This cat discovering that it has ears is absolutely the best thing I will see today. pic.twitter.com/SDx80QOnAI
— Amanda (@Pandamoanimum) July 16, 2020
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Renaming The Redskins
Some suggestions that better reflect the DC culture.
My pick would be the Washington Parasites, though the word “Washington” itself is problematic.
Which Is It?
This is a thing on Facebook, but I’ll do it here. I’ll list five famous people whom I’ve been within a few feet of, but one of them is a lie:
Mitt Romney
Buzz Aldrin
Fred Smith
Newt Gingrich
Bill Nelson
[Evening update]
All right, since everyone is guessing Mittens, I’ll start the slow process of elimination. I met him at the Conservative Summit in DC right after the disastrous 2006 election. I tried to talk to him briefly about space and advising him on it, but (as he later demonstrated), he didn’t give a rat’s patoot.
Monday-afternoon update]
OK, I’ve had enough guesses. I’ve known Buzz for decades; he used to call me in the middle of the night. I had lunch with Fred Smith at the Atheneum at Caltech in the 90s, when we were pitching him for funding for supersonic research. I talked to Newt for a while at a reception at the State Department a year ago. I’ve never been in physical proximity to Bill Nelson, or communicated with him.
The Far Side
Gary Larson is baaaaaack.
Wow, it’s been decades since his last one.
Our Space Future
This is an excellent overview.
Kanye
Will he change how the Democrats treat blacks?
I think he’ll take more black votes away from Biden than from Trump.
A Message To Newsom And Garcetti
Despite the threat of a $50K fine, the fireworks across LA basin were continuous last night as we ate ribs on the upstairs patio. It was a better display than the cities ever put on. I have no idea where the fireworks came from, because I’m sure they’re all illegal for personal possession in California. Maybe they were contraband from Nevada or Arizona. There wasn’t a lot of breeze overnight, and it was still smoky when we got up. I love the phrase “News Karens.”
I hope this massive public disobedience is a harbinger for the election.
[Update a few minutes later]
It wasn’t just LA.
Tucker
Whatever Happened To Whats-His-Name?
An interesting disquisition on Milo, Beethoven, and a Chinese pianist. I haven’t listened to the performance yet.
A New Cannonball Record
Less than 26 hours from New York to Redondo Beach, and he did it solo. That would be averaging over a hundred miles an hour, I think.
That’s the sort of thing I might have tried when I was younger and stupider. I did do a 24-hour drive thirty years ago, but not cross country. I started out in Reno, drove up into northern California, decided to go up and see Crater Lake in Oregon (which I’d never done), then came back down I-5. By the time I got to the Bay area, I decided there was no need to stop for hotel, since it was only another five hours to LA.
[Monday-morning update]
Seeing lots of stories in comments, so here’s one more, my funnest non-stop. I was about to graduate, and driving out to California in late August to do some job hunting. On US 40 in Colorado, somewhere near Steamboat, I saw a young woman hitchhiking. I of course picked her up, to prevent someone less…scrupulous than me from doing so (of course, I didn’t consider the possibility that she was herself a serial killer). It turned out that she was headed to San Francisco to see her boyfriend who was sick in the hospital.
I had been planning to stop in Salt Lake for the night, but she was in a hurry to get there, and knew how to drive a stick, so she drove through the night across Utah and Nevada while I slept. At daybreak we were in Hawthorne (Nevada, not California), and headed from there over Tioga Pass into Yosemite. We stopped by an alpine lake in the high country and had a picnic lunch, then headed down into Yosemite Valley, then down through Gold Country, across the San Joaquin and into the city. When we got there, she found a pay phone, and it turned out he was out of the hospital. I dropped her off in a parking lot where he was waiting for her, bid her farewell, and headed down to Mountain View, where there was a thriving spacer community based at Ames.