Star Trek Continues, Episode 3

Star Trek Continues, Episode 2

Second Base Hit

The Calgary Stampede is going on right now, which means any place of lodging, including campgrounds, is full.  Why Vul-con was scheduled at the same time as Stampede, I can't say, but it was, and I've spent a bit of time this morning calling around to different RV parks looking for a place to stay tonight.  The convention ends at 5pm and I'll need to get under way.

I finally found a campground--with water and power hookups!--not far from Calgary itself.  You'd think that's a home run, but then I add that they don't have wi-fi there, hence the title of this post :-)

My plan is to spend the entire day in Calgary tomorrow, and to head to Banff on Tuesday.

Star Trek Continues, Episode 1

Axanar uses some Star Trek terms--Star Trek Continues is a studio-quality series using the same characters as the original Star Trek.  If you liked TOS (the original series), you'll like Star Trek Continues:

A Flavor of Vulcan

I still can't figure out how to get the pictures from my phone via my Chromebook, and I didn't really want to go out and retake the pictures with my camera so I could just insert the SD card--but I did go out and get a couple today, just so you can get a flavor of the town.  When I get home I'll be able to use the desktop and upload more pictures from the phone.

click to enlarge

County admin building (notice the font):

The tourist information center:

The starship that welcomes visitors to Vulcan:

Street signs.  Crosswalks.  Pictures/references.  The town has embraced Star Trek, and it's paying off for them.

As I said, pictures of such things when I get home.

The events start tomorrow:

Made It To Vulcan

This town is geek Heaven!

Can't get pics off my phone via my Chromebook right now, I'll work on that.  But this is a great little town.

Prelude to Axanar

Assuming you already watched Whom Gods Destroy (discussed here), you know what happens to Captain Garth of Izar.  What were his exploits, what was so important that Captain Kirk studied him at the Academy?  Find out in Prelude to Axanar, a "documentary".


CBS and Paramount are working to ensure the feature length film Axanar never gets made.  Their newly-released fan film guidelines were created specifically to stifle Axanar, and the lawsuits are still in effect.

The only hashtag I've ever used:  #IStandWithAxanar

End of Day 1

It was a lot of driving, including 2 state lines and a time zone, but I'm in for the night at a KOA outside of Twin Falls, Idaho.  The goal for tomorrow is to get close to the Canadian border without needing to stop for a nap like I did today!

(Oh, and even though I'll be in Mountain Daylight Time for the next several days, I'm going to keep the blog setting on PDT.)

Trip #2

I've been back from Mexico for maybe 10 days, now it's time to head to our neighbor to the north.  I've mentioned in a few posts that I'm going to Vul-con 2016, so in that spirit, I'll link to some Star Trek--the actual stuff, and some fan films.  I'll schedule one for every other day, and try to fill in the blanks if I can get wifi to my laptop while I'm up there.

I've linked a few times to Prelude to Axanar, but let's start with the Star Trek episode that was the impetus for the Axanar movies, Whom Gods Destroy:

click to view

For The Left, It's All About Compulsion

California's very own Governor Moonbeam, Crazy Ole Uncle Jerry, thinks young people should be forced to participate in community service--for the greater good, of course:

Q: Some people think a national, mandatory period of service for young people would be …
A: I think it would be very helpful, something that would integrate middle class and lower income people. I think that would be very good...
Q: Why would it be a good idea? What do you think you would gain from a national mandatory service program?
A: First, it’d be an integrative experience, which increasingly is very remote, since the country’s being stratified so much by income. So that’s one thing. Also, it helps to instill ideas and understandings of public service and the larger ... issues that go beyond the individual person and that person’s convenience. So it is, it’s a character-building exercise, as well as doing good things for the community. But that, you know, I think it would be helpful. I think a lot of people get a lot out of being in the Army. Now that’s mostly low-income people, but it would be very good for everybody to have the same experience.

You'll note that everyone in the army today is a volunteer.  I doubt there's one draftee still in, considering that the draft ended in 1973.  But that's not the real issue; no, the real issue is the compulsion, the belief that "I know better what's good for you than you do", the lack of individual choice and freedom.  How appropriate to point this out on American Independence Day.

Over 5 years ago I wrote about why requiring community service as a high school graduation requirement is a bad idea.  The points are still valid when considered against Jerry's ideas.  And in a post a few weeks shy of 8 years old I made a couple other cogent points on the topic of forced volunteerism.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article87008602.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article87008602.html#storylink=cpy

Happy Treason Day, Fellow Colonials!

