Humid Enough Fer Ya?

Ye gads! Spent part of the day at the Skunk Works North Campus with a crew of riggers and despite a fair breeze on Mt. Crosley,* it was ghastly; they ran through the water they'd brought ("Lady, we have plenty!") in about an hour and made pretty good inroads into the official-for-site-work supply, kept chilled in the fridge.

I was able to go indoors part of the time and attempt to be useful instead of gettin' in the way (still, you've got to watch the work some of the time; nice guys, skilled guys, but they'll be on the road by sundown, y'know?). It turned out that had its own issues: a couple of iced-up air-conditioning units meant it was raining indoors in two spots, one of them bein' the workshop where my desk-away-from-Main-Campus is. The tiny, elfin waterfall of suck and fail missed that but got part of the toolbox (6' tall, 4' wide and a 30" deep -- and on wheels), so I had to use WD-40 for what it was designed for. For a change.

...Did that little task in the vast garage, which was (and still is, I bet) a plain sauna, 115°F at floor level.

Got home at almost the normal time and pondered the outside things I had half planned, but the walk through the yard convinced me I would rather dance in flaming goat entrails soaked with rancid yak butter than spend any more time outside.

Maybe tomorrow. Then again, maybe tomorrow they'll have flaming goat entrails on special at the Fresh Market.
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* This is a joke; the place is swimming in water any time it rains and if it is a couple hundred feet higher than Downtown, that's only 'cos they built Indy in a swamp! Yes, laid out by the same guy who did D.C.. He must have been heartbroken to learn Indiana didn't have much in the way of malaria.

Free Reading!

Claire Wolfe links to several yarns this morning, includinghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhe Eric Frank Russell classic, "...And Then There Were None." (Surely you've read it? If not, you otta, if only to learn what "myob" might be and why Our Leaders need to do a lot more of it, followed by getting real jobs).

Also among her links is Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned," the short story that got me reading Vinge. Check it out!

(Here's a nice Bud Webster bit about Eric Frank Russell. And then there's this website, perhaps the best Russell resource on the web.)

Whisky Tango Foxtrot, Over?

This. No.

Goooood Morning!

Here it is, 7:59 and I haven't posted anything.

I went to the Indy Hamfest yesterday, where I proved to myself that walking a lot on grass is better than walking a lot on a hard surface. And proved why I only carry a certain amount of cash to these events....

But I did buy a drill press, a bench-top Craftsman, at a very good price; and I bought something for my peace of mind at work, too: a Tektronics oscilloscope cart, which I will attempt to swap for a top-heavy thing we've been using for various pieces of test gear and which has already damaged one of them.

I picked up several books and quite a lot of minor items of geekery (eventually to be written about at Retrotechnologist), while renewing old friendships, which is the best part of all.

This was as large an event as they have had since moving to the present site from the County fairgrounds, too, which bodes well for the future.

"I Will Never Smoke Or Chew...."

"...And I won't hang out with those who do."

Michelle Bachmann has signed a similar sort of pledge, though it's got a lot more items on the list.

I think all such pledges and promises extracted from those running for office are little more than dares. We'd do better demanding they bite the head off a live bald eagle in public: at least they'd be obliged to actually follow through. In the case of this list, some of the things it appears to demand of a Presidential candidate would require 'em to subvert the Separation of Powers and the Bill of Rights if elected. (So, business as usual, then?)

And what a list it is! The Family Leader has assembled a grab-bag of social-conservative values for their Pledge, including frequent and obsessive mention of homosexuality (Rick Santorum was frothingly happy to sign). They're agin' it, which shouldn't be a surprise; and they're agin' any claim that "those people" could be as happy or as hardwired as the rest of us.

What're they for? Well, gee, they say married couples have better sex (citing U.S. Census data -- and while I find Census questionnaires overly intrusive, I don't remember any questions about that) and more-successful children, along with a collection of dubious statistically-based conclusions leading to the assertion that, even if two people loathe one another, they should stay wed so's society and their kids will get the same advantages as the kids of the loving, married couple next door. (What's wrong with that, you might ask? Simple, there's no "control" group; it compares children of couples who choose to stay married with kids of couples who chose not to get or stay wed; this tells us nothing about the kids of couples who can't get a divorce or, for that matter, the offspring of faithful unwed couples).

They're for the First Amendment, but against porn in all forms -- so much for that racy summer novel you're reading, and so much for the lack of Zen paradox in the Judicial branch, too.

They appear to be in favor of slavery's support of marriage norms, which is (to put it gently) fairly thin ice; while their observation that the children of pre-Civil War slaves were more likely than their modern counterparts to be raised in a two-parent household (a dirt-floor doghouse of a "household," they omit to mention) is probably true, it's also irrelevant; those selfsame children were also several times as likely to be illiterate and to die of any one of a long list of childhood diseases. (You can cite the same general stat for the palefaces in the Big House; the numbers aren't as lopsided but it's a huge shift away from wedlock. So why bring up the other, except to raise a stink? War's over and the last veteran of it died a long time ago).

