The only problem is that by virtue of the fact that the word 'Liberal' actually holds a prominent spot in your vocabulary indicates to me that you've in all liklihood, 'Bought The Line'. --Which in turn means your chances of getting out of this intact are next to nil. (Assholes think that they'll be safe by embracing the rhetoric. Safe is relative, chuckles.)
Time to create legions of hack copies of the LaserDisk set and distribute them.
Lucas used to love film. There was a time when he was annoyed that the toy companies did not release plastic replica blasters along with the figures and vehicles. He pushed for Star Wars gun toys in an age smarting from Viet Nam war fatigue. He did this because he understood that the story went beyond the screen. He understood the mythological weight of Star Wars.
Now perhaps in the last (how many years??) he has slipped, forgotten how to care, the spark went out, built an ivory tower, surrounded himself with Yes Men. Whatever the reason, the Lucas of Old is gone. --And frankly, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that he's been mind-bugged by the Forces of Evil to deliberately destroy his own legacy. The kind of story potential of Phantom Menace, and the kind of public focus its release drew. . ? I've not seen that kind of power in a long, long time. That sort of power can change things on a global level. I think it is entirely possible that the world might right now be in a very different state had Phantom Menace not sucked. I mean, like no war in Iraq different.
The parallels were many and very present. 9-11 WAS the Phantom Menace. --Designed to launch a dictator into power. But Lucas dropped the ball on this one; he squandered the opportunity to score some big points for the Light Side. (Or his mind-jobbed clone did. Hard to say.) He also turned the Force from being an analogy of Chi/Energy into a dumb Star Trek Science thing. Medichlorines? Please. He turned Star Wars into another piece of half-assed Materialist nonsense. Energy awareness is playing an increasing role in the world today; it's going to become very difficult to survive without a solid understanding of such 'taboo' knowledge. Lucas could have helped steer this planet-boat into the right waters, but instead Star Wars has become another Nail in the Coffin. Another Brick in the Wall. Another Shot of Thimerosal. (Etc. ..)
Anyway. ..
It won't make any difference now, but for the sake of good film at least, I think it's time to start making damned sure that copies of the three film Laser Disk set of the cleaned up and pure original movies are transferred to DVD (and whatever other medium is becomes popular), and made available to the world. (The Laser Disk set versions are AMAZINGLY superior films. People forget. I've heard some wool-pulled guys say, "Oh, Star Wars wasn't that good. It's no big deal." This is bullshit. --Anybody who knows anything about editing realizes that surprisingly small changes can make or break a movie, and in this case it is very, very true.)
I know some of you out there must have the ability to make copies from LaserDisk to DVD, so DO it. It's nothing but a couple days of compy-crunch time and the cost of some disks. So DO it! Mail copies to friends with the instructions to make copies themselves and mail those to more friends. Chain-letter the thing. Keep it off the web, because the LucasLawyers have their antenna up these days. The Lucas Clone himself is working his damnedest to destroy all evidence that Good Films ever existed in the Star Wars universe.
Do you want to sit by if you can do something about it? Then don't.
I remember sitting in high school science class going over the details. Our Birkenstock-wearing teacher was probably breaking the rules by telling us what he'd learned. Darned socially aware hippies!
Livestock farmers mixing non-lethal doses of antibiotics into the feed to keep bacteria at controllable levels. (Creating bacteria breeding boilers.)
Junkies, who destroy their immune systems with their chemicals of choice, would normally die off fairly fast but for black-market/clinic-distributed, improperly used antibiotics. Concentrated junkie populations, like those I've walked among in Vancouver and Amsterdam are super-breeders for germs. Chilling and very real.
And then of course, there's the regular citizenry and drugs like 'Contact-C' which allow people to ignore symptoms which would normally put them in bed (where one can properly recover without drugs), and thus keep them at work where they spread the virus and wear themselves down further until a simple viral infection can graduate into a full-fledged bacterial bloom. --Then it's off to the doctor for antibiotics which many don't bother finishing properly once they feel their symptoms fading. --Doesn't matter how often you explain the Hows and Whys to a drone about why they HAVE to finish their antibiotics prescription. People who have been programmed to glaze over when confronted with important knowledge are both common and dangerous.
Humanity is getting exactly what it designed for itself.
Fortunately, ignorance is self-punishing and awareness protects those who choose to learn and act upon what they learn. --Viruses can be avoided if one has groomed their awareness, health and energy. I've not been sick in several years now, and I certainly don't manage it by allowing some drug-salesman 'doctor' to jab me with thimerosal/mercury-laced flu shots! (Which dull the brain, and I strongly suspect, reduce the strength of one's natural immune system, thus increasing the perceived need for just such profitable pharmaceuticals).
But you know, 'Science' is good and great and all that, precluding the need to question the intent behind the needle. Far too many people have traded their critical minds for easy, false trust and never question when they see the 'Science' label and hear an authoritative, soothing voice.
Remember; it's okay to be wrong. You will constantly be faced with false data if you choose the road of continual learning. Just be sure to correct it accordingly as you discover it. You WILL be punished for your mistakes by those who want to stop you from learning, but that's part of the journey. --In the long run, the lemmings are the ones who get sick, and they want your (enforced) company.
If government really wanted spammers gone, they would presumably arrest them, charge them, and punish them.
From what I understand, the FCC and various other agencies know who they all are. With all the Carnivores and Echelons and such in place, it seems to me fairly impossible to hide your activities, Spammer or not.
So I am left to conclude that the people in charge want spammers in place. Why?
That's obvious. --And talk about bounties and Americans getting used to the idea of turning in Americans for fun and profit under the guise of 'legitimate' vengeance should make it all the more obvious. That and further warming people to the idea that the 'internet is a dangerous place' which needs to be controlled.
And from what I've seen on Slashdot, it appears that the tactic is working rather effectively on more than half the posters.
Simply stand up straight, and say aloud with appropriate pomp and arrogance,
"Global warming is a myth. GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH! LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
Repeat as necessary. While this won't serve to alter reality in any significant way, it can certainly make it possible for you to resume your mundane activities and television viewing in relative peace.
Killer heat waves in Europe, missing summers in mid-western Canada, massive drought across China and shrinking glaciers around the world (among numerous other instances of sudden changes to our biosphere), mean absolutely nothing. Just blips due to better reporting systems. Stop worrying and return to your cubicle, citizen. Your government will be re-locating underground to better facilitate the spending of your tax dollars.
A society which puts Consumption and Competition on such high pedestals, deserves all the crime it gets.
If you have something I want, then the best way to get it is to blow your head off and take it. That's competition baby! What? Don't like that? Think there ought to be government controls in place to stop me? What are you? A Communist?
I was talking with a fellow I know who has been studying social and political science for the last five years at his university, and he was telling me about Australia. ..
All the criminals were shipped down under, right? Big penal colony. But because the land was so big, everybody who wanted, could have a stretch of their own. During this period where virtually everybody had property, theft was apparently virtually non-existent. Correlation. . ?
On the same time scale, it appeared that only when the evenly-spread wealth began to 'clump' and sneak into the hands of manipulative money-grower types, and some people got rich and other people were left out on the street with nadda, did crime start to rise again. Now ain't that interesting?
