Category: Good Things

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Congratulations to Richard Branson!

Very well done Sir!

I was astounded, that in the wake of Branson’s achievement instead of congratulations, there were pundits, politicians, and wags, saying things like, “This is why we need a billionaire wealth tax.”

SAY WHAT???

Branson, used his own money, legally earned, requisite taxes paid, and he built a space craft. Then he further put his money where his mouth was and climbed aboard for a flight.

The thing could have malfunctioned, and freeze dried Branson and his crew, it could have exploded, it could have crashed. Thankfully it didn’t, but there was a rather high element of risk in the adventure.

All you have to do to recognize that is look at our planetary history of space travel. That particular history is littered with brave pioneers who died due to various accidents. Remember the Challenger? How about Columbia? Both of those were tried and true pieces of technology which had flown many times before. So much so, that the shuttle launches had become almost ho-hum.

Were I a Branson, Bezos, or Musk. I too would be working to get my own ships into space. The moment my technology worked well enough that I could build a space station, I wouldn’t come back to Earth.

Why bother? The petty politics of this planet and stupidity of our leaders make space look pretty darn attractive.

Space is like international waters. I could keep what I salvaged, and there’s not a damn thing the politicians or practically anyone else could for to stop me.

My next move would be to make the long assed journey to the asteroid belt and start claiming mineral rights on various asteroids. I’d catalog the minerals, and then start the bidding.

“Oh China, you need 220 million tons of nickel? What’s your opening bid?”

“Russia, you need iron? How much? What’s your bid?”

“Germany, you need copper? I’ve got a nice little asteroid just full of the stuff, What’s your bid?”

The whole while I’d be telling politicians, “TAX THIS”

I wouldn’t be asking for money, I’d be asking for Oxygen, Food, Water, and only materials that I couldn’t mine, make, or make use of from the asteroids themselves. I’d be looking for Ice (Water, Methane, Co2) you name it, because I suspect in short order I could make my asking price machines that would be able to refine those materials in my space station too.

Earth would always be my point of origin, a pretty blue speck in the solar system. But a shithole of politics and petty disagreeable people. I’d market employment to folks that could and would work for a living.

I’d give folks another choice, if we decided to take Mars for ourselves, colonize it, and build a better world there’d be no-one who could stop us.

You wouldn’t want to be “fired” from my enterprise because that would mean being sent back to Earth, the shithole, the place where you’d be detained, questioned by moronic politicians looking for some “Crime”, and then taxed on your presumed profits.

Space wouldn’t be an easy, or a safe life, but it would be your life. A life where you were directly in control of your destiny.

For all of you reading this that are thinking., “That will never happen. These billionaires are just playing around because they have the money to waste,” Think again.

Musk has already set his sights on Mars. Branson is talking about space tourism. God only knows what Bezo’s goal is. But each of these guys became a billionaire by seeing opportunity and exploiting it.

If you think they’re doing all of this just to see who’s dick is bigger think again!

One ex NASA engineer was quoted as saying something like, these guys are making advances, spending in a year, what NASA spent in a month. Think about that. How fast do you think innovation is going to happen now that private companies know it’s possible to make their own ships?

With the ability to make ships comes competition about who makes the best ships, the fastest ships, the best engines, the best navigation, Branson’s Unity will probably look like the Wright Brothers plane in 70 years or so. Earth will probably become a quaint little backwater where people are still bitching about politics, religion, poverty, skin color, equity versus equality, and who to tax next.

The real power brokers of humanity will be stretching across our solar system, and beyond.

Space, work ethic, and capitalism, will be the great equalizers. You fuck up in space, and no one will ever hear you whine or scream about the unfairness of it all. If you’re beyond the orbit of Mars and fuck up, you’ll likely be dead and frozen for an hour before anyone gets your first call for help.

Space makes no judgement about you, it will kill you given a chance. All meat is dead meat to the harshness of vacuum.

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The Calm before the storm

So, today dawned bright and beautiful. The temp never dropped below freezing last night so I was able to remove the glacier that had formed on the rear deck.

That is a priority for my safety and Jesse’s since he often leaps before he looks. I’ll grant you that the look on his face when he can’t stop on the ice is funny. But he’s still growing and I’d like to prevent him straining his hips or shoulders with a fall on the deck, or worse yet a tumble down the stairs.

After I finished that chore, we went for our morning walk.

I figured it was a good time to tease you skiers. Conditions are pretty good right now the snow isn’t too packed and you can’t beat 40°F.

I should caution you… Before you grab your gear and come running up the mountain. First off it’s very windy. Second off by 7PM it’s supposed to be snowing. “Great!” You think. Uh not so much, before the snow it’s supposed to be raining. With the already icy conditions adding rain means that the roads will become like greased glass. Then the snowfall prediction is anywhere from 11″ to 17″ altitude dependent.

This means that chain requirements will be in force, and low slung vehicles probably won’t be able to make it up the hill. This storm is supposed to last into Saturday and I’m sure that the snow plows will be doing their best but turnouts may be blocked off by piles of snow so you won’t be able to pull off the road to put your chains on even if you’ve got ’em. Those little cable things are probably not going to cut it either.

I’m guessing that the I-15 will be closed at some point during the storm and that Sunday the roads up here might be passable. But do you really want to spend 5 hours sitting in traffic so that you can ski on crowded slopes, or play in the snow for a few hours, then spend another 5 hours getting home so you can go to work on Monday?

I didn’t think so…

As for us locals, we’ll we’re all making runs to grocery stores and picking up stuff that we’ll need to hunker down. We’re doing errands and trying to take care of little things before the storm hits.

I’m heading out myself in a few minutes to join the fray.

I’ll leave you with these peaceful pictures so you’ll know what you’re missing.

