Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I haven’t drank alcohol for almost 15 years now, so I’m not weighing  in  on the merits of various whiskeys.  Also, when I did drink, I drank everything.  I was quite undiscerning.

But I do like the Tullamore Dew ads on TV.  They are works of art.  Wild, fierce, raging rain storms, clouds flying, trees bending, waves crashing,  and some soulful folks calmly drinking whiskey.  They are so proud of the fact that their weather sucks so bad. 

They truly are beautiful ads, as much for Ireland as they are for the whiskey, but that works on an extra two levels.  When buying alcohol, whether whiskey, vodka, rum or wine, I always found that knowing the country of origin added something to the festiveness of the whole affair and gave you something to talk about.  So, it’s a shrewd marketing move.  When people are in the supermarket thinking “I’d like to buy an Irish Whiskey,” TD will be on their mind.

But, also, as it’s an ad for Ireland, they still win, because a lot of tourists visiting Ireland are going to sample the whiskeys.

I also always enjoy the ‘sight and sound’ adverts for travel to different countries.  In 30 seconds, you see a lot of really cool stuff and hear some great music and get the view of the country they want you to get, of course, and I think that’s agreeable to both sides, we don’t need to know about the flies, and the rats, and the dangers of local traffic.  If we get there, we’ll find out about all that stuff.  In the meantime, we can believe that the Taj Mahal is walking distance from the Temple of Amritsar and there are no intervening slums, or poverty stricken villages.

It is a beautiful world we live in, it really is.  From the windswept coast of Ireland to the outback of Australia, from the Fjords of Norway to the beaches of Spain, we have castles, and palaces, and shrines and cathedrals and mosques  which are beautiful, and we have mountains and lakes and waterfalls and rivers and mighty oceans and vast deserts and deep, tangled forests which change colors in the  fall.

We just need to look at all the beautiful bits, the bits in the ads, and then fix up the parts in between them until the world really looks like that.

It’s a plain, obvious fact that the police in the U.S. are out of line.  They kill old men, autistic little kids, and homeless people.  They shoot at any imagined provocation, and they never get any punishment that comes even close to fitting the crime.

So, maybe this incident doesn’t seem so bad, because nobody got killed, or even hurt, if you call losing all of your prized possessions not being hurt.  It seems a bit of overreach to me.

What the hell were they looking for?

Donald Miller seems like quite a pleasant old man.  He’s certainly led an interesting life, traveling around the world and collecting cool stuff.  Now, at 91, he’s living in Warldron, Indiana, which is, I am quite certain, as close to the middle of nowhere as any municipality on Earth.  He occasionally allows people to tour his  house, as if it were a museum.

He’s got the skin of an Anaconda, two fossilized skeletons of bears, shrunken heads from Papua New Guinea, a piece of concrete that he claims is from Hitler’s bunker but, seriously, concrete is concrete, that could just be a part of a wall or whatever, a lot of arrowheads that were on the property, an old Chinese vase, and much, much+ more.

So, the other day, the police raided the place confiscated all Miller’s stuff.  Their bullshit excuse was they needed to return the items to the country of origin, but somehow I doubt that the Brazilians are going to want their anaconda skin back.  If Romania really wants their bear-o-rama back, maybe they could make an offer for it, or politely request that Mr. Miller send it back to them, or…there are lots of options.

Anyway, what was Miller’s crime?

Just finished reading this article about an Indian billionaire who wants to send a private rover up to the moon.  Not like those NASA or other government sponsored expeditions who just want  to do boring old science.  He plans to make that rover pay it’s way, by digging up gold, platinum, and something called Helium -3, which I guess he assumes will be the next hot thing.

Mining planet from some sci-fi movie

I can foresee huge obstacles, like the cost of getting any minerals back to Earth.  Also, I suspect that he, and Richard Branson, may be just afficionados of space who have lots of money to burn, more than true space visionaries (I hope I’m wrong about that, the world needs some true space visionaries).  But,  I wish him luck.