This is not to say that there aren't people who are naturally stupid and likely to screw up their holdings and end up in the street by following the pale lights of their own dim wits. But that's a different thing from actively pressing an undue and huge portion of otherwise good and able people into the gutter through the unnecessary promotion of such axioms as, "Greed is Good" and "Winning is Everything".
All those Losers are going to feel pretty awful, and violence and disrespect for others is a great way to express feeling awful. Crime is a direct result of societal structure.
Or I suppose you could live in a walled community and give lots of money to security companies and live with a nice back-ground buzz of perma-fear in your gut. I wonder what that does to voting trends and foreign policy. . ?
But as is also said. . , "Water Seeks its Own Level". Service to Self will always lead to complications and misery, and the U.S. is today the capitol of Self-Service on the planet. --Which is why it's goin' down as hard and fast as it is; I'd get the heck out before it's too late, (which it almost is), but then I don't live there.
Although, on a purely techno-clever basis, I do like the Fog Trap and Crunchy Gravel ideas for preventing property theft.
Anyway. . , if I may offer my attempt at the Cole's Notes version of his/her post: (Ahem). ..
"You were never guaranteed privacy, so therefore you don't deserve respect or consideration. Crime is best combatted with ever-increasing controls and distrust, and I am probably smarter and wiser than you because I have read the U.S. constitution."
Pardon me; but this sounds like the spewings of a smarmy fool who has bought into the media message, or has little facility for objective thinking, or is deliberately self-serving with no concern for anybody but his/herself. (Or some combination of the three.)
--On the chance that I am mistaken, (for I have only read portions of the U.S. constitution, being a non-native of that country and as such must clearly not be as smart or wise as the poster), perhaps somebody would care to explain the logic to me.
We're in a new age right now. Things are accelerating, and watching speculative television fiction isn't really the way to stay on top of things. The real adventure is going on outside your front door. Time to take all the mush we learned while absorbing stuff like Star Trek, figure out which parts of it are worth keeping, and then put it into practical application. There were some excellent messages in Star Trek.
Depending on your age group, there's a good chance you're going to be carrying a machine gun by the end of next year. If you want to avoid this, it would be a good idea to disengage from the dream-box while you still can and determine a plan of action. Nobody can make you kill. It's always, always a choice.
My problem extends from the many eye-witness accounts collected shortly after the fact which did NOT describe a large passenger jet. That little flash movie posted did a pretty good job of collecting up many of those accounts. Memory is usually an easy thing to bend into the desired shape when it is, A) in shock, B) Told what 'really' happened by the authorities it has been trained to trust. Paint the right colors and fake windows on a drone, and you'll get people deliberately re-writing their memories to match the official story. I have a friend who's father is a stage magician; people are very, very easy to fool through simple psychological tricks.
--My big issue, though, was the fact that there was no passenger jet wreckage outside the Pentagon!
I was convinced of the official story as well in the beginning; I even argued in its defense; I said, "Look at the pictures! You can see where the wings struck the building; there are impact marks on the concrete walls where the wings and engines hit!"
But, interestingly, while I thought my observation was air-tight, I somehow managed to ignore the fact that if there were impact marks instead of holes, it would suggest that there should also be a pair of destroyed wings and jet engines which made those impact marks, and that they would be on the outside of the building.
There weren't. There was nothing on the outside of the building. Zip. Just blast marks, and one hole which was not big enough to fit the fuselage of a Boeing passenger jet.
There are actually a great many problems with the official Pentagon story. --And frankly, given the track record of governments, (this one in particular), I think it is far more realistic to assume that there was some deviousness going on than not. The fact that the numerous cameras, (also detailed in that little video), which photographed the event, had their film and data collected by FBI shortly after the crash and have not been released or ever discussed strikes me as suspicious.
From the top of my head, I like these two tid bits. . . (Neither story censored; more like, totally overlooked.)
Six months before 9-11, an episode of the Lone Gunmen featured the following; "The FOX TV series The Lone Gunmen (X-Files spin off) airs their opening episode "Pilot" six months before 9/11 which depicts a secret U.S. government agency behind a plot to crash a Boeing 727 into the WTC via remote control and blame it on foreign terrorists in the hopes of generating a bigger military budget."
A lot of the X-Files was channeled stuff through Carter's noodle, it is thought, and I tend to agree. A lot was also poop, but that's how it goes. ..
Anyway, my other current fave was this neat little flash movie which looks into the Pentagon Crash, suggesting that it was a drone aircraft and not a passenger jet which hit the government complex.
So we're comparing Word, which has had millions of development dollars and about a decade devoted to it. . , to a bit of programming done by enthusiasts who want to give the world a free and clean word processor. --Which they have done!
The article itself may be off, but for goodness sake! Cut the complaining a little! The folks at Abisource have done a fantastic job and they've done it in their spare time. They deserve a helluva lot of respect for it. What non-selfish acts have you performed for the rest of the world recently?
--I spent ages searching for a solid open source word processor, and Abiword is these days easily head and shoulders above every other option out there; it has in the last six months alone matured into a very solid little package; the current stable release is 2.0.10, and it is STABLE. I've experienced no crashes, and I use it all the time. I use it as a full word processor capable of handling 200 page files with nimble ease, a general note pad, a general spell checker, a document printer, a file converter, and all with comfort, simplicity and at a very tidy speed. I've used professional packages which have far more bumps and knots, and I've paid for them. For a work in progress, Abiword is amazing.
Now, granted, Abiword isn't as feature-rich as Word, but give it time. Mozilla took a while before it was stable, (remember???), but now look at it! In the mean time, cut some slack and look at the successes rather than the failures. I've followed Abiword's development over the last three years, and it has come a long way.
Abiword is a pleasure to use and it doesn't smell of MS. --I do actually appreciate the esthetics of a small program size. The download is only 4.83 Megs, and that's how big a word processor ought to be! Bloat-ware annoys me conceptually, and Microsoft annoys me directly. Abiword simply feels better, and when you write, one's state of mind is of paramount importance. --Feng shui is largely about how physical esthetics affect one's psychology. Torn envelopes and unpaid bills strewn on the kitchen table, awkward objects littering the entrance, bad colors. . , those hundred little dings to ones subconscious add up to crappy moods and guarded personalities, and you aren't even aware it's happening. The same applies to software; most of us spend hours every day with our minds merged with our computers.
And honestly! How can anybody do their best work while jacked into the offspring of Gates?
The following is the edited version of my last response, which I am stubbornly posting despite the fact that doing so looks obsessive, because I'd rather that than bloody well look like a clown with poor editing after already making an idiot of myself four times in a freeking row. Honestly! I don't know what the hell is wrong with me this month. Perhaps we all have to play 'idiot' once or twice a year for tax reasons; if so, I must be paying some heavy back-debts. Or maybe it's just the coffee. Either way, I'm not posting anything for another week or two until whatever the hell it is fogging my mind clears off.
Just a few final notes here to wrap things up. ..
1. NASA public relations and the media presented a very tight argument for falling insulation damage being the culprit in the Columbia disaster. --Historical evidence was presented from the NASA archives purporting that previous missions of both the Columbia and other shuttles had shown some limited damage to heat tiles resulting from foam insulation falling from the fuel tanks. The speculation and arguments were that a larger piece of foam striking in a certain way could cause a critical failure of the heat shielding.
2. Despite the recommendation by NASA engineers during the mission that the foam insulation strike in question did not pose a problem and that the mission was in no danger, the conclusion was reversed after the disaster and subsequent investigation.
