Goals for 2024

 "What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?" - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1999 Subaru Legacy Window switch

 "The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." - George Orwell

A brief story by Kurt Vonnegut

 I was reminded of a brief sci-fi story when I encountered this article.

 If you don't follow the link, the article describes how the state of Oregon no longer requires High School graduates to show proficiency in reading, writing, or mathematics to graduate.  How does an Oregon High School graduate know that they have the correct diploma if they are illiterate and can't even read it?

In the spirit of the society that the Oregon educational system is producing - one where an illiterate student has the same valid diploma as an honors student - here is Kurt Vonnegut.

Should be back to routine blogging here in a bit.  Thanks for your patience, kind readers.

In the meantime, here is an interesting read.

Suggested Reading

 A thoughtful article that I recently read... thought it would be good to share.

Elections wont fix what ails the west.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse:  Death, Famine, War, and Conquest.  Image courtesy of wallpapercave.

Flying Solo

 "I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he doesn't want to do." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Snow Day

 "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln

Why nuclear weapons degrade over time

 "A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.

When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. 

And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Interesting humanist article

 "Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Weekend blogging: Hanging out in the parking lot at the Ford dealer

 "The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he is in prison." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Old School

 Finishing up construction on the Elk Hills Power plant, on top of one of the boilers.  The rust-colored steam lines below aren't even insulated yet.

Sunday funnies

 

Jim Cramer is a well-known TV personality, who has had a financial advice show forever.  His predictions with regard to large-scale problems on the stock market leave a bit to be desired, however.  Cramer can be  good inverse indicator.

Microwave ovens and Leonids

 "There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." - Søren Kierkegaard

Moving along... Updated

 "I used to drink heavily, until one day I passed out and vomited while on my back.  Since that day, my body has refused to allow me to drink any hard liquor without gagging it back up.  So either my body is preventing me from making another life-threatening mistake, or I've died and gone to hell.  It's getting harder and harder to argue against the latter." - Unknown

Obstacles and their resolution

 "All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and remembered alike." - Marcus Aurelius

Veteran's Day

 More aptly named "Remembrance Day" in other countries.

For the Fallen

By Laurence Binyon

 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; 

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, 

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, 

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Rough week

 "To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of half of nature." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Time for hobbies?

 "Receive without conceit, release without struggle." - Marcus Aurelius

Another microwave oven day

 "'I was once a fortunate man  but at some point fortune abandoned me.'  But true good fortune is what you make for yourself.  Good fortune:  Good intentions, good character, and good interactions." - Marcus Aurelius

A hungry moose

 "Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true." - Julius Ceasar

Splorer

 "No loss should be more regrettable to us than losing our time, for that is irretrievable." - Xeno of Citium

Disc Brakes, Truck Beds, and Shift Work

 "If one makes a mistake and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake" - Plato

Mark's Hard Cider

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them.  There is almost no kind of outrage - torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its moral color when it is committed by "our" side.  The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." - George Orwell

300,000 page views

Thanks everyone, for stopping by!

Take a moment to appreciate the pauses

 "You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by, you take no heed.  You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while, that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Battling entropy

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair" - from the sonnet 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Beer, Fuel Systems, and Engine mods

"No man is free who cannot control himself." - Pythagoras

F100 Instruments

 "That which has been claimed without proof can also be refuted without proof." - Euclid

Nightmare fuel: F100 driver's side roll-up window

 "Good people do not need laws to tell them how to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around those laws." - Plato

Important Article

 

Just drawing some attention to this, because it seems to be accurate and truthful.  Something our modern media does not seem capable of being...

 What is wrong with the western political class?  Please follow the link.

https://gaiusbaltar.substack.com/p/what-is-wrong-with-the-western-political

Movie: Das Boot

 "If you want to be wrong, then follow the masses." - Socrates

Parts delivery

 "The most important relationship we can have is the one we have with ourselves.  The most important journey you can undertake is the one of self-discovery.  To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself.  You must not be afraid to be alone, because knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." - Aristotle

Power's out!