Yeah, I’ve got a bit of a cruel streak.

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It’s been 10 days or so since Parler was taken down…

I’m sad to see it go, but I was able to go cold turkey from social media.

I know the good folks at Parler are working hard to get the site back up, but I’m questioning if I’ll return to any social media.

I maintain Linkedin only for job stuff and don’t interact on the site too much. I’ve never been comfortable with HR departments searching for social history, and Linkedin just makes it easy for them to judge you based on an arbitrary set of nebulous criteria.

I’ve been enjoying my HAM radio much more than social media anyway. There was a gentleman the other day who described HAM as the original social media and I think he’s right. The focus is much more local (although with radio sometimes you can get astounding distances, depending on conditions in the upper atmosphere.)

I’ve been catching up on local events in my immediate area. Figure about 100 miles or so. There are ways to get much farther reliably due to a network of specialized radio systems placed on mountains throughout the country or countries across the planet.

These systems are not funded by government, they’re generally free to use, and are funded by the good will of HAM operators and HAM clubs. Sure, using them is a little more difficult than clicking “Tweet” on your phone, but it does provide a bit of a barrier to the riff raff.

Since Parler was taken down, I switched on my radio and discovered there’s a mountain lion wandering through the town I live in.

Social media on a global scale wouldn’t have necessarily warned me about that. The lion has been seen in multiple locations and appears to be looking for food. The general warning is to make sure that you keep an eye on dogs, cats, and children, even in a fenced yard.

That’s good to know! Especially since Jesse and I sometimes take early morning walks and we’re generally on trails in the forest.

Were I in most any state but California, it would be appropriate for me to be armed while out on a walk in rough areas. Most of those other states would look at being armed as a prudent precaution. But California is so damn twitchy about guns, they’ve made it so that you can’t defend yourself against apex predators, (Human or Animal).

In my local area, there are bears, bobcats, coyotes, rattlesnakes, and as stated, mountain lions. Any one of which could attack if it perceived you and your dog as a threat. This is particularly so if you were to come around a boulder or through a stand of trees and surprise them.

California would prefer to clean up the bloody mess and airlift your body out, rather than allow you to have a fighting chance. Many Californias would shake their heads and tut, tut, your foolishness in being out of the oh so safe, city.

Many of them would say you got what you deserved for being in the wilderness in the first place. That’s one of the weirdest things about living here. Lots of Californias ask, “why would someone have been out in the forest?” I ask, “Wasn’t the person armed and prepared?”

Californians live under the constant threat of sudden destruction from an Earthquake, or a fire, but they are astounded that anyone would want to live where hurricanes or tornados may occur. I actually prefer hurricanes or tornados because you can see them coming and get the hell out of the way. Earthquakes provide no such warning. Fires, you can avoid if you know where they are.

I guess it’s just preference.

Oddly, social media rarely provides any real time useful data about disasters. It’s almost always after the fact. I’ve always assumed that was because of internet outages.

That is why I took the time to get the HAM license, and with recent events, I’m considering taking my license to the next level. This would open my ability to communicate on a wider range of frequencies legally.

Note I said legally. I could talk on those frequencies now, but I’m a law abiding citizen and believe in obeying rules which have a logical purpose and provide a clear benefit. Radio rules typically fall into that category.

There are a lot of other rules that I disagree with because they don’t seem to have a basis in common sense, logic, or science, and simultaneously don’t provide a clear benefit.

Parler was uncensored. Twitter and Facebook are very censored and not in a consistent way. Parler was/is about protecting the First Amendment. Twitter and Facebook say they are proponents of the First Amendment but demonstrably are not.

Parler was taken away from all of us by people that don’t believe in free speech and had the will and capacity to effectively silence a large percentage of Americans. If some people choosing to use Parler were offended by what they read or saw, they had the option to never go back to the Parler site.

But these people, who choose to be perpetually offended couldn’t abide differing opinions. They demand conformity of thought. I suspect that in time they’ll demand conformity of race too, since everything in their world revolves around racial identity politics.

On the radio there is no race. Only the content of your words. If you’re not good at putting your thoughts into words there’s no-one that will stop you from saying something but you might find yourself talking to dead air. Other people listening may simply find another channel, you know, old school… Don’t like what you’re hearing turn it off…

More people need to learn that.

Our house has been remarkably quiet over the past 3 weeks. We both tired of the news, we got tired of Hollywood celebrities shooting their mouths off in hateful tirades about Trump and frankly it’s made it so that watching their movies aren’t that enjoyable. Even music is only turned on when we want to listen to something particular. It’s tougher to relax or suspend disbelief so you can just enjoy the music or movie.

We’re hoping that in time as we distance from this season of chaos we’ll be able to enjoy these things once again.

In the mean time, from the radio chatter I’m hearing, we’re not alone. It appears that streaming movies and music over the fiber network here has dropped off significantly in our local area. But the Library is seeing a slight uptick in usage.

Something else I’d never have known from just social media. But it was on my HAM Radio this morning.

I’ve been listening to a bunch of local HAMS who get together every morning over their first or second cup of coffee.

They just get on the radio, and chat about local stuff. The weather, someone older who needs a little help with a project, the community center asking for books to lend, issues with snowplayers, and when the next community meeting is. The day after a community meeting, someone will summarize what was covered for those that couldn’t attend. It’s nice and somehow comforting.

Perhaps it’s time for us all to act more locally, and stop paying attention to the collective idiots who have found voice in social media. Maybe we should be more concerned about the people in our local area who are trying to do the right thing, and could use actual hands to do work that makes our community better?

It costs you nothing to comment on troubles in another state. But when you comment about something locally, there’s a certain expectation that you’re willing to put your money, or sweat equity, where your mouth is.

I suppose that too is old school…