3. In doing follow-up on this whole story, I ran across this curious item about a photographer who was shooting the Columbia as it first started to break up. He captured an image of an energy bolt striking the Columbia followed by a series of pictures showing a flash and the break-up.
The name of the photographer was Jay Lawson, an electrical engineer who works for Sparks defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp. Jay was at the time also a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno. He captured his images of the shuttle from the Fleischmann facility.
This is a brief description of his video according to an article in the RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL;
Peering up at the southern sky, he caught what appears to be some sort of explosion as Columbia re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. He did not realize that he might have caught the first visual evidence of trouble aboard the space shuttle until he went back inside and watched the tape on his big-screen television. Moments later, he watched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration television channel and realized the shuttle was gone.
There is no mention of the energy strike in this article; the reason I included it here was in part to show the value of his film. If you read the article, you can see that NASA sent a letter thanking him for what were considered to be valuable images which indeed showed the earliest stages of the break-up. --This article also seems important to me because these were apparently the images which came directly after the first frame which showed an energy bolt striking the shuttle. Why the energy bolt was not mentioned at all in the article seems very curious to me.
Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it. That also strikes me as a little weird. But perhaps I just wasn't looking hard enough.
So anyway. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the
1. NASA public relations and the media presented a very tight argument for falling insulation damage being the culprit in the Columbia disaster. --Historical evidence was presented from the NASA archives purporting that previous missions of both the Columbia and other shuttles had shown some limited damage to heat tiles resulting from foam insulation falling from the fuel tanks. The speculation and arguments were that a larger piece striking in a certain way could cause a critical failure of the heat shielding.
2. Despite the recommendation by NASA engineers during the mission that the foam insulation strike in question did not pose a problem and that the mission was in no danger, the conclusion was reversed after the disaster and subsequent investigation.
3. In doing follow-up on this whole story, I ran across this curious item about a photographer who was shooting the Columbia minutes before it broke up on descent. He captured an image of an energy bolt striking the Columbia.
I was unable to find a copy of the image in question, not any stories regarding the conclusion about this image. The name of the photographer was Jay Lawson, an electrical engineer who works for Sparks defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp., and a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno.
His video captured two things, apparently; according to an article in the RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL;
Peering up at the southern sky, he caught what appears to be some sort of explosion as Columbia re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. He did not realize that he might have caught the first visual evidence of trouble aboard the space shuttle until he went back inside and watched the tape on his big-screen television. Moments later, he watched the National Aeronautics and Space Administration television channel and realized the shuttle was gone.
So. . . A bolt of energy striking the Columbia, followed by a bright flash and the break-up of the shuttle.
Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it.
Curious.
So. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the incident; a piece of foam caused damage to heat tiles, which in turn resulted in a critical failure.
The second story is one which comes from two sources; a channeled source claiming an energy weapon was used to shoot down the Columbia, and a photograph of an energy bolt actually striking the shuttle instants before it broke up.
So which is more likely. . ?
One:The U.S. Government can be counted on to not fabricate stories, and that NASA's own engineers who originally said the foam strike did not present a problem were actually wrong.
Two:A photograph of the shuttle being hit by an energy bolt was wrong or fabricated, AND the channeled claim that the Columbia being shot down by an energy bolt was also wrong or fabricated, --and that BOTH were wrong or fabricated by different people in different parts of the country without any contact between each other.
The channeled claim has been instantly disregarded on the basis that it is supposedly impossible that alien intelligence could be in contact with humans. Occam's Razor has been suggested as the means by which 'UFO conspiracy' theory should be disregarded and indeed scorned.
The really unfortunate part is that you can only use this interaction to further cement your views, which remain flawed.
Occam's Razor is a rule of thumb, and it is a pretty good one when used responsibly. But it is not a scientific law, and unfortunately, it is broadly mis-applied and mis-used. Based on its fundamental logic, it cannot work well when being used to test the viability of many emerging possible realities simply because it is designed to measure against the strictures of old accepted realities. To put it another way, asking, "Is it more likely. .," does not require imperial measurement, but rather calls for a subjective value judgment, and as such, using it to gauge the liklihood of a possible reality when one's current knowledge and awareness is by necessity limited to old and limited knowledge, means that things which may indeed be quite real can seem instead to be only very distant possibilities. --Used at various times during history, different researchers would have been easily dismissed by Occam who were later found to be entirely correct. --I realize that's an old argument to point out, but it's a good one because it remains true.
Further. . , the Columbia incident is only a 'closed book' to you because you have chosen to believe the NASA public relations efforts. --And here all I can do is stress that NASA is just another U.S. government body, and the U.S. Government has been shown to have told countless lies and to have used the media to deceive the public many, many times before. It behooves one to think twice before accepting such stories as truth!!!
But I have at this point largely destroyed my credibility through my very half-assed recall of details and my exceptionally poor handling of those few details I did have right. (Which is definitely not par for the course with me. I blame this on the event being over a year old and my reluctance in going over the old details. Laziness nailed me on this one.). Either way, I don't see that there is any point in further attempting to correct this, particularly with somebody who has (ugh) firmly chosen to become entrenched in rudeness and conceit. --Those are walls which most people, and I suspect you as well, generally feel compelled to defend even at the expense of gaining further knowledge. Should the day ever come when you realize you want to change your mind, you will have to dismantle those walls yourself, and they generally prove to be among the most difficult!
I've really not made such a fantastic mess of an argument in years, and I apologize deeply. I know that must sound utterly ridiculous to you at this point and that you will not value such an apology, but it must be offered.
Nobody would consciously ridicule a total stranger.
I re-thought the wording of that one as I hit, 'Submit'.
Interestingly, it calls appropriately to the point of what I was trying to say, because you're quite right! People do commonly treat others this way. So why exactly do people feel compelled to ridicule certain sets of ideas before properly considering the content of those ideas?
This is the knee-jerk reaction I'm talking about. It clearly has the ability to severely limit how a group thinks and deals with new information, and like I said, I have learned to use it as a warning signal that interesting, and potentially valuable ideas are in the offing.
haphazard debate I've had in months. I've never seen so much static in the mix before.
I took a look at the video footage again, and it was indeed shot through a telephoto camera. Enough time has passed between my first seeing it over a year ago and now, for my memories to have decayed. I've certainly learned something about myself, namely that it's worth going over old files before trying to speak with authority on a subject!
However, (and you're going to love this. ..)
When looking for the video footage you were describing, I ran across the following:
(CBS) NASA cast doubt Wednesday on the theory that a piece of foam debris striking the shuttle during liftoff was the "root cause" of the Columbia disaster.
Space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said that after a careful study of the damage possible from the fall of a 20-inch chunk of foam insulation, investigators are "looking somewhere else."
The patch of foam insulation breaking off from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch and striking tiles on the underside of the left wing has been the leading theory of Columbia's destruction, in which all seven astronauts on board were killed.
In recent days, some space experts have speculated that the chunk of foam was coated or infused with ice, which could have increased the weight -- and destructive potential -- of the piece that hit the shuttle.
"I don't think it's ice. I don't think there's an embedded ice question here," Dittemore said, adding that the foam is water-resistant and that an inspection team found no ice conditions that day. "So it is something else.
"It doesn't make sense to us that a piece of debris could be the root cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew," Dittemore said. "There's got to be another reason."