 "When you are born you get a ticket to the freak show.  When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat." - George Carlin

F100 quick update

 "Be a free thinker, and don't accept everything you hear as truth.  Be critical and evaluate what you believe in." - Aristotle

Aurora - finally

 

 

Unf*cking the truck

 "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.  When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." - Laozi

1960 F100 - A new chapter dawns

 "While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with a hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A vacation, almost

"Falling down is not a failure.  Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen." - Socrates

Neutron Activation, N-16, and pools

"Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that is how all important discoveries have been made?" - Henri Poincare

Fuel Inspections and criticality alarms

 "We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to office." - Aesop

How Green is Germany, anyway?

 "Since every man dies, it is better to die with distinction than to live long." - Musonius Rufus

Top Fuel

 Below is a cool onboard video of a top fuel dragster through Start-up, burnout, and a run.  The car starts on gasoline, squirted in by the pit crew, then switches over to nitromethane - the exhaust gets cloudy at that point.

A few statistics about Top Fuel drag race cars:

• The fuel burn during the run alone is about 14 gallons (53 liters).
• 100 mph (161 kph) is reached in 0.8 seconds
• 300 mph (483 kph) is reached in just over 3 seconds - making these the fastest straight-line accelerating vehicles in existence.  Faster than rockets, faster than aircraft carrier catapults, and faster than jets on full afterburner. 
• The pushrod hemi engine is limited to 500 cubic inches (8.2 liters), and produces about 11,000 horsepower (8090 kw)  This value can only be calculated by the acceleration that the engine applies to the vehicle.  There is no engine dynamometer capable of measuring the engine's output.
• Boost is by roots supercharger at 60 psig (4.1 bar)
• At launch the driver experiences 4.5 g, which increases to 6 g mid-track as the clutch fully engages.  Fighter jets must maneuver in order for pilots to experience this level of g force - they cannot achieve it on engine acceleration.

Below:  A reaction video.  Supercharged nitro engine noise is pretty intense.  Every fiber of your body vibrates.

If at first you don't succeed...

 ... learn to live with failure!  Kidding.  Try until you get it right - or at least as well as you can do it.

"Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Fukushima Daiichi water release

 "When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it.  If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger.

Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them.

Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs, in which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion.

Is that so hard?" - Marcus Aurelius

First nickel plating project

"I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential for a scientist." - Luis Alvarez

Don't get your health advice from... Doctors!

 "How soon time will cover all things." - Marcus Aurelius

Nickel Plating amateur hour

 "All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers.

For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall.

Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must be the life of those who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep.

By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Tractor fixin' (Updated)

 "When someone is properly grounded in life, they need not look outside themselves for approval." - Epictetus

Fires, smoke, bead blasting and nickel plate

 "The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering." - Carl Jung

Dr. Viktor Frankl - A modern Stoic

 "They called those mad who did not suffer from the general madness." - Madame Roland

Military Conscription - "The Draft"

 "What society does to its children, so will its children do to society." Marcus Tullius Cicero

Power Augmentation in combined cycle power plants

"There is nothing so costly as bargains." - Margaret Oliphant

USS Gudgeon (SS 567)

  "It is easy to rule using incompetent people, but it's much more difficult to have a functional society with incompetent people in charge.  It all depends on what your priorities are.  The West is run by incompetent, vain, narcissistic, entitled, greedy, deviant clowns.  A society pervaded by sociopaths from top to bottom is doomed to implode" - Unknown commenter

A few posts in the works

 I have a few posts coming along.  Dealing with lack of sleep and energy, and therefore motivation at the moment.  Meanwhile, have a sunrise!

And if you are after some thought-provoking ideas, read this article.  Or this one.

Concert: Falling in Reverse, Ice Nine Kills, Our Last Night, and Catch Your Breath

 "Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away.  Death stands at your elbow.  Be good for something while you live and while it is in your power." - Marcus Aurelius

Concert: Halestorm and Volbeat

 "Money amassed either rules us or serves us" - Horace

Mercedes S600 Loss of boost fixed!

