Leaderboard

Let's see: Ending slavery - made society better, but conservatives hated it Allowing women to vote - made society better, but conservatives hated it Ending enforced segregation - made society better, but conservaties hated it Allowing interracial marriage - made society better, but conservatives hated it Ending bans on being gay - made society better, but conservatives hated it Allowing gay people to marry - made society better, but conservatives hated it I sense a theme here.

Yet another lie. You said the Republicans couldn’t have done it without the Dems actions. The above is yet another source which proves you wrong. Why can’t you just admit that instead of continuing to dig the hole deeper? The claim that it’s somehow the Dems fault anyway is like the rest of what you said - a deeply disingenuous opinion that doesn’t hold up to the lowest level of scrutiny. So you and your source agree that Senate Republicans refused to do their constitutional duty throughout the whole of Obama’s presidency?

Ironically enough, Woke ideology is singularly humorless. As Gandhi said, "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." Like most religiously held beliefs, any parody must be accompanied by appropriate emoticons to so indicate, since any attempt at being more absurd is futile. Much of Woke liturgy seems to have been lifted verbatim from humor anthologies. The response to the question of whether the Radio Announcer job application was successful of "N- n- n- no, they di- di- di- didn't hire me 'cause I'm j- j- j- jewish" was not a case of antisemitism. It is unfortunate that much of the efforts of the Woke mob are entirely counterproductive. For example, the effects of Affirmative Action tend to call into question the qualifications of people who actually have paid their dues and are well qualified. Working with Lethal Service equipment, I do not want to be anywhere near a 'Diversity Hire' of any stripe. I have lived long enough to have seen vast improvements in some of the issues that are dear to the hearts of the Woke, and take exception to their misrepresentation. I have worked with and for people from every continent but Antarctica, male and female (there's a difference), straight and gay, and the only criteria that matter are integrity and professional competence. The most patently racist people I know are those who complain the loudest about 'racism' and so forth. The academics who claim it's 'racist' to expect employees to show up on time or know mathematics are viewed as insulting by many of the people to whom they refer who are entirely reliable and mathematically literate. Someone stating Dr. Martin Luther King's standpoint verbatim would be labeled an Oreo or worse. Judging only by the content of one's character? Heresy! Blasphemy! Do we still have problems as a society? Most certainly. Are they accurately characterized by Woke orthodoxy? Not even slightly. Do any of the 'solutions' put forth by the Woke have merit? No more than filling a fire extinguisher with gasoline. I have spent enough time in Socialist Workers' Paradises to be skeptical of solutions implemented by committee. I am also skeptical of those who wish to be on the committee. BSBD, Winsor

Hi heels, There was this guy named Charles Darwin; he had some ideas . . . Jerry Baumchen

The republican three-step in action: 1) Republicans didn't do it 2) OK they did it but what they really meant was X 3) Democrats did it first Every topic. Every time.

Of course not. He's a scheming, lying, duplicitous, manipulative asshole. Same as Alito and Barrett.

The rules don't change for aircraft type https://www.uspa.org/SIM/2#1I

Yes indeed - that is a Democrat not changing the rules for Supreme Court confirmations. So when you have it there in black and white, why are you still lying about it?

That's ironic. The topic here is you assuming that a black employee you didn't like was promoted because of affirmative action, but you think I'm reading between the lines? Look, I get that you're just lashing out because you're embarrassed - but you have to understand that everyone else can see the same things that I'm pointing out.