Like I said; a very scattered series of arguments and a very difficult puzzle to zero in on. --All I can say with total clarity is that from Day One, the foam story struck me as being 'off'; I've studied a fair bit about public relations work, and I was definitely picking up on the scent of panic and haste with which NASA hustled their explanation together; the cannon demonstration in particular seemed sensationalist and forced. This was my intuitive insight of the situation, and so I went searching for other ideas, and I found several as offered previously.
Now, clearly, my memory of events has decayed over the last year since I was looking at this, and I definitely give you a tip of the hat for your superior recall of the facts and details of the story. My efforts were, and continue to be, primarily attempts to explain why the whole thing felt 'off', and still does. I've been rewarded many times through life for trusting my intuitive insights into things, and while my attempts to explain them aren't always on the money, the reactions themselves tend to sing true, and my willingness to look further afield for reasons often procures fascinating and useful results.
Coincidentally, I find my best results are arrived at when I work with an individual like yourself, who clearly has a superior grasp of Right Brained stuff. But you really do need to work on your attitude. It's really becoming quite insulting.
Correct. When they fly the shuttle back from its alternate landing location they have to avoid rain clouds because raindrop impacts really screw up the tiles. The heat resistent tiles are designed to withstand high temperatures, not impacts.
Fair enough regarding tiles, but it doesn't really address the point.
The offending tile which fell hit a wing, which is designed to put up with massive sheer forces. --And if it wasn't designed to deal with unexpected impacts, (like ice crumbling from the main fuel tank during the same phase of lift off that the foam block was seen to bounce from the wing in the launch video), then the designers were being foolish.
Boeing made the thing, for goodness sake. I'd be very surprised if they didn't use material sciences and design philosophies garnered from their existing knowledge pool. Why would they deliberately invent a new and weaker wing design when all the technology and knowledge for standard designs was pre-existing?
I took a quick look, and it seems that NASA is now retroactively fitting the shuttle with heaters to prevent ice build-up so that the danger from debris falling during launch is minimized. This is a very slick bit of PR, (they've had a year or more to polish it, after all!), because through saying this, they cleverly make a point of saying that the heaters are being installed to replace insulation which was previously there and vital to preventing ice build-up which could fall and damage the shuttle during launch.
--With this they point out that there was always a danger from ice, and that they took care of it before but now they're taking even more care. Very slick. The only problem is that it's total bullshit.
There has always been ice build up and it has always fallen during launches. You can see the ice falling and striking the shuttle in the same video clip where the 'foam block' fell and supposedly did its damage.
Which brings me to another point. ..
Since the video was available of the actual tile striking the wing, then this means the event happened during the very early moments of lift-off. --The camera was presumably attached to the launch tower. --So, if the shuttle was still in range to be filmed, how can it possibly have had enough time reach the super-sonic speeds necessary to have impacted the tile with the same force as those bits of foam the NASA demonstrators were firing out of their test cannon at 400 Km/hour? What's up with that?
Apparently somebody already asked this question, and the response was, "Well, actually the foam was blasted away from the body of the Shuttle, due to air bubbles in the glue heating up. So the foam block was actually explosively launched at the wing."
Well, now! This is the biggest reach yet! --So now, the block, which we all saw in the video not moving any faster than falling ice, was supposedly explosively launched at the wing because of air bubbles?
For me, all of these points add up to a big, "Huh?" The NASA story only makes sense if you don't think about it too much or examine it too closely, which, luckily for them, most people are perfectly willing to avoid doing.
Oh yeah, of course, I knew that. Rats. Columbia broke up on re-entry; not on launch! Sheesh. --The foam block in question broke loose during lift-off, as shown in the video clips. Yeah, definitely my mistake. I must have cross wired memories with the launch videos.
Oh well. I'm sure I have lost all credibility at this point.
Nonetheless, it does actually remind me of another point. ..
Since the video was available of the actual tile striking the wing, then this means that mean the event happened during the very early moments of lift-off. --The camera was presumably attached to the launch tower. --So, if the shuttle was still in range to be filmed, how can it possibly have had enough time reach super-sonic speeds? --Thus, how could there be super-sonic flows of air to catch foam bricks and hurl them in ways most people, as you put it, "don't have a very intuitive grasp of"? (A very common explanation from the authorities; "You are stupid and we are 'experts'. We will tell you what to believe, so stop thinking. It is very annoying!")
Yeah, so that was my other nagging thought during all of the explanations being spun about.
--And still, through all of it, the fact that aircraft wings are designed to put up with massive abuse still hasn't been adequately addressed. The more I think it over, the more impossible it seems that a small foam brick, which was essentially only dropped on the shuttle wing at very little relative speed, could have caused critical damage.
As for losing you on the UFO stuff. ..
It's actually not nearly so flaky a subject as many believe. I also always looked the other way until I came across Richard Dolan. --A great deal of what people base their opinions and rational explanations on regarding UFO stuff is a very limited and corrupted set of data. I read Dolan on a recommendation; his approach is very different from most of the New Age candy out there. He studied a specific stretch of history, from WWII until 1973, working primarily from Military and Police reports, since those agencies have systems designed to properly record and track reports from their personel, and as such tend to have a far greater degree of clarity, technical data from radar and multiple witnesses etc., than sightings made by the general public. Interestingly, when public sightings were discounted, the number of reports just from military and police is staggering. Hundreds of them! People just don't hear about this stuff. --Dolan also worked with several air-force officers who had been active over the three decades his book covers.
Very fascinating stuff. --And that's just one source. There is a lot of amazing data out there if one is willing to look. There is certainly a lot of misinterpretation and silly behavior, but when it comes right down to it, unless one is willing to personally put in the time to examine things, you really can't expect to learn what's what.
--These days I really can't take people very seriously when they scoff unless they have taken the time to properly investigate these and similar issues. Thoughtless dismissal is just too easy, too common, and nearly always based on limited, corrupted information.
I'm also weird. --When people try to prevent me from thinking in certain directions through social punishment like ridicule, my first and immediate question is, "Hum! Why it is so important that I not look at this stuff? Friends, family and total strangers are willing to go out of their way to ridicule me. These cannot be reactions stemming from the conscious. Nobody would consciously ridicule a total stranger. These are reactions stemming from somewhere deeper." I just don't trust automatic reactions of that sort.
As for the rest of your reasoning: you are making mountains out of molehills! What a helluva lot to assume out of my original statement! Methinks thou dost protest too much. It all says more about you than it does the original post.
Aw, I'm just playing with words and ideas. I really enjoy this stuff; looking at patterns and trying to interpret responses. If you don't think as you go, it's like sleep-walking through life. Plus, having an awareness of one's output and internal processes tends to purify, because there is usually a LOT of broken garbage in most people and when you start to notice it in yourself, you naturally want it gone. I'm still working to clear all the crap out of my own system! Phew.
For some reason, my brain just couldn't process the flow of story telling in this thing. I mean, I was REALLY confused, and I usually enjoy costume dramas and high-brow period pieces.
I found 'The English Patient' interesting because of this, actually. It seemed that about half the people who watched the film had the same reaction I did; they actually couldn't follow the narrative logic. To me it seemed a series of disconnected scenes with a lot of characters who may or may not have been the same people. My girlfriend, at the time, though, loved it and teared up while explaining the plot to me. There was even a Seinfeld episode done regarding people's reactions to this film!