A little humor:

What is the male equivalent of: "Fuck it, I'm just going to become a stripper"?

Joining the military.

Red Barchetta

 "Great nations have always acted like gangsters and small nations have always acted like prostitutes." - Stanley Kubrick

Erector set "All Electric" ferris wheel

 "There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." - Epictetus

Filter day

 "People are often unreasonable and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway."

"If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway."

"If you are honest, people may cheat you.  Be honest anyway."

"If you find happiness, people may be jealous.  Be happy anyway."

"The good you do today may be forgotten.  Be good anyway."

"Give the world your best, and it may never be enough.  Give your best anyway."

"For you see, in the end it was between you and God.  It was never about them anyway." - Mother Teresa

The US 'Military Recruiting Crisis' - Some ideas

"The military doesn't start wars.  Politicians start wars." - William Childs Westmoreland, US Army Chief of Staff 1968-1972

Falling down

 "The future has arrived.  It's just not evenly distributed yet." - William Gibson, Science Fiction Author - December 2003.

Independence Day. And Nuclear Ice Cream

 "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." - Otto Von Bismarck, German Chancellor, 1871-1890

Tractor Bits 'n' Pieces (updated with a couple more pictures)

 "If you have assumed a character above your strength, you have both acted in this manner in an unbecoming way, and you have neglected that which you might have fulfilled." - Epictetus

A Hot (Cell) Mess

 "I am sick and tired of war.  Its glory is all moonshine.  It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry for blood and vengeance, for desolation." - General William Tecumseh Sherman

A few thoughts on the lost Titanic submersible

 "A wrong-doer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something." - Marcus Aurelius

Squirrels and string trimmers

 "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of squirrels." - Me

Side-note:  The movie "Oppenheimer" will be released July 21 of this year. 

Another Mercedes Part

 "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Blast Cabinet

 "A person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values." - Marcus Aurelius

Finishing up the air compressor room - updated

 "On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by an outright moron." - H.L. Mencken

Fascinating video on the History of the Earth

 "At no point in history have the people forcing others into compliance been the good guys." - Unknown

Spooks, long flights, and machine gun nests

 "He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The Andreyeva Nuclear Incident

"On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use." - Epictetus

Radioactive Fallout in Eastern Europe? - Updated

 "Recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from 'good families.'" - Marcus Aurelius

Memorial Day 2023

 Posting an editorial in its entirety. (link)

Remember the Fallen — and Those They Left Behind

COMMENTARY

By Brooke Rollins

May 29, 2023

U.S. National Archives

The Christmas season of 1942 was clouded by war in the small town of Waterloo, Iowa, but for Mrs. Alleta Sullivan, it was especially dreadful. A rumor was going about town, and it was about her sons. Or rather, it was about all five sons, each of whom had volunteered for the Navy — and elected to serve together aboard the same ship. The brothers meant to fight as they lived, as a team, as a family, each helping the other out — on the vast and distant Pacific as much as in idyllic Iowa. 

The rumor that reached their mother was that their ship, the light cruiser Juneau, had sunk off Guadalcanal. But Mrs. Alleta Sullivan had received no news. 

So, she did something very American. She wrote to the Navy. “Dear Sirs,” she began, “I am writing you in regards to a rumor going around that my five sons were killed in action in November. A mother from here came and told me she got a letter from her son and he heard my five sons were killed.”

The next line, even softened by 80 years, still breaks the heart in its simplicity and directness: “It is all over town now, and I am so worried.”

Mrs. Sullivan would have been entirely justified in demanding news of her boys. She would have been justified in demanding that the Navy account for them, that she did not have to endure the quiet hell of rumors of her sons. Instead, she does something remarkable, and reading it now is a window into a different — and better — America. She writes that even if her five sons are gone, she will still do her own duty. 

“[P]lease let me know the truth. I am to christen the U.S.S. TAWASA, Feb. 12th, at Portland, Oregon. If anything has happened to my five sons, I will still christen the ship as it was their wish that I do so.”

