Blogger Damaged by Latest Release

draft

 

Poor Blogger!  Clearly they have not been given many resources and I should be glad that they exist at all.  Anyway they did a major software upgrade a while ago and as time goes by I notice more and more things that are broken.

Why are these companies so bad at software?  I dont know, but it looks like they do not do minimal testing and they do minimal, if any, design reviews.  My guess is that they know better but have budget limitations.  Just a guess.

 

Marvel and Body Armor for Women

draft

 

You may not be aware that the issue of body armor for women and how you deal with those women of various breast sizes is a somewhat controversial or at least ongoing topic.  The history of this goes way back and includes rumors from the greeks about how the Amazons in the 5th century BC dealt with the issue.  

 

On a more directly sexist note, the dubious choices made by fantasy illustrators whose heroines have somewhat preposterous bosoms and even more preposterous bodice / body armor has long been noted by teenage boys in the 1920s through to the present day.

 

Marvel has entered into this fashion dialog by proposing a sensible yet imposing solution for the TVA operatives (Time Variance Authority) who enforce the laws and repress deviance from the "Sacred Timeline".  This is from the first episode of Loki (2021). 

 

Remember for body armor to be reasonable, it has to be comfortable enough to wear for a long time, certainly all day.  Yikes, that must be annoying.

 

This is the Marvel proposal.  It doesnt look all that comfortable but at least it is not overtly decorative.  It looks functional. 

 

 

 Here are two examples of body armor from concept sketches found on the Internet.

                                        

 

I am not sure that either of the two above are practical and look more like parade armor to me, e.g. the armor used in presentations, not battle.

I will spare you some of the more egregious, often bikini-inspired, concepts in this area.

Rand 1700 Main Street Re-creation

draft

A real time simulation of the early RAND buildings at 1700 Main Street in Santa Barbara.  This is a screenshot from version 53.

 

It runs best in Google Chrome by the way, but it will run in any browser that has WebGL enabled. It may take a few seconds to load textures.

https://mwahrman.com/dist_053/rand_0_53.html

Something to Like About Right Wing Judges

draft

Although it is true that the American people will suffer and be victimized by nutty boy right wing judges, at least we get to be amused by how stupid they are.  For the record, an AR-15 is not a swiss army knife.  It is a purpose built design by an American company and the design was initially a failure until, in almost a Cinderella fashion, a modified version was chosen by the army.  It is an excellent design, easily manufactured, and completely purpose built to kill humans at a distance, lots of humans.  

 

What if everytime our nutty boy Republicans do something stupid involving the 2nd Amendment, what if all Democrats in the affected areas went out and bought several high quality AR-15s with many extended magazines.  Maybe when they realized that they were just arming their enemy, the damn liberals, maybe they will change their toon.

 

Letter to a Friend

draft

I think we know where we both stand, so why am I bothering you?  I am bothering you because I essentially have no one else to talk to (not quite true but almost true) and I like to vent my feelings.

I doubt I am going to blow anything up.  I may be able to leave the country but doing so requires that I solve a number of problems that have proven unsolvable in the past (there are a few wrinkles here that might work out because I havent tried everything and I do think there is promise in finding a marriage partner who wants a US citizenship and who has a European or UK citizenship with which to trade.... until they close that loophole).

I happen to agree with the editorial below, at least I think I do as far as I have read it and I know the author's work. 

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/01/republican-attacks-on-democracy-are-a-national-emergency-will-democrats-ever-fight-back/

There are huge differences between us and the Weimar example, we are not Germany between the wars.  Nor are we the Shah of Iran during the revolution.  But both examples do suggest one commonality: people were way too complacent that they could control the fanatics and that they did not represent a threat.  I say to you, not only do our right wing fascists represent a threat, they are 9/10ths of the way there and nothing less than immediate extreme response will help.  Now I know you dont believe that, and bipartisan, and cant we just get along, and who needs a Jan 6 commission.  But I think this is sheer and obvious lunacy.  Those who are not ready to go to the mattresses will never defend freedom they have been given enough chances and frankly, we failed.  I hope you get your children out in time.