If he is successful, then the Moon Rush is on and the game is changed forever.  Once there is a chance to make money, the money will come pouring in.  There will then be pressure to build the space elevator, and the technology for that is just around the corner.  They just need to invent some lighter super strength material and the rest will just fall into place.

After the moon, there will be Mars.  And the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.  I was just reading another article about an ice moon, around Jupiter or Saturn I don’t remember which and I’m not going to look it up because it’s late and I’m tired, but that presents another weird situation.  Is there life beneath the ice?  But, by drilling through to look, might we not  be destroying their planet?  We haven’t advanced.  Colonists killing aliens wherever we go.

But soon there will be mining stations throughout the solar system, and thriving colonies, ( using nuclear power, because in space nobody gives a fuck), on the Moon and on Mars, and plenty of space stations operating as cruise lines, (bars, restaurants, zero gravity dance floors).  It will be an amazing future.

And we’re talking within a couple of decades.

I remember when Star Trek: The Next Generation, aka the best Star Trek, came out.  First season.  Hated Riker right off the bat although he later grew on me, especially in the  “Riker goes nuts” episode, and I thought  Data was just a cheesy update of Spock, which he was, but he grew on me, too.  I didn’t like Geordie LaForge and his stupid glasses, and that bias remained for the length of the show, even though we see, with Google Glasses and their imitators, that the science was not far off.  I liked the idea of an old, bald guy as Captain, approved of the  upgrade in Klingon makeup, and accepted the made up version of human history which had led Humans and Klingons being on the same side.  It’s not like there’s any shortage of villains out there.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship

But, it was some of the new, high-tech gadgetry that impressed me the most.  Specifically, the holodeck.  Remember?  It was a bare room.  It was a Wii, with lamer graphics.  But that was back before Wii, so nobody knew they were lame graphics.  I was totally knocked out.

However, by the 2nd season, everybody knew that computer technology was overtaking the show, and they gave the holodeck a makeover, turning it into a full immersion experience and an excellent plot  device when you want to have star fleet officers prancing around in18th century France, with fully inter-reactive characters.  I didn’t blame the writers for the sudden, unexplained change.  As fast as technology is changing in our century, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t change equally fast 400 years from now.

Which brings us to this article.

Wow!

This is one of those technological developments, like anti-gravity or time travel, that I never expected to see happen. (I’m still holding  out hope for contact with extra-terrestrials,  and immortality)  A Dolphin to Human translator!  So far, they’ve only got about 8 words, but it’s a start.  In a few years, we’ll be able to say “Hey, Dolphins, we’ve got a missing plane, any idea where it’s at?” and the dolphins will say “How about first you stop killing and eating us,” and we will have the beginnings of negotiations.

If we can communicate, in language, to another species on Earth, we will some day be able to communicate with species from other planets.

Well, I’m writing  with regard to this story about how a school in the U.S. banned leggings, but that’s not really too surprising and you don’t really need to click on the link.

Schools, every so often, ban some piece of clothing.  Fashions come, fashions go.  They said they  were distracting.  Well, they can be that.

But also, you can skip the article unless you are in 7th grade, in which case you have a direct interest, or are totally oblivious and didn’t realize this was a thing.

I have many women on my facebook page, most of whom spend a great deal of time talking about women’s issues, and, in fact, I do know some in real life, so I have frequently heard the comment “leggings are not pants.”  To which I generally say “So?”

“So!?” one of my real life friends said several months back, as we watched one suchly clad girl as she was crossing the street who, it must be said, had rather an ample posterior.  I’m not saying that in a mean way.  But I’m not saying it in a good way, either.  “Her butt looks like….a butt!”

And she was right, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  If you’ve got a nice butt.

There’s nothing indecent about leggings, and as to provocative….well, the whole idea of dressing, outside of just being comfortable, is to look good.  It’s obvious that women are trying to be beautiful, because so many of them are succeeding at it.

But, back to this “leggings are not pants,” argument.  When did pants become the absolutely uniform clothing choice?  It wasn’t long ago pants for women weren’t allowed.  It was skirts or dresses.  Romans wore togas.  Polynesian  women wear fronds of grass.

Cultures change.  This is what’s in now.  And I think it’s kind of hot.