Near as I can tell, they stop just short of chasing us wimmens and our toddlers back into purdah -- for our own good; and in another Zen-like move, follow that by denouncing Shariah law[1], which would do the same thing and mealy-mouth the same thin justification for it.

For even more paradox, how's about their citing a long list of the sort of social diseases generally associated with promiscuity as evidence homosexuals should not be allowed to marry? H'mm, bit of a logical problem, you'd think, but it's whole camels for dessert if you can only manage to hack that gnat into pieces small enough to swallow!

The Grand Finale is the best paradox of all, all the more in that it is lifted from the Left: in the name of freedom of speech and religion, it demands the candidate fight against "...the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy." At first glance, it's nice-sounding word salad; too bad that when parsed, it's tellin' the Executive to go quash the speakers at the polyamory rally -- in the name of freedom of speech and religion.

Instead of doin' the hard work to demonstrate the superiority of heterosexual monogamy[2] in word, deed and Hollywood movie, The Family Leader want the Feds to stand over it with a whip, herdin' everybody back onto the reservation, willing or no, on the unproven assumption that it will make everything better. Ah, yes, I recognize that Leader Principle!

Top-down social engineering is just as unappealing to me when it comes from the Right as it is from the Left. YMMV.
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1. It's almost amusing that the socially-conservative groups that want to fix things by gettin' Us Women back into the kitchen and nursery under the benevolent protection of Men loathe one another so intensely; Protestant monogamists vs. jack-Mormon "fundamentalist" polygamists vs. Muslim fundamentalists. Hey, guys? From over here, it looks like you're all on the same side.
2. Interesting word, by the way, in that it doesn't rule out polyandry; but I digress. Update: I'm also wrong. Alas, seat-of-the-pants etymology.

"The End Of The Manned Space Program In The U. S."

You say it's over? America's all done with flyin' in space unless we hire a Russian cab?*

Geez, don't tell the people at Blue Origin (btw, they're hiring); don't tell Bigelow Aerospace (btw, they're hiring) and whatever you do, don't mention it around SpaceX, the guys hired to deliver freight to ISS and working on their own manned vehicle. (Btw, they're hiring, too).

'Cos they'll fall over laughing at you. As will the good people at The Spaceship Company (hiring) and their prime client, Virgin Galactic. (Hiring, though the bar is very high indeed.)

And they are just the frontrunners of a very long list.

The show ain't over, folks. It's barely begun.
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* Mind you, they're very good cabdrivers and as long as you're not too tall, it's a good ride. They've got more flight time on their booster and the basic capsule than anyone. But the fare is a bit high.

Dinner, Wheels

Tam and I stopped by the Scratchtruck for dinner; I noticed they were workin' SoBro on my trip home and hauled her there posthaste.

On the scene, we saw a very nice bicycle parked at the Upland Brewing outlet. It caight my eye at once, with the old-school frame geometry. Turned out to be a Pashley Guv'nor; they still make 'em the old way, which means nearly indestructible and great-looking. Make mine a Princess Sovereign, please! (FTC, they're unlikely to send me one free for a mention, so KMA).

Painting: Will It Commence Today?

Two and a half days of scraping later....

More aggressive methods have given way to heating and scraping: it turns out that takes less leverage and when work switched to a ladder -- you get the picture.

Given the darkness of the old wood (which may be hard pine; hard enough to last nearly 90 years, at least), the first coat will be White Primer Of Overwhelming Force (plus I misplaced my sample chips; we're at that awkward stage, a Valspar color matched in Behr paint*). My painter's got a vacation next week, so the deal is, "Leave no bare wood."

This should establish a nice blank canvas to try out the fancy housepaint in an inconspicuous spot, plus do some prep and small work like screen frames -- I've got at least one screen (wooden frame) that wants redone anyway.

The Indy Hamfest is this Saturday! So that's a day to let the paint dry before I go tryin' anything.
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* Which means that no matter how good modern paint-tinting has become, I'll be wanting to get a big order done up in one go, and will be picking up one or two five-gallon mixing cans; you pour all the one-gallon cans together and then even if the Big Magical Machine had a valve stutter or whatever, the color will be consistent).

Indiana Supreme Extreme Court: Vote 'Em Out.

I'm all for tarring, feathering and riding them out of town on a splintery split rail, but they tell me that's all nekulturny an' stuff.

Okay, fine; we'll vote 'em out. The latest insanity? A Public Intoxication DUI conviction -- for being a passenger! So much for the designated driver thing, kid, Carrie Nation's bastard sons don't like it. Demon Rum, y'know, and y'must be guilty of something. (I have been chided, and rightly so, for misstating the charge. I still gotta wonder: as long as a sober person is driving the inebriate in question home or to another non-public place, just how sensible it is to arrest 'em for being too far inside a bottle as long as they're not harming others.)