I first got interested in illumination when I was around 12. I built a light with AA batteries and an incandescent bulb inside a round plastic box. I also had a mercury switch in it, so when I rolled it across the floor it would flash on and off. At night it lit up the room. But during the day I could barely see it. How did that work? How did a bright light become dim just because there was other light there? How do you make as much _useful_ light as possible with as little energy as possible? Because incandescent bulbs were terrible in that respect. In high school I discovered LEDs and how efficient they were. At that point they still weren't as good as flourescent light but they were so much easier to use. I built all sorts of things full of flashing LEDs because I thought they looked cool. In college I finally got my hands on some very efficient red LEDs, and I built a red flashlight on top of a 9 volt battery. It was remarkably useful; both bright and small enough to fit in a pocket. It was the first time I realized that LEDs could be used for illumination. But back then you could get efficient red LEDs and sort of efficient green LED's. Together they made a yellowish light. Everyone who worked with LED's knew that the holy grail was a blue LED - a red, green and blue LED could both make white light and any color humans could see by adjusting their intensities. It was how TV's worked, except they used phosphors. We knew that once you had blue LEDs you could make huge and fairly cheap TVs by using LEDs instead of CRTs. And you could make white lights. Around 1990 I found my first blue LED from a surplus place called Hosfelt Electronics. It was a dim not-very-efficient blue LED in a T 1-3/4 housing, but it was absolutely blue and it meant that better ones were coming. I built several "any-color" lights that I could adjust to make any color from warm white to cool white to purple etc. In 1992 I was working on flourescent ballasts at work and put together the most efficent ballast plus bulbs I could find. They were high color rendering 34W tubes from Philips, and they put out a lot of light. And it wasn't the usual cold flourescent light either; it was a warmish white that looked a lot like incandescent light. I used it for a light over my workbench. The ballast was one of the first Advance electronic ballasts as well. Not only was it more efficient, it was dimmable down to 20% - so I could cut back even further on power when I didn't need it to be bright over the workbench. I also started to see compact flourescents start to replace incandescents. They had all sorts of problems - long warm up times, harder to dispose of, some were noisy - but they were a solid 4x improvement in efficiency over incandescents. This was an even bigger deal in warm climates, since air conditioners also had to shoulder the load to cool the incandescents in houses that used them. I changed all the lights in my parent's house out to CFs and they saw a significant drop in their power bill. In 1995 I started to get more efficient blue LEDs and made a few white-light flashlights. Then around 2000 blue LEDs with phosphor backings started to appear. These flouresced red and yellow and thus made the light appear white, at a small loss in efficiency (since you lose energy when you downshift in frequency.) But overall they were more efficient than even compact flourescents, and today they are both cheaper and more efficient than CF's ever were. Nowadays there are amazingly good high intensity LEDs. Petco Park just replaced all their stadium lights with LED's - so now they can be part of the light show, with their instant on/off times. You can buy light tiles you just stick to your wall that gives you not only white light, but any color light you want. We are continually developing illumination that gives us more light, light that looks better, light with more flexibility - and for ever decreasing costs and ever improving efficiencies. And on my wall there is a TV that is made of millions of red, green and blue organic LEDs - the holy grail we talked about way back in college. And similar technology lets you build 100 foot video screens anywhere you want. That old flourescent fixture I built way back when kept moving with me - from my parent's house in New York to a rental house on Long Island, to a house in San Diego, through two apartments, another rental house, the first house I owned and now to my current house, where it hangs over the workbench in the garage. And it finally failed for good after over 30 years of service, with both ends blackened and the filaments so gone that not even the Advance ballast could start them any more. And the bulbs were replaced by LED tubes that are even more efficient and look just as good - so at least the ballast will live on.

Listen and watch quietly. How deep is the tread on the tires? Is paint cracked? Is rust or corrosion visible? If manifest routinely reminds the pilot to top off the fuel and oil ... that is a good habit. If the pilot does a pre-flight inspection before the first students arrive every morning, that is a good habit. If he/she stares at the fuel sample for a few seconds, that is a good habit. If he cleans all the dead bugs off of the windshield, that is a good habit. If he promptly orders fresh bugs, that is a good habit. If the pilot compulsively "dips" the fuel tanks every between loads, that is a good habit. If he keeps a spare can of oil handy, that is a good habit. If he reminds everyone to fasten seat-belts before taxiing, that is a good habit. If the pilot reminds everyone to sit quietly until above 1,000 feet, that is a good habit. If he consistently keeps instruments "in the green" that is a good habit. If the pilot leaves notes for the mechanic every Sunday evening, that is a good habit. If a mechanic routinely looks over the airplane (formally called a 25 hour inspection) every Monday morning, that is a good thing. If the mechanic washes used oil from the belly, that is a good habit. Most of those habits are visible to a casual observer. Remember that most piston-pounding jump-planes are more than 25 years old and based upon even older technology, so they require more maintenance than your 5 year old car. While turbine-engined jump-planes tend to be younger, and can go longer between inspections, they have been around-the-block and their airworthiness depends upon the diligence of the last mechanic. The brightest DZOs treat their airplanes as long term investments - like retirement funds - and keep the value up by constant maintenance.