Is it only treason if you lose?  Or is it always treason, and you just get away with it?  Do such distinctions matter when your side wins?

Brexit version 1.0.

We Came Close, But No Cigar

So sad.   You get a shot like this once in a generation:

In one of the last acts of the current term, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association to rehear the case that the court had already ruled on in a 4-4-opinion in March.

The lawsuit sought to eliminate “agency fees” that require teachers to pay a portion of union dues. If the plaintiffs – Rebecca Friedrichs and nine other California teachers – had won, it could have inflicted a potentially devastating financial blow against the CTA, and by extension all public employee unions.

The split opinion, which came about as a result of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, represented a major victory for the CTA and public employee unions. It kept the court’s earlier decision, requiring mandatory fees, intact.

I'm Told Voter Fraud Is A Conservative Myth

Funny how every time voter fraud is uncovered, it always leans one direction--and that direction isn't to the right:

Same day registration and other liberal “reforms” have made it easy for ineligible voters to cast ballots in many states. When law-abiding citizens point out that liberal policies enable voter fraud, the left’s response is always that 1) voter fraud hardly ever happens, so 2) you must be a racist. Typically subtle liberal argumentation.

Here in Minnesota, a case is pending in our Supreme Court that challenges same day registration and various actions by our Democratic Secretary of State that have enabled illegal voting. I haven’t yet had time to evaluate the plaintiffs’ legal arguments, but the factual allegations are explosive:

A new voter fraud case before the Minnesota Supreme Court claims 1,366 ineligible felons have cast at least 1,670 fraudulent votes in recent statewide elections, possibly tipping the outcome of close contests, including the 2008 U.S. Senate race.

The Golden State

There was gold in 1848, but not so much today:

CALIFORNIA WATCH: Crumbling Roads? Let’s Build Bike Lanes! Plus this: “A Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Development Committee backgrounder from last July noted that ‘68 percent of California’s roads are in ‘poor’ or ‘mediocre’ condition, putting California behind 43 other states in road condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.’”

We can't maintain our roads with some of the highest taxes of any state in the country, but we can afford an overly-generous social safety net (I've read that 1/3 of all welfare cases in the country are in California) as well as a bullet train from nowhere to nowhere.

What party has run this state pretty much my entire life?  Do you think there might be a causation factor in play?

TSA-holes

My despising the TSA knows few bounds, and here is yet another reason why:

19-year-old Hannah Cohen was returning home from St. Jude's Hospital with her mother for treatment of her brain tumor (a trip they had made for 17 years), when Hannah somehow set off the metal detector at the security checkpoint.

TSA wanted to do a further scan on Hannah, but she was reluctant. Hannah's mother, Shirley Cohen, tried to inform the agents that her daughter was disabled. She is partially deaf and blind in one eye, paralyzed, and becomes easily confused. “They wanted to do further scanning, she was reluctant, she didn't understand what they were about to do," she said.

Despite her concerns, Shirley was kept away from her daughter by police. Hannah, obviously afraid, tried to get away from the grips of the TSA. “She's trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere,” said Shirley.

Authorities have thrown out the charges and the family has filed suit.  I don't care if they become rich or not from this, what I hope is that the lawsuit's spotlight on the lack of common sense, lack of decency, and lack of results eventually causes the TSA to go away.

Greenpeace and Golden Rice

USA Today has an op-ed about Greenpeace and its opposition to golden rice--at the cost of hundreds of thousands of blind children a year across the planet.

Good on USA Today for publishing that piece; I just want to point out that I've been writing about golden rice since 2005.

Only Liberals Will Be Surprised By This

It's not like this wasn't predicted, loudly and often:

Insurers helped cheerlead the creation of Obamacare, with plenty of encouragement – and pressure – from Democrats and the Obama administration. As long as the Affordable Care Act included an individual mandate that forced Americans to buy its product, insurers offered political cover for the government takeover of the individual-plan marketplaces. With the prospect of tens of millions of new customers forced into the market for comprehensive health-insurance plans, whether they needed that coverage or not, underwriters saw potential for a massive windfall of profits.

Six years later, those dreams have failed to materialize. Now some insurers want taxpayers to provide them the profits to which they feel entitled -- not through superior products and services, but through lawsuits.
 
Earlier this month, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina joined a growing list of insurers suing the Department of Health and Human Services for more subsidies from the risk-corridor program. Congress set up the program to indemnify insurers who took losses in the first three years of Obamacare with funds generated from taxes on “excess profits” from some insurers. The point of the program was to allow insurers to use the first few years to grasp the utilization cycle and to scale premiums accordingly.

