and gas at night, to generate a continuous level of power, even during cloudy or rainy days. One of the biggest problems with solar and wind power is that they are not reliable constant sources of power. You have to have coal, gas, or nuclear to provide a high baseline level of power to connect your solar panels or windmills up to. We will NEVER be able to convert to a completely solar or wind power grid. So, this solution would be the best of both worlds.

Actually, I'd like to combine this with the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) nuclear plant design. Nuclear power from thorium promises to be MUCH better than the traditional uranium plants. The only reason we went with uranium is that the byproducts and waste products can be used in weapons, and thorium cannot.

Alex Jones and Bohemian Grove

2011-09-09T07:16:00.000-06:00

For the past year, I've been listening to the podcasts of the Alex Jones show. Jones is a libertarian conspiracy theorist, and I find him to be often crazy, often sane, and always entertaining. He is very interesting, and I find a lot of my own attitudes echoed in his comments. My favorite parts of his show are when he starts going off on tangents and just rants away about TSA groping, 9/11 'truth', BPA, GMO crops, carbon taxes, or any number of things. I'm going to be posting about some of the stuff I've heard on his show in the past year because while I believe some of it to be true, some I do not. But I have to give Alex credit for one thing: he is not afraid to confront those he believes to be in the conspiracies.

In 2001 (I think), Alex managed to get into the Bohemian Grove during their annual summer camp where many of the nation's top politicians gather to, well, worship a great stone owl (Molech) by sacrificing an effigy of a child to it, and have gay sex with prostitutes. Sounds crazy. But Alex got video with a hidden camera of one of their ceremonies of something called the "cremation of care". And I agree with Richard Nixon, it's some of "the f-ggiest g-ddamn things I ever saw." (said on one of the Nixon tapes, after Nixon went to one of the meetings) Supposedly he has talked to the gay prostitutes, who won't go on record about their activities.

If you want to find the video, look for "Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove". It's on youtube.

Now I realize that Alex is a lot of hype, but I think it is really cool that he got in there. But I still wonder just HOW he got in there and was allowed to leave. Maybe they didn't know who he was yet? I don't know. But more importantly, what the heck are all these politicians doing going to this Satanic camp?

Jimmy 'SOB' Hoffa

2011-09-06T16:46:00.000-06:00

Hoffa Threatens GOP At Obama Event: "Take These Son Of Bitches Out"

That son of a bitch can't even say "sons of bitches" correctly. Probably had unionized teachers in his public school.

More Proof of Apollo Landing

2011-09-06T16:33:00.000-06:00

New Sharper Views of Apollo Landing Sites

Yes! More pictures from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which can see the Apollo landing sites and all the stuff that was left at each of them. You can even see the foot tracks and rover tracks the astronauts left when they moved around. Of course, all the Moon Hoax idiots will say these are all faked too. That's fine; I think these are cool.

Now if they would only show those Apollo 18 site pictures...

Homeschool Computer Science

2011-08-25T07:04:00.000-06:00

I am planning on teaching computer science to my older two kids this year as part of their homeschool, and while I know where to start, I don't know what the best approach might be. Should I get a text to follow as a guide? Which language should I teach them? C? Java? Fortran? (Just kidding with that last one)

I'm thinking that part of this should also be a project to build their own computer from components. I have never done this before, and it looks like there are zillions of components out there, so how best to approach that? Also, I would like to install Linux on this box, so which version should we use?

Suggestions would be appreciated!

Opening Up Again Soon

2011-08-19T16:46:00.001-06:00

Well, it's been a year and a half since I deleted the blog, and lately I've been thinking of starting up blogging again. It's not definite yet.

Why did I stop? Well, back in February 2010, things were picking up a LOT at work. I did not want to keep writing on this blog when there were other things I needed to be doing: being a husband, father, and employee. Since then, a lot of things have changed for me at work. I will not go into detail about work here, but I will say that I am in a different "department" working on an entirely different project. I am also in a different, more challenging role, which has been good for me. As for family, that hasn't changed, it just keeps being challenging as all our kids get older.

So... hope if anyone sees this, they'll drop a note in the comments. I'm going to update the template some more and then ask Vox to put me back on his blogroll. See y'all later.