I've only run into this phenomenon once before, and it was in an English class where we read a brief short story.
I honestly found the story utterly impenetrable while everybody else in the class just read it without any hassles and answered all the questions. I felt like I was trying to cut through some sort of advanced math where the words were obeying some kind of different grammatical law. It was like I was suffering from a very specific form of brain damage just in regard to that one story. Very strange. 'The English Patient' had the same effect on me.
Aside from the depressing bleakness of the film, I thought it was pretty darned clever and quite watchable.
Made for a song, too. Think about it! They only needed the one set! Plus, all the special computer effects were done for free by the effects company so that they could advertise their wares to the film industry. All in all, a very solid film made for almost nothing. Written like a 102 minute twi-light zone, I had no real complaints except intellectual differences which would have made for interesting talk with the writer/director over beer.
--And it wasn't an alien cube. Just government. I guess you got fed up and didn't finish watching.
Yeah. Roland Emerich and Dean Devlin need to be shot for making "Stargate". The television show was pretty good, but the movie. . . Wow.
--A truly fantastic, compelling idea done very, very, very badly. I swore at the time, sitting in a packed theater on opening day, that if I ever ran into either of those idiots, I was going to punch them in the stomach. --To return the favor for how I felt after watching that piece of drek.
What I find interesting is that more than one of their films have already been mentioned in this series of posts!
Although, for sheer crapola that I paid to see was Mark Hamill's "Time Runner". Just plain shit; basically a student/fan film which Mark agreed to act in for the helluvit and as a result, made it into theaters. It was my own fault for having expectations. --Interestingly, because of his willingness to do stupid films just 'cuz, Hamill remains one of my all-time favorite actors. He's a guy who really, really doesn't care about his professional image. There are very few actors who can claim this. This is true coolness. Anybody who worries about image is, by definition, seeking validation and therefore not cool. I'd put Hamill in a similar league as William Shatner and maybe Adam West. These are comfortable guys who are actually happy in life, and as a result, do awesome work from time to time.
And one of the coolest quotes I've ever heard actually came from the set of "Time Runner"; Hamill was being interviewed. The production was taking place in some small town and he was asked, "Wow. Do they even get cable out here?"
To which Mark answered, "Well, they have cable, but I don't know if they get it."
Actually, I really liked the Star Wars Holiday Special; I just got a copy of it and watched it a month ago, first time in twenty-five years! It sort of reminded me of the Muppet Show. --Oh, I agree, it was pretty ghastly, but it also rocketed me back to when I was seven years old, back when Princess Leia was the prettiest girl in the universe.
The fact that VCR's didn't exist back then made movies something far more special than they are today. --A show like that allowed you to visit old friends again, and friends are such that you forgive blemishes and shoddy production values.
And actually, even as an adult, seeing Han and Chewie take out storm troopers was pretty cool!
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem is that by virtue of the fact that the word 'Liberal' actually holds a prominent spot in your vocabulary indicates to me that you've in all liklihood, 'Bought The Line'. --Which in turn means your chances of getting out of this intact are next to nil. (Assholes think that they'll be safe by embracing the rhetoric. Safe is relative, chuckles.)
What's the age of draft in your country?
You'll learn.
-FL
Lucas used to love film. There was a time when he was annoyed that the toy companies did not release plastic replica blasters along with the figures and vehicles. He pushed for Star Wars gun toys in an age smarting from Viet Nam war fatigue. He did this because he understood that the story went beyond the screen. He understood the mythological weight of Star Wars.
Now perhaps in the last (how many years??) he has slipped, forgotten how to care, the spark went out, built an ivory tower, surrounded himself with Yes Men. Whatever the reason, the Lucas of Old is gone. --And frankly, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that he's been mind-bugged by the Forces of Evil to deliberately destroy his own legacy. The kind of story potential of Phantom Menace, and the kind of public focus its release drew. . ? I've not seen that kind of power in a long, long time. That sort of power can change things on a global level. I think it is entirely possible that the world might right now be in a very different state had Phantom Menace not sucked. I mean, like no war in Iraq different.
The parallels were many and very present. 9-11 WAS the Phantom Menace. --Designed to launch a dictator into power. But Lucas dropped the ball on this one; he squandered the opportunity to score some big points for the Light Side. (Or his mind-jobbed clone did. Hard to say.) He also turned the Force from being an analogy of Chi/Energy into a dumb Star Trek Science thing. Medichlorines? Please. He turned Star Wars into another piece of half-assed Materialist nonsense. Energy awareness is playing an increasing role in the world today; it's going to become very difficult to survive without a solid understanding of such 'taboo' knowledge. Lucas could have helped steer this planet-boat into the right waters, but instead Star Wars has become another Nail in the Coffin. Another Brick in the Wall. Another Shot of Thimerosal. (Etc. .
Anyway. .
It won't make any difference now, but for the sake of good film at least, I think it's time to start making damned sure that copies of the three film Laser Disk set of the cleaned up and pure original movies are transferred to DVD (and whatever other medium is becomes popular), and made available to the world. (The Laser Disk set versions are AMAZINGLY superior films. People forget. I've heard some wool-pulled guys say, "Oh, Star Wars wasn't that good. It's no big deal." This is bullshit. --Anybody who knows anything about editing realizes that surprisingly small changes can make or break a movie, and in this case it is very, very true.)
I know some of you out there must have the ability to make copies from LaserDisk to DVD, so DO it. It's nothing but a couple days of compy-crunch time and the cost of some disks. So DO it! Mail copies to friends with the instructions to make copies themselves and mail those to more friends. Chain-letter the thing. Keep it off the web, because the LucasLawyers have their antenna up these days. The Lucas Clone himself is working his damnedest to destroy all evidence that Good Films ever existed in the Star Wars universe.
Do you want to sit by if you can do something about it? Then don't.
May the Force be With You!
-FL
Saw this coming from 20 years ago.
I remember sitting in high school science class going over the details. Our Birkenstock-wearing teacher was probably breaking the rules by telling us what he'd learned. Darned socially aware hippies!
Livestock farmers mixing non-lethal doses of antibiotics into the feed to keep bacteria at controllable levels. (Creating bacteria breeding boilers.)
Junkies, who destroy their immune systems with their chemicals of choice, would normally die off fairly fast but for black-market/clinic-distributed, improperly used antibiotics. Concentrated junkie populations, like those I've walked among in Vancouver and Amsterdam are super-breeders for germs. Chilling and very real.
And then of course, there's the regular citizenry and drugs like 'Contact-C' which allow people to ignore symptoms which would normally put them in bed (where one can properly recover without drugs), and thus keep them at work where they spread the virus and wear themselves down further until a simple viral infection can graduate into a full-fledged bacterial bloom. --Then it's off to the doctor for antibiotics which many don't bother finishing properly once they feel their symptoms fading. --Doesn't matter how often you explain the Hows and Whys to a drone about why they HAVE to finish their antibiotics prescription. People who have been programmed to glaze over when confronted with important knowledge are both common and dangerous.
Humanity is getting exactly what it designed for itself.
Fortunately, ignorance is self-punishing and awareness protects those who choose to learn and act upon what they learn. --Viruses can be avoided if one has groomed their awareness, health and energy. I've not been sick in several years now, and I certainly don't manage it by allowing some drug-salesman 'doctor' to jab me with thimerosal/mercury-laced flu shots! (Which dull the brain, and I strongly suspect, reduce the strength of one's natural immune system, thus increasing the perceived need for just such profitable pharmaceuticals).