Stop there for a moment and re-read that. Even in the shadow of the most terrible prospect a mother can face, Mrs. Alleta Sullivan tells the Navy it can count on her to keep her commitments. She would never have said it, but here you can see from whom her five sons inherited their own sense of sacrificial devotion. 

“I hated to bother you,” she continued as if she had anything at all to apologize for, “but it has worried me so that I wanted to know if it was true. So please tell me. It was hard to give five sons all at once to the Navy, but I am proud of my boys that they can serve and help protect their country.”

Mrs. Sullivan did not have to wait long for her answer. Her letter went to the Navy and crossed paths with the inbound casualty notification. Her letter went out in early January 1943. On the early morning of January 11, three Navy officers arrived at the little house on 98 Adams St. in Waterloo. Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan knew why they had come. The officer in charge knew he could not soften the blow.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “All five.”

The story of the Fighting Sullivans is a famous one, notable for its contrast of great virtue — five brothers, on fire with duty imparted by their parents — and great tragedy, in their death together on a black day off the Solomon Islands. We have an obligation to remember. We should also remember that it is not the only tale of its kind. We today are as far from World War II as it was from the Civil War. In that war, there was the heartbreaking episode of Mrs. Bixby and her five sons, all fallen in battle, of whom President Lincoln wrote that they were “so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.” In his 2013 “The Guns at Last Light,” Rick Atkinson tells a lesser-known tale of an elderly widower in Missouri, one Henry A. Wright, who waits at his small-town train station for the casket bearing his son, killed on Christmas Eve 1944 in the Ardennes.

He also received the remains of another son, who died in a German prison camp. He also received the remains of still another son, who died in combat in Germany, 10 days before war’s end.

Atkinson writes that the three brothers were buried “side by side by side beneath an iron sky.”

These stories of the grievous loss of the young, strong, brave, and parents burying their children, hit us hard. They should. If they do not, then we are undeserving of the fallen. The five Sullivans, the five Bixbys, and the three Wrights seize our attention and hearts because of the numbers. But make no mistake: the mother, the father, the brother, and the sister who lose a single son at war, do not grieve less because it is just one. 

For them, there is the consolation in the grace that is only God’s to give.

On this Memorial Day, we remember all the fallen — and we remember those whom they left behind. We have a sacred obligation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” — and that obligation increases a hundredfold because the battle was borne, and the wife was widowed, and the child was orphaned, for us. “Freedom is not free” is an overused phrase, almost cliche, which does not mean it should not be said. But this Memorial Day, when you say it, think of what it means on the most human level. You live in the greatest nation, among the greatest people, in the history of the world.

You have that privilege because, across three centuries, unnumbered Americans laid down everything for it.  

A young man died in battle on a sunny morning on the road to Concord.

A loving father fell in the wheatfield at Gettysburg. 

A draftee determined to make his father proud died on the Imjin.

A bright and eager student breathed his last at Khe Sanh.

A young woman took her final flight over Fallujah. 

Remember them. Let the memory steel you — to deserve them.

Baby's first bath

 "Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?" - Charles Bukowski

Submarine escape

 "No man is more hated than he who speaks the truth." - Plato

Grandpa's Truck

 "The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." - Charles Bukowski

Rise and Fall

 "If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man." - William Thackeray

A couple of new toys

"Da mihi castitatem et contentiam, sed noli modo" A prayer in Latin: "God give me chastity and continence, but not just yet" - St. Augustine of Hippo

Evolution and Devolution of the American truck

 "We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." - Immanuel Kant

The ethics of a raven

 "It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being." - Marcus Aurelius

Brick

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." - Plato

1984

 "We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime." - Franz Kafka

Back to routine. Concerts.

 "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

Moss Blasters

 "If someone falls off the roof, I'd rather it be someone else." - Me

A day off?