Our chance to start removing these "Justices" comes up in 2012, when Grand High (oh, ain't he?) Panjandrum of the Indiana Supreme Court Steven H. David takes his seat in the dunking booth. Let your aim be true, O Fellow Hoosiers, and vote this freedom-hating nitwit back to ambulance-chasing, where he belongs. Or, if he promises to be nice, the gutter, which is a step up.

My home state does a lot of things right. Picking him wasn't one of them. Some of his backup singers need to hie themselves otherwhere, too. Y'know, I'd even take me a straight-up Leftie, if he was a good lawyer and promised to read all the rules and apply 'em fair and square, rather than go diddling around after whatever whim went wafting through the howling, empty wilderness of his mind. But I'm a dreamer; Lawful Evil was only ever a category in a game.
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Semi-relatedly: Didja know Oklahoma was Dry from the start in 1907 right up through 1959? Strewth, and it was ended in an unusual manner: "In the 1950s governor J. Howard Edmondson, wanting to end the illegal traffic in booze, realized that the way to end prohibition was to enforce it. With vigorous tenacity Edmondson instructed local authorities to set up roadblocks, search vehicles, arrest violators [...]. [...]Oklahoma began to dry up, liquor became increasingly hard to find, hotels began to lose convention and conference business when it was learned for the first time that they wouldn’t be providing liquor. Now unable to get their drink, Oklahomans demanded change. [...W]ent to the polls and officially ended prohibition." D'ya suppose that was the original goal of the War On Some Drugs? --No, me neither. Anyway, there's your wild and wooly West, all two-faced Temperance an' such for half a century. Next time someone tells you this law or that will "take us back to the days of the old West," don't forget this tid-bit of history!

Housepainting Update: Okay, Now I'm Scared

About a day and a half of wall-stripping has revealed cracked siding, loose siding, funky wood and butt joints (rather than scarfed or half-lapped) where one long board ends and the next begins. Oh, they were caulked, probably when the present coat of paint was applied; caulked using a material similar to chewing gum, though lacking in its adhesive and structural qualities.

The old paint exhibits wildly variable adhesion -- some patches fall off at a harsh word, others require a belt sander. One wall (one of the long ones) is about three-quarters prepped.

I'm starting to worry my young painter has taken on too large a job. Or that the unaffordably right thing is to rip the old siding off and start over. :(

Before Kings Of The High Frontier

...There was Salvage 1, an unlikely 1979 TV show starring (with equal unlikelihood) Andy Griffith as a junkman salvage yard operator who dreamed of stepping into the gap left when NASA stopped the Apollo program...and salvaging all the things they'd left on the moon -- for profit!

Naturally, he and his team succeed; naturally, NASA's bureaucrats loathe the notion and do whatever they can to trip up the intrepid heroes. (Yes, in 1979, FedGov bureacrats -- though not the space agency's hard-working rank and file -- were portrayed as dogs in the manger. Who knew?) (All the folks who put in an honest day's work at NASA are still my heroes in RL. I think the agency is pretty blamed creaky and I wish it wasn't so hostile to profit, but that's not the fault of those with their shoulders to the wheel).

The science is generally laughable, though for the time and the medium it's a noble compromise between semi-right-sounding words ("monohydrazine!") and achievable effects, but the spirit is straight-up independent can-do. The writers struggled a little at coming up for jobs for a commercial space vehicle, though they generally succeeded in getting at least some connection.

I don't know about sending you scrambling for this bit of television jetsam; I stumbled across it on cable 20 years ago. Victor Koman's book has rather more fire and thunder. But it's interesting nonetheless.

(Kings Of The High Frontier doesn't seem to actually be available in an e-reader edition at Pulpless.com, where it was priced an affordable $3.50 American and with IMO better cover art than the hardback -- though you can find that via the Amazon link at Tam's. They've even got an autographed version if you move quickly! Oddly, it's not available at Victor Koman's own KoPubCo. I'm guessing the publisher bought all rights).

Pugsly Immune To Irony

Huge Chavez, back in Venezuela after having to go to Cuba for cancer surgery (I'll bet he didn't have to bring his own meals and bandages!), praised the independance of the country he's "improved" so much that...he had to leave it to get surgery.

In a reaction that will surprise no one except the semi-commie/semi-strongman, his country's bond prices had risen sharply when it came out he was ill...and fell even more abruptly when he returned. One could hardly look for more sincere criticism. Way to lead the way to prosperity, there, ya little weasel!

(Then there's this photo. Family reunion or has he gone all Charlie Sheen?)

Y'know, that man could do a lot for his county's economy with a solo car trip in a well-sealed garage.