But you know, 'Science' is good and great and all that, precluding the need to question the intent behind the needle. Far too many people have traded their critical minds for easy, false trust and never question when they see the 'Science' label and hear an authoritative, soothing voice.
Remember; it's okay to be wrong. You will constantly be faced with false data if you choose the road of continual learning. Just be sure to correct it accordingly as you discover it. You WILL be punished for your mistakes by those who want to stop you from learning, but that's part of the journey. --In the long run, the lemmings are the ones who get sick, and they want your (enforced) company.
How much do you value your social acceptance?
-FL
From what I understand, the FCC and various other agencies know who they all are. With all the Carnivores and Echelons and such in place, it seems to me fairly impossible to hide your activities, Spammer or not.
So I am left to conclude that the people in charge want spammers in place. Why?
That's obvious. --And talk about bounties and Americans getting used to the idea of turning in Americans for fun and profit under the guise of 'legitimate' vengeance should make it all the more obvious. That and further warming people to the idea that the 'internet is a dangerous place' which needs to be controlled.
And from what I've seen on Slashdot, it appears that the tactic is working rather effectively on more than half the posters.
-FL
"Global warming is a myth. GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH! LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
Repeat as necessary. While this won't serve to alter reality in any significant way, it can certainly make it possible for you to resume your mundane activities and television viewing in relative peace.
Killer heat waves in Europe, missing summers in mid-western Canada, massive drought across China and shrinking glaciers around the world (among numerous other instances of sudden changes to our biosphere), mean absolutely nothing. Just blips due to better reporting systems. Stop worrying and return to your cubicle, citizen. Your government will be re-locating underground to better facilitate the spending of your tax dollars.
-FL
I will anyway.
A society which puts Consumption and Competition on such high pedestals, deserves all the crime it gets.
If you have something I want, then the best way to get it is to blow your head off and take it. That's competition baby! What? Don't like that? Think there ought to be government controls in place to stop me? What are you? A Communist?
I was talking with a fellow I know who has been studying social and political science for the last five years at his university, and he was telling me about Australia. .
All the criminals were shipped down under, right? Big penal colony. But because the land was so big, everybody who wanted, could have a stretch of their own. During this period where virtually everybody had property, theft was apparently virtually non-existent. Correlation. . ?
On the same time scale, it appeared that only when the evenly-spread wealth began to 'clump' and sneak into the hands of manipulative money-grower types, and some people got rich and other people were left out on the street with nadda, did crime start to rise again. Now ain't that interesting?
This is not to say that there aren't people who are naturally stupid and likely to screw up their holdings and end up in the street by following the pale lights of their own dim wits. But that's a different thing from actively pressing an undue and huge portion of otherwise good and able people into the gutter through the unnecessary promotion of such axioms as, "Greed is Good" and "Winning is Everything".
All those Losers are going to feel pretty awful, and violence and disrespect for others is a great way to express feeling awful. Crime is a direct result of societal structure.
Or I suppose you could live in a walled community and give lots of money to security companies and live with a nice back-ground buzz of perma-fear in your gut. I wonder what that does to voting trends and foreign policy. . ?
But as is also said. . , "Water Seeks its Own Level". Service to Self will always lead to complications and misery, and the U.S. is today the capitol of Self-Service on the planet. --Which is why it's goin' down as hard and fast as it is; I'd get the heck out before it's too late, (which it almost is), but then I don't live there.
Although, on a purely techno-clever basis, I do like the Fog Trap and Crunchy Gravel ideas for preventing property theft.
-FL
Anyway. . , if I may offer my attempt at the Cole's Notes version of his/her post: (Ahem). .
"You were never guaranteed privacy, so therefore you don't deserve respect or consideration. Crime is best combatted with ever-increasing controls and distrust, and I am probably smarter and wiser than you because I have read the U.S. constitution."
Pardon me; but this sounds like the spewings of a smarmy fool who has bought into the media message, or has little facility for objective thinking, or is deliberately self-serving with no concern for anybody but his/herself. (Or some combination of the three.)
--On the chance that I am mistaken, (for I have only read portions of the U.S. constitution, being a non-native of that country and as such must clearly not be as smart or wise as the poster), perhaps somebody would care to explain the logic to me.
-FL
We're in a new age right now. Things are accelerating, and watching speculative television fiction isn't really the way to stay on top of things. The real adventure is going on outside your front door. Time to take all the mush we learned while absorbing stuff like Star Trek, figure out which parts of it are worth keeping, and then put it into practical application. There were some excellent messages in Star Trek.
Depending on your age group, there's a good chance you're going to be carrying a machine gun by the end of next year. If you want to avoid this, it would be a good idea to disengage from the dream-box while you still can and determine a plan of action. Nobody can make you kill. It's always, always a choice.
-FL
--My big issue, though, was the fact that there was no passenger jet wreckage outside the Pentagon!
I was convinced of the official story as well in the beginning; I even argued in its defense; I said, "Look at the pictures! You can see where the wings struck the building; there are impact marks on the concrete walls where the wings and engines hit!"
But, interestingly, while I thought my observation was air-tight, I somehow managed to ignore the fact that if there were impact marks instead of holes, it would suggest that there should also be a pair of destroyed wings and jet engines which made those impact marks, and that they would be on the outside of the building.
There weren't. There was nothing on the outside of the building. Zip. Just blast marks, and one hole which was not big enough to fit the fuselage of a Boeing passenger jet.
There are actually a great many problems with the official Pentagon story. --And frankly, given the track record of governments, (this one in particular), I think it is far more realistic to assume that there was some deviousness going on than not. The fact that the numerous cameras, (also detailed in that little video), which photographed the event, had their film and data collected by FBI shortly after the crash and have not been released or ever discussed strikes me as suspicious.
-FL
Six months before 9-11, an episode of the Lone Gunmen featured the following; "The FOX TV series The Lone Gunmen (X-Files spin off) airs their opening episode "Pilot" six months before 9/11 which depicts a secret U.S. government agency behind a plot to crash a Boeing 727 into the WTC via remote control and blame it on foreign terrorists in the hopes of generating a bigger military budget."
A lot of the X-Files was channeled stuff through Carter's noodle, it is thought, and I tend to agree. A lot was also poop, but that's how it goes. .
Anyway, my other current fave was this neat little flash movie which looks into the Pentagon Crash, suggesting that it was a drone aircraft and not a passenger jet which hit the government complex.
-FL
The article itself may be off, but for goodness sake! Cut the complaining a little! The folks at Abisource have done a fantastic job and they've done it in their spare time. They deserve a helluva lot of respect for it. What non-selfish acts have you performed for the rest of the world recently?
--I spent ages searching for a solid open source word processor, and Abiword is these days easily head and shoulders above every other option out there; it has in the last six months alone matured into a very solid little package; the current stable release is 2.0.10, and it is STABLE. I've experienced no crashes, and I use it all the time. I use it as a full word processor capable of handling 200 page files with nimble ease, a general note pad, a general spell checker, a document printer, a file converter, and all with comfort, simplicity and at a very tidy speed. I've used professional packages which have far more bumps and knots, and I've paid for them. For a work in progress, Abiword is amazing.