 "Will any man despise me?  Let him see to it.  But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised." - Marcus Aurelius

Outage time again

 "Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." - William Gibson

Another Aurora Borealis fail

 "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform you or push an agenda.  It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate the truth." - Garry Kasparov (chess grand master)

Isle of Man TT

 "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Sun Tzu 

Water Heater Repair

 "To love another person is to see them as God intended them to be." Fyodor Dostoevsky

Happy Sweet 17

 Today is this blog's 17th birthday.  It's been around since 2006.  That's like a couple million years in internet time.  When this blog started, AOL was still a significant internet provider, and MySpace had over 100 million subscribers.

In 2006, Twitter launched, Blu-Ray was announced, 23 and Me (DNA analysis) was founded.  Saddam Hussein, former Iraqi president was sentenced to death and later hanged.

Strange times then, stranger times now. 

Spring of 2023

 "Seek not the good in external things.  Seek it in yourself." - Epictetus

USS Thresher in memoriam

 "Death is a cessation from the impression of the senses, the tyranny of passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body." - Marcus Aurelius

Gravitational Lensing

 "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the earth.  I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet earth.  I didn't feel like a giant.  I felt very, very small." - Neil Armstrong

Sonification of a black hole

 "I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in an apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Tired of tires

 "Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another." - John Henry Newman

The six factor formula

 "The men American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." - H.L. Mencken

21st Vehicle: Mercedes S600

 "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died.  Rather we should thank God that such men lived." - Gen. George S. Patton (Not an endorsement of any war by this author, FYI)

Economics revisited

 "Be cheerful also, and seek not external help nor the tranquility which others give.  A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others." - Marcus Aurelius

Green skies and conjunctions

 "Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life." - Marcus Aurelius

Radiation Warning Sign

 "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it." - Thomas Paine

The Behavioral Sink

 "When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind." - C. S. Lewis

It's finally here!

 "If the populace knew with what idiocy they were ruled, they would revolt." - Charlemagne

A different ride to work

 "So what oppresses us and scares us?  It is our own thoughts, obviously.  What overwhelms people when they are about to leave friends, family, old haunts, and their accustomed way of life?  Thoughts." - Epictetus

Good commuting music yet again

 "When you were in the military, did you ever kill anyone?" 

"Well, I was a cook, so yeah, probably."

Spare Key

 "In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.  Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.  Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained.  That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time." - John Stuart Mill

Recent Bizarre Media News

 "When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint.  When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist" - Unknown

A whole week off

 "If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according to what others think, you will never be rich." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

War is bad

 "And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say 'Come and See', and I looked and beheld a pale horse: And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed him.  And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." - King James Bible, Revelations Ch. 6 Verse 7-8

Upcoming repairs

 "Science progresses one funeral at a time." - Planck's Principle

Men at Work

 "I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me and yet assure myself and others that I feel sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible... except by getting off his back" - Leo Tolstoy

Chickens!

 "Only an introvert can see the unfathomable stupidity of man." - Carl Jung

Into the deep end of the pool

 "Remember two things:

1. That everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period.

2. That the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing.  

The present is all that you can give up, since that is all that you have.  And what you do not have, you cannot lose." - Marcus Aurelius

Passings

 "Death is beautiful when seen to be a law and not an accident.  It is as common as life." - Henry David Thoreau

Net Positive Suction Head

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always always certain of themselves, while wiser people are filled with doubt." - Bertrand Russell

A bit of everything

 "The wisest are most annoyed at the loss of time." - Dante Alighieri

Sociology - A perspective on Anomie and Strain Theory

 "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.  It is up to you to give life meaning." - Jean Paul Sartre

RIP Jeff Beck 1944-2023

 Gonna miss ya dude...  

The Jazz/Fusion era was incredible and amazing.

Sagging

 "Sustainability is living on nature's income rather than its capital." - Murray Gell-Mann

Fanning

 "Beware of false knowledge.  It is more dangerous than ignorance." - George Bernard Shaw

New Year 2023 Post

 "For what else is tragedy than the portrayal in tragic verse of the sufferings of men who have attached high value to external things?" - Epictetus