As with most of the ACA’s plans, this soon went awry. Utilization rates went off the charts, in large part because younger and healthier consumers balked at buying comprehensive coverage with deductibles so high as to guarantee that they would see no benefit from them. The predicted large windfall from “excess profit” taxes never materialized, but the losses requiring indemnification went far beyond expectations.

It's almost as if there are two types of people in the world--those who understand economics, and those who are leftists.

Who Will Take This Warning Seriously?

You would hope that even lefties would look at this pronouncement from our governmental nanny and say, "you've got to be kidding me":

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it is no longer safe to eat raw cookie dough or batter — even if you're using a recipe that doesn't use raw eggs.

In fact, the administration said in a new consumer update posted Tuesday, it's not safe to eat raw flour in any form. Not homemade "play dough," not licking the spoon of brownie batter. Nothing.

Here's the deal: You know that raw eggs can carry salmonella, which is no good, but it turns out flour can harbor E. Coli, which also is nasty. The FDA says dozens have been sickened by the Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O121 after they ate raw flour. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38 people were infected in 20 states with illnesses starting in December.

In over 50 years on this planet I've never met a person who got salmonella or e. coli, whether from licking the cake beaters or from licking a petri dish containing those two yuckies.  I doubt I've ever met someone who didn't lick the beaters, or eat cookie dough or cake batter, or any similar thing.  This is among the most ridiculous pronouncements ever.

Another way of looking at it is as a failure of the FDA to keep nasties out of the food supply.

"You Have To Change With The Times"

My nana used to tell me that her "gran"(dmother) in England used to tell them when they were children, "You have to change with the times."  Obviously that advice is better some times than others, but in general I'd say it's not far off--you at least need to acknowledge the changes in the times and decide the best way for you to react to those changes.

The article quoted below reminded me of a discussion I was once in about 19th century railroads in the United States.  At the time they were enormously powerful, very rich, and influential companies, but they didn't change with the times--and today I'd venture a guess that very few Americans could name a single extant railroad company besides Amtrak.  They lost their influence and power because they saw themselves as railroad companies and not freight companies or transportation companies.  They didn't adapt to steamships and later to big rigs, they stayed mired in rail.  They didn't change with the times.

It seems that some of our automobile companies today are trying to change with the times:

But most important from a business perspective, driverless vehicles are poised to threaten the $570 billion that Americans spend each year on new cars. For 125 years U.S. auto companies made their money on the manufacture of motor vehicles. Now they must be in the business of ride-hailing apps, shuttle buses, 3D maps, and computers on wheels that drive themselves. They’re no longer automotive companies either—they’re now calling themselves “mobility” companies, just in case all those predictions about the end of car ownership come true. At stake is a transportation services market that Ford believes is worth $5.4 trillion, a sum that makes you wonder why it took the auto industry so long to go after it.

Doing More Before 9am Than Most People Do All Day

Remember those great Army slogans from the 80s, "Be all that you can be" and "We do more before 9 am than most people do all day"?  I really felt like I was living those this morning.

Yesterday it was obvious that my water heater wasn't working.  No amount of cajoling could get that pilot light back on, either.  I figured I'd need a new one; after all, it was a Montgomery Ward water heater, and how long have they been out of business?

My dad's memory is going a little, but if he remembers only 1/50 of what he ever knew about building or fixing things, he'll remember more than I'll ever know on such topics.  He was not a jack-of-all-trades, he was a master-of-all-trades.  There wasn't a vehicle or appliance built that he couldn't repair back in his day.  He designed and built his own house when he was 33.  He wasn't book-smart, but he sure knew a lot about a lot of things.  And when I told him about my water heater problem, he said he'd be over in the morning and we'd replace it.

As he usually does when he says he'll be here at a certain time in the morning, he called and said he'd be much earlier.  I was prepared for that this morning.  He got here before 8 am and we got right to work disconnecting and removing the old one.  When it was out we went to Home Depot, where I'd already checked online for exactly the heater I wanted and knew it was in stock.  We got back home and started installing.

Installation needs to be done well, but it isn't rocket science.  Things went very smoothly for us, and by 11 am or so the heater was fully operational.  By the time I got back from taking my dad to A&W for a root beer float, I had 40 gallons of hot water just waiting to be used in the shower.

It cost me several hundred dollars and a root beer float.  That seems a good deal to me for a water heater and some fix-it knowledge.