Now, granted, Abiword isn't as feature-rich as Word, but give it time. Mozilla took a while before it was stable, (remember???), but now look at it! In the mean time, cut some slack and look at the successes rather than the failures. I've followed Abiword's development over the last three years, and it has come a long way.
Abiword is a pleasure to use and it doesn't smell of MS. --I do actually appreciate the esthetics of a small program size. The download is only 4.83 Megs, and that's how big a word processor ought to be! Bloat-ware annoys me conceptually, and Microsoft annoys me directly. Abiword simply feels better, and when you write, one's state of mind is of paramount importance. --Feng shui is largely about how physical esthetics affect one's psychology. Torn envelopes and unpaid bills strewn on the kitchen table, awkward objects littering the entrance, bad colors. . , those hundred little dings to ones subconscious add up to crappy moods and guarded personalities, and you aren't even aware it's happening. The same applies to software; most of us spend hours every day with our minds merged with our computers.
And honestly! How can anybody do their best work while jacked into the offspring of Gates?
-FL
1. NASA public relations and the media presented a very tight argument for falling insulation damage being the culprit in the Columbia disaster. --Historical evidence was presented from the NASA archives purporting that previous missions of both the Columbia and other shuttles had shown some limited damage to heat tiles resulting from foam insulation falling from the fuel tanks. The speculation and arguments were that a larger piece striking in a certain way could cause a critical failure of the heat shielding.
2. Despite the recommendation by NASA engineers during the mission that the foam insulation strike in question did not pose a problem and that the mission was in no danger, the conclusion was reversed after the disaster and subsequent investigation.
3. In doing follow-up on this whole story, I ran across this curious item about a photographer who was shooting the Columbia minutes before it broke up on descent. He captured an image of an energy bolt striking the Columbia.
This is a follow up on that story.
I was unable to find a copy of the image in question, not any stories regarding the conclusion about this image. The name of the photographer was Jay Lawson, an electrical engineer who works for Sparks defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp., and a volunteer at the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno.
His video captured two things, apparently; according to an article in the RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL;
So. . . A bolt of energy striking the Columbia, followed by a bright flash and the break-up of the shuttle.
Now, I have been completely unable to find any copies of the image of the energy bolt on the web. Nor have I found any follow-up stories regarding it.
Curious.
So. . . What we have right now are two stories. The first is the big media story which broadcast the NASA claims regarding the incident; a piece of foam caused damage to heat tiles, which in turn resulted in a critical failure.
The second story is one which comes from two sources; a channeled source claiming an energy weapon was used to shoot down the Columbia, and a photograph of an energy bolt actually striking the shuttle instants before it broke up.
So which is more likely. . ?
One:The U.S. Government can be counted on to not fabricate stories, and that NASA's own engineers who originally said the foam strike did not present a problem were actually wrong.
Two:A photograph of the shuttle being hit by an energy bolt was wrong or fabricated, AND the channeled claim that the Columbia being shot down by an energy bolt was also wrong or fabricated, --and that BOTH were wrong or fabricated by different people in different parts of the country without any contact between each other.
The channeled claim has been instantly disregarded on the basis that it is supposedly impossible that alien intelligence could be in contact with humans. Occam's Razor has been suggested as the means by which 'UFO conspiracy' theory should be disregarded and indeed scorned.
Interestingly, Occam was a monk who
Occam's Razor is a rule of thumb, and it is a pretty good one when used responsibly. But it is not a scientific law, and unfortunately, it is broadly mis-applied and mis-used. Based on its fundamental logic, it cannot work well when being used to test the viability of many emerging possible realities simply because it is designed to measure against the strictures of old accepted realities. To put it another way, asking, "Is it more likely. .
Further. . , the Columbia incident is only a 'closed book' to you because you have chosen to believe the NASA public relations efforts. --And here all I can do is stress that NASA is just another U.S. government body, and the U.S. Government has been shown to have told countless lies and to have used the media to deceive the public many, many times before. It behooves one to think twice before accepting such stories as truth!!!
But I have at this point largely destroyed my credibility through my very half-assed recall of details and my exceptionally poor handling of those few details I did have right. (Which is definitely not par for the course with me. I blame this on the event being over a year old and my reluctance in going over the old details. Laziness nailed me on this one.). Either way, I don't see that there is any point in further attempting to correct this, particularly with somebody who has (ugh) firmly chosen to become entrenched in rudeness and conceit. --Those are walls which most people, and I suspect you as well, generally feel compelled to defend even at the expense of gaining further knowledge. Should the day ever come when you realize you want to change your mind, you will have to dismantle those walls yourself, and they generally prove to be among the most difficult!
I've really not made such a fantastic mess of an argument in years, and I apologize deeply. I know that must sound utterly ridiculous to you at this point and that you will not value such an apology, but it must be offered.
Good luck to you! I'm gone.
-FL
I re-thought the wording of that one as I hit, 'Submit'.
Interestingly, it calls appropriately to the point of what I was trying to say, because you're quite right! People do commonly treat others this way. So why exactly do people feel compelled to ridicule certain sets of ideas before properly considering the content of those ideas?
This is the knee-jerk reaction I'm talking about. It clearly has the ability to severely limit how a group thinks and deals with new information, and like I said, I have learned to use it as a warning signal that interesting, and potentially valuable ideas are in the offing.
-FL
I took a look at the video footage again, and it was indeed shot through a telephoto camera. Enough time has passed between my first seeing it over a year ago and now, for my memories to have decayed. I've certainly learned something about myself, namely that it's worth going over old files before trying to speak with authority on a subject!
However, (and you're going to love this. .
When looking for the video footage you were describing, I ran across the following:
Like I said; a very scattered series of arguments and a very difficult puzzle to zero in on. --All I can say with total clarity is that from Day One, the foam story struck me as being 'off'; I've studied a fair bit about public relations work, and I was definitely picking up on the scent of panic and haste with which NASA hustled their explanation together; the cannon demonstration in particular seemed sensationalist and forced. This was my intuitive insight of the situation, and so I went searching for other ideas, and I found several as offered previously.
Now, clearly, my memory of events has decayed over the last year since I was looking at this, and I definitely give you a tip of the hat for your superior recall of the facts and details of the story. My efforts were, and continue to be, primarily attempts to explain why the whole thing felt 'off', and still does. I've been rewarded many times through life for trusting my intuitive insights into things, and while my attempts to explain them aren't always on the money, the reactions themselves tend to sing true, and my willingness to look further afield for reasons often procures fascinating and useful results.
Coincidentally, I find my best results are arrived at when I work with an individual like yourself, who clearly has a superior grasp of Right Brained stuff. But you really do need to work on your attitude. It's really becoming quite insulting.
-FL
Shame on you Mel! What would Mad Max have thought, given his world was the end result of this kind of message?
-FL
Fair enough regarding tiles, but it doesn't really address the point.
The offending tile which fell hit a wing, which is designed to put up with massive sheer forces. --And if it wasn't designed to deal with unexpected impacts, (like ice crumbling from the main fuel tank during the same phase of lift off that the foam block was seen to bounce from the wing in the launch video), then the designers were being foolish.
Boeing made the thing, for goodness sake. I'd be very surprised if they didn't use material sciences and design philosophies garnered from their existing knowledge pool. Why would they deliberately invent a new and weaker wing design when all the technology and knowledge for standard designs was pre-existing?
I took a quick look, and it seems that NASA is now retroactively fitting the shuttle with heaters to prevent ice build-up so that the danger from debris falling during launch is minimized. This is a very slick bit of PR, (they've had a year or more to polish it, after all!), because through saying this, they cleverly make a point of saying that the heaters are being installed to replace insulation which was previously there and vital to preventing ice build-up which could fall and damage the shuttle during launch.
--With this they point out that there was always a danger from ice, and that they took care of it before but now they're taking even more care. Very slick. The only problem is that it's total bullshit.
There has always been ice build up and it has always fallen during launches. You can see the ice falling and striking the shuttle in the same video clip where the 'foam block' fell and supposedly did its damage.
Which brings me to another point. .
Since the video was available of the actual tile striking the wing, then this means the event happened during the very early moments of lift-off. --The camera was presumably attached to the launch tower. --So, if the shuttle was still in range to be filmed, how can it possibly have had enough time reach the super-sonic speeds necessary to have impacted the tile with the same force as those bits of foam the NASA demonstrators were firing out of their test cannon at 400 Km/hour? What's up with that?
Apparently somebody already asked this question, and the response was, "Well, actually the foam was blasted away from the body of the Shuttle, due to air bubbles in the glue heating up. So the foam block was actually explosively launched at the wing."
Well, now! This is the biggest reach yet! --So now, the block, which we all saw in the video not moving any faster than falling ice, was supposedly explosively launched at the wing because of air bubbles?
For me, all of these points add up to a big, "Huh?" The NASA story only makes sense if you don't think about it too much or examine it too closely, which, luckily for them, most people are perfectly willing to avoid doing.
-FL
Oh well. I'm sure I have lost all credibility at this point.
Nonetheless, it does actually remind me of another point. .
Since the video was available of the actual tile striking the wing, then this means that mean the event happened during the very early moments of lift-off. --The camera was presumably attached to the launch tower. --So, if the shuttle was still in range to be filmed, how can it possibly have had enough time reach super-sonic speeds? --Thus, how could there be super-sonic flows of air to catch foam bricks and hurl them in ways most people, as you put it, "don't have a very intuitive grasp of"? (A very common explanation from the authorities; "You are stupid and we are 'experts'. We will tell you what to believe, so stop thinking. It is very annoying!")
Yeah, so that was my other nagging thought during all of the explanations being spun about.
--And still, through all of it, the fact that aircraft wings are designed to put up with massive abuse still hasn't been adequately addressed. The more I think it over, the more impossible it seems that a small foam brick, which was essentially only dropped on the shuttle wing at very little relative speed, could have caused critical damage.
As for losing you on the UFO stuff. .
It's actually not nearly so flaky a subject as many believe. I also always looked the other way until I came across Richard Dolan. --A great deal of what people base their opinions and rational explanations on regarding UFO stuff is a very limited and corrupted set of data. I read Dolan on a recommendation; his approach is very different from most of the New Age candy out there. He studied a specific stretch of history, from WWII until 1973, working primarily from Military and Police reports, since those agencies have systems designed to properly record and track reports from their personel, and as such tend to have a far greater degree of clarity, technical data from radar and multiple witnesses etc., than sightings made by the general public. Interestingly, when public sightings were discounted, the number of reports just from military and police is staggering. Hundreds of them! People just don't hear about this stuff. --Dolan also worked with several air-force officers who had been active over the three decades his book covers.
Very fascinating stuff. --And that's just one source. There is a lot of amazing data out there if one is willing to look. There is certainly a lot of misinterpretation and silly behavior, but when it comes right down to it, unless one is willing to personally put in the time to examine things, you really can't expect to learn what's what.
--These days I really can't take people very seriously when they scoff unless they have taken the time to properly investigate these and similar issues. Thoughtless dismissal is just too easy, too common, and nearly always based on limited, corrupted information.
I'm also weird. --When people try to prevent me from thinking in certain directions through social punishment like ridicule, my first and immediate question is, "Hum! Why it is so important that I not look at this stuff? Friends, family and total strangers are willing to go out of their way to ridicule me. These cannot be reactions stemming from the conscious. Nobody would consciously ridicule a total stranger. These are reactions stemming from somewhere deeper." I just don't trust automatic reactions of that sort.
-FL
Aw, I'm just playing with words and ideas. I really enjoy this stuff; looking at patterns and trying to interpret responses. If you don't think as you go, it's like sleep-walking through life. Plus, having an awareness of one's output and internal processes tends to purify, because there is usually a LOT of broken garbage in most people and when you start to notice it in yourself, you naturally want it gone. I'm still working to clear all the crap out of my own system! Phew.
-FL
I found 'The English Patient' interesting because of this, actually. It seemed that about half the people who watched the film had the same reaction I did; they actually couldn't follow the narrative logic. To me it seemed a series of disconnected scenes with a lot of characters who may or may not have been the same people. My girlfriend, at the time, though, loved it and teared up while explaining the plot to me. There was even a Seinfeld episode done regarding people's reactions to this film!
I've only run into this phenomenon once before, and it was in an English class where we read a brief short story.
I honestly found the story utterly impenetrable while everybody else in the class just read it without any hassles and answered all the questions. I felt like I was trying to cut through some sort of advanced math where the words were obeying some kind of different grammatical law. It was like I was suffering from a very specific form of brain damage just in regard to that one story. Very strange. 'The English Patient' had the same effect on me.
-FL
Made for a song, too. Think about it! They only needed the one set! Plus, all the special computer effects were done for free by the effects company so that they could advertise their wares to the film industry. All in all, a very solid film made for almost nothing. Written like a 102 minute twi-light zone, I had no real complaints except intellectual differences which would have made for interesting talk with the writer/director over beer.
--And it wasn't an alien cube. Just government. I guess you got fed up and didn't finish watching.
-FL
-FL
--A truly fantastic, compelling idea done very, very, very badly. I swore at the time, sitting in a packed theater on opening day, that if I ever ran into either of those idiots, I was going to punch them in the stomach. --To return the favor for how I felt after watching that piece of drek.
What I find interesting is that more than one of their films have already been mentioned in this series of posts!
Although, for sheer crapola that I paid to see was Mark Hamill's "Time Runner". Just plain shit; basically a student/fan film which Mark agreed to act in for the helluvit and as a result, made it into theaters. It was my own fault for having expectations. --Interestingly, because of his willingness to do stupid films just 'cuz, Hamill remains one of my all-time favorite actors. He's a guy who really, really doesn't care about his professional image. There are very few actors who can claim this. This is true coolness. Anybody who worries about image is, by definition, seeking validation and therefore not cool. I'd put Hamill in a similar league as William Shatner and maybe Adam West. These are comfortable guys who are actually happy in life, and as a result, do awesome work from time to time.
And one of the coolest quotes I've ever heard actually came from the set of "Time Runner"; Hamill was being interviewed. The production was taking place in some small town and he was asked, "Wow. Do they even get cable out here?"
To which Mark answered, "Well, they have cable, but I don't know if they get it."
-FL
The fact that VCR's didn't exist back then made movies something far more special than they are today. --A show like that allowed you to visit old friends again, and friends are such that you forgive blemishes and shoddy production values.
And actually, even as an adult, seeing Han and Chewie take out storm troopers was pretty cool!
-FL